99 Days(73)

That would kind of defeat the purpose of my run, on top of which it feels like I’ve pretty much hit my quota of Donnelly time for one summer, but it doesn’t exactly seem as if she’s asking. “Um . . . sure,” I hear myself tell her, opening the passenger door and climbing up onto the bench seat. I can smell the sweat clinging to my skin. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Connie says as we head back around the lake in the direction that I came from. We ride in silence for a moment, just the crackle of the oldies station she and Chuck always used to listen to when they dropped us off or picked us up. “Just a few more days, hm?” she asks, pausing for the traffic light at the intersection of the lake road and Route 4. “I’m driving Julia out to Binghamton next week.”

“Yeah,” I say vaguely—it feels weird to the point of distracting to be in the car with her, to wonder what she’s heard and thinks and feels. “We talked about that, a little.”

Neither of us says anything after that, this echoing silence that feels like it stretches on for days. The sun bounces off the wide wooden dashboard. Connie speaks first. “Listen, Molly,” she says, sighing a little. “I don’t know what went on between you and my boys this summer. I don’t really want to know. They’re my boys, all right? I’m always, always going to stick up for my boys. But honestly—” Connie breaks off. “Honestly, kiddo, you didn’t exactly have an easy go of it either the last few months, did you.”

“I—” I have absolutely no idea how to respond to that; it’s not a question. I feel like the top of my head’s been blown off. “I’m okay,” I tell her finally, because it seems like the best answer even if it’s maybe not the truest. “I made it through.”


“You did.” Connie nods. “I used to be able to give you guys Band-Aids and Popsicles,” she tells me. “That used to be all it took.”

I don’t know what to say to that, either, exactly. It feels like she’s trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what. We’re approaching my house now, the long ribbon of driveway; I probably could have made it home just as fast on my own. Connie stops at the bottom, doesn’t bring me all the way up. “Thanks for the ride,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” she says, nodding. “Take care of yourself, Molly.”

I stand there until her taillights disappear, just watching.

That’s when I remember.

*

It was before Patrick broke up with me, before anything happened with Gabe: I stopped by the Donnellys’ on the way back from my run after school and found Connie in the kitchen making breakfast for dinner. “They’re out in the barn, I think,” she said, sneaking me a piece of bacon off the paper towel. “Tell them this is almost ready, okay?”

“Sure,” I promised, but I hadn’t even made it all the way across the yard when I heard their raised voices.

“—can’t just let it alone, can you?” Patrick was asking. “Just back the f*ck off, bro, I mean it.”

“It’s not really up to you, is it?” That was Gabe. I stopped outside the barn, still flushed from my run and feet sinking into the fragrant muck of the yard. What were they fighting about? It felt like things had been building between them for months now—or longer, maybe, ever since Chuck died.

“It’s not up to me?” Patrick countered, disbelieving. I couldn’t see him inside the barn, but I could picture him fine, his limbs sprawled across the sagging plaid sofa. “What is that, a challenge?”

“Call it whatever you want,” Gabe said. “She’s a big girl. She can make her own choices.”

*

I stand there at the foot of the driveway, not quite home and not quite gone. For so long I’ve felt like the one who came between Patrick and Gabe, this horrifying destroyer who busted up their otherwise perfect family. And maybe I am.

But maybe—

What is that, a challenge?

I take a deep breath and head up the driveway. I unlock the door and go inside.

*

That night I don’t sleep, I just lie there, brain raging like a hurricane: Patrick and Gabe and my own bad judgment, that quiet argument in the barn in the winter chill.

dirty slut dirty slut dirty—

Enough.

I lift my head up off the pillow, actually open my eyes in the dark: At first it sounds like Penn’s voice, or possibly my mother’s. For a moment I think it might be Imogen.

Then I realize: It’s only me.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough.





Day 93


I’m fully intending to skip the Lodge’s end-of-summer staff send-off—it’s pretty clearly suicide to show up—but Penn stops me on my way out the door specifically to make sure I’m going to be there, and I don’t have the heart (or the courage) to tell her no. The stupid party was my idea to begin with, back when this summer seemed like it might somehow work out after all. I don’t want Penn’s last memory of me to be as someone who bailed.

As soon as I turn up poolside, though, I know it was a mistake of epic proportions: Here are Tess and Mean Michaela with their feet in the water, Julia by the food table with Elizabeth Reese. I was hoping Jay might bring Imogen for a buffer—even texted her a frantic SOS—but she’s working late tonight at French Roast, which means I’m totally on my own. I swallow and square my shoulders, trying not to feel like a zebra smack-dab in the middle of a hungry pride of lions. I have as much right to be here as they do after all.