The Leaving(56)

“I’m sorry,” she said, even though she really wasn’t; she just didn’t want a scene in the parking lot at the Love Boat. “I’m just so on edge.”

“Come on,” he said. “I told Emma we’d come get her.”

Avery stopped walking. “Why’d you do that?”

“Uh,” he said. “Because she’s our friend? Because I thought you’d want to see her?”

“I didn’t know you guys, you know, texted.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” she said. “Should it be?”

“Why would it be?”

He got into the car and she got in, too, and he started to drive toward Emma’s. After a few long blocks, her ice cream had reached that point of no return, where it was melting faster than she could reasonably lick it, and she opened her window and tossed what was left of it out. It hit the car with a thud as Sam took a sharp turn.

“What the hell, Ave?”

“I didn’t want the rest of it.” Her hands were sticky, and the only napkin she had left was sticky, too.

He shook his head. “We could have found a trash can.”

She leaned out to look in her side mirror, saw a racer’s stripe of ice cream. “There’s a car wash up on the right. My treat.”

They stopped at a light that had to be in the running for the longest red in the world, and then he pulled into the car wash. She handed him a ten to slide into the machine at the entrance and then he pulled up to the doorway, put the car in neutral, and they were off.

First came the rainstorm.

And she knew she wasn’t making it up, the tension between her and Lucas. The way that he looked at her, the way the air felt around them. You couldn’t make that up.

Then the blue-and-purple foam soap. She wanted to take a picture of that, too, compare it to that ice-cream swirl.

Then the dullflapping of those oversize brushes—the car basically being pummeled clean by some palsied rubber octopus.

She could remember all this, seen from the backseat when she was little.

A feeling of car sickness and fear and wonder.

He felt something for her.

Something more.

She knew it.

Then more rain.

Then huge fans to blow it all dry.

A gale.

Avery picked a droplet of water on the windshield and watched as it held on for dear life—so much longer than the droplets around it that she actually started rooting for that little guy and then it finally surrendered and went poof in the now blinding daylight.

She slid her sunglasses back down over her eyes.

Sam reached over and squeezed her knee as he pulled away. “You okay?”

She nodded and looked out her clean window, saw everything in sharp focus. “I think we should break up.”





Scarlett


Her hands on fabric,

her foot on the pedal,

her eyes focused on the line of stitches.


She made a skirt first, to get her fingers used to working the machine again. It was the only thing she’d done since coming home that felt right.


Her mother had had some old fabric lying around, so she’d used that.

She didn’t love it.

It didn’t matter.

There’d be time.

She’d shop.

She’d make dresses.

She’d make simple tops.

She knew how to do all that and had a moment of gratitude for . . . whoever.

This, at least, was a small gift.

Some small consolation prize.

Maybe the others had secret skills, too. Things that could bring them even a small bit of . . . joy?

Sarah had seen things in her mind like sketches.

Scarlett went and got her phone and called her.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Then voice mail—the robot kind, prerecorded.

“Sarah. It’s Scarlett. Listen. I want you to try to do something. I want you to try to draw what you see—the house, the girl. You said you see them like sketches, so just pick up a pencil and see what comes out. I just realized I know how to sew and, I don’t know. Maybe you can draw. Call me? Okay?”

She went back to the machine with the last piece of fabric she had on hand, thinking just to practice more, to maybe make a small purse.

She ran the machine and lost herself in the rhythm, the hum, the click-clicking of the needle.

When she stopped, she hadn’t even sewn along a seam.

She’d made a series of lines with right angles.

Nothing but three rectangles.



Such a waste of fabric.

She’d have to find a seam ripper and pick them out.

She heard Tammy’s phone ring, heard her pick up and then, a moment later, say, “Yes, thanks. Of course I’ll tell her.”

Tammy came into the room and stood there, looking . . .



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. . . and Scarlett said, “What?”

“They found a body.”


That cliff of h e r s.


“In the Everglades.”

Flattening.


“Max?”