The Leaving(67)

On a beach.

Sand at their feet.

Surf behind them.

His arm around her shoulder.

Her grin wide.

“Where’s this?” he asked Ryan.

“Oh, those swings were death traps. They got taken down years ago.”

Ryan said it like it wasn’t anything at all.

Lucas absorbed it like a fist to the gut.





AVERY



He texted that night when she was watching TV alone in the den: I’m outside

She got up and went downstairs and out the front door and then down to the car. “My parents are out,” she said. “Want to come in?”

“You sure?” he asked.

When she said “I’m sure” back, she said it in a way that was meant to be doubly meaningful, but of course he wouldn’t notice.

She’d never been more sure of anything than her wish to be with him.

She led him through the house and out to the pool, and sat in a lounger. He took the one beside her.

“So?” She tucked her hands into her hoodie pockets.

“Well, they found clothes and stuff there. There were huge framed photos of the things we remember. Like the carousel horse I’ve been picturing. Scarlett’s hot air balloon.”

“Really?” Avery had certainly never imagined that.

He nodded. “They think it was really him. But I don’t know. Nothing was familiar at all.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“They found a gun there and I feel like it’s going to have my prints on it.”

Not at all the conversation she’d been expecting.

She said, “Why would you think that ?”

“It turns out I know how to load a gun.”

She tried to picture it.

Couldn’t.

“I’m confused,” she said. “If you don’t think it was the place—”

“I think the gun is going to have my prints on it but that it’s a setup. I think the whole location was staged.”

“Who would even be able to do that, though?” He was suggesting some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. And people who believed in all that were, well, kind of crazy, right? Backward Beatles records about Elvis. Smoke on the grassy knoll.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I know it sounds crazy. Maybe I’m wrong.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t even try. The surface of the pool shimmered like fish scales.

“What do you remember most about your childhood?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She recrossed her legs, switching which ankle was on top. Her bones hurt.

“Try.”

She closed her eyes. A few eager memories were already there, shouting pick-me-pick-me. “Playing with my neighbors, drinking nectar huckleberry blossoms. Riding our bikes. Playing at the beach. I remember being bored a lot. I remember sleepovers with my cousin . . . or actually I remember looking forward to them more than I even remember what we did. I remember having to get picked up from kindergarten because I fell during recess and hurt my knee really bad and couldn’t stop crying. I remember a lot of daydreaming. Wanting to be famous. Like a rock star or an Olympic figure skater. I think I only gave up on that last one last year.”

He sat up and sat sideways on his chair, smiling. “But what’s your single most vivid memory of your childhood?”

The memories quieted; none stepped forward. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been asked that before and wondered why it would matter?”

“It matters because I’m asking.”

“But what would it mean?”

“Just try. Most vivid.”

“I remember going to Mexico with my parents. They let me buy a pi?ata. It had its own seat on the plane home.”

“That’s not it. Try again.”

That panic started to peek around the corner again. This shouldn’t be hard. She had to remember. She said, “A vacation in Maine where I played video games in an ice-cream shop. It was the first time my parents let me go out on my own with my cousin.”

“Not it. Try again.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Racing around her mind, grabbing at anything of value, like a Supermarket Memory Sweep. “Getting stung by a bee. I felt something on my leg and went to scratch it and got a handful of bee. I screamed.”

“You could just keep going and going, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I guess?” It felt like they were having a fight and she wasn’t sure why. But yes, memories were lining up at the checkout now, waiting their turn.

That time she made a massive sand castle with her father, the way he’d taught her to drip sand to form towers.

The night her parents had a party and she and Max crept halfway down the stairs to peek at the dancing, at the wine being poured.

The time she fell down the back stairs, slid on her back, couldn’t breathe; the panic in her mother’s eyes.

The first time she went off the high diving board at the pool where she’d learned to swim, the way she’d felt like she’d never make it back up to the surface in time and might die.

If he hadn’t asked her, would she have remembered any of that ever again?