The Leaving(72)

Kristen smiled some. “You’re really not going to like it.”

“Just tell me!” Nearly shouting.

Kristen pushed up off her elbows, then wiped sand off them. “I remembered seeing you kissing someone,” she said, now brushing sand off her hands, “but it wasn’t Lucas.”





Lucas


The map of Opus 6 on the kitchen wall was hand drawn on graph paper with black ink; clearly showed six main paths leading to the center. Lucas thought his own capital Os, when he wrote, had the same angle, and he admired his father’s weird small cap/script hybrid where he’d labeled the lower reflecting pool and upper pond.

The urn with his father’s ashes sat on a high shelf in the next room.

Miranda was in the shower, water running like rain.

“Let’s finish it,” Lucas said to Ryan, who was attempting to cook spaghetti, reading the box. “Let’s finish Opus 6. Let’s put a stone there.”

“That thing has to weigh like four hundred pounds.”

“Wait,” Lucas said. “He has the stone?”

Ryan put the box down, set a timer on the stove. “It’s out behind the RV.”

Lucas had never gone around the back, through overgrown shrubs. “How was he going to move it?”

“I don’t know.” Ryan stirred the water.

“So let’s figure it out.” Lucas went for the door. “Maybe it’s on a dolly or cart or something?”

“Now?” Water dripped from the wooden spoon in Ryan’s hand.

“Why not now?”

“Because I’m cooking.” Stirred the pot again. “And it’s going to rain any second now. And you’re not even convinced they caught the right guy.”

It was true that the sky was bruised and menacing, true that he didn’t buy the John Norton theory. But right now it didn’t feel like it mattered. “Maybe I’m wrong. And why should Dad have to wait? We’ll just have to be quick before the storm. Let’s go.”

“Lucas,” Ryan said. “Just calm down, okay?”

“Uh.” Miranda came into the kitchen, hair in wet pigtails, wearing a Smurfette shirt. “Are you okay? ’Cause you sound like you’re losing it.”

“Already lost it.” Lucas felt it to be true; the sight of Smurfette—the thought of Avery—might surely send him over the edge. “But it’s time to move forward with my life, right?”

“I don’t understand why you won’t believe they found the guy.” Miranda peered into the pot to see what was there.

Lucas removed the tacks holding the map up and put it on the kitchen table to better study it. “Maybe he was the guy. Maybe I’m wrong. I mean, it makes no sense that one person could do this. I must have gotten sick at least once in my entire childhood. So what doctor did I go to? What about the other four . . . or five? We’re supposed to believe that one guy pulled all this off ? Raised five kids and no one else helped? But whatever, I guess. Everyone else seems satisfied.”

“Well, maybe they’ll figure it out now.” Ryan dumped the contents of a jar of tomato sauce into a pot. “Put together more pieces now that they know who he is. Maybe people will start coming forward. Maybe they’ll find who he was working with.”

Miranda picked at the polish on her fingernails. “Have you considered the possibility that you maybe had better childhoods than the ones you were going to have?”

“We’re not living in a science-fiction novel,” Lucas said, and had a pang of guilt about not having gone back to see Orlean again. And useless Chambers had, of course, turned up nothing related to that at all. And now he had a body, so why should he?

“What if you were?” Miranda pushed. “Would it make you feel better? Would you be able to move on then?”

“I don’t know, Miranda. And I really don’t feel like I have to explain myself to you.”

“Fine.” She got up and took plates from the cabinet. “Lash out at one of the few people in your life who actually care about you.”

“Why do you care?”

She stood at the table, holding the plates. “I don’t know, Luke, why do I?”

He slid the map out of the way and she started putting plates down, loudly. He tacked it back up to the wall and, out the window, saw Scarlett’s mother’s car coming up the drive.

He opened the front door, went out.

“Everything okay?” he asked when Scarlett got out.

Then Ryan was beside them, saying “Scarlett” and looking awe-struck, like she was famous, some idol of his, and she said “Ryan.” And smiled. “Hey.”

And Miranda cleared her throat, and Ryan turned but barely. “This is Miranda,” he said.

“His girlfriend,” Miranda added.

“Nice to meet you,” Scarlett said. Then she turned to Lucas and said, “Can we talk?”

“Sure.” Lucas headed toward the RV.

And she seemed anxious—this nervous look in her eye—so he reached for her hand, but she slipped away and said, “There’s something I have to tell you but I’m scared to,” and she looked more like a stranger than she had since they’d come back.

“You can tell me anything,” he said, and felt it to be true.