The Leaving(74)

There would be no happy ending for any of them.

Maybe murderers could have soft hair.

And anyway: memories of ridiculous things like princesses and ballerinas and superheroes and pirates, all that nonsense? What place did they even have when you grew up? And what was wrong with peo ple—parents—for even allowing kids to dream about all that, for encouraging it?

She’d never be a mermaid or ballerina or magical fairy. No boy would ever fly or scale walls and swing from bridges. Growing up was about crushing every dream kids had—nonsense, empty dreams that we’d given them.

Burn, Smurfette, burn.

You too, Tink.

Throw Santa in there on a stake while we’re at it.

The flames were too fast.

She pushed open the screen door and dropped the flaming photo onto the dirt, startling a salamander, which scurried away. She picked up a nearby rock and hit the embers a few times, not wanting to burn the whole house down, though, really, it wasn’t the worst idea.





Scarlett


A woman in a pale-pink dress holding a feather duster answered the door. “Can I help you?”

“Oh.” Scarlett hadn’t been expecting . . . the help?

Thought about just walking away.

Back down the marble steps, past those two pillars.

Down the long path, past that Jaguar and that BMW, past the gardening crew pruning the flowering trees by the front gate, back to where she belonged.

But . . .

No.

“Is Adam home?”

A happy smile. “Can I tell him who’s calling?”

“Scarlett.”

“Come!” She waved Scarlett in. “You can wait in the sitting room.”

Scarlett stepped into the main hall—a curved staircase like for women in ball gowns—feeling small and even more poorly dressed than usual, and followed the woman into a room off to the right.

Couches the colors of coral—peach, turquoise—and large house-plants. Trees, really.

Walls of books.

An antique-looking globe on a whitewashed wooden table.

Large windows with sheer white drapes held back by golden sashes.

“Scarlett?”

She turned.

Adam wore an ivory linen short-sleeved shirt and plaid shorts—red, white, and blue; his shoes looked like they were intended for boating.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes.” She hadn’t called before turning up because she figured he’d just put her off somehow. “Can we talk?”

“Come on,” he said. “I hate this room.”

So she followed him down a few hallways, this way and that, and ended up in a more casual sunroom that looked out at the yard; a few foam noodles and a pair of pink inner tubes floated lazily in a massive in-ground pool. He sat in a cozy-looking white armchair and indicated another one for her.

“So,” he said. “What’s up?”

He seemed so . . . normal . . . that it irked her, and yet something about how at ease he seemed put her at ease, too. She felt like she could relax for the first time maybe since coming home. As she sat, she said, “Kristen said she remembered something under hypnosis.”

“And?”

“You and me.” She hesitated at having to say it out loud, but there was no way around it. “Kissing.”

He tilted his head for a second, then righted it. “How do you feel about that?”

“Confused. How do you feel?”

“You want lemonade?” He stood and crossed the room to where a pitcher and some glasses sat on a tray.

“Uh,” she said. “Sure.”

He poured. “My mom’s gone all atheist New Age-y on me and she keeps saying this thing, ‘It is always now.’”

He turned to her with two glasses, handed her one, and sat. “‘It is always now.’ Some guru of hers says that. And that’s what I’ve been clinging to. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what happened to the last eleven years.”

“Don’t you want to know if it’s true that you and I were together?” She sipped her lemonade; it was too bitter. “More importantly, don’t you want to know who did it and why?”

“Why does it matter if we were together if we don’t remember?” He drank, too. “And John Norton did it.”

A girl about seven years old walked into the room; her light-brown hair was in a wet ponytail, her sundress showing bony shoulders and a pale-pink leotard underneath it. Behind her trailed another girl with darker brown hair and skin, also wet ponytails and ballet gear.

“Well, hello, dancers,” Adam said.

“Hello.” The first one crossed her ankles and took a strand of her hair and pulled it toward her mouth, a nervous tic.

“Hello,” the other said, mimicking.

“This is my friend Scarlett,” Adam said.

“You have friends?”—from the darker-skinned girl, with a tickle laugh. Gen uine curiosity. Not a sarcastic bone in her body.

Adam laughed. “Yes, I have friends.” He turned to Scarlett. “These are my sisters—Belle and Nadia.”

“Hi, Belle,” Scarlett said. “Hi, Nadia.”

They both said hi shyly, then went to another part of the room and started playing with ghoulish dolls—Goth clothes, oversize hair, red lips scowling.