The Leaving (22 page)

They drove in silence.

MOUTHS. PIERS. LOVE. HOLDING HANDS.
LOOKING OVER SHOULDERS.
ON THE SIDE.

So much to process. He was afraid to speak, really.

Then finally, as they approached town, she got her phone out and called Chambers. She told him about the penny. About Anchor Beach. About the guard there. How he remembered them, and her jacket. How their initials were carved into the pier.

“Tell him about the book,” Lucas said.

She nodded and explained it all. It already felt like so long ago—Orlean with his unruly hair and sad eyes. The bar, the rainstorm.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she said after they’d agreed that Lucas would meet with Chambers to speak more about
The Leaving
in the morning.

For a second Lucas couldn’t think what she’d left out.

“We’ve both been skipping the bottom step of staircases,” she said. “Like out of habit? That has to be a clue, too, right?”

Lucas pulled up to Opus 6 and turned off the engine.

Scarlett said, “I don’t think I can make that promise,” and ended the call abruptly.

“What was that about?” Lucas gathered his camera and bag.

“He wanted me to promise we wouldn’t go off on our own again, wouldn’t try to investigate.” She got out to come around to the driver’s side. He stood and wondered, should he kiss her again? And he studied her eyes, her body for clues. But now it seemed like somehow—here—that was all gone.

All a dream.

That photo.

EYES LIKE SOIL. FUZZY DICE. RAIN.

It was real.

They were real.

It had happened.

But . . .

“Chambers said he’d go there, interview the guard,” she said, getting into the car. “And I guess let me know what he says after you talk to him?”

“Of course,” Lucas said.

She closed her door and drove away, and he stood so very still and watched and his eyes followed the stones at his feet, just picked a path and stone by stone it led to up to that empty plateau.

He made a promise to himself to do something about that, then went up to the house, where lights were on and Ryan said, “How’d it go?”

Miranda was there.

Miranda was always there
.

This time standing at an ironing board in the middle of the living room, ironing a decal onto a shirt.

“Someone recognized us.” Lucas went to the couch and sat aside a tall stack of neatly folded T-shirts. “Like from before. He told us where we’d carved our initials into a pier.”

“That’s incredible,” Ryan said. “So what now?”

“Wait.” Miranda’s iron hissed. “Where was this?”

“Anchor Beach?” Lucas said.

“That’s where the author of the old book lives?” Ryan asked.

“No.” Lucas said. “About an hour away.”

“So how did you end up
there
?” Miranda held the shirt up, examined her work, set it aside. The room smelled of melting plastic.

“It’s a long story,” he said. The penny was Scarlett’s to talk about.

“So,” Ryan repeated. “What now?”

“We told the police. We’ll talk more. They’re going down there to check it out.”

“So they’ll search for Max?” Ryan asked.

Like that, a rush of guilt.

A surge of shame.

Hadn’t even had a thought about Max. Or

AVERY. DEFIANT. ELBOW STOUCHING.
HOW COULD YOU JUST FOR GET A WHOLE PERSON ?

Had been so caught up in

KISSES. HEARTS. PIERS.
XXXXS. EXES?

And now, wanted to be the one to tell her.

About all this.

So she was maybe . . . what . . . ready?

“Hey, where do they live?” he asked, and had the feeling of hiding something. “Max’s parents, I mean.”

AVERY

She recognized him walking in the dark, a castle guard doing his rounds, as Sam drove up the block to drop her at home. She didn’t say anything, hoped Sam hadn’t even seen him, and bent to slide her heels back onto her blistered feet. How much worse would they hurt right now if she
had
decided to dance?

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Sam leaned over and they kissed, but barely.

“Sounds good,” she said, feeling something fake in her voice.

Then she got out and walked up the front path and the front steps and put her key in the door and opened it and turned and waved. Sam seemed intent on watching her actually go inside, so she went in, annoyed about it, as quietly as she could and then watched through the peephole as he drove off, and then she stepped back out.

The street was crickets-quiet.

He was probably still four houses down.

Why was he out? Lurking?

Her ears were ringing from hours of boogie-woogie nonsense.

Electric slides and last-dance-last-dance-tonights.

Finally, his footfalls broke through and then he was standing in front of her house, but not seeing her, maybe looking for a house number.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a loud whisper. “Avery?” he whispered back.

She stepped forward so he could see her and realized her wish was coming true.

Her in her purple dress.

Him here to see it.

“Yes,” she said, going down to meet him. Still feeling small next to him, even in heels.

He looked at her hard. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she said.

“No”—he seemed embarrassed, flustered—

Good
.

“I mean, yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I went to talk to the author of
The Leaving
today. I wanted to tell you about it. And we went to a place where someone recognized us. So we told the police and maybe they’ll find Max there. I don’t know. It’s all still unfolding. I just. I wanted you to know.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” she said, knowing what the answer was going to be but wanting to hear it anyway. “Who’s ‘us’?”

“Oh,” he said. “Me and Scarlett.”

She nodded. “Did she read it? Did she know why she said that about going on a trip? What’s it even about?”

“It’s pretty out there—people living in an underground city to avoid sending their kids away, that kind of thing.”

“Anyone left behind? Killed? Anything that could be a parallel to Max not coming home?”

He shook his head. “No, sorry.”

“So what did the author say?

“He has Alzheimer’s.”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

Sometimes life was too much.

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

She shook her head and thought again about the calendar with the countdown to getting out of Florida. Why would anyone in their right mind want to spend the prime years of their life there? Florida wasn’t the Sunshine State. It was the prune juice state. The Depends state. It was where you went to go to Disney and visit your grandparents, sure, but it was no place to actually
live
—not if you had a healthy pulse. Maybe whoever had done this knew that. That Florida was no place to raise kids. They should’ve moved away after the shooting. Then maybe that would have been that.

“The police were asking my dad about Max and the school shooting today,” she said. “Whether he was there. What do you think that’s about?”

“I don’t know,” he said.
“Was
he there?”

“Yeah. An open house thing.“

“I was there, too,” Lucas said.

“I know,” she said. “Ryan and I used to . . . talk.”

He nodded. “Why would they be asking about that now?”

She honestly didn’t know. Had they all been there? Why would that matter? Everyone had been there.

“Do you remember it?” she asked.

“No.”

“It’s just as well,” she said.

They stood there on the front path for a minute and she really just wanted to go inside, take her shoes off, and have everything be different.

“What’s with the camera?” she asked, noticing the strap across his chest that led to a small case.

“Oh.” He pulled it forward. “I have a tattoo of a camera shutter and I seem to know my way around cameras.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know. Maybe it’s a clue that maybe connects to Scarlett’s clue? We don’t know yet.”

“Are you
with
her?” she asked. “Scarlett?”

“We’re trying to figure that out but yeah”—he seemed totally fine with telling her—“I think so, yeah.”

She had to turn away to hide a burning behind her eyes.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

Scarlett sat outside, windows down in the darkness, listening to the surf and trying to make sense of the day, for a good long while.

Then, finally, she went inside, tapped on Tammy’s door, found her in bed with her laptop.

“Did you pass the alien probe yet?” Tammy asked.

“Why do you want it to be aliens?” Scarlett plopped down at the foot of the bed.

Feeling so completely dra i n   e    d.

She’d tell her about the penny.

Just . . .

later.

Tammy looked at her over her reading glasses. “I don’t
want
it to—”

“It’s the
least likely
explanation,” Scarlett cut in. “So just answer the question.”

Her mother’s whole body tensed.

Then she breathed out loudly through her nose.

Her voice was a few tones deeper, almost possessed-sounding, when she said, “Because I do not want to believe that
another human being
could have done this to you.”

For a second, looking at the anguish on her mother’s face under the golden glow of the bedside lamp, Scarlett could almost remember the deep
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
of a spaceship.

Could almost remember a creature . . .

Its eyes in a V.

That w a l k e d

on light.

She could almost remember

. . . floating weightlessly up toward . . .

Scarlett’s gaze found some crooked stitching on a throw pillow on the armchair in the corner. “Do you have a sewing machine?”

Her mother was blowing her nose. “Sure, but I haven’t used it in years. I was starting to teach you, you know. We were making little purses and stuff. Hemming curtains.”

  /         /
     /

“Can you show me?”

Lucas

Chambers stood outside the precinct, holding a cup of coffee top-to-bottom between his thumb and middle finger. “I’ve got good news,” he said. “The coroner has ruled your father’s death an accident.”

Relief, of course, but also:

“I’m not sure I like your definition of good news.”

“I should clarify. There’s no
evidence
to support any theory that there was wrongdoing,
nor
is there evidence to vindicate you.” He shift ed his coffee to the other hand, took the lid off, blew on it. “But you won’t be charged.”

“Well, I guess I should be grateful, then.”

“Your brother said your father wished to be cremated, so that’s being arranged, and we’ll have the ashes delivered.”

Lucas nodded.

No family, no funeral.

It was easy that way.

“So.” Chambers put the lid back on. “Tell me about the book.”

“It’s from the sixties. It’s about a society that sends their kids away for their childhood. My father e-mailed with the author’s son a few
years ago and I tried to contact him, but he’s dead. Brain cancer. Their e-mails mentioned that his father had a cult following. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a connection? Obviously, the Alzheimer’s makes it impossible to get any information out of him.”

Chambers sipped his coffee, winced. Took the lid off again.

Lucas said, “His research sounds relevant. It never came up before?”

“No.” Blew on it again. “But, Lucas. You have to just let me do my job, okay.”