The Leaving (30 page)

“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.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking around.

“I need to see something,” he said. “It’s not far. We’ll talk there.”

They walked in silence until they got to the RV and Lucas pushed through tall weeds behind it, stepping on dry branches with his boots.

It was propped up on cinder blocks and caked with dirt. Lucas brushed away and cracked some of it off to see:

He squatted down to better see. “It reads like a joke now.”

“He couldn’t have known how it was all going to play out,” Scarlett said.

He shook his head, put his hands on his thighs, and pushed up to stand. “How do I keep his memory alive if I can’t remember him?”

“I’m so sorry, Lucas,” she said.

“I know.” They walked back toward one of the reflecting pools and stopped. “So what do you need to tell me?”

Thunder rumbled, and she looked off toward the direction it had come from. “Kristen remembered seeing me with Adam.”

A drop of rain landed on his nose, had to be wiped. “What does that mean, ‘with Adam’?”

“
Kissing
Adam.” She looked away. “And I don’t know, when we kissed—you and I—when we were in Anchor Beach . . . I felt happy on the one hand but there was something underneath it, too. Like guilt? And I think I thought or hoped it was just a weird feeling about us being there together and not knowing our past. But . . .”

The rain was starting to feel personal, like it had some kind of grudge against him.

“I think I was remembering feeling suffocated.” She seemed not to notice or care about the rain. “I don’t know. Maybe I was cheating on you? Maybe you found out? I think I wanted out and you weren’t happy about it. At all.”

He wanted the storm to just get on with it, to really let loose and get it over with, but it seemed liked it was already stopping. They weren’t in its path after all. He said, “I would never try to pressure you into anything.”

“See, I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”

Him wanting more than she wanted from him?

Him caring more, or about the wrong things?

Yes, maybe that did feel right.

He went and sat on a low stone wall, pulled a weed that had sprung up between two rocks, releasing the smell of dirt into the air. Drops from trees shimmied the water in the pool, stirred some of its murk. “I’m starting to really not like this picture of who I was,” he said. “Jealous and angry?”

They turned at the sound of footsteps and voices.

Chambers was walking toward them, this time with his partner in tow.

“I’m really sorry, Lucas.” Chambers stopped a few feet away. “It wasn’t my call on this one. I’m sure you can argue self-defense, but the feds, well . . .”

His partner kept coming.

“You were right about the fingerprints on the gun . . . ,” Chambers said.

“. . . and there’s gunshot residue on a jacket that also has your DNA all over it.”

“. . . and the coroner put John Norton’s time of death as the day you all escaped.”

Escaped?

They didn’t escape.

“Lucas Davis,” Chambers’s partner said. “You are under arrest for the murder of John Norton. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

AVERY

Her cell phone rang during episode six of a web series she’d decided to binge-watch to kill time. At long last, Emma had remembered that her phone was a phone.

“Hey.”

Emma: “Are you watching the news?”

“No. Why?”

“Just turn on CNN.”

So now even talking sounded like texting.

Avery got up to stop her show and switched over to regular TV, then found CNN.

“. . . arrest made in the case of The Leaving . . . but perhaps not the arrest people expected or hoped for. The perpetrator of the crime has been identified as one John Norton, and he has been found dead. A gun with fingerprints belonging to returned Leaving victim Lucas Davis is alleged to be the weapon used and Davis has been taken into custody
.”

Another guy said, “
Now, I understand there is some speculation here, as to whether Davis might have also played some role in the death of Max Godard
.”

Then the original guy: “
I’m not sure there’s much to that theory but
. . .”

Avery said, “I gotta go,” and hung up and turned off the TV and went up to The Shrine and looked through a desk drawer until she found the picture of herself—Smurfette—and Max and Lucas as pirate and sailor. She looked for signs. Signs that Lucas was not who she thought he was. Something maybe in his eyes that would reveal some dark side he had spent his life learning how to disguise.

She couldn’t see it, but also didn’t want her memory of Max to be tangled up with him, just in case.

She took the photo and went back downstairs and out to the lanai and to the grill, where a trigger lighter hung from a side hook.

She clicked it a few times before it lit, and then she ignited the corner of the photograph and watched as the image started to melt away.

There was no point in keeping a photo like that, in keeping a memory like that.

Not with him in it.

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.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

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.

“My replacements,” Adam said. “The wonder twins.”

“No,” Scarlett said, when the meaning of the words sank in. “Don’t be like that.”

“It’s true.” He didn’t seem upset by it. “My parents were so miserable for like four years after I disappeared that they decided to have another kid. And it wasn’t happening, so they adopted Nadia from Costa Rica and
then
they got pregnant with Belle.”