Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  It’s Lark, too.

  And in her hands, she has her planner.

  “I did not hide anything in there,” I blurt immediately, because I guess I’ve finally snapped. I wish this proclamation—which is true—seemed more convincing, but since I have actual beads of sweat on my forehead, I’m sure I look like Lying Witness Number Four, sent over here from central casting.

  “Well, this is awkward,” says Sibby, grimacing as she looks between me and Lark. “In this case, I can literally say I’ve been there.” She gestures to where I’m standing.

  Lark laughs.

  Wait . . . she laughs?

  “What’s going on here?” I say, my gaze now the one ping-ponging between them. They look like they’re about to put on face masks and watch The Princess Tent. Honestly that’s a pretty good idea, but I still can’t figure out what’s happened here since I left.

  “Lark came to check on you,” says Sibby. “She was worried.”

  “I read the news and thought I’d come over,” she says. She holds up her planner. “I was showing Sibby what you’d done for me while we waited for you to get back.”

  Sibby? It’s Sibby now?

  “Why have I never hired you to do a planner?” Sibby says, gesturing to Lark’s. “This one is gorgeous.”

  “Because you use an app,” I say.

  “Point,” says Sibby, holding up a finger. “How’d it go with Cecelia?”

  I rub at my sweaty temples. “You guys, I need a minute. What is—are you two friends now?”

  “We had a nice talk while we waited for you,” Lark says. “You didn’t tell me Sibby was auditioning again.”

  I gape. “I didn’t know she was.”

  Sibby waves a hand. “I’ll tell you about it. A small production. Who knows if I’ll get it.”

  “Sib, that’s so great. What’s the—”

  Sibby snaps her fingers, as though she’s trying to wake me out of a hypnosis. “Focus, Meg.”

  I drop my bag, take a few steps, and sink onto the area rug, sitting across from their spots on the couch. “It went okay with Cecelia. But on the way home I got offered the Make It Happyn gig.”

  They both get excited at first, until I fill them in on the details, adding some extra padding to my throw pillow eyes with a few additional tears.

  “Ugh,” says Sibby. “You can’t take it.”

  “I don’t know if I can not take it. I’m going to lose so many clients because of this. People trust me with a lot of details about their lives. And they’re right to be angry. To be suspicious of me.”

  “Lark was suspicious,” Sibby says, and my stomach drops.

  “Lark, I was serious. There’s nothing in there. I haven’t done this in months. I was going through—”

  “Suspicious is the wrong word,” Lark says reassuringly. “I was . . . hopeful?”

  “Hopeful?”

  Lark cracks the planner, presses her thumb against the pages so they shuffle past in the way of a flip-book. She shrugs. “I stared at every page, every letter. When I got to the end I realized I was looking for something pretty specific.”

  “God,” says Sibby. “The suspense is killing me here.”

  Lark smirks, but then she looks at me. “I think it’s not working out with Cam. Or it’s not working out in New York. I’m not sure which.”

  “Oh, Lark,” I say.

  “Well, it’s not New York’s fault,” Sibby says, defensively, and I can’t help but smile. But then I feel another pang of sadness about Reid, Reid and Sibby. It would have been fun, to watch them argue about New York, to teasingly pile on him about it. But maybe that will never happen now.

  I refocus on Lark. “Did something happen?”

  She shrugs. “No, but . . . I mean. You’ve met him.”

  “Yikes,” says Sibby. What Reid and Sibby would one hundred percent have in common is absolute derision for a shark-tooth necklace.

  “I don’t know if it was ever right between me and him,” Lark says. “I don’t know if we can work it out, either. I don’t even know if I want to.” She looks down again at the planner, smooths her hand over the cover. “I think maybe I was hoping you had the answer.”

  “I definitely don’t,” I say, and I mean it. I am the last person to be advising people about their relationships. “But I will talk through it with you as much as you want. If you need that.”

  “She’s good at that,” says Sibby. “One time she lettered me a gorgeous pro/con list about getting a tattoo.”

  “I think that’s why I’ve been stalling about the wall. I’m sorry for that, by the way. But I—”

  “Lark, it’s completely okay. If that house isn’t your home, we shouldn’t do it.”

  “But you could use the money.”

  I purse my lips, lower my brows in a look of censure. “We’re not doing that, Lark. We’re friends.” I borrow a line from Cecelia. “You’re more to me than the jobs, okay?”

  She nods, lowering her eyes, and I send a glance toward Sibby, relieved when I see that she looks totally comfortable. If seeing Lark here had been painful for Sibby before, it certainly doesn’t seem to be now.

  “Okay,” Sibby says. “She does need money, though, if she’s not going to do this”—she pauses to prepare her big voice—“extremely bad job idea. Meg, what if I—”

  I cut her off before she can suggest anything ridiculous, such as calling her dad. It strikes me suddenly how many things have changed—not only in the last terrible, stressful day and a half, but also in the last few months. One gray day in spring, a man I never thought I’d ever have occasion to see again came through the doors of the shop and confronted me about my letters, and I felt as isolated as I’d ever been in my life. Now, it’s a gray summer day and it feels as if the whole city knows about my secret, but at least I’m not facing the fallout alone.

  “I can handle this,” I say, feeling a whole lot more capable than I did when I walked in here. “I need to . . . start over, I guess. I’ve done it before, right? I’m going to start contacting my clients, and I’ll try to reassure them the best I can, though it’ll probably be difficult to—”

  “I could help,” Lark says.

  Sibby and I both watch as she holds up the planner again, waving it in the air. “I’ll do some social media posts about this to start.”

  “Oooh,” Sibby says, and there’s not a trace of jealousy in her voice. I get the sense of something important here, some shift in our pattern—Sibby not looking to take over, to be the one in charge. “Yes, this is good.”

  “And you meet your clients out, right? At coffee shops?”

  “Uh, yes?”

  Lark nods. “Maybe I could show up for the difficult ones, you know? I’m not saying everyone would care, but I still have a good deal of Princess Freddie power to my name. I could be a character reference. I mean, not a movie character. I’m not going to come in costume. You know what I’m saying.”

  I blink at her. “But you . . . What about your privacy?”

  She shrugs again. “That’s why I’d be a good reference, right? I trust you with my stuff, so they can, too.”

  “Lark, this is too much.”

  “It’s not. It’s like you said. We’re friends.”

  “Oh!” Sibby exclaims. “Are we going to have a sleepover now? Because we absolutely should.”

  “I can swing it,” Lark says. “I’ll call Jade and ask her to bring me some things.”

  “Who’s Jade?”

  “My assistant,” Lark says, and Sibby’s eyes go wide.

  “Oh, my God,” she says, smooshing all her syllables together in excitement. “We have so much to talk about.”

  From my spot on the floor, I watch them chat easily, and I feel warm all over at the sight. This is love, too, I tell myself, reminding that aching mark on my heart. These friends who are here for me, who are helping me pick up the pieces after this scandal.

  But even so, all night I wait for a call, a text, an e-mail.

/>   All night I feel like someone I love is missing.

  Chapter 20

  I guess I leave because I’m looking for a sign.

  In the early light of Sunday morning, I rise from the massive pile of blankets and throw pillows (not my eyelids, which have been modestly improved by, of all things, two moist teabags laid gently over their swollen surface) haphazardly arranged on my living room floor. Pretty much all of my bones hurt from sleeping in this arrangement, even a few I wasn’t aware I had, but I don’t suppose I’d trade it. Sibby’s still down there, the comforter from my bed pulled up over her head, only her pouf of black curls visible on the pillow. On the couch, Lark is sprawled—in true princess style—limbs askew, mouth open, a gentle snore punctuating her breaths. Neither one of them stirs when I move, and I’m guessing that’s because they stayed up much later than me. I’m pretty sure I’d drifted off sometime during the fifth episode of The Bachelorette binge-watch, and as I tiptoe into the kitchen I fleetingly wonder if I ought to check the freezer for one or more of my bras.

  Instead, I immediately check my phone, which is, at this point, almost certainly a fool’s errand. There’s still nothing from him, and nothing new from the news or gossip blogs—only the same basic information, repackaged to seem like there’s something additional. Keeping the clicks coming.

  I could start working, I suppose, could start setting up these coffee-shop meetings Lark plans to help me with. But this early on a Sunday—well, on a Sunday at all, probably—I’m probably not going to hear much back. And anyway, at this particular moment, when my heart—still looped with that inconvenient L—is tight and aching, work would only be another kind of hiding. If I’m missing Reid so much, I might as well do the one thing that’ll make me feel closest to him.

  Quietly, I wash my face and brush my teeth, avoid everything in my closet with any kind of frolicsome pattern, and shove my feet into a pair of sneakers that’ll keep my feet comfortable. I snag a piece of scrap paper from my desk and in my own unadorned, unremarkable handwriting, I write a simple message.

  Going for a walk. Back soon. xo—Meg

  I leave it on a throw pillow beside Sibby before I leave.

  Outside the morning sky is clear. It’s already warm, but nothing like yesterday’s sweaty soup-fest, and I focus on the fresh air as I walk for blocks and blocks. All the signs are familiar to me, and I can’t think of a single game to play. I think of Reid that night at Swine, telling me he walked with a Meg-shaped shadow beside him, and once it’s in my head, it’s all I can imagine—my relationship to this city and its signs changed forever now, a memory of Reid with me in so many places.

  He did give you signs, I keep thinking, each time I wrestle with the shock of what’s happened. His disdain for his work, his stress over it, his reluctance to talk about the details. His phone—the trouble it had caused to be away from it, even for his so-called sick day. His money people, math people frustration. His insistence that he would leave New York by the end of the summer, his seeming difficulty comprehending how he might stay.

  But it’s the other signs I struggle to read without him here beside me. That last time I saw him, and the look on his face when he saw Avery. His determination when he came to see me at the shop, coded program in hand. Was it less amicable with her than he’d told me? Had he told everyone about what he had seen in my letters, and had he sought me out, at least at first, because he couldn’t get over her?

  No, I think, almost desperately. No, you have other signs. Everything he and I shared. Every way he ever touched me. Every time he walked with me, made love to me. Those were signs, too. Remember them, I tell myself. Remember them while you wait.

  But if I could only hear from him. Call, text, e-mail. Anything.

  It’s what I’m thinking as I wind my way back home, my skin dewy with sweat now, my feet growing tired. I forgot my sunglasses, so now I squint against the brightening morning sun, and when I’m only a few buildings away from my own, the light grows almost blinding as it glints off the hood of a car that’s parked out front. I raise my hand to shade my eyes, annoyed. That’s a no parking zone; there are signs everywhere.

  But as I approach, I notice someone standing beside it, as though she’s guarding it from any cop who might try it with a ticket. She frowns down at her watch, clearly impatient, and maybe that wouldn’t be so unusual except that when she looks up, she catches sight of me and I get the eerie certainty that I’m the person she’s been impatient for. She straightens, her eyes on me like I’m a flight risk.

  And maybe I am. I’m not ashamed to say I really and truly think about turning and walking in the exact opposite direction. Is interest in my small part in this story high enough that a reporter could’ve actually tracked down where I live?

  But once again, something makes me stay.

  I walk toward her, steeling myself for confrontation.

  “This is a no parking zone,” I say bluntly. Reid would be proud of that, I think.

  The woman raises a dark eyebrow. “You’re Margaret Mackworth?”

  I raise an eyebrow back. “You’re . . . ?”

  The right side of her mouth hitches. “Your roommate told me you’d be coming back. I’m Special Agent Shohreh Tirmizi. I work for the FBI.”

  She doesn’t pause to allow me to process that information. She simply pulls a leather fold from her pocket and shows me an honest-to-God badge. A badge! Now that I’ve seen that, I decide she has many other law enforcement-type qualities, at least such qualities that exist in my imagination. She has a suit on like Olivia Benson from SVU! Also she is tall.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m Meg. Is he—”

  But she doesn’t wait for me to ask my question. “My partner and I have been working with Reid Sutherland for the last eight and a half months.”

  I blink at her. “I thought it was six.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

  Somehow, from her tone, I get the sense she’s not just talking about the timeline information.

  “Is he okay?” I say before she can cut me off again.

  “He’s fine. He’s had a lot of statements to give after the arrest. And given some of the accusations circulating about him in the press—” She breaks off and gives me a meaningful look, as if she knows all about the way I clicked through the gossipy stories containing those accusations: Reid and his revenge mission; Reid orchestrating some kind of numbers-game setup of Alistair Coster.

  “Well,” she finishes, “we’re trying to limit anyone’s access to him for a few days.”

  I furrow my brow. “But I’m not—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not anyone? I’m not trying to access him, to ask him whether some parts of those stories are true?

  I clear my throat after I trail into silence, and she simply looks at me again, taking my measure. Or maybe she’s using some sophisticated interrogation tactic on me. Honestly, if it’s the latter, it’s pretty effective, because for a second I consider telling her about the time I shoplifted a Werther’s Original from the bulk candy section at the grocery store. When I was eight.

  “I don’t have any information for you,” I say, finally, submitting to her considerable powers. “He never told me—”

  “I know that,” she says, and the way she says it tells me she knows Reid, trusts him. “I came because he asked me to.”

  For the first time since Friday, my heart leaps with hope.

  From the inside of her Olivia Benson jacket, Agent Tirmizi draws out an envelope, stuffed thick with paper. Even from here I can see Reid’s handwriting across the front:

  A letter. Of course.

  Even though I want to reach out and snatch it, to run up to my apartment and shut the door while I pore and pore over it, I wait until she holds it out to me, and I take it from her hands gently.

  “Thank you,” I tell her.

  She has that assessing look again. “You should thank me for more than this letter.”

&n
bsp; I blink at her, confused. She really seems as though she’s waiting for something specific.

  “Um . . . oh!” I say, struck with an idea that doesn’t seem all that good, but at least it is one. “Yes. Thank you for . . . your service?”

  This feels awkward. I am obviously also against financial crimes, but you know. This seems kind of insistent, under the circumstances.

  For the first time, she seems to take pity on me, or maybe that’s the face she makes when she’s trying not to laugh.

  “Reid mentioned you to me earlier this spring,” she says.

  “He did?”

  She nods. “After you’d e-mailed him to meet. It was—that came at a critical time. Reid had met with us several times that week.”

  “Oh.” I try to imagine what those meetings would have been like. Would they have been in a windowless room, one table, two chairs, Reid and an FBI agent facing each other beneath an industrial light fixture? Or would Reid have been ushered into a bland but comfortable conference room? Would they have poured him tea, spoken to him gently, encouragingly? I suppose I could ask Agent Tirmizi, but as with so many questions I have—I only want to ask them of Reid.

  “I suggested he might want to take you up on your offer. To give himself some relief from all this.”

  I blink down, let my eyes slide closed for a few seconds so I can think of Reid that first day at the Promenade. His weekend clothes, his stern face, his sad eyes. Someone did tell me recently I ought to try keeping my mind occupied.

  I feel the weight of the letter in my hand, let the pad of my thumb pass over the exact spot where Reid has written my name. I wish he had pressed harder. I wish I could feel some relic of his hand’s movement over these letters. I notice that it’s not sealed, the envelope’s flap only tucked inside, and I look up at Agent Tirmizi.