by Jayne Denker
Because of what? But Sera’s voice was an even lower murmur. George answered, also keeping her voice low, and Casey realized he was practically falling out of his chair trying to hear. Although he caught a word here and there in their muted exchange, he couldn’t get the gist of their argument. Then there was a rustling sound, and footsteps, and George’s voice got louder. Casey rearranged himself at the table and picked up his coffee cup, trying to look casual.
“I’ll call you from the road. Or maybe when I get there. Give Amelia a kiss for me.” It sounded like George’s voice cracked a little.
Then the screen door slammed.
Sera appeared in the kitchen doorway, her face drawn. She looked at Casey, and if he hadn’t known Serafina Down half his life— long enough to know this woman’s go-to emotion was anger, not sorrow—he’d have sworn there were tears in her eyes.
“George—?” he asked.
“She left.”
“Now?”
“Right now. No warning. Real nice, huh?”
“But . . . I mean, she told me she was going back to Boston, but I didn’t think it’d be—”
“I know,” Sera sighed. “But that’s George for you. Acts like this town gives her the plague. Family too.” She plopped down in the chair opposite him and pulled the notes about her pottery exhibition toward her. “I should’ve figured she wouldn’t stay this time either. Screw her. Where were we, Case?”
But Casey was already on his way out of the room. He ran down the hall, out the door, and down the porch steps, not really knowing what he was doing. What in the world could he say to keep her here? How could he stop her? Hell, who could stop George from doing anything?
She was still here. The Pink Lady was idling roughly in the driveway, and George was sitting still as stone in the driver’s seat, her hands over her face. He hurried up to the car, knocked on the window. She jumped, took her hands away from her face, brushed at her cheeks, pushed the tangle of reddish-blond hair out of her eyes. She rolled the window down, but only halfway. Casey gripped the top of the glass as if he could push it down farther.
“George, what—”
“Not you too, Casey. I’ve got to go. I told you.”
“But . . . right now?”
“Why wait?” she said softly, looking down at her lap. When she looked up again, her eyes were glassy. “I e-mailed you the password and instructions on how to post stuff on your Web site. Try to keep the blog fresh—put up something new whenever you can, to keep people interested. Updates on what you’re doing, scheduled events, you know.” She took a shaky breath. “And do one more thing, okay?”
“What?”
“Read the latest letter someone sent in to Down on Love.” She put the car in gear.
“So that’s it?”
She gave him a grim smile. In any other circumstances he would have loved gazing at her dark-honey-colored eyes, the scatter of freckles across her nose. But now all he could see was how pale she was, and panic coursed through him as he wracked his brain trying to figure out what to say to get her to stay. He didn’t want to be without her anymore.
“Goose, come on—”
“Gotta go, Casey. Take care, all right? Don’t work too hard. Good luck with the farm.”
“Tell me you’re coming back!” he called, but George just pulled out of the driveway and backed into the street, leaving him standing alone in the muggy morning, struggling to breathe.
George made it all the way to the next block before her escape was thwarted for the first time. She’d been doing the speed limit—assisted by the law-abiding person in a Buick directly in front of her. She wasn’t sure who was driving, but she could tell it was a senior citizen by the choice of car, the dutiful low speed, and the fact that she couldn’t see the person over the back of the seat, à la the old lady in Ferris Bueller. Even if an eight-year-old had boosted his grandfather’s sedan, he’d be going faster than this, she was sure.
“Hey, George!”
The shout came from a pickup truck going the other way down the street. The driver stopped in the middle of the road to chat—a common occurrence in Marsden—and she was forced to be sociable. The very last thing she wanted. It was Mike, the future fossil at Smithson’s Hardware.
“Hi, Mike,” she said reluctantly. Now that she’d made her decision, she was itching to get out of town. For the best, she kept telling herself. She didn’t belong here, she kept telling herself. Time to go. And she tried not to remember Sera’s disappointed face, Amelia’s fluttering eyelashes as she slept sweetly in her crib after Casey deposited her there, Casey’s stricken expression as he watched her pull out of the driveway.
“I hear you’re friendly with the competition now!”
“What?”
“You and Celia. That’s really nice.”
Oh God, had that just been last night? It felt like years. They’d done their best to squash the whole “town taking sides” thing, and George knew it might die out eventually, but she didn’t have the patience to wait for what could take years. She wanted a shortcut to the inevitable, a final nail in the coffin, and she was making it happen right now. If anyone let her actually leave town, of course.
“But what’m I going to do with my Team George shirt?”
“Burn it, Mike.”
“Aw, you don’t mean that,” he said with a chuckle.
“Isn’t it about time to open up the store?”
“Oh, hey, you’re right. Better get going. You have a good one, George.”
George didn’t give him a backward glance in her rearview mirror as she stepped on the gas. She left the window open, and as she sped up, the already-warm breeze ruffled her hair, tangling it and sending some into the corner of her mouth. She pulled it away and instinctively slowed down so she was just doing the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit and no more.
Oh God, not only had she lost her edge when it came to blog snark, she’d also lost it driving.
She knew the fastest route out of town was a back road up over the hills, but she couldn’t resist one final cruise down Main Street. Gone soft indeed. Yikes. Even though she knew it was a bad idea, she turned the Pink Lady downhill and into the valley, picking up the main road at the corner closest to Missy’s Hits for Misses.
It was still early, and the town looked downright picturesque, all dew-laden and sparkly with morning sunlight. Shops weren’t open yet, but some proprietors were hosing down the sidewalks in front of their stores, café owners putting out tables and chairs. The most activity was centered around the coffee shop, where people waited patiently in a line to get whatever complicated concoctions they couldn’t make at home.
George wondered if she should stop for a caffeine fix of her own. She couldn’t imagine driving all the way back to Boston without one. In fact, she was so sleep-deprived, and jonesing so much for coffee and a gloppy chocolate-filled, frosted croissant, that her stomach hurt. Sure, that was it. It couldn’t be because she was leaving Marsden behind, could it? No. That was just crazy talk.
She forced herself to keep driving, promising herself she’d stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of the strip of chain stores and fast-food joints outside town instead.
Sooner than she expected, George got to the last block of Main Street. She stopped at the last of the three stoplights—red, even though there was almost no one on the road besides her—where she stared at the town hall on her right. She sure didn’t need to see that and remember what happened the last time she was there. She looked to her left and spotted Suzette’s. Good grief, every single place held some sort of memory, all of them recent, too many of them painful. Now she desperately wanted to blast out of town, but the light stayed red. She sighed.
Her eye was drawn to a person jogging up the side street by Suzette’s, past Vinyl Nation, the music store. The person was running but didn’t look like a jogger. Then she spotted a mural, still wet and glistening in the sunlight—a flock of paper airplanes turning into birds, reminiscent o
f an Escher print. Marsdy. She’d missed him again. And now she’d never find out who it was.
The light turned green. She started to roll through the intersection, but another vehicle pulled out in front of her from her right, at the last minute. She slowed down before she rear-ended the very familiar, beat-up red pickup doddering along in front of her at . . . she checked her speedometer . . . Seventeen. Miles. Per hour.
George groaned. “Goddammit, Burt.”
The last thing she needed was another delay. Her head was messed up enough already. She didn’t need to be tootling along behind Burt; it only gave her more time to think. She had known it was going to be tough breaking the news to Sera that she was leaving, but she’d had no idea how bad it was going to get. Of course her sister took it personally, then threw in the guilt trip about Amelia, but George had been prepared for both angles of attack. What she hadn’t expected was Sera cutting to the chase, asking her if she was leaving because of Casey. And in such a soft, kind tone too. A furious Sera she could handle; a sympathetic Sera was just unheard of.
“Tell me the truth,” she had said. “Is it because of Casey? Because if you’re running away from him, you’d be really crazy. And stupid.”
Nice. Seemed she couldn’t remain sympathetic for long. This was Sera, after all.
But George had answered in as levelheaded a manner as she could muster. “I can’t handle it, Sera.”
“Why the hell not?”
George had scrambled for a reason. “He wants something from me that I can’t give him.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Stop saying that! You know why. I’m still recovering from being burned by Thom. I think Casey’s making a mistake, and he’d be better off with Celia instead. And this stupid town and its gossip doesn’t help matters.”
Sera had crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “Son of a bitch, you sure have a million excuses, don’t you? But the truth is you’re just scared.”
George had started to protest, but her sister cut her off, holding up her hand, palm flat, like a traffic cop.
“Don’t even start with me, you chickenshit.” Apparently Sera had many months’ worth of profanities stored up, and she was going to use her whole arsenal in one last go-for-broke assault on her sister’s barricades. “It’s Thom’s fault. It’s Casey’s fault. It’s the freakin’ town’s fault. What else have you got up your sleeve, huh? Come on, I know if I shoot down these three you’ll come up with more. You freakin’ brat—it’s nobody’s fault but your own. You’re afraid of everything—which, by the way, makes no sense. You’re one of the strongest people I know. You have absolutely no reason to be afraid of anything. And I’d think you, of all people, would know better than to let other people shape your future. Who cares what other people think? Who cares what other guys ‘did’ to you? You’re stronger and you’re bigger and you’re better than all of that.”
George had been stunned. But instead of taking Sera’s words to heart, she’d pushed them—and her—away. “Don’t expect so much from me, Sera. I haven’t got it in me.” She’d sighed heavily and turned away. “I’ve gotta go.”
And, before she could change her mind, she’d walked out.
Just as she crossed the state line, George’s phone rang. She tucked her earpiece in and answered, once a quick glance at her screen confirmed it was nobody from Marsden.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, stranger. I got your text. Thought I’d call instead.”
George took a steadying breath. “Thanks for getting back to me, Thom.”
“Congrats on the Beanie! I always knew you could do it.”
Oh, good God. Since when? But she just bit her tongue and said, “Thanks. It’s exciting.”
“Are you back in town yet?”
“Couple of hours away.”
“I’ve been thinking—”
“I’m sorry to bug you, but I couldn’t think of anybody else—”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m glad to help. I’ve been trying to come up with a place you can stay, like you asked, and honestly, I can’t think of anybody who can put you up.”
How hard did you try? she wanted to say, but she didn’t. “I can’t afford a hotel, Thom. Can’t you think of anybody who wouldn’t mind my crashing on their couch? What about your coworker—what was her name—Petra or something? You said she had a huge place.”
“Mm, I would ask, but she’s at her parents’ place at the Cape.”
“Even better.”
“Nnno, I don’t think she’d want a stranger alone in her apartment.”
What the—she wasn’t a stranger. Well, she was, to Petra, but couldn’t Thom vouch for her? Damn, he was being a dick again. She thought of how Casey would bend over backward to help someone . . . and then she pushed the thought out of her head. No more Casey.
“Thom, please. Can’t you come up with anybody else?”
“Well, yeah, I can think of one.”
“Great—who is it?”
“Me.”
George nearly drove off the road. “Oh, no—”
“I’m serious. You need a place to stay, and you know there’s plenty of room here. You can sleep on the futon in the guest room. No ulterior motives, I swear. Really.”
George sighed. What choice did she have? It was either that or run up a huge hotel bill on her already debt-choked credit card.
“Come on, George,” he wheedled, and her Spidey sense tingled. What was his game? Thom was never this generous unless there was something in it for him. “You’re more than welcome. Let’s let bygones be bygones, huh?” She hesitated again, and suddenly his voice took on a more challenging tone. “Unless you don’t trust me or something.”
Before she knew it, she succumbed to one of his old passive-aggressive tactics, hurrying to protest, “Of course I trust you.” Dammit. “All right, fine, I’ll stay there. But only till I find my own place.”
“Great. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
When in the world had it ever been “fun” to live with Thom? But maybe she should trust him. Maybe he’d turned over a new leaf. Maybe they could be adults about this—they could be friends and enjoy each other’s company for however long it took her to collect her award and then . . . figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
Casey sat back, ran a hand over his mouth, and sighed heavily. He wasn’t sure what to make of the blog entry George had told him to read. Well, he knew what she was getting at. It was as subtle as being pummeled by one of the hundred-pound pumpkins that he’d planted early and were now looming over the rest of the crop in his fields. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if she had made up this letter as well, just to get her point across. But no. He knew George wouldn’t do that—she’d been too ashamed of the few entries she had fudged.
Whatever the origin, George’s regular followers weren’t impressed with her advice. Some wrote kind comments like “George, are you all right? This doesn’t sound like you,” and others not-so-kind ones, along the lines of “WTF, DoL? Where’s the smackdown? Where’s the ‘dump his ass’? If I wanted something this lame I’d be reading Dear Abby,” and even “This advice blows. For the first time, I disagree with you. Do not like. Come on, George, you can do better than that.” Then a healthy debate erupted over whether the woman seeking advice should confess her feelings now, wait her turn and then swoop in after the guy has his heart broken, or stay silent.
Casey stopped reading somewhere around the hundred-and-fiftieth comment, his eyes glazing over as he wondered if Celia was actually the author of this letter. And, if she was, what did it mean? He’d heard Celia and George had had a girls’ night out. Naturally he’d feared they were talking about him the whole time, comparing notes (hey, it was only natural), but once he looked beyond his own navel, he wondered what was up George’s sleeve. Whether or not the letter was from Celia, did George use her response to advise her to do this very thing—swoop in on Casey? And did she tell Casey to read th
e entry so he’d date Celia after George was gone?
Because she definitely was gone. She hadn’t turned around and come back an hour later, as he’d hoped. She hadn’t even called. As the day went on, the mood in the Down-Montgomery house had dissolved into a kind of muted chaos. Sera had gotten more and more furious at her sister’s disappearance, Jaz had gotten depressed, and Amelia had gotten whiny, as she looked for her auntie and didn’t find her.
Casey had gone back to the farm and told Darryl, certain he’d hear about it soon anyway. Of course Big D had turned right around and told everyone else on the crew. At this point the whole town knew. The people on Team George had cast him pitying looks when he went to the market that afternoon, and when he ran into Nate on the street, the older man had clapped him on the shoulder and shaken his head sadly, as if there had been a death in the family. Nora had muttered she knew all along she’d backed the wrong horse and gave Casey a free brownie sundae with his lunch.
As he leaned back in his desk chair, still staring at George’s blog but not seeing it, his phone rang. Sera.
“She’s not coming back, is she?”
“Nope,” Casey answered bluntly. “I don’t think she is.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it? I was a bitch to her.”
“No, it was my fault.”
“Maybe we can just blame George. Since she’s not here to defend herself.”
Casey laughed a little. “We could try. But I don’t think we’d be able to manage it.”
“Okay, then, let’s blame you, like you said. I told you not to go out with her.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
“There was no expiration date on the threat. I can still beat you up, you know.”
“Wouldn’t blame you in the least.”
Chapter 25
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Yep.”
Pause.
“Oh. I guess you saw the caller I.D., huh?”