by Sofia Grant
He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer; took out a clean white cotton shirt, held it loosely in his hand. “Would you like to wait outside? I’ll just be a minute.”
“Well.” Her heart beat like a bird’s, much too fast. “I’m not . . . I don’t want to go.”
“You’re afraid of what they’ll say? Come on, Mags. You’re better than that.”
“No, it isn’t that.”
He waited, and she had the dizzying sense of the ground rushing up. “It isn’t that I’m afraid to go home,” she finally managed, little more than a whisper. “It’s that I want to stay here. Here,” she said for emphasis, pointing at the bunkhouse floor. “With you.”
His hands stilled, clutching the shirt tight. He did not look away. If anything, he seemed to look deeper inside her. His mouth tightened and for a moment she thought he was going to order her out of the room.
Instead he moved toward her. A step, another, until he was close enough that she could see the faint crescent-shaped scar bisecting his eyebrow.
“Are you sure you know what you’re asking, Mags? Because there ain’t a soul alive who’d give their blessing.”
“I’m not going back.” She managed to hold his gaze, even as she seemed to be melting from within. “I won’t. I’m staying with you.”
He reached for her, his work-scarred fingers brushing her jawline, then hooking up her chin. Not gently. “You’re making a mistake big enough for both of us.”
She took a shuddering breath and found her voice. “I don’t care.”
Then she found her courage. She put her hand on his chest and felt the beating of his heart, steady as the tides, and that was the end of his objections.
Chapter Eleven
Two o’clock had come and gone, then three, and Katie had to face the facts: her cousin had not made excellent time. Had not, perhaps, made the trip at all. A thousand things could have gone wrong—a flat tire, a wrong turn, a change of heart—and she couldn’t do anything about any of it.
She’d read the entire issue of People, slowly, making it last. Of particular interest was a feature about a young starlet who’d gained eighty-five pounds and lapsed into obscurity after losing a baby to SIDS. Now, two years later—flush with health and photographed on a rooftop garden wearing a gauzy off-the-shoulder sundress—the actress discussed her upcoming film and theorized that she’d entered a twilight realm in the months following her loss, during which her mind and soul had been gently hijacked by a guiding spirit while her body did its best to stumble along on a diet of fried chicken, celibacy, and fourteen hours of daily sleep.
Katie closed the magazine and laid it gently down next to her on the bench. Was that what she was doing—was this trip to New London an effort to keep her body occupied while her subconscious mind adjusted to a new, childless reality? Was she even now giving up on that dream? And had she needed to get away from Liam to do it? And if that was true—what did it mean for the two of them in the future?
Why, a tiny voice inside her wondered, had she been so eager to leave him behind?
So engrossed was Katie in her thoughts that when the truck rumbled to a loud, exhaust-belching stop in front of her, she jumped up from the bench in alarm, dropping the magazine, and found herself staring at bright red fenders rising up above huge tires. They weren’t really at the level of her tits—more like her rib cage. The engine revved one last time and sputtered out with a ground-trembling cough. The driver’s side door opened and out of the corner of her eye, Katie saw security guards converge from both directions, already blowing their whistles, but her cousin didn’t pay them any mind. She came barreling around the front of the truck and threw her arms around Katie—a blur of wild hair and warm skin and skinny limbs that smelled like watermelon and hairspray—and lifted her off the ground.
Literally.
“Oh my God, oh my God!!” Scarlett squealed. “Where’s your stuff? Oh, listen to me, you don’t have any stuff, obviously. I mean, shit, sorry, that’s probably the last thing you want to think about. Okay, upsy daisy! Get on in there before they set the dogs on us. Fuck off,” she added cheerfully, flipping off both guards on her way around the truck.
Katie opened the passenger door and hoisted herself up to the step, a gap of at least two feet that took a gymnastic effort. Her cousin was a surprisingly tall girl, close to six feet in flat sandals, and as thin as a rail. She had no curves at all, no hips or breasts or tummy or calves. Her hair started out dark brown at the roots and gradually faded to white blond at the tips, except for chunks that were dyed a mesmerizing green, and a tattoo of monkeys—monkeys—looking exactly like the ones in the plastic Barrel of Monkeys set that Georgina had bought her once, then inexplicably never let her play with—linked by their tails, frolicked across her collar bones, the outermost disappearing into her tank top at the armholes.
But that was not the most remarkable thing about Scarlett Jesse Ragsdale. As she put the truck in drive and moved aggressively into traffic, earning a horn tap and a rude gesture from the cars she’d cut off, she turned and regarded Katie thoughtfully, and Katie wondered if they were thinking the same thing: each had the Griseldis Nose.
Oh, that nose! A perfect clone of the one that adorned the center of Griseldis Willems’s pinched, unsmiling face in the only surviving photograph of her great-great-grandmother, it had been the bane of Katie’s thirteenth year, a year in which a few of the girls at the Heckinger School (Georgina had strategically dated a member of the school board to get Katie not just admitted but granted a full scholarship) had had a variety of cosmetic procedures—but Katie had been flatly denied. Georgina said it wasn’t the money; in her heart of hearts, Katie thought she might be telling the truth. Georgina, after all, had been made to suffer through adolescence with the same nose, and perhaps she felt it had given her the grit she needed to survive.
It wasn’t the worst nose in the world, or even in the eighth grade. It wasn’t, in the grand scheme of things, even all that bad. But it was distinctive, and no girl wanted to be distinctive in 2000, when Britney Spears hadn’t yet lost her mind and was still setting the pretty-minx beauty standard for a generation. The Griseldis Nose was narrow, with incongruously wide nostrils that flared when Katie was experiencing any strong emotion, and there was a ski-slope shape to it—a gentle angle that suddenly took a sharp dive half an inch down the bridge. Head on, it wasn’t particularly noticeable, but from the side it looked—well, a kindly teacher had told Katie at the start of eighth grade that it looked “Roman,” unwittingly cementing her loathing of it.
Now Katie was staring at that same nose in profile. A dead ringer, though Scarlett’s was the same gorgeous caramel shade as the rest of her. Other than the nose, Scarlett’s features were quite different from Katie’s: a high forehead and a bit of a widow’s peak visible under the tumbling mass of curls that Scarlett had secured with the sort of plastic barrettes one generally only sees on toddlers. A dainty little chin and a rosebud mouth slicked with clear gloss; big, white, slightly crooked teeth. She was a knockout—maybe she’d never even given the nose a thought.
“You hungry?” Scarlett asked, suddenly more subdued. She wrenched the wheel, narrowly fitting into a gap in the traffic.
“Oh God yes,” Katie said, weak with relief.
“Reach down there on the floor—’less Merritt got to it, which I wouldn’t put past him.”
In a wadded Target bag, Katie found a half-empty sack of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, an unopened can of Men’s Health Nuts, and a package of bright orange cheese ’n’ peanut butter crackers. She settled on the nuts, popping off the top of the can and digging in.
Scarlett nodded approvingly. “Go for the healthy shit, good idea. Plus, you know what, I don’t think there’s really any difference between the men’s and the regular. Except maybe the pistachios. Like, are we supposed to believe pistachios are good for dick health or something?” She shook her head in disgust. “Marketing, right? So tell me about getting mugged.
Were you scared?”
“I was . . .” Katie thought, chewing. “Actually, you know what, I wasn’t really. I guess I was more surprised. And—and annoyed, because I thought I’d miss my flight. If Liam hadn’t been there, I might have put up more of a fight.” She remembered now that the mugger had a little mustache, which she’d barely registered at the time; was it supposed to be ironic? Some sort of defiant nod to the coffeehouse poet look that Johnny Depp and Justin Timberlake had affected? And following quickly on that thought was another one: Were her references dated? Had she officially become . . . not young?
“Damn,” Scarlett said admiringly. “You got the family stubborn streak. I would have been like, shit, please don’t kill me, you know? What did he get?”
“Well, my suitcase, obviously . . . my bag, which had my laptop and my phone. My wallet.” She looked down at her hand. “Liam’s wallet. And our rings.”
“Your wedding rings?”
“Mmm.” At least the diamond was insured; there was their rent money, anyway, for the next few months.
“Aw,” Scarlett said. “That’s just fucked-up. I mean, take my purse, take my car, but when I get married I’m not taking my ring off for anyone.”
“Is, um, Merritt, is he your boyfriend?” Fiancé, husband . . . Katie should have known these details. She was a terrible cousin.
“Yeah, well, that’s a little complicated,” Scarlett said in a rush. “See, we broke up, but our lease isn’t out until September, and we can’t get out of it early, and I don’t have anywhere else to live, so . . . Plus we’ll probably get back together. He’s a little crazy. I mean, but not in a bad way. Like an artistic way. He’s a musician? When he’s not doing carpet cleaning?”
She glanced over at Katie, as if for agreement, and Katie was thinking no, no, no, artistic wasn’t good for anyone, especially not a girl like Scarlett. Not that she knew her cousin, not really. But she was . . . sweet, that was the word that came to mind, despite the tattoos and the sandals with the heels practically worn off and the sad little sequin detail on her shorts pocket, grimy and crusted, the black nail polish flaking off, that hair, the thin orange straps of a bra visible under a practically transparent tank top.
Sweet enough to drive two and a half hours to pick her up and another two and a half hours back.
“I need to pay you for gas,” Katie blurted. “I’ll get money—Liam’s wiring it to me. I just need to go to the bank or something. He’s figuring it out.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Scarlett said, waving her hand breezily. “I mean, after this week, we’re going to be rich, right?”
KATIE FELL ASLEEP about ten miles out of Dallas.
She didn’t mean to; Scarlett had been telling her a complicated story about how she and Merritt had somehow missed each other at a show he was supposed to play in Tyler, which led to the fight that turned into a breakup. When the story finally hit a lull, Katie had asked to borrow Scarlett’s phone to look up Liam’s number, but it was an old clunky thing with no Internet. Luckily, it turned out that directory assistance was still a thing.
Liam wasn’t listed, but his company was, and Katie got to him fairly quickly through the automatic directory system. He picked up on the second ring, and to Katie’s surprise, he sounded . . . annoyed.
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m all right.”
“Katie, shit, it’s crazy. I mean, the cops said they’d come to my office and it’s been like, what, seven hours already?”
Katie blinked. “I’m with Scarlett. She picked me up,” she said slowly, enunciating carefully. “At the airport. We’re driving to New London now, but we won’t be there until after dinner.”
“Oh, good that she was able to come.” Liam sounded distracted. His voice was muffled as he called something to someone and Katie knew he’d covered the receiver with his hand. “I’m working on the bank thing. Can she float you until tomorrow? Because the wait for customer service is like forever.”
Katie’s heart sank. She peeked at Scarlett, who was spinning the honest-to-God dials on the radio, country music coming through the static on low. Scarlett didn’t look like she could float herself until tomorrow, much less Katie, who hadn’t yet broached the topic of where she would stay tonight if she didn’t get her hands on some money.
“Can you call again?” she said.
“Yeah, okay, but shit, Katie, I mean, I’ve got to file a police report, and Rex is picking me up after work so I can meet the locksmith at the car.”
“What? Why?”
“Because that shithead got your keys, and because, okay, and I really don’t need you to come down on me about it, but I lost mine again, okay? I mean, I know they’re somewhere in the apartment.”
Katie clamped her mouth shut and inhaled, let it out slowly. How Liam, who’d graduated cum laude from Columbia, could lose critical objects on a weekly basis was an enduring mystery in their home, one that she had once found adorable.
“Oh” was all she said.
“But shit—how are you, Goldilocks?” he added, his tone softening. “I mean, jeez, let’s start this conversation all over. Duh. God. Katie. Are you okay? How do you feel?”
Katie shook her head and sighed. There wasn’t anything he could do for her right now—it would have been better not to call. “I’m okay, really. I mean, cramps and whatever but I’m fine. Mostly I think I need a shower and something to eat and to sleep for like twelve hours straight.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Liam said with feeling, and Katie thought—no, no, this doesn’t get to be about you. Then she chastised herself: Liam was allowed to be freaked out about the mugging. After all, the guy had pointed—no, worse, he’d hit Liam with the gun. Metal to skin, to his face, where a bullet would have gone straight into his brain and killed him.
When Katie and Liam fought, which wasn’t often—not as often as, say, his sister Cat and her partner—he often accused her of being stubborn, as if her stubbornness was standing in the way of the resolution of whatever issue had come up.
You’re so damn stubborn, he had said, when she’d raised her concerns about the apartment, when she’d begged him to keep looking until they found something a bit bigger. Don’t be so stubborn, he’d implored, when she balked at going to Antigua with his parents for their anniversary. Maybe if you weren’t so stubborn, he’d counseled, when Katie refused to sit by and let Arthur Salisbury take credit for her work in department meetings, something that had undoubtedly played a part in his decision to let her go.
But Scarlett had said it with admiration—the family stubborn streak. And maybe now, in these particular circumstances, it was an asset.
“I need to go,” she said suddenly and decisively, cutting Liam off in the middle of his sentence. “I need to figure out the rest of the day. Don’t forget to call the bank again, okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” Liam said, peevishness battling with concern. “Call me when you get settled, okay?”
“He’s cute,” Scarlett said, once Katie had hung up and set the phone back in the drink holder in the console. “I looked you guys up on Facebook. I couldn’t find yours, though. Only his. Liam Garrett—it’s not like a super common name but there were still like ten others.”
“Listen, Scarlett . . . I was wondering.” Katie took a breath. “Is there any way I could stay with you tonight? Just for one night—Liam’s wiring me money, so I’ll be fine by tomorrow. I can buy a new phone and check into a motel and rent a car and—well, everything. But right now I just . . . I mean, you never realize how cut off you are without your credit cards.”
Scarlett’s smile faltered, and she stared straight ahead. Her hands clenched the wheel more tightly.
“Oh! Gosh!” she said, her voice overly bright. “That would be so fun! But, Katie . . . God, I feel so shitty even saying this, because you coming here is, like, the best, and I’m so excited we’re finally going to get to know each other, but . . . I just, I can’t. It’s super complicated.”
“It’s absolutely no problem,” Katie said automatically, the reassurance slipping out of her like air from a balloon, before she even had a chance to remind herself that she really needed this. She didn’t know another soul in Texas, besides her mother and a few old friends who undoubtedly thought she was a bitch because she—well, had acted like a bitch, cutting ties with everyone she knew.
Scarlett was probably embarrassed by her home, but there had to be some way for Katie to reassure her that whatever the problem with the place—too small, too humble, too messy—she wasn’t above it. She wished she hadn’t worn the cashmere, the fine leather boots. Heck, at this point she would be happy to sleep in the truck bed.
“No,” Scarlett said softly. “No, it’s not right. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I promise. You’ll see. And for tonight, you can just stay at Gomma’s. I’ve got the keys.”
“Oh,” Katie said, brightening. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Even better—she could finally relax, after the long, crazy day she’d had, without having to make conversation. Margaret’s house would be run-down and shabby, but it would do.
“And she didn’t die in there or anything like that,” Scarlett added. “I’ll come in for a bit and help you get settled. And I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. I’ll bring you breakfast.”
“You don’t have to work?”
“I quit my job,” Scarlett said. “When I found out Gomma left me the house. It was a shitty job anyway, I was on the line at the elastic plant, and they were only giving me like thirty hours a week because they didn’t want to give me the benefits and—”
“Scarlett,” Katie interrupted delicately, having got stuck on the left me the house part of the conversation—the whole reason she was here. “Did you just say . . . I’m sorry, but—I thought that the contents of the will were . . . unknown?”
“Oh, well, yeah,” Scarlet said. “But Gomma always said she was leaving it to me. Like, for the last five years or whatever.”