“Wow, geez.” Sean drank the last sip and looked into his empty glass.
Ashley couldn’t read him. He was warmer with her than before, but she felt a strange distance between them, like he was conducting a job interview.
“Can I get you something else?” he asked.
She remembered the glass in her hand and took two long sips. “No, this is great, thanks.” What was going on here? Ashley couldn’t tell anymore.
The phone rang at that moment and Sean excused himself to the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello...Yeah, okay.” Sean looked at Ashley, then stretched the curly wire around the doorway so he was tucked back into the kitchen, as far away from her as the cord would allow. His voice lowered to a whisper. “Yes, I’ve seen her...What is it?”
Ashley strained to hear his side of the conversation, which sounded curt and impolite.
“How do you know?” he demanded. “That could mean anything...Fine...Fine...I don’t want to be involved...Okay, fine, I’ll be careful. Goodbye.”
The conversation ended, but Sean didn’t budge. Ashley had an image of him standing frozen in the kitchen with his finger depressing the hook on the wall-mounted phone.
“Everything okay?”
Sean hung the phone on the cradle and walked back into the living room. “Yeah, no problem. Sorry about that.”
She reclined slightly into a pillow, hoping to change the mood in the room.
Sean looked around nervously. “Yeah, so I was just reminded of a thing I have to do. It’s a parenting obligation. I promised Beth. I’m really sorry.”
Ashley sat up. “Wait, tonight?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m so embarrassed. I just have to go.”
Ashley didn’t budge. She brought her wineglass to her lips and slowly drank the rest of its contents while Sean watched. No way was she going to let him push her out. Something was going on here and she was not getting kicked out of the secret circle now that she had one foot in.
“Can I tag along?” She wiped the perimeter of her lips with her fingers and watched Sean for a response.
“You want to come? No, no that wouldn’t work. Beth and I kind of have an agreement about this stuff.”
“Understood.” Ashley nodded. She was going to make him squirm. “Well, then, maybe I could meet you afterward. I’m free all night.”
Sean’s eyes widened like she’d said something crazy, and maybe she had, but he was the one lying his ass off. If anyone was crazy, it was the guy with all the secrets. What was he hiding?
Sean sighed and sat down on the couch beside her. “Listen, I’m sorry about tonight. I’ll make it up to you.”
He put a warm hand on her calf and squeezed slightly. With that touch, Ashley felt a bolt of lightning run straight up her leg and her resolve weakened. She assumed he was trying to manipulate her, but she still liked the feeling of his hand on her leg. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“I would expect it.” And then Sean stood up and waited. It was time for her to go.
Ashley stood and slid into her shoes. She was in no rush. She took one more look around the room, hoping for clues about what the hell was going on. Sean got her jacket and helped her into it. Then he put a hand on her back and gently led her toward the door. The electricity was undeniable to her, even if he was escorting her out.
“Thanks for coming over,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Call me.” It was work to smile, but Ashley did it. She could fume in her car. Fume or fret, she wasn’t sure which.
Sean closed the door as Ashley stood beneath the porch light. She could hear the lock turn on the other side, quietly, like he was trying to go unnoticed. He had locked her out.
She walked to her car on the street without any notice of her open coat in the frigid temperature. The ignition turned, the vents blasted cold air at her, and then she was driving away.
“Ahhh!” Ashley screamed, pounding on the steering wheel. Something was happening on this island that she needed to know about.
She drove fast down the empty street. And then, just as she approached the first turn, Ashley slammed on the brakes. She’d seen something in her rearview mirror.
Ashley pulled into a nearby driveway and in two quick motions, reversed course and went back in the direction from which she’d come.
Two blocks down, she saw it: Sean. He was huffing along the dark sidewalk alone in his puffy coat. He must have left mere seconds after her. At first he didn’t look up, but Ashley decelerated so quickly that the car nearly stopped in the road.
He glanced, and she panicked, and then they were making eye contact through her window. Shit, she’d been spotted. But so had he.
And then Sean did a thing that made all of Ashley’s theories and suspicions seem possible. He broke into a sprint and ran. Down the side road, then onto Main Street, toward Hunter’s or Kat’s or the part of Addison where Ashley suspected all the action—all the secrets—to be.
She considered following him with her car, but that would have been too aggressive. She wasn’t stalking him, after all. She just wanted to know where he was going and what he was keeping from her. No need to alarm anyone.
Because Ashley wasn’t a stalker, she sat in the idling car for a cool count to one hundred, and then she drove slowly home by way of downtown, a circuitous route to be sure.
Sean was still running when she passed him the second time.
Chapter 13
Kat pulled the goggles down over her eyes and selected an iron rod from the assortment she kept against the wall. It was almost midnight, but there was no use in going to bed. She never really slept anymore, and she certainly wouldn’t now, not after the brief phone call with Sean.
Kat looked at the store inventory list. They were low on paperweights and chachkas, the inexpensive souvenir items for tourists. Normally, she hated making that stuff, but lately the mindless items were the only things she managed to finish.
She twirled the rod in the pool of molten glass, around and around until it was the size of a plum. Then she pulled it out, dipped it into a bowl of aqua-colored glass shards and put the spiky little ball into the glory hole. She twirled again and watched the granular colors melt before the blazing heat. Why had Sean been so quick to get off the phone with her? Why had he been so vague in his answers? They hadn’t spoken in three weeks—not since she and Hunter told him about Kyle—and she expected something different from the call: anger, or at least follow-up questions, but this was just haste. She couldn’t make sense of it.
Kat didn’t want to call Sean on that night. He needed time and she wanted to respect that. Kat didn’t really think that Sean was just going to run to the cops and turn her in. Maybe he’d do it to Hunter after everything that had happened, but he wouldn’t do it to her. Maybe. But with Ashley in the picture, everything had changed. They needed to be more cautious now. Kat had seen Ashley earlier that day and she had new cause for concern.
She’d been sitting in a dark corner of the Addison Library, examining a road map of Florida, when she heard the bathroom doors swing open, followed by a brief and troubling conversation.
“You’ve been at that desk all day,” the librarian said to someone. “Are you a student?”
“Yes, doctoral,” the woman said. “I’m a little behind with my thesis, so I’ve been cramming.”
At first, Kat didn’t recognize the voice. They were just beyond her line of vision.
“Well, you seem like a hard worker,” the librarian went on.
“I was actually ahead of schedule. But I’ve been distracted by another research project. Something pretty explosive fell into my lap recently.”
It was then that Kat recognized the voice as Ashley’s. Kat leaned in toward the stacks that separated them and strained to hear the rest.
“That sounds exciting,” the
librarian said.
“It is. People will know about it soon.”
People will know about it. That’s what Ashley had told the librarian. People will know about it.
Kat had walked around in the cold for much of the afternoon, stewing about those words. Was Ashley talking about Kyle? Had she found some sort of smoking gun with the tidal patterns? It was possible that she was referring to something else, something related to her work. But what if she was not? If there was even a slim chance that Ashley was going to be a problem, then Kat had to do something.
So she went home, ate some toast, stared blindly at the television screen for twenty minutes and finally decided to just call Sean. She knew he was in the best position to determine if there was anything to be worried about. She just wanted him to do a little probing with Ashley. And she knew that no matter how angry Sean was with her, he would be loyal to her first, before Ashley. She hoped.
But Sean had been weird on the call. Receptive to the information, more or less, but very weird. She didn’t even get a chance to tell him what she needed him to find out. It was as if he was having a different phone conversation altogether. He just acknowledged what she was telling him and hung up, no commitments made.
So now, as Kat sweated alone in her garage, she couldn’t stop thinking about the big fat possibility that she’d misjudged Sean’s loyalty to her.
Kat pulled the hot aqua blob from the glory hole, spinning slowly along the way. She held the rod straight up, letting the blob drip down toward her feet like a teardrop in slow motion. When it reached the desired shape, she smooshed it gently onto the cool cement floor. It looked like a chocolate kiss. She twisted the rod with her left hand and used a blowtorch with the right until the steel pulled away from the hardening kiss. One paperweight, done.
Was it possible that Sean was working with Ashley? The idea seemed unlikely, but it wasn’t out of the question. Sean was angry with Kat and horrified by the choices she’d made since that terrible night. And he was always so sure of his goddamn rightness in this world. Who knew what he was capable of? This was new territory.
Kat returned the rod to its resting place and began sweeping. She was forever tracking tiny glass rocks onto the hardwood floors of the shop with the soles of her shoes. She swept ferociously, her anxiety mounting.
Sean was more rigid now than he used to be. It was a subtle change, but she remembered him as being more forgiving at the start. Or maybe that was a trick of the imagination. Kat wasn’t in love with Sean because of his ability to forgive; she was in love with him because of his sureness, which actually seemed to inhibit his capacity to forgive. There was a day, probably six years ago, when they went out on a sailboat. Sean had borrowed it from someone at the boatyard. He’d been trying to impress her. They’d brought sandwiches and beers, enough provisions to stay out on the water for hours. They’d stayed out until Sean’s shoulders were burned bright red and all the bottled water had been drunk. It had been Kat’s first time on a sailboat and she had been nervous, but Sean’s comfort and confidence were infectious. He was so unabashedly content with his life. He was content with Martha’s Vineyard, and he knew exactly what he wanted from it all. She’d never met anyone like that.
Where Kat came from, people didn’t sail, or stare up at the clouds, or talk about the ocean with poetic flourishes. Everyone in Kat’s childhood had been working to acquire more material possessions or in the process of losing them—that was the measure of everything. And it wasn’t because they had no money, though that was also true. They would have been like that as rich people too, if given the chance. Sean and Orla never had much, either, but theirs was a completely different way of being poor. Sean was grateful for everything. And he—perhaps justifiably—believed that this was the right way to live. Sean had little sympathy for those who operated by a different set of values.
So no, perhaps he hadn’t ever been a forgiving man, but there were so many other reasons to be in love with someone.
A knock on the garage door startled Kat. She walked to the entrance and put her hand on the doorknob but did not turn it.
“It’s me,” Sean said from the other side. “I’m freezing. Can I come in?”
Kat opened the door and took him in. Pink cheeked and panting, Sean appeared to have run there. “Are you okay?”
He walked past her into the garage. “Can we go inside?”
She nodded and led him up the back stairs to her apartment.
The lights were all on and a cooking show droned from the TV. Kat liked it that way now, even in the middle of the night. Kyle’s image couldn’t break through all that noise quite so easily.
“Wow, it’s a real command center up here,” Sean joked. He was nervous.
Kat found the remote and turned off the TV. “Yeah, sorry. So what’s going on? This is about my call, I assume.”
He nodded and sat down at the table. “Yeah, it is. Sorry I was weird on the phone. It’s just that...she was there with me.”
“Oh.” Kat sat across from him in the bright kitchen. She didn’t know if this meant that he was allied with Ashley now or that he was sleeping with her. And if it was one, did it have to be the other too?
“She just came over for a drink. We barely talked actually. I got rid of her after you called.”
Kat felt her body relax slightly. “Oh wow. Sorry. I swear I didn’t know she was there with you. I just wanted to know if she’d said anything. When I saw her today at the library, it seemed like maybe she had some new information or something. It seemed like she was still pursuing this.”
“I don’t know if she’s still pursuing it. We haven’t talked about it. But I haven’t said anything to her.”
“Okay. Well, thanks. I’m really grateful for your...discretion.”
Discretion. It was the same word Hunter had used when he offered the money to Kat. Discretion is the universal euphemism for bad secrets.
Sean furrowed his brow. “Kat, don’t read too much into this. I got rid of Ashley tonight because I needed to think. I still need to think about it all. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Okay.”
“And, to be honest,” he continued, “I don’t know what’s going on with me and Ashley. I thought she was actually interested in me, but she’s also got this preoccupation with Kyle’s death, which sort of confuses the whole thing. I may have misread her.” Sean scratched his beard and looked out the window to the black ocean.
Kat didn’t want to talk about his feelings for Ashley. “Well, thank you for not telling her anything.”
Sean scratched harder. He was fidgety. “Kat, I don’t know what I’m going to do with...that information. I just don’t know yet. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not going to tell Ashley about it, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily going to just stay quiet forever, either. This is a really fucked-up position you’ve put me in.”
“Oh.”
“And, you know, I have to consider Weeta. I have to be able to live with myself. And if I can’t defend this to her when she’s older, then it’s probably not defensible, you know?”
Kat studied his face. It was apologetic, but it was also pitying. He pitied her poor judgment or her moral weakness.
“Sean, you don’t have to defend anything. You don’t have to do anything. That’s all we’re asking for, for you to do nothing.”
“Yes, but that’s not right. Kyle’s family deserves the true story. That’s how society works! Bad things happen, and people take responsibility for their actions, Kat. You’re not someone who runs away from this sort of thing.”
She wasn’t going to let him lecture her about right and wrong. Two months ago, maybe she could have endured it, but the world had gotten more complicated since then. Kat felt the temperature in her body rise.
“No, Sean, that’s not how society works, though it’s a very comfo
rting idea. In reality, sometimes bad things happen and people get away with them...or the wrong people are punished...or the real story is never told. Kyle fell! Hunter and I didn’t do it and we shouldn’t have to pay the price for it.”
Sean shook his head. He was all pity now, nothing apologetic about him. “I bet Hunter told you that.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
Kat didn’t want to fight with Sean, self-righteous bastard that he was. She just wanted to go back in time and do a few critical things differently. She wanted to drink less that night at The Undertow. Then she wanted to go home with Sean. She wanted to tell Hunter to go to bed and watch him leave the bar alone. Mostly, she wanted to give Kyle the chance to right his actions on that night, to be only a drunk person flirting with very bad behavior, someone who’d gotten close to the edge and walked himself back. No one deserves to die for their intentions alone, do they? Kat didn’t know. Kyle was a monster that night, but Kat’s guilty conscience wouldn’t let her off the hook that easily. He hadn’t, technically, done anything. And now he was dead.
Kat began to cry.
Sean scratched vigorously at his beard. Then he reached across the table and put his hands on top of hers. Kat leaned forward and cried into their intertwined fingers, her tears falling down along his rough knuckles. He wasn’t wrong and neither was she. Everything was just so intractably fucked-up.
“Are you seeing her?” she muffled into his hands.
“What?”
Kat lifted her face. “Are you seeing her?”
“No, I’m not.” Sean paused. “It seemed like a possibility, but I don’t think it is. She’s very...intense.”
Kat didn’t know what to do with this information. She was jealous and heartbroken, but she was also angry that he could even consider being with someone who was intent on bringing her down. It seemed so distinctly male to compartmentalize the two concerns in discrete and unrelated categories. Everything was muddied up, but he apparently thought a relationship—or at least sex—with Ashley wouldn’t spill into the rest of their lives. Kat was more sad than mad. She just wanted to go back in time.
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