Which probably meant she shouldn’t.
“Sweetheart.” Gordon sensed her melancholy. He leaned over and put his hands on her shoulders. “Everything will work itself out. We’ll discuss your future at the end of the month, all right? That gives us eleven days to formulate a plan.”
Andy chewed her lip. Gordon would formulate a plan. Andy would pretend like she had a lot of time to think about it until the tenth day, then she would panic.
He said. “For tonight, we’ll take your toothbrush, your comb, whatever you absolutely need, then we’ll pack everything else tomorrow. And get your car. I assume it’s still at the mall?”
Andy nodded. She had forgotten all about her car. Laura’s Honda was there, too. They were probably both clamped or towed by now.
Gordon stood up. He closed her art supply box and put it on the floor out of the way. “I think your mother just needs some time alone. She used to take her drives, remember?”
Andy remembered.
On weekends, Andy and Gordon would be doing a project, or Gordon would be doing the project and Andy would be nearby reading a book, and suddenly Laura would burst in, keys in her hand, and announce, “I’m going to be gone for the day.”
Oftentimes she would bring back chocolate for Andy or a nice bottle of wine for Gordon. Once, she’d brought a snowglobe from the Tubman Museum in Macon, which was two and a half hours away. Whenever they asked Laura where she had gone and why, she would say, “Oh, you know, just needed to be somewhere besides here.”
Andy looked around the cramped, cluttered room. Suddenly, it felt less like a cave and more like a hovel.
Before Gordon could say it, she told him, “We should go.”
“We should. But I’m leaving this on your mother’s porch.” Gordon pocketed the bourbon. He hesitated, then added, “You know you can always talk to me, sweetie. I just wish you didn’t have to get tipsy to do it.”
“Tipsy.” Andy laughed at the silly-sounding word because the alternative was to cry, and she was sick of crying. “Dad, I think—I think I want some time alone, too.”
“O-kay,” he drew out the word.
“Not, like, forever. I just think maybe it would be good if I walked to your house.” She would need another shower, but something about being enveloped by the sweltering, humid night was appealing. “Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay. I’ll tell Mr. Purrkins to warm your bed for you.” Gordon kissed the top of her head, then grabbed the plastic garbage bag she had filled with underwear. “Don’t dawdle too long. The app on my phone says it’s going to start raining in half an hour.”
“No dawdling,” she promised.
He opened the door but did not leave. “Next year will be better, Andrea. Time puts everything into perspective. We’ll get through what happened today. Mom will be herself again. You’ll be standing on your own two feet. Your life will be back on track.”
She held up her crossed fingers.
“It’ll be better,” Gordon repeated. “I promise.”
He closed the door behind him.
Andy heard his heavy footsteps on the metal stairs.
She didn’t believe him.
4
Andy rolled over in bed. She brushed something away from her face. In her sleeping brain, she told herself it was Mr. Purrkins, but her half-awake brain told her that the item was way too malleable to be Gordon’s chubby calico. And that she couldn’t be at her father’s house because she had no recollection of walking there.
She sat up too fast and fell back from dizziness.
An involuntary groan came out of Andy’s mouth. She pressed her fingers into her eyes. She could not tell if she was tipsy from the bourbon or had crossed into legit hungover, but the headache she’d had since the shooting was like a bear’s teeth gnawing at her skull.
The shooting.
It had a name now, an after that calved her life away from the before.
Andy let her hand fall away. She blinked her eyes, willing them to adjust to the darkness. Lowlight from a soundless television. The wah-wah noise of a ceiling fan. She was still in her apartment, splayed out on the pile of clean clothes that she stored on the sofa bed. The last thing she remembered was searching for a clean pair of socks.
Rain pelted the roof. Lightning zigzagged outside the tiny dormer windows.
Crap.
She had dawdled after promising her father that she would not dawdle, and now her choices were to either beg him to pick her up or walk through what sounded like a monsoon.
With great care, she slowly sat back up. The television pulled Andy’s attention. CNN was showing a photo of Laura from two years ago. Bald head covered in a pink scarf. Tired smile on her face. The Breast Cancer Awareness Walk in Charleston. Andy had been cropped out of the image, but her hand was visible on Laura’s shoulder. Someone—maybe a friend, maybe a stranger—had taken that private, candid moment and exploited it for a photo credit.
Laura’s details appeared on one side of the screen, a résumé of sorts:
—55-Year-Old Divorcee.
—One Adult Child.
—Speech Pathologist.
—No Formal Combat Training.
The image changed. The diner video started to play, the ubiquitous scroll warning that some viewers might find it graphic.
They’re going to take you down harder than him, Laura. This is all going to be about what you did, not what he did.
Andy couldn’t bear to watch it again; didn’t really need to because she could blink and see it all happening live in her head. She stumbled out of bed. She found her phone in the bathroom. 1:18 a.m. She’d been asleep for over six hours. Gordon hadn’t texted, which was some kind of miracle. He was probably as wiped out as Andy. Or maybe he thought that Laura and Andy had made amends.
If only.
She tapped on the text icon and selected DAD. Her eyes watered. The light from the screen was like a straight razor. Andy’s brain was still oscillating in her skull. She dashed off an apology in case her father woke up, found her bed empty and freaked: fell asleep almost there don’t worry I’ve got an umbrella.
The part about the umbrella was a lie. Also the part about being almost there. And that he shouldn’t worry, because she could very well get struck by lightning.
Actually, considering how her day had gone, the odds that Andy would be electrocuted seemed enormously high.
She looked out the dormer window. Her mother’s house was dark but for the light in her office window. It seemed very unlikely that Laura was working. During her various illnesses, she had slept in the recliner in the living room. Maybe Laura had accidentally left the light on and couldn’t bring herself to limp across the foyer to turn it off.
Andy turned away from the window. The television pulled her back in. Laura backhanding the knife into Jonah Helsinger’s neck.
Thwack.
Andy had to get out of here.
There was a floor lamp by the chair but the bulb had blown weeks ago. The overhead lights would be like a beacon in the night. Andy used the flashlight app on her phone to search for an old pair of sneakers that could get ruined in the rain and a poncho she’d bought at a convenience store because it seemed like an adult thing to have in case of an emergency.
Which is why she had left it in the glove box of her car, because why would she go out in the rain unless she got caught without an umbrella in her car?
Lightning illuminated every corner of the room.
Crap.
Andy pulled a trashbag from the box. Of course she didn’t have any scissors. She used her teeth to rip out a hole approximately the circumference of her head. She held up the phone to gauge her progress.
The screen flickered, then died.
The last thing Andy saw were the words LO BAT.
She found the charger stuck in an outlet. The cable was in her car. Her car was two and a half miles away parked in front of the Zegna menswear store.
Unless it had already been towed.