Brooks passed her a dewy can of Coke from the picnic basket. For a guy, Brooks was strangely good at picnic packing. There was always a variety of junk and healthy food: chips and cookies and apples, turkey sandwiches and cold drinks. Eureka’s mouth watered at the sight of a Tupperware of some of his mom Aileen’s leftover spicy shrimp étouffée over dirty rice. She took a swig of the soda, leaned back on her elbows, resting the cold can between her bare knees. A sailboat cruised east in the distance, its sails blurring into the low clouds on the water.
“I should take you sailing soon,” Brooks said, “before the weather changes.” Brooks was a great sailor—unlike Eureka, who could never remember which way to crank the levers. This was the first summer he’d been allowed to take friends out on the boat alone. She’d sailed with him once in May and had planned to do it every weekend after that, but then the accident happened. She was working her way back to being around water. She had these nightmares where she was sinking in the middle of the darkest, wildest ocean, thousands of miles from any land.
“Maybe next weekend?” Brooks said.
She couldn’t avoid the ocean forever. It was as much a part of her as running.
“Next time, we can leave the twins at home,” she said.
She felt bad about bringing them. Brooks had already gone far out of his way, driving twenty miles north to pick up Eureka in Lafayette, since her car was still in the shop. When he got to her house, guess who begged and pleaded and pitched small fits to come along? Brooks couldn’t say no to them. Dad said it was okay and Rhoda was at some meeting. So Eureka spent the next half hour moving car seats from Dad’s Continental into the backseat of Brooks’s sedan, struggling with twenty different buckles and infuriating straps. Then there were the beach bags, the floaties that needed blowing up, and the snorkel gear William insisted on retrieving from the farthest recesses of the attic. Eureka imagined there were no such obstacles when Brooks spent time with Maya Cayce. She imagined Eiffel Towers and candlelit tables set with platters of poached lobster springing up in fields of thornless red roses whenever Brooks hung out with Maya Cayce.
“Why should they stay home?” Brooks laughed, watching Claire fashion a seaweed mustache on William. “They’d love it. I’ve got kiddie life jackets.”
“Because. They’re exhausting.”
Brooks reached into the basket for the étouffée. He took a forkful, then passed Eureka the tub. “You’d be more exhausted by guilt if you didn’t bring them.”
Eureka lay back on the sand and put her straw hat over her face. He was annoyingly right. If Eureka ever let herself add up how exhausted by guilt she already was, she’d probably be bedridden. She felt guilty for how distant she’d grown with Dad, for the unending wave of panic she’d unleashed on the household by swallowing those pills, for the smashed Jeep Rhoda insisted on paying to fix so that she could hold the expense over Eureka’s head.
She thought of Ander and felt more guilt at being gullible enough to believe he’d take care of her car. Yesterday afternoon, Eureka had finally worked up the courage to dial the number he’d slipped inside her wallet. A thick-voiced woman named Destiny picked up and told Eureka she’d just hooked up her phone service the day before.
Why drive to her house just to give her a fake number? Why lie about being on Manor’s cross-country team? How had he found her at the lawyer’s office—and why had he driven away so suddenly?
Why did the possibility of never seeing him again fill Eureka with panic?
A sane person would realize Ander was a creep. That was Cat’s conclusion. For all the nonsense Cat put up with from her various boys and men, she didn’t tolerate a liar.
Okay, he’d lied. Yes. But Eureka wanted to know why.
Brooks lifted a corner of the straw hat to peek at her face. He’d rolled over onto his stomach next to her. He had sand on the side of his tanned cheek. She could smell the sun on his skin.
“What’s on my favorite mind?” he asked.
She thought about how trapped she’d felt when Ander had grabbed Brooks by the collar. She thought about how quick Brooks had been to make fun of Ander afterward. “You don’t want to know.”