I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I had no job and only three dollars in my pocket, so I spent an hour walking around downtown. I bought an orangeade and spent a half hour on a bench sipping it, wondering if there was ever going to be any way for me to go home. I imagined the house itself in pieces, brought to the ground by my bad attitude. I imagined a crisis meeting convening as I sat there in the park, with Ashley and Lewis and my mother and Lydia and my ex-boss Burt Isker and my father and Lorna, all of them debating the question What on Earth Has Happened to Haven? Only Sumner would be on my side. Over the space of just one summer he’d managed to breathe life into me again, just as he had all those years ago. And now I was playing hooky from my life there on that bench, on the day before the biggest day of my sister’s life, and I didn’t even care. I imagined their faces as they sat around that table, voices clucking with concern. I was causing a Crisis.
I called Casey. She was off phone restriction and back in her mother’s good graces after tap-dancing lessons and family therapy. When she heard my voice she said, “Hey, hold on. I’m switching phones.”
I was at a pay phone, watching a crazy man talk to himself on the bench I’d just left. I held on.
“Haven.”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” She sounded incredulous, even as she whispered. “Your mom called here three times already, looking for you. They’re freaking out over there.”
“She called you?” I said.
“She thought you’d come here. She told Mom everything, and I overheard. My mom talks so damn loud.”
“What’d they say?” I was the center of serious mother talks.
“Well, your mom asked if you’d been around and my mom said no, so then your mom goes into this whole thing about you freaking out at work this morning and then fighting with Ashley and running out of the house, and she’s just frantic because she thinks you must be on drugs or something, she’s not sure....”
“Drugs?” I repeated. “Did she really say that?”
“Haven,” Casey said matter-of-factly, as if she knew so much about these things. “They think everything is drugs. They do.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I said, offended.
“Well, that’s not the point. So apparently your sister is going ballistic and your mom and Lydia are combing the neighborhood looking for you and the rehearsal is at six-thirty and they think you might ditch that too, so it’s just imperative that they find you before then.”
“The rehearsal dinner,” I said. Of course. I was a bridesmaid. If I hadn’t been, I doubted an all-points bulletin would ever have been issued.
“So what is going on?” Casey demanded. “Where are you? Tell me and I’ll come meet you.”
“Nothing’s going on,” I said. “I’m on my way home.” I didn’t know if that was true, but I didn’t want Casey meeting me. I liked this freedom and I wasn’t ready to share it.
“Are you sure?” she asked, sounding disappointed.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Wait. At least tell me what happened at work. Your mom said she thought you’d assaulted a customer or something—”
“Later,” I said to her. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said sullenly. “But are you all right? At least tell me that.”
“I am,” I said. “I just have some stuff to work out.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, call me if you need me. I’m just here practicing my tap dancing.”
“I will. ’Bye, Case.” I hung up and glanced around the small park I’d been hiding in. There were families out with their kids, college students throwing a Frisbee while a big, dumb-looking dog chased after it. I wondered if the Town Car was cruising the streets downtown, Lydia hoping to catch a glimpse of me so that I could be rustled up and dragged to the rehearsal dinner. I was throwing everything out of whack, and I knew it. I was like a fugitive, running from some indefinable force made up of my mother’s worried eyes and Ashley’s whining and Lydia’s Town Car, sucking up my steps even as I took them. It was late afternoon now, and hotter than ever. My shirt was sticking to me and I needed somewhere better to hide.
I was standing at the crosswalk, squinting, when I heard it. That humming of a car, coming around the corner behind me and then down the street, with Sumner behind the wheel. He stopped at the light, too far away to hear me even if I’d had time to yell his name. The light changed and he pulled away, one hand balanced on the steering wheel, the other arm hanging down the side of the car, drumming his fingers. He took off, I watched him go, blending with the other traffic until he turned onto a side street just a little way down. I started walking.