“His hips are going,” Patrick says quietly, reaching down to scratch behind Pilot’s affable, furry ears. “He’s ten; he can’t really do stairs anymore. My mom rigged up a little step-stool thing so he can get up on the couch.”
I look down at Pilot, who’s panting cheerfully. His muzzle’s gone a silvery-gray. I remember when the Donnellys brought him back from the ASPCA, wriggly and wormy—Patrick and I rolled around in the yard with him anyway, muddy and covered in grass stains. Julia didn’t want anything to do with any of us. Gabe was off with his friends, I think. “Shoot, I didn’t know.”
Patrick shrugs. “Yeah, I can see how that’s the kind of thing my brother wouldn’t have told you,” he says, giving Pilot a final rub and heading for the kitchen door.
That stings. “Patrick—” I start.
“Aloe’s in the sunroom,” he interrupts me. “Come on.”
“Sure.” I follow him through the hallway, past the creaky staircase and into the bright, airy sunroom that Connie’s filled with fiddle-leaf fig and cacti, an enormous and vaguely terrifying spider plant that’s been holding court next to the picture window since I was a little girl. There’s a bright patterned rug spread over the floor, oranges and reds. Patrick picks a pair of scissors out of a jar on the bookshelf—one is encouraged to prune, if one is going to spend time in here—and snips a couple lengths of aloe off the plant.
“Thanks,” I tell Patrick quietly—our fingers brush as he hands me the aloe, this stupid useless shiver I feel all over my body. Way before anything romantic ever happened between us Patrick and I were always touching-friends, his arm slung around my shoulders or our palms pressed together to see whose hand was bigger. It used to make me feel reassured, when I bothered to think about it at all, a way of orienting myself in space, like running your hand along the wall in a dark room. Now even this much contact feels foreign and strange.
For Patrick, too, apparently: “I’ll get you a baggie,” he says, clearing his throat and heading back toward the kitchen, leaving me alone in the sunlight and green.
Day 40
Imogen invites me over to have my cards read, which is how I know I’m really forgiven; I head over after work with two slices of the Lodge’s midnight chocolate cake and a CD of a singer-songwriter Penn turned me on to, this new chick from Brooklyn who plays the slide guitar. The night’s summer-cool, the sky over the lake a toasted rose gold. It rained this afternoon, quick and violent, and the road is still shiny and wet.
I haven’t been to Imogen’s house much since I got back here, a cottage off a side road not far from the high school, full of crystals and an altar to the Goddess set up in the front room. It smells like vanilla and patchouli oil, familiar. “Well, hey, Molly,” her mother says when she answers the door in a pair of flowy pants she’s had as long as I’ve known her; her hair’s different, though, pure white and cropped short around her face. I remember what Imogen told me about the cancer, and I squeeze her long and tight to say hello.
I grab two forks from the kitchen and head up the back staircase to Imogen’s room, where she’s putting the finishing touches on a huge brush script painting she’s working on, twenty-four by forty-eight inches that just says EASY DOES IT. “Not bad advice,” I say.
“I like to think so.” Imogen grins, dunking her paintbrush into a mason jar full of water and motioning toward the bed. There’s a picture of her and Tess in their graduation gowns tucked into the mirror. Her RISD sweatshirt’s slung over the chair. “You ready? Ooh, you brought cake, huh?”
“As per the agreement,” I tell her, passing a fork over and settling myself down on the ancient quilt. She hands me the cards to shuffle; after a moment, I hand them back. “Ready,” I say, taking a breath.
Imogen nods. “Think of your question,” she instructs me, just like always. When we were in middle school I remember wanting to know if Patrick liked-liked me. After Gabe I remember silently begging the cards to tell me what to do. Tonight I’m not even sure what I’m after exactly, but before I can articulate it even to myself Imogen sets the cards down on the bed.
“You hurt me,” she says, and I snap to attention, like hearing my name called in class. “When you peaced out like that.” Imogen glances down at the deck in front of her. She’s wearing purple mascara, and her lashes cast shadows across the apples of her cheeks. “You were my best friend, Molly. You always had Patrick. But I only ever had you.”
I open my mouth to tell her I’m sorry, to start apologizing and never ever stop, but Imogen looks up and shakes her head before I can get there: “Think of your question,” she says again, more softly. She takes a breath and flips the first card.
Day 41
“You know what tomorrow is, right?” Gabe asks me. We’re perched at the counter at the shop eating messy slices of pizza and drinking fountain Cokes, orange grease pooling in the ridges of the cheap paper plates. I forgot how much I loved Donnelly pizza until this summer: It’s like I’m craving it all of a sudden, like there’s some secret ingredient my system’s been lacking.
I squint at him. He’s got a stringy bit of cheese stuck to his bottom lip, and I reach up to peel it away. “The day after today?”