Chapter Twenty-seven
“I WANT TO WATCH MORE MOVIES,” LARK SAID. SHE dropped the plates, crusted with the remnants of our breakfast, into the sink. Marjorie and Otis sat at one end of the table finishing their tea, while Arden and I played rummy.
“No more movies.” Arden looked at me over the cards fanned out in her hand. Her normally messy black bob was combed straight behind her ears, and her skin, scrubbed clean, had a healthy glow. “We don’t need to see any more tortured love stories.”
I tugged at the frayed ends of my hair, my mind half there and half with Caleb. After sending out the message last night I’d collapsed into the worn mattress, letting my body sink deeply into sleep. Soon my thoughts gave way to dreams, and I saw him in his room, his hands resting on his radio.
I saw him listening to the message.
Lark started over to the table, pointing a finger at Arden. The sweater she wore was three sizes too big and fell down over her bare shoulder. “You’re not the only one who gets to decide. I might be younger than you, but I have a vote—”
“All right, all right,” Otis said, throwing up his hands. He laughed, his gray eyes meeting Marjorie’s. “It feels like old times.”
I remembered the picture of the beach and the scrawled note from the girl named Libby. “Do you have a daughter?” I asked, setting my cards facedown in front of me.
“Two,” Marjorie said. She wiped off the table, scraping at a dried tomato seed with her fingernail. “Libby and Anne.”
Otis stood. His back faced us as he dumped a bucket of water into the sink. “They were what you hope for when you have children,” he said. “They were twenty-seven and thirty-three.” When he turned back he had tears in his eyes.
“We don’t talk much about that anymore, though,” Marjorie offered. The dishes clinked together in the sink. “Anyway, Otis just meant that it’s good to have you girls here.”
I thought of my own mother and the letter she had written me. She had tucked it into my pocket on the day that the trucks came—the last thing I’d ever have of her. It was lost now, back with my other keepsakes at the dugout, never to be held again. I thought about how she had snuggled next to me in my bed, reading me stories about a talking elephant named Babar. She had tied my shoelaces, dressed me, and combed my hair. I love you, she said silently, with every button she buttoned, every wrinkle she pressed flat. I love you, I love you, I love you.
“We’re happy to be here, too,” I said.
But Marjorie was looking at something over my shoulder. The lines on her face seemed deeper, more severe, as she walked to the bookshelves. Her hand touched first the top shelf, then the black metal radio beneath it. “Someone moved the radio.”
The way she said it—slow, tinged with anger—scared me. Otis rested his arms on the counter, his gaze settling on Lark.
“Why are you looking at me?” Lark said. She wheeled backward, pulling her sweater tight around her shoulders. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I did,” I said, the breaths tightening in my chest.
Marjorie tilted her head, studying me. “What did you do?” she asked, her voice louder than usual.
Arden turned to me now too, a look of confusion on her pale face. She set down her cards.
“I had to send out a message to someone—but it was in code.”
“What code did you use?” Marjorie said urgently, coming toward me. She twisted the end of her purple scarf until it was a hard, tight coil.
Arden gripped my arm. “To Caleb?” she asked.
“Who the hell is Caleb?” Otis asked. I flinched, my breath quickening.
Marjorie circled the table to reach me. “It doesn’t matter who he was,” she said, squeezing her fingers into my shoulder. “It matters what code she used. Now tell me, which one was it?”
Marjorie and Arden stared at me, their eyes pleading and urgent. I stood, backing against the wall. “The code—the only one.”
Marjorie slapped her hand onto the table, sending her glass toppling over, water running to the floor. “There isn’t only one. There have been thirty different codes since the Trail started five years ago.”
The room grew too hot. My body slicked with a thin layer of sweat. I could barely make out the words. “He especially loved people—”
“No!” Otis cried, pounding his fist on the counter. “No, no, no!”
Lark’s eyes welled. “What? What’s wrong?”
“It has to be some mistake,” Arden said hastily. “Maybe she didn’t do it right, maybe it never went out. Who would listen to it anyway?”
“Everyone,” Otis snapped. “Everyone—that’s who.”
Marjorie was rubbing at her forehead. The sunlight glowed through the curtains, making her skin look pink. Finally, she turned to Otis. “Get the bags. We don’t have much time.”