Though Sylvie considered it for a moment, she realized she didn’t want her job anymore. Not that job, not in its current iteration. Too much was lost.
But if Scott didn’t have anything to do with this, why hadn’t he gone to the meeting? She brought it up once to Joanna and Charles. What did Scott think he knew about the wrestling boys that, eventually, made him leave town? Was there hazing? Why would he have just taken off like that otherwise? Joanna had poked at her dinner for a while, and then said, “Maybe he just wanted us to think there was something else to the story about the boys and the wrestling team, and that was why he was running away. Instead of, you know, just picking up and leaving because he simply didn’t want to be here.”
At first, Sylvie threw out that possibility—people didn’t do that. But she wondered what would hurt worse—knowing that Scott had abetted in something or realizing that Scott just wanted nothing to do with them anymore. The first option carried disappointment and shame, but the second carried personal guilt. There might have been more she could have done to keep him here. It startled her when she realized which option she preferred to believe.
Resigning from the board stopped her life abruptly. Suddenly there were no meetings. No obligatory parties. Other things halted, too—they decided not to go on a family vacation to Cape May, and Charles and Joanna began tentatively planning a trip of their own to Saint Lucia. Charles had put down a deposit on a six-night stay in a seaside bungalow there; he would be able to write off some of it as expenses, he explained, because he was working on a story for the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s vacation home also on the island. It’s a start, he said. At least it’s a writing clip. After he quit his job—he didn’t get into why, only that he wasn’t cut out for advertising—Charles followed an Inquirer editor around until he paid attention to him, even crashing an office party he knew the editor was attending. It could have been a disaster, Charles told Sylvie, but I think the guy was kind of proud of me. I think it showed him I was serious.
When Charles came over for dinner, Joanna sometimes called in the middle—she was often in Maryland, visiting her recuperating mother and her mother’s new boyfriend, Robert. Charles and Joanna had decided to move back to Philadelphia, putting their house up for sale. While they waited for it to sell, they met with Philadelphia Realtors, looking at different apartments, comparing square footage, pet policies, and twenty-four-hour doormen.
One weekend in mid-June, Charles decided to join Joanna in Maryland. Before he left, he kept asking Sylvie if she’d be all right. Did she need anything from the store? Should he bring her some DVDs to watch? Could she call a neighbor if something happened? Stop it, Sylvie kept telling him. I’ll be fine. I’m used to being alone.
She drove to his house and saw him off, needlessly helping him pack his car and lock up his house. Before Charles got into his car, he gave her a long, contemplative look. “There’s something we need to talk about one of these days.”
“What?” she asked.
He rattled the keys in his hand. “It’s nothing I want to get into right now. It’s just … we need to have a long talk.”
She watched as he backed out of the driveway and started down the street. Was it a reference to the girl? Did Charles know? If he did, did she want to know? It seemed better just to let it go.