“Oh my God, will you stop telling me to leave?”
But two other uniformed men have appeared behind Mayhew, approaching me with a wariness I would find flattering if I wasn’t busy glaring at Arthur. Hands close around my elbows, hauling me away from him. I swear and stomp, tennis shoes sliding off heavy boots, knuckles too swollen to make a proper fist. The last glimpse I see of Conference Room C is Arthur taking the empty seat, shoulders bowed, and Elizabeth Baine, smiling.
TWENTY-FIVE
The parking lot is dark except for the yellow rings of streetlights, thronged with moths and mayflies. There’s a familiar pickup near the entrance, parked with admirable disregard for the white lines, and a Volvo not far away. Two women lean against the driver’s side, shoulders barely touching. They look up when the detention center door slams behind me.
Charlotte calls my name. Bev is already moving, breaking into a run. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bev run for anything—I bet she didn’t even run out of her office when it was on fire—but she’s running now, for me.
She stops awkwardly before me, her arms half-raised. She says, gruffly, “You okay, meathead?”
I nod, more out of habit than conviction. Then I throw my arms around her and squash my face into the warm muscle where her shoulder meets the collar of her tank top. Bev says, “Oh, Jesus,” with considerable disgust, but her arms fold around me, and if she notices the damp smear of snot on her shoulder, she doesn’t say anything.
I think: It’s been eleven years and who-knows-how-many days since someone held me like this,but that’s a lie. I’ve never been held like this, sure and steady, for as long as I need; Mom only ever held me as long as she wanted.
It occurs to me that I’ve been mourning two people all these years—the mother I had, and the mother I wish I had—and that neither of them was the one who kept a roof over my head.
“Bev, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, the motel—I didn’t think they would do anything like—”
She murmurs, “Hey, shut up,” into my hair. I shut up.
Bev thumps my back twice when I pull away, as if I’m the hood of an unreliable car, and scrubs her eyes hard against her own shoulder.
She shepherds me to the Volvo. “C’mon, let’s head over to Charlotte’s, get you a shower.”
“I can’t.”
“Hon,” she says, not unkindly, “you smell like a burning tire.”
“Look, I still don’t know where the hell Jasper is because he won’t answer his damn phone, but I’ve got to find him, and she’s got Arthur in there—”
Bev squints. “He that big scarecrow that went running in a few minutes ago?” I nod. “What’s he to you?”
“My . . .” I begin, but I can’t think of an accurate noun. The possessive hangs.
Bev says, “Screw him,” at the same moment that Charlotte says, “We’ll wait with you.”
Charlotte produces a cardigan and a sleeve of peanut butter crackers from the backseat, like a true librarian. She drapes the cardigan fussily over my shoulders and daubs the soot off my face with a T-shirt that says KIDS WHO READ, SUCCEED! on the front. I lean on the bumper, eating crackers with clumsy hands, watching the detention center door. Bev and Charlotte settle on either side of me like a pair of gargoyles or guardian angels.
After a silence, I say, “So, you two are . . .”
Charlotte says, “None of your business,” at the same time that Bev says, “Yeah, for a couple years now.” I feel their eyes meeting over my head, a pair of wry smiles colliding.
“And here I thought you brought my library holds to the motel out of the purity of your spirit.” I cluck my tongue. “But really you just had the hots for my landlord.”
“At first I came in spite of her,” Charlotte admits. “But then she started requesting her own holds, and we started talking . . .” Charlotte lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “Did you know she likes poetry? Like the really corny stuff, we’re talking the Romantics.”
Bev flaps her hands as if sentiment is a mosquito she can shoo away. “I was just trying to impress you, I told you.”
“I’m sure you were, sweetheart,” Charlotte says, insincerely, and I have the disorienting experience of watching my landlord blush.
I give Bev a doubtful squint. “Are you sure, Charlotte? I mean, she eats Vienna sausages straight out of the can. Like an animal.” Bev thwaps the side of my head. “I’m just saying, you could do better.”
“Maybe I could,” Charlotte says, speculatively. Then her eyes meet Bev’s, soft and sober, and I feel abruptly as if I’ve walked in on them kissing. “But maybe I don’t want better.”
It’s a good thing Bev flips me off and says, “So eat it, kid,” because otherwise I might cry again.
We wait in silence after that, except for dull buzz of bugs against the light bulbs and the rustle of the cracker wrapping. There’s a weird stillness in my head, a muffled tension like a pillow pressed over a screaming mouth.
A silhouette moves on the other side of the glass door, tall and narrow. I’m walking toward him before the door is fully open.
Arthur doesn’t look hurt, but there’s something weird about the way he’s moving. His shoulders aren’t hunched around his collar, and his stride is wide and easy, as if he recently put down some immensely heavy object. He meets my eyes across the parking lot and I catch the white sickle of a smile. If he’s trying to reassure me, it doesn’t work. A chill skates down my spine.
He stops beneath a streetlight and waits, hands tucked in his pockets, wearing the fey smile of a man who has recently pulled the pin from a grenade. The indentation in his left cheek is deeper than I’ve ever seen it. I scowl at it.
Arthur is unfazed. He tucks a gritty, ashen lock of hair behind my ear, casually possessive, as if he’s done it a hundred times before. As if his fingers don’t leave a phosphorous streak across my cheekbone, white-hot. “Nice cardigan,” he says, and I restrain myself from grabbing his shoulders and shaking him very hard.
“Did she drug you? Are you alright?”
He answers with a shrug, loose-boned and easy. I am going to shake his teeth loose from his skull. “What happened in there? What are they going to do now?”
“Nothing.” There’s a calm certainty in his voice that makes the hairs on the backs of my hands stand up. “To you or to Jasper. Ever again.”
“Arthur.” I’m close enough to see the tiny flicker in his eyes when I say his name, a flash of something like physical pain. “What did you give them?”
Another smile, and I resist the impulse to set my thumb in the black curl of his dimple. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about—”
A muffled ringtone interrupts me. I whip back to face Bev and Charlotte. “Is that my phone?”
Charlotte is already holding out a plastic baggie, lit pale blue by the glow of my screen. “We talked the receptionist around.”
I run back and rip the bag open, swiping up without looking at the caller. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Wow, okay, where the fuck are you?” At the sound of Jasper’s voice, my legs go for the second time this evening. I catch myself against the Volvo, my back sliding down hot metal, my throat clogging with tears.
“Jesus, Jasper.” My voice comes out thin and wavery. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
His sigh is a gust of wind through the speaker. “I turned off my ringer for like one hour and everybody has a heart atta—”
Then both of us are talking, trampling one another’s sentences. “Listen, I’m so sorry I said—”
“Did you really burn down the motel? Because—”
“Who said that? Of course I didn’t, God, Bev would murd—”
“Is she okay? Did she—”
“Yeah, Bev’s fine. She’s right here. Where are you now?”