After a while, I dream that I’m at Elise Grindle’s wedding, and for some reason there’s water pouring down the middle of the guest tables, swirling through place cards and favors, sweeping flowers and floating candles down the white cloth into my lap.
I make it back into my own bed before morning, and wake up with a crusher of a hangover and a forearm I carry around like it’s equal parts ground glass and rusty nails. I accidentally touch it off the bathroom door before I’m fully awake and yelp. So much for feeling better in the morning.
I wash up and put makeup on my bruises, which have started to fade and turn yellow around the edges, then dress carefully in nicer clothes than usual, jeans and a three-quarter-sleeve shirt that hides most of the scrapes on my arm. It’s a gray, wet day, but the rain’s holding off for now, and I hear Hunt’s ladder ka-thump against the clapboards now and then as he paints.
The house is quiet, mellowing after the past couple days of drama. I eat breakfast alone, wishing somebody would come talk to me but not holding my breath; Mags’s car is gone and Mom’s out in the garden, giving me the cold shoulder. Nell will probably be on house arrest until she’s thirty, unless Libby can get her into a good convent first. Me, I know what I have to do, even if it turns my guts to water. I just need to find a way to get myself out there.
Hunt comes inside around noon, washing his hands and filling his mug with what’s left in the coffeepot. I quit channel surfing and straddle a kitchen chair, watching him move around, knowing his way around the kitchen almost as well as I do now. “Can I ask you something?”
He glances back at me. “Shoot.”
“Did you really buy this place so you could live here with your wife?”
Mom would skin me if she could hear this, but Hunt doesn’t get all huffy. He takes a swallow from his mug and pulls his bag lunch out of the fridge. “I did.”
“How come it didn’t work out?”
He’s got ham and Swiss, looks like; he eats it right from the wax paper. “Well”—he chews—“sometimes, after you been together awhile, you don’t fit the way you did when you started. Life gets in between. If you let it.” Another bite. “We let it.”
“I heard you started building her a barn so she could have horses.” Sounds like a spoiled-brat thing to want, if you ask me. He nods. “How come you planted all those lupines on the foundation?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “Lupines were my mother’s favorite flower.” The way he says it, I know his mom must be dead. I guess he’s pretty old to still have a mom kicking around, anyway. He’s got some grays and all.
I watch him eat, then scrub my face and hunch over the table. “Everybody’s mad at me. Mom and Mags aren’t even talking to me.”
His gaze is sharp, but not judgey; quiet or not, I don’t think Hunt misses a trick. “They got good reason?”
“No. I mean, yeah, there’s stuff I can’t tell them right now. Not because I don’t want to, because I can’t. And they all hate me for it.”
“Nobody hates you around here.”
“Libby does.” That trips him up. “She thinks I’m turning Nell into some kind of tramp. Stupid.” I start to lean my elbows on the table, then pull back, not wanting him to see me wince. “I’m not what she tells everybody I am.”
“No, you’re not.” He brought a chocolate snack cake with him, and he takes the plastic off, offers me half, then takes a bite when I shake my head. “I was hoping maybe you’d win Queen. Show ’em a thing or two.”
I laugh. “Were you there?”
“I caught some of it.”
“Then you know how bad I tanked it. Whatever. I don’t care. I’m not really Queen material anyway.”
“I thought you deserved your shot.” The way he says it makes me sit back. He starts balling up his trash.
“Was it you?” I watch him push back from the table. “Hunt, did you put my name in for Princess?”
His embarrassment shows only in the set of his shoulders, and how he keeps himself busy rinsing his mug, swiping crumbs off the place mat into his hand. “I was in the town office getting the sticker for my truck, figured what the hell. You’re as good as any of those girls on the ballot. And you’re funny and you got some grit, which ought to count for more than it does.”
I sit there, blinking, not sure what to do until it comes to me to say, “Thank you,” for something I didn’t even know I was thankful for until I found out it all happened because he thinks I’m worth something.
I tap my fingers on the table, almost letting him escape back to painting before I catch him at the door with, “Are you sorry it didn’t work out with your wife?”
He shakes his head. “That was some other guy. Some kid. Couldn’t speak to it either way.”
“Then you should go out with my mom. Don’t wait around anymore, or she’ll think you don’t like her enough.” He stands there with his fingers on the door handle. “Trust me, girls hate that. Guys are always saying we’re impossible to figure out or whatever, but it’s pretty simple. Let her know how much you like her.”
He has to clear his throat twice before saying, “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Good.” I hesitate, then decide to go for it. “Listen. I guess you probably don’t have any reason to go into Hampden today. But if you’re going, I could use a ride. I’ll give you gas money.”
He turns, considering me, resting his shoulder against the door.
“Don’t worry, I’m not scoring weed or anything. It’s just something I have to do.” I look up at him. “But if you’re not going, it’s okay.” Part of me really hopes he’ll say no.
“I need some things from True Value. Could swing by the one on Main Road North.” He opens the door. “Run and tell your mom.”
Mom glances up when I stop beside her. When she sees it’s me, she goes back to yanking weeds, her brows drawn.
“I’m going into Hampden with Hunt.” Nothing. “We’ll be back soon.” Nothing. “Okay?”
She talks to the dirt. “You checking in with me now, Darcy?”
“Do you want me to?” She rakes her gloved fingers through the soil, digging at a root. I’m ready to stand over her all day until she answers me, but Hunt starts the engine, and I know if I waste another second, I’ll never do this. “Whatever. Bye.”
As we leave, I watch her sit back on her heels, her hands on her thighs, but she never lifts her gaze from the ground.
We have to cross the bridge to get to Hampden. Thump, the pickup tires cross the meshed steel teeth binding Route 1 to the bridge, the vibration sending a sick ache through my arm. Gray girders fly by, railing streams past. I stare down into the Penobscot, daring it. Come and get me. The water’s the color of rusty iron today, churning and boiling and paying no mind to Tommy Prentiss’s youngest girl.