The one that had entered the lot as they left in Kinley’s car.
The one that had stopped Ivy and Mattie outside the school.
“Who’s the old lady?” Garrett asked from behind her. He put his chin on her shoulder and peered out.
It was Mrs. Stratford. Her window was down, and her elbow rested on the door.
And now she was sitting outside. Watching. She put a hand above her brow and peered up toward the window, like she knew Ivy was there.
“I don’t know,” Ivy lied.
Another car pulled up. An older black Explorer, boxy and too big to be good for the environment.
Daniel.
“Shit!” Ivy said.
“What?” Garrett asked. He grabbed her arm and leaned over her from behind. He felt too close, and Ivy wanted to shake him off.
Daniel got out of his truck and frowned at the car parked at the curb.
Did he recognize her? Ivy’s mind whirled. He had to, didn’t he? This was his case. Of course he would know who Mrs. Stratford was.
She watched as his head moved, as he followed Mrs. Stratford’s line of vision to their house.
“Your brother will take care of it,” Garrett said, squeezing Ivy’s shoulder. “Good thing he’s a cop.”
Ivy shrugged out of his hands and watched while Daniel leaned over the car and addressed Mrs. Stratford. She opened the window, just a crack, but their voices were far away and muffled.
“Ivy—”
“Give me a minute, Garrett, okay?” she said. She felt, rather than saw, Garrett step back. But it didn’t matter. Daniel was already waving as Mrs. Stratford drove away. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Ivy put her hands on her forehead. What the hell was she even doing here?
She turned her back to the window.
“Do you even want me here?” Garrett’s voice was small and hurt.
Ivy put his hands on the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to her lips. She kissed him hard and deep and with all the passion she could muster. She drew all of the pain and hurt she’d experienced since they’d broken up, and all the love she had for him, and every emotion she thought she’d forfeited since she lost him, and she kissed him, and he kissed her and his hands were on her small of her back and in her hair and everywhere.
“I love you,” Garrett whispered in her ear. “Let’s try again. Please.”
Ivy clung to him, feeling his body against hers and trying to remember the way it used to warm her.
But even Garrett, who she thought she had wanted more than anything in the world, could not push all of the horror out of her mind. It could not remove the rusted car. The way Dr. Stratford looked in the trunk. His half-open eye that watched them as they moved his body.
Garrett was a complication.
An unnecessary one, no matter how much she had loved him.
She buried her face in his shoulder. It took all of her strength to stay there, for just another minute.
But she pulled away. And she felt like she was peeling off her mask, the one distant shadow of her Former Self that she had been clinging to.
She touched his shoulders, her fingers barely brushing his shirt. “I think I need more time, Gar,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
When she saw the hurt in his eyes, she added it to her Chest of Horrible Memories. The ones that weighed on her, that made her feel like she was dragging the whole world behind her with every step she took.
Horrible memories, she had learned, always outlast the good ones.
Mattie
Tuesday, June 23
“Iced soy chai, please. Extra large.”
Ivy stared at him. “Um, you already told her that.”
Mattie jerked out of his reverie. The barista (a pretty girl with a big hoop in the middle of her nose) stared at him, her hand out.
“Oh, yeah.” Mattie dug in his pocket and produced a couple of bills before handing them over. She tossed them in the cash register and gave them a little card that featured a dog named Murdoch. “We advertise for the local shelter,” she told them. “Our cards save over two hundred dogs a year.”
Mattie took the photo of Murdoch and followed Ivy to a table near the back of the little shop. Ivy had just sort of shown up again while he was vegging on the patio, thinking all sorts of grisly things, and told him to follow her. So he had, and they’d ended up in this odd coffee shop with oscillating fans running everywhere and music that was just a little too fast for relaxation.
It was better, Mattie guessed, than sitting in his bedroom, watching the ceiling fan turn. Or sitting on the back porch, listening to the reluctant lapping of the pool whenever the breeze kicked in.
It was better than all the waiting.
He couldn’t turn his brain off. He couldn’t stop thinking about Stratford and the police and Kip thinking he had seen Stratford and the little line of black-red blood under Stratford’s nose and how his dead skin had been slick in the rain.