“Not interested.”
He ordered another vodka on the rocks. “Someone’s going to do it. I’m just saying . . . why not you?”
/
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/
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“Yeah, why not you?” Tammy said, and Scarlett wondered whether Adam and Sarah had already inked book deals. “You were always reading, reading, reading. Couldn’t get you to stop reading. If you love books so much—”
“When I was five?”
“Yes,” Tammy said.
“I knew how to read before kindergarten,” Scarlett said, but it was a question for Tammy. Now that she was thinking of her as that—Tammy—she couldn’t un-think it.
“Yes, ma’am.” Tammy’s foundation wasn’t quite the right match for her skin.
“In this book of mine,” Scarlett said, “is it aliens who did it?”
“You wouldn’t have to say for sure.” Tammy gave Steve a look and said, “As I’ve said, no one can say for sure. But I bet it’d sell like hotcakes if it was aliens.”
“Maybe you should write a book!” Scarlett said.
“Maybe I will!” Tammy took a pull off her drink with a slim red cocktail straw, then looked out the window, like there was something really fascinating out there.
The silence felt tight around Scarlett’s throat.
An invisible necktie of awkwardness and anger.
Steve said, “You do know how to tell a good story, Tammy. I remember those nights I’d just sit at the bar, when there was hardly anyone else there, and I’d be thinking, Damn, she sure can talk.”
Looking at the ocean, Scarlett tried to hatch an escape plan.
She should run to the end of the pier, jump off, and hope to be rescued by the crew of some boat bound for a faraway land.
Or she could just walk toward the shore and into the water until it buried her. Maybe hope for some dolphin or manatee or mermaid to deliver her to some fantastical underwater city? Or maybe just to . . . wherever she’d been before?
Steve was still talking. “Then I got to wondering what else you might be good at,” he said, and Scarlett’s mother said, “Oh, stop.”
Yes.
Please.
Stop.
“Seriously, though. A book,” Steve said. “Promise us you’ll think about it?”
Lucas
Lucas half expected a flock of birds or bats to fly out of the RV, but it was eerily quiet.
Dead still.
He followed his brother into the dim compartment, swatting at thick spiderwebs. Ryan turned on a lamp that flooded the room with golden light. There were Post-its and articles on every wall and cabinet door; even the windows were mostly covered.
A large whiteboard blocked one window, with crazy notes scrawled in black marker.
Lucas saw his own name—the first box of six, in the top left corner—and read,
ONE WEEK BEFORE IT HAPPENED, LUCAS SAID THEY WERE BEING FOLLOWED BY A MAN CARRYING WRAPPING PAPER.
He turned to Ryan. “What is this man-with-wrapping-paper thing all about?”
Ryan came to his side and stared at the whiteboard while he spoke. “We were walking home from my baseball game. And you kept stopping and turning around and then walking and stopping and turning around, and it was driving me crazy because I just wanted to get home and tell Dad about my two hits, and I finally asked you why you were stopping, and I guess I was mean-sounding and you said, ‘No reason.’ But then a few minutes later, you said, ‘It’s just that there’s a man following us.’”
Ryan paused then, took a breath, shook his head.
“I told you that you were being ridiculous. And you said that he was carrying something that looked like wrapping paper, and I said something like, ‘Oooh, the scary man is going to wrap us and take us to a party,’ and that was the end of it . . . until a week later, when you disappeared.
“I told the police about it, and they interviewed some of the guys on the team, and people said they remembered seeing this guy with wrapping paper hanging around the ball field. But of course they never found the guy. There were a few attempts at police sketches, but none of them looked anything alike and they started to think that the guys didn’t really remember seeing the guy, just wanted to be a part of something and be helpful.
“Anyway.” Ryan looked like he’d aged two years telling the story. “If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, maybe I would have seen the guy and everything would have been different.”
“Maybe.” Lucas felt his whole body un-tense now that he knew. “Maybe he was just a guy. With wrapping paper.”
“Something that looks like wrapping paper is what you said.”
“What looks like wrapping paper?” Lucas asked.
“You’re the one who saw it.” Ryan shrugged. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out. “I’m supposed to meet Miranda.”
“What’s the situation with you two, anyway?” Lucas lifted a pile of newspaper clippings, started to sift.
“The situation?”
“How’d you meet? How long have you been together? Is it serious? Does she live here?”