The Leaving (32 page)

She stood on the center pier at Anchor Beach, squinting out at the water as clouds gossiped on the horizon.

It had been foolish, maybe, to visit Orlean again. But she’d left Adam’s house feeling like she had to do
something
—and Orlean was the last possible lead they hadn’t gone back to follow up on. A lead that might point to the real who, the real why. But of course he hadn’t remembered her, hadn’t read
The Leaving
, hadn’t been able to tell her once and for all what the stuff was that you couldn’t forget if you tried.

She’d visited Goldie again, only now they were calling her by her name, Margaret. They’d talked about the painting on the wall, which was named
Christina’s World
.

“Do you like it?” Margaret had asked.

“I do,” Scarlett had said. “Her body positioning projects such desire for movement. Do you think she ever gets there? To the house?”

Margaret had said, “Yes, I think so. I think someone comes to help.”

Scarlett had texted Sarah—
Any progress on the sketches?
—when she’d left, but had gotten no reply. A text from Ryan had said,
Going to bail my brother out. He asked me to let you know.

Now Scarlett closed her eyes and tried to picture the sky in
Christina’s World
—was it blue? Gray?—and wondered what a painting of this moment—her on this pier, this sky—might look like.

Would the artist be able to capture the pull she felt to the water?

To anywhere but here?

But to where?

The world was so big.

Her life story so huge in it.

The stuff of movies!

And yet her part in it all felt so small.

One tiny stitch.

Something blubbed in the water, and she looked down trying to find what it was, hoping for a manatee who’d maybe turned up early for the winter party.

Then imagined herself

diving    in,     fully    clothed.

Imagined how her clothes would fall away like a skin she was shedding, or maybe float like wings.

How her hair would swirl around her like mermaid hair as her lungs got tight, or how it might get knotted up, strangling her.

She imagined someone coming to save her from drowning

—could she even swim?—

Or no one.

She looked to the skies again and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be the sort of person who’d see something up there and think it was a UFO.

What would it be like to be that free to believe?

To cling to something—a memory, a trick of the eye, the same thing—even in the face of logic and reason.

The afternoon had turned chilly and she wished she had her jacket with her. She’d stalled in making the new one several times now but felt like if she had the original one, if she were able to put it on, she might feel like herself again.

She walked back to where she knew the initials would be and ran her fingers over them—the prick of the splintered wood on her thumb—and had a physical memory of what it had felt like to kiss him, how amazing and terrifying to connect with another human being, with him.

He’d loved her once.

She’d loved him.

What was love if not a kind of forgetting?

A forgetting about the inevitability of loss.

Or was love more a kind of remembering?

Remembering how badly we need to be needed, understood.

Remembering that maybe it was the whole reason we were here.

Had she been the one to x those letters out?

Had Adam?

It didn’t matter.

She’d save herself.

It turned out she very much liked being alone.

So she planned on doing that for a while.

When she was alone she felt free and in control, even if the only thing she was in control of was herself.

Maybe the remembering and forgetting of love would come later, down the line, when she was ready.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Sarah.

This is the house.

There was a sketch attached.

Scarlett opened it, zoomed in on it.

Nothing familiar about it at all.

Then another photo came through.

A face.

A remarkable likeness of Ryan’s girlfriend.

Younger, sure, but definitely her.

Miranda, was it?

Why was Sarah sending her a drawing of Miranda?

Did Sarah even
know
Miranda?

The text followed:

This is the girl.

/
        /
    /
  /

What girl?

Oh.

No.

                 /
                          /
                                 /

Lucas

The guard unlocked the gate and let Lucas through. Ryan had hands in his shorts pockets, looked tired around the eyes.

“You actually got the money?” Lucas said.

Ryan nodded but looked baffled. “It turns out there’s a fair amount of savings. Like Dad had applied for all these artist grants and had won a bunch and made some good investments and it adds up. I’m not sure what’ll be left once we’re done paying a lawyer for you. But—”

“It won’t come to that,” Lucas said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“I’m
not
sure. I just—I need to go over everything again. We’re missing something.”

Miranda was idling in the car just out front and switched over to the passenger seat—climbing across the center console—so that Ryan could drive.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Better now,” Lucas said. “Sashor actually came to see me and said they have a theory they’re pursuing now that the whole thing started with someone trying to erase our memory of the shooting.”

“What?” Ryan said.

Miranda said, “That’s crazy.”

“Apparently it’s not that crazy. Chambers pointed to a bunch of studies where scientists have successfully erased traumatic memories.”

“Maybe you should try hypnosis,” Ryan said. “Kristen did, right? Maybe you’ll remember something that will clear your name. Maybe you’ll remember what your tattoo means.”

In the backseat, Lucas rolled his eyes. “Kristen remembers a wooden owl. Not the most useful information.”

“Maybe you should try it anyway,” Ryan said.

“Why are you suddenly all fired up about all this?” Lucas asked when Ryan stopped at a light.

“Why aren’t
you
?” Ryan shouted. “You’ve been charged with murder.”

“I didn’t do it!” Lucas shouted.

“How do you know?”

“I just”—How did he know?—“he’s not the guy. I’d
know
. We’d know. This guy, there’s no connection to Anchor Beach or to anything.”

“You don’t
know
anything,” Ryan said.

That SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT shirt was still hanging there in the shop window in town.

They weren’t that far from the house.

He could walk the rest of the way.

“Thanks for the support.” He got out of the car at the next light and headed for the gift shop.

Inside, he wound his way through overstuffed racks, lost in a hedge maze of T-shirts and baseball hats and gnomes on beaches and sea-shells with googly eyes.

This
was what people wanted to help them remember? Flamingo snow globes? LIFE’S A BEACH coffee mugs?

The only souvenir he had from his whole life was inked into his skin. It had, over the last week, healed nicely.

And yet . . .

“Can I help you?” A girl with fake blond hair with a purple streak in it sat perched on a barstool by the register reading a magazine. She barely looked up.

“That shirt in the window,” he said. “‘Sun’s Out, Guns Out.’”

“What size?” She moved to get up.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to buy one. I just want to know . . . what does it mean?”

“It’s like a muscle-head thing,” she said.

“Muscle head?”

She bent her arm, made a fist. “Like when it’s warm enough out to show off your arm muscles.”

He couldn’t help but feel disappointed. “That’s got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.”

“Agreed,” she said, and he turned to go and started the long, hot walk home. He would head for the RV—regroup. He’d take a run at everything again.

Sure, they’d erased the shooting.

They’d erased eleven years.

But he still had his inked skin.

He still had his trained eye.

It
had
to be the thing that would help him prove he was innocent and that they’d gotten it all wrong.

Maybe Sashor and Chambers were onto something with regard to why. But the more important thing, the thing that had always mattered most to Lucas, was who?

Nothing had changed.

AVERY

In her father’s office, she sat at the computer and rooted around through his e-mail and figured out where the audio files were and started to listen to every call that had been recorded since the tip line went live. After a while she started to recognize the voice of the “nutjob” her father had been referring to.

“
He didn’t do it. You have to dig deeper. It’s not over
.”

“
How do you know this? Who are you?
” the tip-line guy asked.

“I’m a dead man.”

Click
. Gone.

Later, the same voice again:

“
It was only supposed to be for a few hours, you see
.”

And again later,

“
I was only there once. I don’t know where it was, but it wasn’t that place
.”

“
Sir, can you be more specific?
”

“
I can’t. They’re probably watching me. They’re probably listening
.”

And the last one:

“
They were going to pin it all on me if I talked. They buried him in my backyard, for Chrissake
.”

Maybe everyone was right.

The guy was just crazy.

Or he wasn’t.

She had to go back to the drawing board.

With Lucas in jail, she’d have the RV all to herself.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

Drove like a lunatic, then pounded on the door until her fists hurt.

Lucas still hadn’t responded to the texts she’d sent from Anchor Beach. And that had been several hours ago.

She’d forwarded the sketch of Miranda.

Wrote,
This is the girl Sarah says was with us.

Then,
On my way to you from Anchor Beach.

“Is Lucas here?” she asked when Ryan answered.

“No,” Ryan said, sounding annoyed. “We had a fight
after I bailed him out of jail
.”

“Is
Miranda
here?”

“She
was
.” A look of confusion. “But she ran home to get some stuff she needed. Why?”

“Sarah said she remembered another girl being with us. She sent me a picture she drew of her.” She pulled the picture up on her phone and held it out.

Ryan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Have they ever met? Miranda and Sarah?”

“I don’t
think
so. But if Miranda’s . . . that would mean . . .” Ryan sat down, dropped his head. “That she
targeted
me?”

It was the conclusion Scarlett had come to on her drive, as well. “How did you meet her?”

“She came into the hotel where I work one night with some friends.”

“She could have known who you were before she turned up.” Scarlett’s thoughts were in sharp focus. “It means they knew they were going to let us go . . . because when was that?”

“A few months ago.”

“They wanted someone here in place to watch him . . . or us.”

What if there were more like her?

What if someone closer to her was also watching her?

What if they all had someone watching?

How long had her mother known Steve again?

How long had Adam’s family had that housekeeper?

What if Kristen’s hypnotist was somehow . . . ?

“The other day,” Ryan said. “Wow. When we were looking at photos. She knew our dog’s name but I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever told her we’d even had a dog.”

“I’m so sorry, Ryan.”

“She called him Luke the other day, too. He didn’t seem to notice, but—it seemed weird.” Ryan got up and took off down the hall. “She keeps some stuff here.”

Scarlett followed him, but by the time she got down to the door of his bedroom, he was already coming back out.

“She’s gone.” He ran his hands through his hair and let out a guttur al moan. “All her stuff is gone.”

The phone on the coffee table buzzed.

“Is that yours?” she asked when he didn’t move for it.

“Lucas’s. He left it in my car.”