Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
The driveway danced with fireflies by the time I got home. I’d driven back in silence, my thoughts racing while the world around me remained quiet. So much at once.
Numb, I shifted into park and stared at the vines crowding the edge of the drive. Down to the freshly pulled landscaping, in desperate need of mulch and a new set of marigolds. It ran all the way to the shed. The door was cocked at an angle, the lock in the loop but not shut.
I stepped out of the car. My shoes hissed on cracked pavement and gravel. There was time to fix that now, too. Another thing on my never-ending list.
The list would never be finished. I could feel it. Like the house loomed over me.
Home, home, home, it whispered.
I patted my hands on both cheeks. Still warm; I’d tried to wait until the puffiness settled—Emma would demand for me to explain why I was crying, and the thought of explaining why I’d met with Irene again wasn’t something I was ready to unravel.
I’d been so close to sticking my head out the window while I drove down the road to see if the cold air would calm the redness. Now, I’d just have to deal with it.
I took in the house as I walked up the cobble path. The streaked maroon and blue skies. The half-lit windows, curtains open. Emma’s silhouette in the living room. The main door hung ajar behind the screen door. Laughter echoed from inside. Maybe that voice was right.
Home.
The music stopped when I opened the front door. Someone cursed. Then a groan.
“I don’t get it,” Sayer said from the kitchen. I rounded the corner to find him unraveling a sour strip. He waved it around like a lasso. “She doesn’t sound any better than she did, like, four years ago? What’s the obsession?”
Emma stood in the middle of the living room, arms wide. “How can you say that? Have you no taste?” She gestured wildly to the TV. “Everyone loves Marion Blanchet. How do you not?”
Sayer gave her an exasperated look. He swung the sour strip toward the pantry and asked, “Why do you think?” Then he spotted me. He gave me a wicked grin. “Oh, Landry! You’re back!”
Emma whirled. “Tell him Marion Blanchet is not a tone-deaf walrus.”
“I mean—” but my words died.
Hadrian leaned out of the pantry, two bags in his fists. One, an assorted bag of Reese’s, the second a bag of cheese puffs. He wore his same button-down shirt and trousers and shoes as always.
His skin looked a bit more sunned, though, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes—completely gray.
They could see him. They spoke to him. Breathed the same air, existed on the same plane as he did.
For a split second, I saw it: a possibility.
An alternate reality where this was normal.
Maybe Hadrian came by after work to eat dinner with everyone.
Emma and Sayer would bicker, just like they were now.
We would be up through the late hours, Emma would trickle up to bed early, and Sayer would fall asleep on the couch.
Hadrian and I would be on the front porch, he would say he had to leave because of work in the morning, I would complain about sanding floors, and he would say it would be okay.
That he’d see me tomorrow and he would help, because that’s just the kind of person he was.
And then I would watch him leave. He wouldn’t vanish into the humid air or fold himself into darkness. He would just walk away, and he would come back tomorrow.
Already, my phone was in my hand. While all eyes were turned, that moment between movements when someone almost locked eyes, I started to take a picture.
The three of them, together, in one space, proof that Hadrian had been here with us—with me.
He eyed the phone before he set the bags down.
I manage to catch a look at the pictures before they disappeared into their folder.
Only Sayer and Emma stood in frame. Hadrian didn’t, like he didn’t exist.
I swallowed a sudden knot of tears. I stuffed my phone away.
“Landry,” Hadrian greeted, then turned his head. At just the right angle, his eyes flitted yellow like a cat’s. Sayer wagged his eyebrows while Emma continued on her stint, oblivious.
“—haven’t listened to her sophomore album,” she insisted. “You don’t know the story she’s painting until you’ve at least listened to that one.”
“I didn’t realize there’d be a party when I got back,” I said, suddenly very, very aware of the undereye bags I’d accrued.
“I stopped by,” Hadrian said. He rounded the couch, brushed his hands on his pants. “You know. Figured I’d say hi.” His Lowcountry accent seemed thicker than before. Like I could drown in it. So human.
“That’s okay.” I pulled my purse off and sat it on the back of the couch.
“We’ve enjoyed his company,” Sayer said. He handed Emma the bag of cheese puffs. Immediately, she stopped talking and ripped it open. Another wolfish grin. “You didn’t tell us he lived nearby.”
“She didn’t tell us about him, period,” Emma muttered. She held up three cheese puffs. “Not that I’m mad. I’m not. Just hurt.” She popped the cheese puffs into her mouth by the handful. “But free food does help.”
I glanced at Hadrian. His eyes glittered.
“Are you okay?” he whispered. He shifted to stand slightly between Sayer, Emma, and I.
“Of course.” I noticed the balloons Sayer had gifted me still floating in the corner of the breakfast nook. “Just a long day.”
He searched my mouth, my eyes, then back again. “Mm. Liar.”
I nudged him. “Rude.”
“I need a poll,” Sayer announced. He took the bag of cheese puffs from Emma when she started to wander toward the TV.
“I wasn’t finished with those,” she shot back.
“All eyes for thirty seconds.” He set the bag on the counter. “Dinner, a movie, SNL reruns, or we attempt a fire in the firepit outside.”
Hadrian did a decent job at looking ambiguous when Sayer made a scan of the room—but I thought of his comment once about hating the TV, so I blurted, “I vote firepit. We can use those metal tongs Emma found.”
Emma snapped her fingers in approval. “Yes, okay, I’ve got this. Marshmallows. Graham crackers. Chocolate.” She rounded the island for the pantry, ready to gather supplies. She passed off bags to Sayer before emerging with three sets of long toasting forks.
“Sorry, Hadrian.” She gave me a quick glance, devious. “You’ll have to share with Lan.”
She slipped into the hall, Sayer hot after her. The two of us brought up the rear. The screen door that led out from the sunroom had just managed to slam shut when he leaned forward, his mouth at the soft part of my neck, and whispered, “We’ve been conspired against, haven’t we?”
I suppressed a smile, but failed. “I fear we have.”
“Do I want to know what S-N-L means? Or movie?”
He held the door for me. I made a point to walk close, close enough to brush against his shirt, and said in my best spooky voice, “It involves that horrid little box with the moving pictures.”
A look of torture split his face. “Dear God, please, no.”
I laughed, low, as we trekked down the back steps, over the steppingstones, and down to the back patio.
Sayer and Emma already had the accoutrements spread out, as if it were a feast. Sayer attempted to dig a lighter out of his pants, while Emma whipped a box of matches out of hers.
Then it was a race to see who could light the starter the fastest.
Hadrian pulled a chair out for me. Instead, I motioned for him to sit instead.
His mouth flattened. “Ladies sit first.”
I stood on my toes. “Thank you, but I’d rather sit with you than alone. You sit first.”
After a seconds-long stalemate, he narrowed his eyes and sat down. I held back a smile when he spread his knees, back still straight, in a partial man-spread. It wasn’t as casual as men’s today posture tended to be, but it was there.
I couldn’t lie. Something about him, being here with Emma and Sayer, made me brave.
I sat down on the footrest in front of his chair, right between his knees. He shot me a look. I settled my hand on his knee and scooted closer.
“It’s okay. Calm down.” A grin played on my lips.
He jerked his chin to Sayer and Emma, a silent question. And them? he seemed to say, not so much out of fear of disapproval, but his eyes questioned comfortability. From me.
Emma tried to bat the lighter out of Sayer’s hand. He snatched her match and broke it in two.
“That’s rude,” she spat.
“Not everything has to be a competition,” he shot back.
Her eyes went beady. She grabbed the lighter, threw the matches toward me, and shoved her shoulder into his chest. They skittered across the rocks surrounding the pit and stopped a few inches from my feet.
“Let me show you how a real survivalist starts a fire, Sayer,” she said.
Sayer didn’t blink when he turned to me. “Do you see the abuse I put up with?”
“Now you feel my pain,” I said.
I leaned back, my side against Hadrian’s leg.
Little by little, the tension in his body loosened.
While Sayer and Emma continued to bicker, he shifted from my peripheral.
Reached out like he might approach a skittish animal—and let his arm drape across my back.
His fingers made idle circles over my shirt.
The fire made a wooft sound. The starter blazed to life, which only sent Emma’s ego higher than it already was.
“See.” She stood and smacked the lighter against Sayer’s chest. “I told you.”
He took his glasses off and pointed them at her. “No couth. Whatsoever.”
Emma only arched her eyebrows and ventured to the table.
It wasn’t until the marshmallows were roasting over the fire, the smell of smoke had seeped into my hair, dried my eyes, and heated my toes, that I realized I could do this: life, with the three of them.
My marshmallow caught fire when I drifted in thought. I gasped, wrenched it out of the flames, and huffed on it so hard I saw stars.
“No! That was a good one,” I whined. I’d gotten just enough crisp to it that it would’ve melted the chocolate.
“Here.” Hadrian dug another marshmallow out of the bag that Sayer had stolen. “I’ll eat that one.”
Emma had given me a secret, wicked grin. Sayer saw. Glanced at me. Wiggled his eyebrows.
I’d rolled my eyes, but inside, my chest warmed.
And I very well thought, if he’d let me, I might have floated away right then out of happiness.