Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
Molly
Nine months ago
“Why Cape Vincent?”
“Why not?” Gigi asked, swinging around to face me.
Sable hair tucked behind her ears, which glittered with pinhead diamond studs, she was folding a pile of yoga tops where she stood at the counter.
I already knew she was thinking of nicking one.
Even new employees did inventory work at the store, and she understood how to get around security.
If I knew Gigi, she would snag one for me too.
It was what she’d call a victimless crime, pressing her left eye into a wink, though I didn’t think our manager would agree.
“Cape Vincent is less than two hours away,” she informed me.
“It’s on the water. I used to go there as a kid.
” For a tick, her gaze dropped away. “It’s in the Thousand Islands. ”
“Never been. Is it nice?”
“The nicest. And that’s not just the nostalgia talking.”
I believed it. When Gigi’s dad was still alive, her family traveled a lot—Spain, Germany, Beijing; all places I’d never seen and probably never would.
I’d only known her since the spring, when she took the job at Wins, but Gigi was a reliable barometer for nice.
If she was excited about a place, it was a place worth seeing.
“I could use a break from my mom anyway,” she went on, pleating an errant sleeve that had escaped the pile.
“Having second thoughts about moving back home?” The decision to stay with her mom for a while had come days after her father’s death, but they were six weeks into the arrangement now, and I’d picked up on the signs that she was getting antsy.
“I don’t know. Not always.” Gigi said it tenderly. “She’s just so … depressed, I guess? I feel bad for her, obviously, and I’m dealing with all of the same shit, but she shuts down, you know? I thought it would help for me to be there, but she hardly even talks to me.”
As I listened, I eyed a couple of teens at the front of the store.
They were rummaging through a rack of sweatshirts looking for their size, yanking them off the hangers in the process.
Another mess for me to clean up. “I’m sure she’ll come around,” I told her.
“Your mom’s still grieving. You both are.
Maybe a couple days away is exactly what you need. ”
Her face lit right up. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Mom’s going to her sister’s in Ithaca for the long weekend, and I already told her I have to work. Let’s see if we can get someone to cover for us.”
“Seriously?” I hadn’t been expecting the plan to develop so quickly.
We’d been bouncing around the idea of a trip for a while, since one night when we met up for drinks and I confessed I hadn’t done much traveling.
Gigi was determined to help me make up for lost time, and had been tossing out suggestions.
I was partial to Niagara Falls, charmed by photos of people in yellow rain slickers and rainbows slicing across the gorge, but I’d agreed to let Gigi take the lead.
She’d opted to give the planning a rest after her dad’s death, which I totally understood.
I wasn’t close with my own dad, who remarried a year after the accident, but I knew the throbbing ache of loss, along with the gut-deep guilt that fell upon the living.
If she was ready now, if she thought some distance from her mom could help her heal, I was all for it.
I had another motive for wanting that shared experience, too.
Our time together at Wins would be ending soon.
Gigi had an interview lined up for a really good job, and I had this feeling she was going to get it.
That didn’t mean we couldn’t still be friends, but the store was what connected us, and if I’m honest, I worried that she’d outgrow me.
Take her beauty and stories and hypnotic smile somewhere else, where she’d find people with far more promising futures than me.
The Thousand Islands. I took in the name from all angles, imagining a glittering sheet of green water studded with jagged blue rocks, something straight out of Scotland or Thailand. Foreign and dreamy and strange.
The place sounded perfect.
“You know what?” I said, my cheeks tight and hot with excitement. “I’m in.”