Chapter 6 #2
"Of course," Mom says, squeezing my hand. "We are so proud of you, darling. And so happy you're here."
"You might need to hire staff pretty quickly," Dad says. "We've been telling people and half the town wants to switch to you. Some of Dr. Foster's patients have already said they'll move over."
"I don't want to poach his patients. He's been here my whole life."
"He's struggling to handle the workload and he'd be the first to tell you. We'll drop in tomorrow when we do the realtor. He'll be glad you’re here, I promise."
We sit and talk for a while about neighbours and townspeople, the small things, and I wait for one of them to mention Austin. They don't. Not once. I'm not sure whether I'm relieved or more on edge for the absence of it.
An hour later, Dad helps me unload boxes into the barn. We're sitting on one catching our breath when Mum appears with a jug of homemade lemonade, and when I take the first sip it knocks me sideways so fast I don't have time to prepare for it.
It tastes like being seventeen. Like summer evenings on the porch with Austin's arm around my shoulders and nowhere we needed to be and nothing we needed to do and the whole summer stretching out in front of us like it was never going to end.
"Savannah." Dad nudges me. "You were away there."
"Sorry. The lemonade." I look down at the glass. "It gave me some good memories."
He's quiet for a second. Then, carefully goes on. "Do you think about those days?"
"You mean Austin." It's not really a question.
He nods.
"Yeah. All the time. I try to block it out but I loved him so much. What he did was the last straw though, Dad. I deserve someone who looks at me the way you look at Mum."
"He always did look at you like that, Sav."
I know that. That's the part I've never been able to make sense of.
"I know. I just don't understand how it went so wrong." I set the lemonade down. "Anyway. It was over ten years ago and I'm over it."
Dad gives me the look he's had since I was about eight years old, the one that means he knows exactly what I'm doing and he's going to let me do it anyway. "Really?"
"Really."
"What are you going to do when you see him?"
"Smile and say hello. Like I will with everyone I meet. He doesn't get any special treatment."
"If you say so."
"Dad."
He holds both hands up and says nothing else and we finish the lemonade in peace, but that if you say so sits in the back of my head for the rest of the afternoon, through dinner and into the night. Quiet and annoying, like a song I can't shake.
The next morning we're up early. The realtor is warm and congratulatory. They hand me a set of keys that feel heavier than keys should feel, with the weight of a decision made real.
Dr. Foster's practice is next. Nothing has changed inside it. Martha is still at the front desk and she smiles at me like I never left. She goes pink when I tell her I've missed seeing her face. Dr. Foster himself comes out when his patient leaves and pulls me into a hug before I can say a word.
"So," he says, sitting back behind his desk. "I hear you're my competition."
"I'm here to take the overspill. There's enough of this town for both of us."
"More than enough." He looks tired in the way people look when they've been carrying too much for too long.
"To be honest with you, Savannah, I've been hoping someone would come for years.
I'm getting old. My knees are shot and this town has tripled since I started here.
" He leans forward. "I'm delighted you're opening. Truly."
I like him even more for saying it straight.
We chat for a while and then Dad and I leave and cross the road to Ruby's Diner and my stomach lifts a little because Ruby's is the one thing in this town that has never in my memory been anything other than exactly what it is.
Ruby herself is at the door before we're through it. "Oh my god. Savannah." She comes at me with her arms out and hugs me the way small women who are mostly personality hug, which is completely and without reservation. "Welcome home, sweetheart."
"I couldn't not come in on my first day back. I've been thinking about your pecan pie for about six months."
She beams and shows us to a table by the window. "Now what are we having?"
"Coffee and apple pie," Dad says, without looking at the menu.
"Strawberry milkshake and the pecan pie."
Ruby points at me. "I could have guessed that. It was always your favourite when you came in with Austin." She smiles the smile of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and walks away before I can respond.
Dad laughs.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say a word."
"You laughed."
"I smiled. There's a difference." He folds his hands on the table. "Aren't you going to ask about him?"
"No." I straighten my napkin. "I'll run into him at some point. There's no need to go looking for information."
"He asks about you, you know."
I look up. "What? When do you talk to him?"
"I take the car to the garage. He's there sometimes. He used to come over for dinner for a while, years ago, but that stopped."
Something moves through my chest that I don't examine. "He probably found someone else to occupy his time."
"Savannah."
"I'm just saying."
Ruby arrives back with our order and saves me from having to say anything else. My milkshake tastes exactly like my memories. Cold, sweet and specific to this place. I wrap both hands around the glass and I don't think about Austin.
I'm thinking about Austin.
Ruby hovers.
This is what Ruby does, she orbits tables she's interested in, and I've known her long enough to know she has something she's working up to. I let her get there in her own time.
"So," she says, leaning her hip against the booth. "You'll be seeing a lot of those boys now you're back."
She nods toward the window. As if on cue, I hear it before I see it, the low rumble of engines, and I look up to see four bikes are rolling slowly down the main street. My heart jumps before I tell it not to.
"Is one of them? " I start, and then I stop, because I don't want to finish that sentence.
"Oh, look at those handsome men," Ruby says, watching them go. "They're here most days. Take it in turns to pick up lunch and bring it back. Regular as clockwork."
"Do they ever cause trouble?" I ask, because I need to say something that isn't what I was about to say.
She turns back to me with a look that could strip paint.
"Those boys? Not a chance. They'd help an old lady across the street and half of them have.
They might look mean on their bikes but they are good to this town, Savannah, and this town knows it.
We're protected here and that means something.
" She holds my eye for a second to make sure I've heard her.
"Austin has a lot to do with that, by the way. He's not just a mechanic anymore."
She walks away before I can ask what she means by that.
Dad puts his hand over mine on the table. "They're not bad people, Sav. I know it's complicated but they look after us. When things have gone wrong in this town, we know who to call. They might not do everything by the book but they're ours."
Ruby comes back to refill Dad's coffee and she gives me a look that means she's not done. "His boy is the image of him," she says, setting the pot down. "Nine years old now. EJ. Comes in here with his dad sometimes on a Saturday. Sits up at the counter and has a strawberry milkshake, same as you."
I stare at my glass.
"He's a good father," Ruby says, and her voice is quieter now, not gossipy, genuinely meaning it. "That boy doesn't want for anything. Not attention, not love. You can see it."
I don't know what to do with that. I take a sip of my milkshake and I say nothing and Ruby watches me with the expression of a woman who has spent forty years serving this town and has seen every variety of human feeling come through her diner.
"You're not as over him as you think you are, sweetheart," she says. Not unkindly. Just a fact.
I don't answer. I don't need to. We both know she's right and saying so out loud isn't going to help either of us.
She tops up my milkshake without being asked and moves on down the counter.
I eat some of my pecan pie and I don't say anything, the bikes are gone from the window and the street is just a street again. But everything Ruby said is sitting in my chest and won't move.
He's not just a mechanic anymore. His boy has a strawberry milkshake on Saturdays. Nine years old and the image of his father.
I didn't ask about any of this. I was not going to ask about any of this. That was the plan and I was doing fine until this milkshake and this diner and this town that remembers everything whether you ask it to or not.
"Things have really changed around here," I say finally.
Dad smiles over his coffee. "Most things. Not everything."
I know he's not talking about the town.
AUSTIN
I can't explain it.
I'm in the middle of replacing the brake lines on a Softail that came in yesterday. My hands know what they're doing well enough that my head has gone somewhere else, which is normally fine. Normally my head goes somewhere useful when my hands are occupied, but today it just keeps stopping.
Like something's different about the air and I can't work out what.
I look up at the bay doors. Same yard. Same sky. Brick's truck is parked at the same angle it's always at. Seb is arguing with someone on the phone outside the side door.
Everything is exactly the same as yesterday.
"You're doing that thing," Brick says from somewhere behind me.
"What thing."
"The thing where you stare at nothing and stop working."
I look back at the brake lines. "I'm thinking."
"About?"
"The job."
Brick says nothing to this, which means he doesn't believe me. He walks past and puts a cup of coffee on the edge of the workbench but keeps walking, saying nothing. That's Brick, that's exactly Brick, and normally I find it reassuring.
Today it makes me feel like I'm missing something.
I think about going to Ruby's for lunch. I don't know why Ruby's specifically. I usually just eat at the clubhouse, but the thought comes and sits there with a particular weight to it. Ruby's. Lunch.
I pick up the coffee instead and drink it at the bench and think about the brake lines.
After the job's done I stand in the yard and look at the street for a while, which isn’t something I normally do. The street is the street. Nothing's happening on it. Seb comes out the side door still on the phone, catches my expression, and raises his eyebrows at me.
I shake my head. I don't know what I'd tell him.
That night after I've put EJ to bed I sit outside his door for a while in the corridor and listen to him breathe. I do that sometimes when things feel off-kilter and I can't name why. The sound of him asleep, steady and even, is the most reliable thing I know. It has been for nine years.
I lean my head back against the wall while I sit with the feeling I can't name before I eventually go to bed and I don't think about it anymore.
I wake up at three in the morning and I'm thinking about Savannah.
I haven't woken up thinking about Savannah in a long time. Long enough that it surprises me, the sharpness of it, like something has been switched back on without asking my permission.
I lie in the dark, breathing through it, until my mind caves and I finally fall asleep.
In the morning I take EJ to school and drive back through town but I don't know what I'm looking for. I just look.