Chapter 4 #3
Lucia’s response came back almost instantly. Three skull emojis, which apparently meant she was dying laughing. Nina figured it was a compliment, but she was not quite sure.
“Elena is going to see this,” Nina said, looking at her phone. “Lucia will show her, and Elena will have opinions.”
“Oh, Elena has opinions about everything,” Claire said. “Elena once had opinions about the way I folded towels.”
“Well, were you folding them wrong?” Harper asked.
“Apparently, there is a correct way to fold towels, and it has been passed down through Elena’s family for generations. I was disrespecting her entire lineage by folding in thirds instead of halves.”
They laughed until Claire’s ribs ached.
The bar was starting to thin out, with serious karaoke performers leaving and allowing the closing-time stragglers to come in.
Hank was wiping down the soundboard with a cloth. He was humming something that sounded much like a Willie Nelson song.
“We should go,” Claire said, looking at the time. It was past eleven. She had a forty-five-minute drive back to Beaufort, and she still needed to get Nina back to Edisto. Harper had an hour to Charleston on a weeknight.
They were fifty years old, out past eleven on a Friday at a karaoke bar on the outskirts of town. The absurdity made Claire want to laugh and cry.
She wanted to call her twenty-year-old self to report that the future would be confusing and not without surprises.
They walked into the parking lot. The night was cool. Claire’s car sat under a street lamp that buzzed and flickered. They stood beside it but did not get in.
“Month one,” Harper said. “Done.” She did a little check mark with her finger in the air.
“That was the most fun I’ve had in years,” Claire said, and she actually meant it. She meant it with her entire body, which was still buzzing from her time on the stage and maybe from the wine.
It was still buzzing from the feeling of doing something useless and joyful for absolutely no reason except that she had promised on a napkin that she would.
“So who picks next month?” Nina asked.
“Me,” Harper said, “Rotation. Nina picked this one, I pick month two, Claire picks month three.”
“It better be something good,” Claire said.
“Remember, it has to scare us,” Nina reminded.
“Oh, it will. Trust me.”
Harper hugged both of them, lingering a bit longer than she normally would. She got in her car and headed toward Charleston, her taillights disappearing down the dark road.
Claire drove Nina to Edisto. The road was empty and dark, the marshes invisible on either side.
Nina was quiet in the passenger seat, but it was a different kind of quiet than Claire had gotten used to over the last year or so. It was the quiet of somebody who was thinking about what had just happened, not what they had lost.
“Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for driving to Edisto to get me. You didn’t have to do that. I know it’s way out of your way.”
“It’s not out of the way.”
“It’s forty-five minutes out of the way.”
“Nina.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s never out of the way.”
Nina didn’t say anything else because she didn’t need to.
Claire dropped her off at the cottage on Edisto and watched her walk up the porch steps. Lucia’s bedroom light was on, and Nina waved once from the door. Then Claire drove home.
It was almost one in the morning when she pulled into the driveway in Beaufort.
The house was dark.
Greg was asleep.
She walked inside as quietly as she could, hung up her keys, and stood in the kitchen staring at the napkin on the fridge.
Three signatures.
Three rules.
Month one.
Done.
Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Harper.
For the record, I was incredible up there.
Then Nina responded.
You pointed at a stranger and winked. It was so cringey, as my daughter would say.
Harper:
I was commanding the room. It’s called leadership skills.
Claire:
Good night, you two.
Harper:
Good night. Month two is going to be absolutely terrifying. You've been warned.
Nina:
Good night. Thank you. Both of you.
Claire stood in her dark kitchen with the phone in her hand, smiling at the screen full of messages.
She had loved these women for 30 years and realized that Greg had not texted her once tonight. He had never asked where she was, if she was safe, or when she would be home.
He had gone to bed, left the porch light off, and not wondered about her at all.
She put her phone on the counter and looked at the napkin once again.
She turned off the kitchen light and walked to the bedroom where her husband of twenty-six years was sleeping on his side of the bed, facing the wall, breathing deeply.
It was the unbothered breath of a man who had not even noticed his wife had just done the bravest thing she had done in a decade.
Claire stood in the doorway for a long time.
Then she went to the guest room, took out her sketchbook from the shelf where it had been sitting for twenty-seven years, and opened it to a blank page.
She didn’t draw anything. Not yet.
She just held the pencil and looked at the white space.
For the first time in longer than she could even remember, there was a small, terrifying thrill of not knowing what came next.