Chapter 25 #2
I didn't know how to reply so I pulled her against me and held her, the cold water running past us both, the sun hot on our shoulders, and for a long time neither of us said anything at all. There was nothing that needed saying. She had said all of it, even if I was still trying to understand it.
We were still sitting like that when Grace's white RAV4 nosed into the clearing by the pond. The horn gave two cheerful beeps. Grace leaned out the window and waved excitedly.
"Don't mind me!" she hollered. "Don't stop on my account!"
She climbed out, kicked off her shoes, and pulled her shirt over her head as she walked toward the water, casually shedding her clothes.
Grace hit the pond in a flat dive and came up halfway across, swam to where we sat in the shallows, and planted herself beside Scout, dripping and grinning. Grace rested her head on Scout's shoulder like she'd been doing it her whole life. Scout patted her cheek as they grinned at each other.
I marveled at their friendship. Four months ago these two had not even met.
Scout, raised half-wild in the woods on Shakespeare and venison.
Grace, a city kid with her tattoos and her RAV4 and her secrets.
They had no business fitting together, yet here Grace was, cheek on Scout's wet shoulder, and Scout's arm around her without a thought, the two of them easy as sisters.
"How was the bakery?" I asked.
Grace's head came up. Her whole face lit up.
"Okay so. Today was huge." She wiped water from her eyes. "I brought Irma a batch of yakgwa this morning. Just as a gift, you know, thank-you-for-the-job kind of thing. And she tried one and she got this look. And then she ate a second one. And then she goes, 'Grace. We are going to sell these.'"
"She didn't," Scout said.
"She did! So we spent the whole day on it.
Made like six batches, tried different shapes because the traditional flower mold is gorgeous, but we wanted something unique.
Something from Port Chasten. So we tested some shapes that reflected the area.
And we put samples out on the counter, free, just to see. "
Grace was talking with her hands now, water flying with each excited gesture.
"Dude, people lost their minds. This one old guy ate four samples and asked when he could buy a whole box. A whole box! Of yakgwa! In Port Chasten!"
"That's wonderful, Grace. Really."
"I have a box in the car for you two to try.
Different shapes. I need honest opinions, like not nice opinions.
" She pointed a finger at each of us. "And there's a box for Scout to take to Abner, and a box for you to give to Claire and DJ.
It's all market research." She said the phrase with enormous satisfaction. "Market. Research."
Scout laughed and squeezed her. "We're honored to be your test subjects."
"You should be. This is gonna be a thing, sis.
I can feel it." Grace tipped her head back and let the sun hit her face, water beading on her skin.
"I'm telling you. Ever since I started parking in Thomas's driveway, everything's been going my way.
The job, the bakery, this. It's like the universe finally clocked in. I'm fucking unstoppable, yo."
"Unstoppable," Scout agreed solemnly.
"Damn right." Grace flicked water at me. "Say it, Thomas."
"You're unstoppable," I said.
"Louder."
"You're unstoppable, Grace Kim!"
She whooped and slid off into deeper water, floating on her back with her arms spread wide, the late sunlight gold across the whole pond.
Scout's hand found mine under the water again and held it, and I thought yet again that I had somehow stumbled into a life I didn't deserve and couldn't fully explain, and that I would do almost anything not to lose a single piece of it.
Two days later, my phone woke me in the morning. I blinked in confusion at Grace's name on the screen. Seeing it wasn't right because Grace was at the bakery by four-thirty and never called during a shift.
"Grace?"
"Thomas. Sorry to call so early. Uh, I need help."
Her voice was tight in a way I'd never heard from her, the flat voice of someone holding themselves very still.
"What's wrong?"
"My car's gone."
"Gone how?" I asked.
"Towed. I was stacking baking sheets when I saw them dragging it down the road. I ran after them screaming, but they totally ignored me. It's like... Fuck! They took my car, Thomas." A shaky breath. "Everything's in it. Everything I own."
"I'm coming. Stay at the bakery. I'll be there in twenty."
I drove fast getting to Port Chasten. Grace was waiting on the curb out front, still in her flour-dusted apron, arms wrapped around herself in the warm morning as if she was cold.
"Do you know the tow company that took it?"
She nodded and climbed into the truck and handed me a scrap of paper with an address on it. I pulled out toward the highway, heading for the impound lot in Forks.
Grace didn't talk much on the drive. That was the part that scared me. Grace always talked.