Chapter 12
Fletcher
I opened my eyes at six in the morning and my first thought was — August.
Not the ceiling. Not the light coming in under the curtains. Not the sound of the ocean or Margaux breathing next to me.
August.
How was she? Was she okay? I had held her on that rug last night with her knees gone and her eyes full of something I had not been able to name, and she had looked at me like she was very far away from me even though she was right there, and I had not been able to stop thinking about it for the entire night.
Sleep had come around three. When it came, I dreamt I was at the Millhaven Farmer’s Market. August’s booth was there — but August wasn’t. I walked the whole market looking for her. Every booth, every aisle, every turn. I kept walking. I kept looking. She wasn’t anywhere.
I woke up from that dream feeling worse than I had before I slept.
Margaux was still sleeping, breathing slow and even, her hair spread across the pillow. I got up carefully. I got dressed. I went downstairs.
The house was quiet. Six in the morning quiet, the kind that meant everyone was still somewhere between asleep and awake. I went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine and stood there listening to it run.
Something was fluttering on the counter.
A piece of paper, held down by the corner of the cookie jar, moving slightly in the draft from the open window above the sink. I walked over and picked it up.
Dear Jennifer and Douglas, I had some urgent work come up at home. Thank you for everything — for always making me feel so welcome. I’m so sorry to miss the goodbye. All my love, August.
I read it twice.
I put it back down on the counter.
She had heard me.
She had been behind that curtain.
She’s a nobody.
I took the stairs two at a time. Maybe she hadn’t left yet. Maybe she was still in her room.
The door to her room was open. I could see it from the top of the landing.
Open, not closed. I went down the hallway and stood in the doorway and looked at the room.
The bed was made. Not just straightened — made properly, the way you made a bed when you were leaving somewhere and didn’t want to leave a mess behind.
Her bags were gone. The windowsill was empty.
The water glass she’d put the dahlia in was still there, sitting dry on the sill.
She was gone.
I knocked on Callie’s door.
Then I knocked again, harder.
Callie opened it. Her hair was everywhere and her eyes were half-closed and Poppy appeared behind her shoulder like a small, sleepy ghost.
“Where is August?” I said.
Callie looked at me. Then she looked at August’s open door down the hall. She woke up faster than I’d seen her wake up in thirty years of being her brother.
“What—”
“Did she say anything to you last night? Did she tell you she was leaving?”
“No. Fletcher, what—”
“Check your door. Her note.”
Callie looked at the floor. There was a folded piece of paper that had been slipped under her door. She picked it up. She unfolded it. She read it. Her face did something complicated.
“Why would she just go?” Callie said. “In the middle of the night? Without saying anything?”
I looked at the note in her hands.
“When I was on the patio last night,” I said. “Was August near the door?”
Callie looked up slowly.
“She was going to come out and say something to Margaux.” Callie’s voice had gone very careful. “She felt bad that Margaux felt unwanted. She was going to—” She stopped. Her eyes changed. “Fletcher. Was Margaux saying something about her that she might have heard?”
“It’s not Margaux,” I said. “It’s me.”
I didn’t say anything else. I turned around and went back down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the front door.
I got in the car.
I put the key in. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands. I stared at the driveway.
I turned the key.
The engine came on.
I was about to press the gas pedal with all the force my feet could muster, when it occurred to me.
What am I doing?
The question arrived before I could stop it. I sat with the engine running and the driveway in front of me and I thought about what came after this. I would drive two hours to Millhaven. I’d knock on her door. She’d open it. And then what?
I’m sorry, August. I’m sorry for what you heard. I said all that because I wanted to protect you. From the world, and from myself.
And then what?
Would I tell her I’d been in love with her for five years? Would I tell her that she was the only person who completed me? Would I also tell her about the dark road after midnight I took almost everyday and about Paul Greer’s son growing up without a dad because of me?
If I pulled her toward me, all of it would come with her. Everything I was. Everything I’d done. Every dark thing I had been carrying alone because it was mine to carry and not hers.
She did not deserve a man who got someone killed.
I turned the engine off.
I sat in the quiet car for another minute. Then I got out and went back inside.
Callie was in the kitchen.
She had changed into a tank top and shorts and she was standing with her arms crossed and she looked at me when I came through the door with a look that asked a question she already knew the answer to.
I said nothing.
“You’re not going after her,” she said.
“It’s better this way.”
“Fletcher—”
“It’s better this way, Callie.”
She shook her head. Slow and deliberate. “You’re impossible,” she said. “You know that? You are a coward. You are an actual, complete coward.”
“Callie.”
“Don’t Callie me. She packed her bags in the middle of the night and walked out of this house alone and you just turned your car off and came back inside.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She pressed her mouth together. “Do you have any idea—”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Callie turned to look.
Margaux came into the kitchen. Her hair was down and her eyes were soft with sleep and she looked at me like a puppy.
“Baby, what happened? Is everything okay?”
Callie looked at her.
Then she looked at me.
She picked her car keys up off the counter. She walked past Margaux, and past me.
She turned around as she was just about to step out, as if she had forgotten something.
“You know what?” She said, her eyes moving between Margaux and me.
“You both deserve each other.”
Then she turned around and left.
I stood in the kitchen.
Margaux put her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong with her?”
I looked at the counter. At the note still sitting under the corner of the cookie jar.
“Margaux, we need to talk.”
***