The Bargaining (11 page)

When the sound of my breathing ceases, a different sound takes its place—a steady squeak singsonging its way across the forest floor and climbing into my ears. A flicker of light catches my eye, and I venture more slowly this time toward the movement, which I soon see is attached to ropes in a clearing.

The ropes hold a flat plank of wood, dulled gray and dangling from a nearby tree branch on the outskirts of a brief expanse of open space. The nighttime breeze carries it back and forth, eking out a new creak with each rhythmic movement.

In the makeshift swing sits Rae, cradling a bottle of vodka in her lap.

“You look cold.
I'm
not cold,” she says, uncapping the ­bottle.

“That's because you don't feel,” I say, standing uneasily beside her. The moon is nearly full, and this is the first time I've seen it this clearly since we arrived in Point Finney.

She offers me the bottle, and I see myself refusing but feel my fingers grasp the neck before I sit on the hard ground. I'm freezing and want to feel something burn me. The bottle should be cold but it's warm from her grip.

“I don't know how to make you leave me alone,” I say after mentally rejecting a hundred other confessions first.

“Then you don't really want me to,” she says and takes the bottle back.

“I know that's what you always thought,” I say. Moonlight reflects off her diamond labret. “But I'm done letting you make my decisions for me.”

“Oh, I know. I read all about it. Face it, Penny. I'm with you for the long haul. Don't worry, though. I'm entertaining company.”

“So at the rest stop? Was that your idea of entertainment? It wasn't funny. I thought you were someone who needed help.”

“Well, aren't you the patron saint of the Pacific Northwest? And who says that was me, anyway?” Rae takes another drink, ponders the taste for a second before swallowing without a flinch. “And if we're talking about people who need help . . .”

“I'm not here to do any of this with you,” I say, nodding to the bottle and alluding to everything else. “I'm just here to tell you this is the last time we're going to talk.”

I start to get up, but she beats me to it.

“That's quite the declaration. So much to live up to.” Rae eases the bottle into my hands. “Sounds like your evil stepmom is starting to get through when your real parents couldn't be bothered. I'm sure that'll last.”

I open my mouth to tell her all the ways she's wrong, but all that comes out is a tiny puff of white air.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I'm only here when you come looking for me?” Rae asks.

She looks up at the moon I was just looking at, which makes me feel oddly jealous, like that's not her moon to enjoy, and turns in the opposite direction of the house. Ducking under the branch of a nearby tree, she looks it over, offers it a tiny smile and a pat on its bark.

“I like these woods,” she says softly. “It's like they want you here, you know?”

Then she disappears into the deep part of the woods, and as I search for her vanishing form, I blink back the suspicion that she's still watching me from the darkest shadow she can find. The longer I stare into the murky depths, the harder it becomes to convince myself I'm not seeing those
same white eyes that I saw at the rest stop gazing back at me.

I uncap the bottle she gave me (which looks awfully similar to the one I remember stealing from the kitchen and burying in the Rubbermaid before leaving Phoenix) and pull in another swallow. I feel the drink land in my stomach, on top of the anger I try and fail to tamp down. I consider what might happen if I drink the whole bottle. I picture Melissa Corey's face smooth from confused pain to vague recognition when she looks at me. I picture the letters I wrote to Rae, all the horrible things she was never meant to read but should have already known. I picture Rae in the desert, walking back to me where I slept, telling me to just leave her alone and she'll do the same. It's okay. Sometimes friendships simply don't last. Sometimes you just part ways amicably. I picture my parents parting ways amicably.

I picture it all melting in a bubbling puddle, evaporating under the wind of these woods, growing over with moss.

I lie down in the needles beside the swing and listen to its ropes creak under the breeze, then I tilt the bottle back and swallow until things look foggy and I've forgotten what cold feels like on my skin.

I close my eyes for a moment. For maybe more than a moment.

And when I open them, I see two small feet pass over me.

They pass over me again, then again, in time with the creak of the swing. They're bare but muddy, limp on the ends of dangling legs clothed in frayed denim.

They pass over me again. A torn white T-shirt drapes over a set of sharp shoulder blades. A dark baseball cap sits beside a boy on the swing.

I ease onto my elbows, and his dangling feet narrowly miss my face. But before I have a chance to react, he leaps off the swing and sets off running, hat in hand, his bare feet springing against the blanket of pine needles that grows thicker the farther he runs. In an instant, he's disappeared into the woods, the same way Rae traveled.

“Hey,” I mumble, but my mouth is coated and dry and I can't focus my vision. I hear distant laughter, a kid giggling, and know I must sound as wrecked as I feel.

I struggle to steady myself on my feet, my bones aching from the dampness now plastering my thin fleece to me. I consider brushing the needles from my legs, but my body feels like it somehow filled itself with slowly drying cement, and I'm struggling to keep upright.

Which is probably what I get for falling asleep on the ground in the middle of the woods after—I examine the ­bottle by my feet—too much vodka.

“She did it to me again.” I make sure to say it aloud. I need constant reminding of how easy it is for me to fall back under Rae's spell. And how easy it is for me to revisit those same old habits while I figure out how to fill the spaces she scooped out of me.

The walk from the woods back to the house feels like it takes a year. The trees crowd me, their branches seeming to lower into my path at every turn, their needles lifting and pulling the fabric of my clothes. I slip through the kitchen door and drop the bottle of vodka in one of the boxes before dragging myself upstairs to a bed I know won't feel like my own for the duration of the summer.

8

M
AGGIE'S
G
ROCERY IS THE SIZE
of a large post office. And, in fact, it does mail letters and packages, so long as you have cash to pay for it, or so the handwritten sign in the corner by the dairy refrigerator says. There's a lady behind the foggy Plexiglas eyeing me over the top of her paperback, and I do my best to look as suspicious as possible just to piss her off.

What am I going to steal? A stick of butter?

My head is throbbing and my stomach is rolling and my bones and joints and everything else padding them pulse under my skin like pipes straining under water. I never drank before Rae, and I've never seen anyone do it like she did it—like she was trying to get back at someone. My drinking
always felt like more of a response to a question no one actually asked.

I never threw a single punch before I met Rae, either, in case we're counting all the things I never used to do.

April meets me at the back of the store bearing a new treasure.

“They have wooden baskets,” she says, holding one up just in case I don't understand what a basket is. “Not to buy. I mean, this is what you shop with. No big metal carts. How cute is that?”

More charm.

“Don't forget coffee filters,” I say. April's face falls a ­little at the reference to the whole Ripp's interaction, and I remember the silent promise I made to try a little harder. After she came home from meeting the Realtor and the engineer who never showed up, she looked more disheartened than I've seen her look since we rolled into this crazy little town that only sells eggs in one store. And I was too caught up in the strangeness of my own afternoon to be of much support, something I'm still not quite sure how to offer her.

But I know I should try, so I follow up with, “Maybe you should ask if you could buy one of those baskets. You could put bath towels in them or something. I don't know. Aren't
people who run bed-and-breakfasts always putting bath ­towels in baskets?”

Her face brightens a little under the flickering neon light above the dairy case. “Brilliant! Penny, you act like you're not into design, but you might just have a knack for it, you know. It's that photographer's eye of yours.”

I fail to suppress the shudder that skitters over my shoulders at the thought of my phone's camera and what it showed me the other day.

April's eagle eye catches it and gives me a questioning look. I tilt my head toward the dairy case.

“Freezing over here,” I say, and she nods in a different direction.

“I'll get the perishables last. Let's head for the bread now. Here.” She hands me my very own basket for shopping.

Four full wooden baskets and one and a half hours later, we've circled Maggie's Grocery five times, weaving in and out of every aisle with more focus than a police K9. April had to be sure we didn't leave a single jar of locally made blackberry preserves unturned.

At the register (a single register, mind you, with one very slow cashier named Roberta), we get more than a few stares, our load clearly bordering on maximum capacity, like it's a crime to buy too many bottles of local honey
adorned with five thousand ribbons and a cartoon bee.

When it's finally our turn to ring up, Roberta is mostly as pleasant as she's been to all the people before us, though not without a touch of suspicion, a characteristic I'm beginning to equate with this entire town.

“Doing a little stocking up?” she asks April without looking up from her scanner.

“Something like that,” April says, her own wariness after the Ripp's ordeal keeping her tone polite but more distant than I know she'd prefer it to be. “We're fixing up one of the old homes, and we're not exactly close to any stores.”

“Baskets,” I mutter to April, and she stops digging for the wallet in her purse and looks up.

“Oh, right! Yes! I was wondering, I know it's a stupid question, but do you, well, see, we're thinking of staging this house as a bed-and-breakfast for people looking for a remote getaway, and this house could use as much help as we can get. And your little baskets are so . . .”

“Charming,” I finish for her, and she nods.

If she was hoping Roberta would complete her thought for her, April might be waiting a little longer. Because all she can do is stare at April. She's stopped scanning, and a quarter of our food waits patiently on the conveyer belt, which is more than I can say for the line backing up behind us.

“Anyway, I was wondering if we could purchase a few of these—”

“Where'd you say you folks were staying?” Roberta asks. I'm beginning to get that Groundhog Day feeling. My head starts pounding a little bit harder.

April's apparently getting it too, because I can practically feel her tense up next to me. The air gets that static feeling, like an open flame could spark and set the whole place on fire.

“Actually, I don't believe I did say,” says April, hackles up.

I shove our food a little farther up the conveyer belt because the guy in line behind me is starting to breathe a little too heavily for my comfort. I inch closer to April.

Roberta begins slowly scanning again, her eyes unmoving from April's. Maybe it's that silent confrontation that sets April down the same path I thought she regretted from yesterday.

Not that I'm one to criticize the wrong path.

“We're fixing up the Carver House. The one in the Kitsap Woodlands. I'm guessing you've heard of it. Seems like everyone around here has.”

Roberta slams our loaf of bread onto the scanner and lets it lie there. She looks furious with it, like it somehow betrayed her. But instead of looking at April like I expect her
to—actually, I expect her to throw the bread at April—she turns an apologetic gaze to the breathing man behind me.

Then she does turn her ire to April after a long moment. “Maybe you should just go on,” she says.

April and I both stand there, our groceries in limbo, the air popping with static electricity all around our heads.

“I'll go,” says April so quietly I almost can't hear her, and I'm a foot away, “as soon as we have our groceries. Now, if you'll kindly finish and tell me how much I owe you.”

“I said you should—”

“Just let her buy her damn groceries, Roberta,” the guy behind me says, and now I swear the entire line is holding their breath.

I turn to look at the guy I tried to get away from a second ago. He's tall and big, and for a split second, I think I'm looking right at my dad. Even the man's tan jacket resurrects an old autumn memory I never realized I'd stored away. I'm suddenly at the Woodland Park Zoo, and my mom is at the counter buying us all crappy zoo tacos, and my dad and I are sitting at a sticky table playing that game where you try to slap the person's hands before they pull them away. And I'm winning, as always. My dad never once let me lose to him.

But this guy's jacket has a Riley's Autoparts patch sewn
onto the front, and he looks like the world has swallowed him up, spit him back out, and left him to live a mangled existence right here in Maggie's Grocery.

“George, I don't have to—”

“Just give 'em their food and let 'em get the hell out,” he says, the least comforting defense of two people who have done nothing wrong that I've ever heard.

“Look, I don't know what your problem is, but—” I start to say, but April puts her hand across my chest like she's trying to brace me against a fast stop. It's clear nobody in this store is going to finish a sentence today.