Welcome to Pine Island, pop. 7,120.
She felt her chest tighten. There was the entrance to LaRiviere Park … the high school … Night Road. By the time Scot pulled up in front of his office, Lexi’s jaw ached.
“Are you okay?” Scot asked, opening her door.
Get out, Lexi. Smile. If there’s one thing you know how to do now, it’s fake a smile.
She managed it. “Thanks, Scot.”
He handed her one hundred dollars. “This is from your aunt. And here’s a bus ticket to Pompano Beach. The bus leaves tomorrow afternoon at 3:30.”
“Tomorrow?”
How was she supposed to keep her distance when she was here, at the scene of her crime and the only place that had ever felt like home?
“Jenny invited you to spend the night and have dinner with us if you’d like,” Scot said.
“No.” She said it too quickly and realized her mistake. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that I haven’t been around people for a long time. Two thousand one hundred forty-four and a half days.” She smiled tiredly and looked around, anxious to be on her own.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Scot said.
Lexi wanted to shake her head, maybe even say hell, no, but she just stood there.
“She lives with her dad in the old Tamarind cabin on Cove Road. I see her every now and then in town with her dad.”
Lexi didn’t react. In prison, she’d learned to hide everything, especially pain. “Does she look happy?”
“She looks healthy.”
Lexi nodded. “That’s good. Well, Scot—”
“We could fight for her, Lexi. Partial custody or at least visitation rights.”
Lexi remembered “visitations” with her mom: the two of them in a room while a social worker looked on. What Lexi remembered about those rare days was how scared she was of the woman who’d borne her. “I’m a twenty-four-year-old ex-con whose last real job was part-time at an ice cream shop. I have no place to live, and I doubt like hell I’ll be hired at any decent job. But I should swoop in and see my daughter, wedge myself into the Farraday family again, and bring up all that pain … so that I can feel happier. Is that it?”
“Lexi—”
“I won’t be like my mother. I won’t make any decision that isn’t in my daughter’s best interest. That’s why I’m going to Florida tomorrow. Grace deserves better than me, and if I’m around she’ll love me anyway. That’s what kids do: they love loser parents, and it breaks their hearts.”
“You’re not a loser. And what’s wrong with her loving you?”
“Don’t.”
Scot pursed his lips. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of keys and extracted one. “This is the key to my office. There’s a sofa bed in the conference room and a bike by the front door. The combination is 1321. We closed up early today, so the place is all yours.”
She took the key and pocketed it. “Thank you, Scot.”
“No problem. I believe in you, Lexi.”
She should have walked away then, said nothing more. That was what she meant to do; instead, she found herself looking up at him, saying, “Did Zach get married?”
“No. He’s still in school, I think. No wife. He lived with his parents for a few years and then moved into that cabin on the cove.”
“Oh.”
“He never wrote?”
“A few times. I sent all the letters back unopened.”
“Oh, Lexi,” Scot said, sighing. “Why?”
She crossed her arms, trying not to remember the feel of those letters in her fingers, the sight of them on the rough gray wool of her blanket. But she’d been so angry then, so wounded. She’d acted out in all kinds of terrible ways. By the time she was past all of that, stronger, it was too late. He never wrote again, and she hadn’t had the courage to write to him.
“I should have taken your advice,” Lexi finally said, unable to look at Scot as she said it.
“Yes.”
“Well. Thanks again. I think I’ll go for a bike ride. It’s a beautiful day.”
Scot went over to the front door of his office, got the bike, and guided it back to her.
She wanted to tell him how much it had meant to her, his being there today. For years she’d prepared to be all alone when she got out of prison, and she saw now how painful that would have been.
“You’re welcome,” he said quietly.
She nodded one last time and took the bike from him and rode away.