She takes possession of the center of the kitchen, swinging around with an assessing eye. “I’m afraid I’ve come to ask you to leave.”
I was never going to be able to stay. I have no claim on the house or anything in it, now that my lover of barely nine months has kicked the bucket. I mean, obviously.
The trouble is, I have absolutely nowhere else to go and barely $200 to my name, more if I pawn some of the jewelry I’ve been carting around since my failed engagement back in Boston. Not even that will get me enough for a plane ticket home. Honestly, even if I fly back to the East Coast, I have nowhere to go there, either.
But this isn’t the first time I’ve faced homelessness. I was shuffled around the foster-care system from the age of two, and aged out dramatically just a few months before high school graduation, whereupon my foster mother kicked me out because she thought her husband was looking at me too much. I’d landed a scholarship to University of Pennsylvania and tried desperately to convince her to let me stay, but she was just done. One of my teachers found me a place to live until I could get to the dorms in the fall, or I’d have been on the street then.
I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Right, of course. I’ll be out this afternoon.”
She raises her chin. A hard glint lights her eye. “I’m sorry, no. You need to go now.”
“Now?”
One eyebrow lifts. “My daughter Maya has inherited the house, and she’s coming home from rehab tomorrow. I need to get things ready for her.”
“Will she want to come here? I mean, her dad just died. Maybe that’s a bit harsh for a newly recovering addict?”
“You’re so well informed,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “But it’s none of your business.”
“Sorry. I was trying to be helpful.”
“She has nowhere else to go.”
We have that much in common. “Can I at least get a shower?”
For a moment I think she will refuse, but Elvis has always liked me, and he heaves a big sigh and leans on my leg right that second. Whenever Meadow comes by, which is way more often than I want to see her, Elvis greets me like his long-lost sister, a behavior I admit I’ve encouraged. She measures him, then says, “Of course. I’m just going to start stripping beds and get some laundry going.”
As if I’m a guest at a B&B and the new guests are coming. I pick up my coffee cup, drain it, and rinse it out. Last coffee in this house. It feels like my ribs are breaking. “Okay.”
I head upstairs, bare feet on the cool tiles, feeling something dense start sucking me in, a black hole in the middle of my diaphragm. I look at each step, at the colorful Spanish tiles on the risers, my hand on the carved banister that has known the hands of hundreds of people over the years. My heart sends me a memory of Augustus walking backward, one hand in mine, another on the railing. Tears start gushing out. Again.
All I’ve done for two solid days is cry.
The primary bedroom sits by itself to the right of the stairs, a big room with french doors that open onto a balcony overlooking the ocean. It’s a dull day, but the water is still hypnotically beautiful, moving endlessly. I walk outside, smelling jasmine and sea air, and stand there a long time, knowing I’ll always remember it. Remember this view, this house, the man, the whole strange season.
Before she can come up and catch me, I fling open my suitcase and take all the dirty clothes from the hamper, his T-shirts and jeans and underwear, and stuff them into one side. Out of the drawers I take my far more meager things and layer them on top of his. Only then do I go into the bathroom, with its alcoves and tiles, and turn on the shower for the last time. I strip off his boxers and my tank and look at my body in the mirror, thinking of him looking at it, his big hands on my breasts, my ass.
It wasn’t supposed to be Augustus. How did I get so caught up in him?
Meadow knocks on the bathroom door. “You all right in there, Norah?”
Some wild meanness rises in me and I yank open the door, fully naked. “I’m fine.”
For a long moment she stares at me and I stare back, still wishing I could be her friend, be the one who brought her real story to the world, and that will never, ever happen. She is so disdainful of me now.
Maybe with good reason. I don’t know.
We are almost exactly the same height—Augustus was tall and he liked long-legged women—and we stare at each other in a roaring, pulsing silence. In the bright light, the ravages of time show on her skin—in the little lines around her mouth and the softness of her neck. I square my shoulders and she can’t help but look at my breasts, which are still high and proud, and something breaks hard on her face. Tears are in her eyes when she looks up again.