“I would love to. Shall I bring something?”
“Nope. Just yourself.” A great crashing boom of thunder slams the air, and we both laugh. “I wouldn’t walk.”
“No. I’ll be there soon.”
I hang up and the music comes back on, filling the room with upbeat love songs. I think of Meadow spinning around with her hair flying, and my father tipping her backward almost to the floor, kissing her neck. They were so beautiful, so passionately in love with each other. Rory and I rolled our eyes, but we both loved it. A swell of tears burns behind my eyes.
Nope. Not crying over an asshole who fractured our family without a single backward glance.
Not doing it.
But I miss him.
Chapter Thirty-One
Norah
I’m filling condiments at the bar, chitchatting with the bartender, a guy with a fabulous beard and the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. In the days before Augustus, he would have been my exact catnip, but nothing about him attracts me at all. I wonder sadly but without a lot of heat if I am broken now, if Augustus and his charming ways have ruined me for anyone else. As I wipe down salt and pepper shakers, I think about that, wondering what it was exactly that made me fall so head over heels in love with him. Why Meadow did. Why all of us do. So many of us, and by the time I got him, he was pretty freaking old.
It didn’t matter. It was something about the way he turned his attention on you, completely, with a kind of laser-like focus that blocked everything else out, as if you were the only star in the entire galaxy. He gave compliments, but never smarmy ones—he paid attention, so he noticed when a color made my eyes stand out, or when I changed my nail polish or tried a new lipstick. He examined and admired every inch of my body and worshipped it, which was the sexiest thing in the world.
And other things.
He brushed my hair. He massaged my hands or my feet when we were watching a movie. He knew all my favorite foods and bought them for me with no care over whether they were elegant or gourmet or junk. I have a weakness for crunchy CHEETOS, and he’d sometimes just bring a bag home from work. Or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Or Cara Cara oranges. Whatever.
He read to me. Read to me. No one in my life had ever read to me, not anything, but when he found out I loved poetry, he read my favorites to me—Mary Oliver, Ellen Bass—and also his own favorites, love songs and manifestos from the sixties. He loved Simon and Garfunkel poetry, which he joked was way too white for him to like, and yet he did.
He whistled when he cooked, and sang in the shower with a voice that boomed out as big as his laugh. He made dolls of hollyhocks for his granddaughters and brought Rory a beer that could be purchased only in a town sixty miles away.
He was known for little presents—a single flower, a pair of earrings, a book, a pencil, a toy, a piece of candy.
“You’re going to wash the silver off the top of that,” the bartender—his name is Jeremy—says. “Something on your mind?”
I shake my head. What can I say? My lover died and I miss him. But that just makes everybody uncomfortable, and it’s not like he could do anything to make it better. I just have to long for Augustus until I don’t. Maybe I always will. As someone said, grief is a thing you have to carry.
The door swings open and we both glance up. Two cops in plain clothes come in. “Norah Rivera?”
“Yes. How can I help you?”
“You’re a hard woman to track down,” the woman says. “I’m Detective Love and this is Detective Vaca.”
“Is this about Augustus?”
“It is. Can we sit down somewhere?”
“Is that okay?” I ask Jeremy.
“Sure.” He shrugs. “I’m not the boss.”
I lead them over to a booth in the corner. “Maya Beauvais told me you’d want to talk to me.”
“Is there some reason you didn’t come in on your own?”
“I don’t have a car, and I’ve got a job, and I only found out yesterday that you wanted to talk to me.”
“Fair enough.” She flips her notebook. “You’ve been living with Augustus for nine months, is that right?”
“Yeah. I came out here in September, and didn’t leave.”
“Whirlwind romance?”
I nod.
“He was a lot older than you.”
“Yes.” I deliver a level gaze at her. “Did you ever meet him?”
“Can’t say that I did. I don’t really run in those circles.”
“Circles?”