“Nana, why do you ask? What’s been going on at home?” She stared at me, and hastily, I added my knee-jerk courtesy: “If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”
“It’s been a bit of a zoo, having everyone under the same roof.” She peered up at the house, its windows like unblinking eyes. I just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable, she’d emailed on my birthday. Kristen has been acting a bit strange lately.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Nana? Is something wrong?”
She ran her tongue across her lips. She’d just taken the sharp inbreath of someone about to blurt something out when—
“Nana!”
A hand dropped onto Nana’s shoulder and we turned to see Kristen’s smiling face. How had she gotten here without us seeing? How long had she been standing there?
“Emily forgot her jacket,” Nana announced, too loud.
I gestured toward it with a flourish. “And since I missed Nana inside, I was just saying hi.”
Kristen nodded. “I thought you were in a hurry, so I was surprised to see you out here with someone. Thought I’d investigate.”
“Just your old grandma!” Nana’s voice was a singsong.
“Well, thank you for keeping me safe from all the dangers of Brookfield,” I cracked, and Nana chortled. “Anyway, I should let you go. Kristen, we’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Happy travels,” she replied, her smile shifting into a smirk. “Be safe.”
* * *
—
Kristen has lost her mind. Was Nana safe? Was there something I could do? Would any of my loved ones be in danger while I was out of town…Priya? The thought looped as I drove the tree-lined roads past looming colonials, broad Tudors, neo-classicals with grand white columns in the front. No flashy McMansions here: Kristen’s neighbors were classy and smug, convinced that nothing bad could happen to them, not behind their moats of landscaped gardens and neatly trimmed bushes.
I wasn’t being fair—I was simply jealous, the envy like a stent in my heart, pushing against it from the inside. These people paid their mortgages, cut tuition checks, debated whether the Vitamix was worth the splurge. They weren’t wondering if someone they knew was deeply unhinged. If the police were hot on their trail. If the walls, professionally painted in a pretty shade of eggshell, were closing in on them by the second.
With the exception of one. I flashed to Kristen again, crumpled on the bed, used Kleenex piled like snow in the bin at her feet. No way was that an act. Right?
At a four-way stop, I burst out of the subdivision and onto a main road, and I realized I’d been holding my breath.
The flicker in Nana’s eyes: I’d recognized it with a surge of solidarity. I felt it myself so many times a day, bursts so tiny and sharp and expected and, and normal that I barely registered them: just the usual accompaniment to walking or eating or smiling or not smiling or showing a little skin or wearing a poofy parka or simply existing with a female form.
I merged onto the freeway and accelerated hard. My pulse picked up speed along with the sedan as I flew past the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair, the baseball stadium, the three glass domes of the botanical garden, latticed like bugs’ eyes. When my exit appeared, no one wanted to let me in and I had to jam on the brakes, then dart in front of an SUV who pretended not to see my blinker.
In the rearview mirror I saw the driver’s angry upturned palm, a what-the-hell gesture. As if it were my fault for taking up three-dimensional space, for having volume and mass and density.
And then I did the thing I never, ever do. I lifted my middle finger and waved it above my shoulder, so that he couldn’t miss it. For a moment I felt powerful, but then at the next light he pulled up next to me and rolled down his window to let out a stream of obscenities.
I stared straight ahead and, as my heart pounded in my rib cage, pretended not to notice.
CHAPTER 34
My stomach tightened when Aaron’s car pulled into my driveway. I waved and rolled my suitcase outside, then turned around to lock up.
I jumped as two hands encircled my waist, then smiled as he nuzzled my neck.
“Hello, you,” he said.
“Hey there.” Our foreheads touched and I closed my eyes. Oh, how I wished I could give in to the feeling, melt into his arms. “You excited?”
“Let me take that.” He grabbed my suitcase and I followed him to the car. He hit a button and the trunk flew open and bobbed at the top. Something in its angle, the gaping maw, brought me back to that moment in Chile, when we were sweaty and sore from digging a shallow grave and ready to face the unthinkable horror of producing a body for it. The rental car’s trunk had bounced in the same way, like it was laughing at us.
He closed it with a thunk and shot me a crooked smile. “I brought us chocolate croissants again. Hope you’re hungry.”
“So sweet! Thank you.” Just like in the airport weeks ago, when I hadn’t known I’d see him. His shape emerging near baggage claim, hitting me like a thunderclap.
We set out under a silvery sky. “It’s supposed to rain here all weekend,” he announced, drumming his fingers to the garage rock he’d put on. “Hopefully it holds off until we’re in the air.”
“Yep.” It took a huge amount of effort to reply. This trip might’ve been a horrible idea. “Thank God we’re going somewhere sunny.”
My phone was ringing again, and I rooted around in my bag. A number I didn’t recognize, one with—oh God—too many digits.
Aaron glanced my way. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, no, sorry, I— Let me check one thing.” I tried to keep my fingers from shaking as I googled the country code of the incoming call: Chile. Shit. Plus two new texts from Priya, a reply to my late-night plea to steer clear of Kristen while I was away; she’d sent back a string of question marks, followed by “WTF? Everything ok?”
Aaron gestured at the dashboard. “Hey, this reminds me: I packed some THC gummies.”
“Huh?” I glanced around, bewildered, then realized he was talking about the stonery song on the radio. “Oh. Great! You’re not…afraid to fly with it?”
“Nah, it’s in my dopp kit.” He waved his hand and I stared at him, my envy so thick I felt it seeping out of my pores: not a care in the world, nothing to worry about. The opposite of fear isn’t safety, Kristen had said. It’s knowing you’ll always be in charge.
The song finished with the unhinged shrawww of an electric guitar, and the peppy morning-show DJs sprang into action:
So, Dave, I’m sure you’ve been hearing about this twenty-four-year-old backpacker whose body was found in Chile.
Oh, everyone’s got a theory. Last week I heard someone say they thought aliens were involved, since that region is famous for its UFO activity.
What I can’t get over is that the parents are—
“You know what’s wild?” Aaron pointed at a speaker. “This dude disappears, probably got himself twisted up in some shady shit. Drugs or whatever. But no one wants to say that—it’s gotta be aliens who are responsible, nothing he could’ve done. ’Cause he’s a dude. Like, remember Natalee Holloway? It was all: Well, why did she leave her friends? And why did they let her go off with a guy she didn’t know that well?”