“Ashley’s coming. We’re going to Munroe.”
“It’s raining.”
“It’ll stop.” I duck my head under the lukewarm spray and silently curse myself. The beach is hardly appropriate for a stormy day. “We’ll kill time at Starbucks, or Target.”
I can’t hear her sigh, but I know it’s there. My mother’s signature move, a low exhalation that’s almost a groan—as if she’s seventy instead of newly forty, and plagued by arthritic knees, failing vision, a lifetime of bittersweet memories. Mom is nothing like she sounds in those moments. First of all, she’s gorgeous. The boys in my class have always made sure I understood that I’ve fallen short of the family standard. I’m cute, in a freckled, girl-next-door sort of way, but Rebecca Baker is capital-S stunning. A raven-haired, dark-eyed classic beauty. Of course, she doesn’t realize it, and that just makes her all the more appealing.
Mom wears the same trend-blind clothes she wore when I was little, wide-legged pants when the fashion is skintight, and dresses that hide her slender figure instead of accentuating it. I’d kill to dress her just once. I’d put her in a pencil skirt that hugs her waist and some low heels. Her hair loose and just a little wavy. My mom wears her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, bobby pins ensuring that no face-framing tendrils will ever escape. I’d have to hate her a little if I didn’t love her so much. And when I look in the mirror, I can’t help but wonder why Jonathan is all her, and I’m made up of the bits and pieces of a stranger.
Lawrence isn’t my real dad. I don’t know who is.
“Mom,” I call, reaching for the shampoo. “Can I have some privacy?”
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she says.
I don’t answer.
* * *
When I come downstairs, freshly showered and feeling slightly more human, Mom isn’t in the kitchen. She’s in the laundry room folding towels—or at least I think she is. I tell myself she’s busy, and instead of picking up the conversation like she so obviously wanted me to do, I pour myself a glass of orange juice and grab a blueberry muffin from the basket on the counter. I swallow the juice quickly and tuck the muffin in a paper towel, then go wait for Ashley from the protection of the covered porch. It’s not long before she’s pulling down the driveway.
“Ashley’s here!” I shout through the screen door, grateful for my friend’s punctuality. “We’ll talk when I get back!”
There’s a muffled reply from inside the house, but I’m already running down the steps into the pouring rain. For a moment I can’t hear anything except the roar of water as it falls in sheets around me and explodes against the stone path. Then I’m wrenching the passenger-side door open and collapsing inside with a giggle.
“Some beach weather,” Ashley says wryly. I can tell she’s still irritated that I overruled her plans for the day. I’ll make her change her mind. I’m good at that.
“Got a towel?” I grin at her, offering up my dripping arms as evidence of my need.
“You didn’t take one?”
I shrug, but she reaches into the backseat and hands me a beach towel printed with multicolored popsicles.
“It’ll pass.” I squeeze the excess water out of my hair with Ashley’s plush towel. It’ll dry in a riot of dark blond curls, but I don’t care. I rather like my lion’s mane. It fits me.
“Are you even wearing your suit?”
I flash her, exposing my favorite green bikini top with the little white flowers.
My muffin is damp, but edible, and I tear off a corner with my teeth. A plump blueberry bursts against my tongue. “Thanks for getting me out of here,” I say around a mouthful.
“What happened this morning?” Ashley’s softening already, warming up to our comfortable chatter and the promise of a juicy story. “Did Law tear you a new one?”
“He’s not even home.”
“You dodged a bullet there.”
“Look,” I say, pointing in the rearview. “It’s clearing already.” There’s a patch of sky behind us where the clouds have torn that looks exactly like the swirl in the blue peppermints my mom used to take to church. They cut my mouth, but I sucked them anyway, yearning for something sweet. I feel like that a bit right now, hungry in a way that’s inexplicable and undefined.
“Spill,” Ashley demands. “Where were you this morning?”
My story is thin, bare bones, though I’m not exactly sure why I’m hiding things from her. It just seems to me that there are too many loose ends, and I know exactly how my best friend feels about my prime suspect.