I brace my feet, preventing Arthur from stepping around me. “He doesn’t have anything to say to you.”
Baine nods to Constable Mayhew without looking at him. “Escort her out, please.”
He tips his stupid hat to her and comes clomping toward me, and I don’t know how much hell I can raise with hands like a pair of boiled fish, but I’m prepared to find out when Arthur says, tiredly, “Opal. Go.”
“Oh my God, will you stop telling me to leave?”
But two other uniformed men have appeared behind Mayhew, approaching me with a wariness I would find flattering if I wasn’t busy glaring at Arthur. Hands close around my elbows, hauling me away from him. I swear and stomp, tennis shoes sliding off heavy boots, knuckles too swollen to make a proper fist. The last glimpse I see of Conference Room C is Arthur taking the empty seat, shoulders bowed, and Elizabeth Baine, smiling.
TWENTY-FIVE
The parking lot is dark except for the yellow rings of streetlights, thronged with moths and mayflies. There’s a familiar pickup near the entrance, parked with admirable disregard for the white lines, and a Volvo not far away. Two women lean against the driver’s side, shoulders barely touching. They look up when the detention center door slams behind me.
Charlotte calls my name. Bev is already moving, breaking into a run. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bev run for anything—I bet she didn’t even run out of her office when it was on fire—but she’s running now, for me.
She stops awkwardly before me, her arms half-raised. She says, gruffly, “You okay, meathead?”
I nod, more out of habit than conviction. Then I throw my arms around her and squash my face into the warm muscle where her shoulder meets the collar of her tank top. Bev says, “Oh, Jesus,” with considerable disgust, but her arms fold around me, and if she notices the damp smear of snot on her shoulder, she doesn’t say anything.
I think: It’s been eleven years and who-knows-how-many days since someone held me like this,but that’s a lie. I’ve never been held like this, sure and steady, for as long as I need; Mom only ever held me as long as she wanted.
It occurs to me that I’ve been mourning two people all these years—the mother I had, and the mother I wish I had—and that neither of them was the one who kept a roof over my head.
“Bev, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, the motel—I didn’t think they would do anything like—”
She murmurs, “Hey, shut up,” into my hair. I shut up.
Bev thumps my back twice when I pull away, as if I’m the hood of an unreliable car, and scrubs her eyes hard against her own shoulder.
She shepherds me to the Volvo. “C’mon, let’s head over to Charlotte’s, get you a shower.”
“I can’t.”
“Hon,” she says, not unkindly, “you smell like a burning tire.”
“Look, I still don’t know where the hell Jasper is because he won’t answer his damn phone, but I’ve got to find him, and she’s got Arthur in there—”
Bev squints. “He that big scarecrow that went running in a few minutes ago?” I nod. “What’s he to you?”
“My . . .” I begin, but I can’t think of an accurate noun. The possessive hangs.
Bev says, “Screw him,” at the same moment that Charlotte says, “We’ll wait with you.”
Charlotte produces a cardigan and a sleeve of peanut butter crackers from the backseat, like a true librarian. She drapes the cardigan fussily over my shoulders and daubs the soot off my face with a T-shirt that says KIDS WHO READ, SUCCEED! on the front. I lean on the bumper, eating crackers with clumsy hands, watching the detention center door. Bev and Charlotte settle on either side of me like a pair of gargoyles or guardian angels.
After a silence, I say, “So, you two are . . .”
Charlotte says, “None of your business,” at the same time that Bev says, “Yeah, for a couple years now.” I feel their eyes meeting over my head, a pair of wry smiles colliding.
“And here I thought you brought my library holds to the motel out of the purity of your spirit.” I cluck my tongue. “But really you just had the hots for my landlord.”
“At first I came in spite of her,” Charlotte admits. “But then she started requesting her own holds, and we started talking . . .” Charlotte lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “Did you know she likes poetry? Like the really corny stuff, we’re talking the Romantics.”