Forever. Part 18

"I am for very real. Can I come inside?"

I jumped off my bed and went to the window, peering around. I could just see the edge of a rather ugly station wagon at the end of the driveway.

"Is that you in that perv-mobile?"

"It smells," Cole said. "I would invite you to come out here and talk to me in the privacy of the car, but it's pretty powerful stuff, whatever is making it smell."

"What do you want, Cole?"

"Your credit card. I need to order a fis.h.i.+ng net, some hardware, and a couple of tranquilizers that I swear are totally over-the-counter. Also, I need them overnighted."

"Tell me you're just trying to be funny."

"I told Sam I could catch Beck. I'm going to build a pit trap using the pit Grace helpfully found by falling into it and bait it with Beck's favorite food, which he helpfully recorded in his journal while telling an anecdote about a kitchen fire."

"You are trying to be funny. Because otherwise, this sounds like an insane person on the telephone."

"Scent is the strongest tie to memory."

I sighed and lay back down on my bed, phone still at my ear. "What does this have to do with keeping you all from being killed by my father?"

There was a pause. "Beck moved the wolves once before. I want to ask him about it."

"And a fis.h.i.+ng net, some hardware, and drugs will help you to do that?"

"If not, it's all the makings of a very good time."

I stared at the ceiling. Long ago, Jack had thrown Silly Putty at the place where the ceiling tipped to meet the roof-slanted wall, and it still stuck there.

I sighed. "Fine, Cole, fine. I'll meet you at the side door, by the little stairs you went up before. Park that thing someplace my parents won't see when they wake up. And don't be loud."

"I'm never loud," Cole said, and the phone went silent in my hand at the same time my bedroom door opened.

Still lying on my back, I looked upside down to the door and was unsurprised to see Cole letting himself in. He shut the door carefully behind him. He was wearing cargo pants and a plain black T-s.h.i.+rt. He looked famous, but I was beginning to realize that was a function of the way he stood, not of what he wore. In my room, which was all floating, light fabrics and pillows that shone and mirrors that smiled back at you, Cole looked out of place, but I was beginning to figure out that that, too, was a function of how he was, not where he was.

"So today you're Cross-Country Barbie," he said. I remembered I was in my running shoes and shorts. He walked to my dresser and sprayed a puff of my perfume into the air. A Cole in the dresser mirror waved his hand through the mist.

"Today I'm Humor-Free Barbie," I replied. Cole picked up my rosary from the dresser, his thumb over one of the beads. The way he held it made it look like a familiar gesture, though it was hard to imagine Cole St. Clair entering a church without catching fire. "I thought that side door was locked."

"Not so much."

I closed my eyes. Looking at him was making me feel ... tired. I felt the same weight inside me that I'd felt at Il Pomodoro. I thought, possibly, that what I really needed was to go where n.o.body knew me and start over again, with none of my previous decisions, conversations, or expectations coming with me.

The bed sighed as Cole climbed onto it and lay on his back beside me. He smelled clean, like shaving cream and the beach, and I realized he must have taken special care before he came over here today. That made me feel weird, too.

I closed my eyes again. "How is Grace doing? About Olivia?"

"I wouldn't know. She s.h.i.+fted last night so we locked her in the bathroom."

"I wasn't friends with Olivia," I said. It seemed important for him to know. "I didn't know her, really."

"Me neither." Cole paused. He said, in a different voice, "I like Grace."

He said it like it were a very serious thing, and for a moment, I thought he meant it as "I like Grace" which I couldn't even properly comprehend. But then he clarified. "I like how she is with Sam. I don't think I ever believed in love, not really. Just thought it was something James Bond made up, a long time ago, to get laid."

We lay there, not speaking, for a few more minutes. Outside, birds were waking up. The house was silent; the morning was not cold enough to trip the heater. It was hard to not think about Cole lying right there beside me, even if he was quiet, especially since he smelled good and I could remember exactly what it felt like to kiss him. I could remember, too, exactly the last time I'd seen Sam kiss Grace, and I remembered, more than anything, the way Sam's hand looked, pressing against her as they kissed. I didn't think that was what it looked like when Cole and I had kissed. Thinking about it was making it get all loud and crowded inside me again, the wanting Cole and the doubting that it was the right thing to want him. I felt guilty, dirty, euphoric, as if I had already given in.

"Cole, I'm tired," I said. As soon as I said it, I had no idea why I had.

He didn't reply. He just lay there, quieter than I thought he could be.

Irritated by his silence, I battled whether or not I should ask him if he'd heard me.

Finally, in a quiet so deep that I heard his lips part before he spoke, he said, "Sometimes, I think about calling home."

I was used to Cole being self-centered, but this, I felt, was a new low in our relations.h.i.+p, him hijacking my confession with one of his own.

He said, "I think that I'll just call home and tell my mom that I'm not dead. I think I'll call my dad and ask him if he'd like to have a little chat about what meningitis does to you on a cellular level. Or I think I'll call Jeremy - he was my ba.s.sist - and I'll tell him that I'm not dead, but I don't want to be looked for anymore. To tell my parents that I'm not dead but I'm never coming home." He was quiet for such a long time then that I thought he was done. He was quiet long enough that I could see the morning light in my airy, pastel room get a little brighter as the mist began to burn off.

Then he said, "But it just makes me tired even thinking about it. It reminds me of that feeling I had before I left. Like my lungs were made of lead. Like I can't even think about starting to care about anything. Like I either wish that they were all dead, or I was, because I can't stand the pull of all that history between us. That's before I even pick up the phone. I'm so tired I never want to wake up again. But I've figured out now that it was never them that made me feel that way. It was just me, all along."

I didn't reply. I was thinking again about that revelation in the bathroom in Il Pomodoro. That wanting to just be done, for once, to feel done, to not want anything. Thinking of how precisely Cole had described the fatigue inside me.

"I'm part of what you hate about yourself," Cole said. It wasn't a question.

Of course he was part of what I hated about myself. Everything was part of what I hated about myself. It wasn't really personal. He sat up. "I'll go."

I could still feel the heat of the mattress from where he'd been. "Cole," I said, "do you think I'm lovable?"

"As in 'cuddly and'?"

"As in 'able to be loved,'" I said.

Cole's gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looked like when he was younger, and exactly what he'd look like when he was older. It was piercing, a secret glimpse of his future. "Maybe," he said. "But you won't let anybody try."

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

"I can't tell the difference between not fighting," I said, "and giving up."

Despite my eyelids being tightly shut, a single, hot tear ran out of my left eye. I was so angry that it had escaped. I was so angry.

Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn't know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth.

It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole's hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn't a touch that said I need more. It was a touch that said I want this.

It was all completely soundless. I didn't think either of us was breathing.

Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered.

He said, "That's how I would kiss you, if I loved you."

He stood up, looking unfamous, and retrieved the car keys from where they'd slid out onto the bed. He didn't look at me when he left, shutting the door behind him.

The house was so noiseless that I heard his step down the stairs, the first five or so slow and hesitating, and then all the rest in a rush.

I put my thumb on my neck where Cole's had been and closed my eyes. It didn't feel like fighting or like giving up. I hadn't realized there was a third option, and even if I had, I wouldn't have guessed it had anything to do with Cole.

I exhaled, my breath long and noisy over lips that had just been kissed. Then I sat up and pulled out my credit card.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

* SAM *

I didn't particularly feel like going into work the next morning, since the world was coming to an end, but I couldn't think of a compelling and plausible explanation to give Karyn, so I left home and drove into Mercy Falls. I couldn't bear the sounds of Grace the wolf, either, clawing disasters into the walls of the downstairs bathroom, so it was a mercy, in a way, to leave, though I felt guilty for feeling that way. Just because I wasn't there to be reminded of her panic didn't mean that she wasn't feeling it while I was gone.

It was a beautiful day, no sign of rain for the first time in a week. The sky was the dreamy, high blue of summer, months early, and the leaves of the trees looked one thousand colors of green, from electric, plastic shades to a hair lighter than black. Instead of parking behind the store as I usually did, I parked on Main Street, far enough away from the center of downtown that I wouldn't have to feed a parking meter. In Mercy Falls, that was only a handful of blocks. I left my jacket on the pa.s.senger seat of the Volkswagen, put my hands in my pockets, and started to walk.

Mercy Falls wasn't rich, but it was quaint, in its way, so by virtue of its quaintness, it had a pretty thriving downtown. Charm, plus proximity to the beautiful Boundary Waters, brought tourists, and tourists brought money. Mercy Falls offered several blocks of boutique-sort shops to part them from their cash. The shops were largely of the sort that kept husbands waiting in the car or sent them poking around in the hardware store on Grieves Street, but still I glanced in windows as I walked. I kept to the edge of the sidewalk so that the cautious morning sun could reach me. It felt good on my skin, a small consolation prize in this terrible and wonderful week.

I made it a few yards past a shop that sold clothing and knick-knacks, and I stopped and doubled back to stand in front of the window. A headless mannequin in the window wore a white summer dress. It was just a simple thing: thin straps up over the shoulders, a loose tie round the middle. The fabric was something that I thought was called eyelet. I imagined Grace in it, the narrow straps over her shoulders, a triangle of bare skin below her throat, the hem falling just above her knee. I could imagine her hips beneath the thin material, my hands bunching the fabric at her waist when I pulled her to me. It was a carefree dress, a dress that was about summer and ankle-high gra.s.s and blond hair streaked paler by the confident sun.

I stood there for a long moment, looking at it, wanting what it stood for. It seemed like such a foolish thing to be thinking of right now when so much else was at stake. Three times I s.h.i.+fted my weight, about to step off, to go back on my way. And every time that image of Grace - wind lifting the edge of the dress, pressing the fabric flat to her belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s - kept me fixed in front of the window.

I bought it. I had four twenties in my wallet - Karyn had paid me in cash last week - and I left with one of them and a little bag with the dress nestled in the bottom. I backtracked to put it in my car and then went on to the Crooked Shelf, eyes on the sidewalk running ahead of me, feeling the warmth and uncertainty of having bought a gift that cost more than a day of working. What if she didn't like it? Maybe I should have been saving for a ring. Even if she had really meant it and did want to marry me, which seemed like an impossible thing, a ring seemed far off. I had no idea what a ring cost, and maybe I needed to start saving. What if I told her I'd got her a present and that was what she expected and I disappointed her? I felt simultaneously like the oldest nineteen-year-old on the planet and the youngest - what was I doing thinking about rings, and why hadn't I thought of it sooner? And perhaps in all her practical nature Grace would be annoyed that I'd bought her a gift instead of doing something about the hunt.

So it was these things I wrestled as I walked into the bookstore. With my mind so far from my body, the store felt like a lonely, timeless place as I opened it up. It was Sat.u.r.day, so an hour after I opened the store, Karyn came in the back door, sequestering herself away in the tiny back room to do ordering and reconciling. Karyn and I had an easy relations.h.i.+p; it was nice to know she was in the shop even when we didn't speak.

There were no customers and I was restless, so I walked back to the workroom. The sun was coming in the front windows full and strong, reaching long hands all the way back here. It warmed my body, comfortingly hot, as I leaned on the doorway.

"Hi," I said.

Karyn was already sitting surrounded by drifts of invoices and book catalogs. She looked up at me with a pleasant smile. To me, everything about Karyn was always pleasant - she was one of those women who always seemed comfortable with themselves and the world, whether they were in polar fleece or pearls. If she thought any differently about me since Grace disappeared, she didn't show it. I wished I could tell her how much I had needed that from her, that unchanging pleasantness. "You look happy," she said.

"Do I?"

"Happier," she said. "Have we been busy?"

I shrugged. "It's been quiet. I swept. And removed some tiny handprints from the front windows."

"Children - who needs them?" Karyn asked. It was a rhetorical question. She mused, "If it would get warm, we'd get people. Or if that Tate Flaugherty sequel would come out already, we'd have them in scads. Maybe we should do up the front window for it. What do you think, an Alaskan theme for Mayhem in Juneau?"

I made a face. "It seems to me Minnesota just got done with its Alaskan theme."

"Aha. Good point."

I thought about my guitar, the northern lights over my head, the songs I needed to write about the past few days.

"We should do music biographies," I said. "That'd make a nice window."

Karyn gestured to me with her pencil. "Point to the man." She lowered the pencil and tapped it on the letter in front of her, a gesture that suddenly reminded me of Grace. "Sam, I know that Beck is ... ill, and this might not be a priority for you, but have you thought about what you're doing for college?"

I blinked at the question and crossed my arms. She looked at my crossed arms as though they were part of my answer. I said, "I - hadn't given it a lot of thought yet." I didn't want her to think I was unmotivated, though, so I said, "I'm waiting to see where Grace goes to school."

I realized, half a moment later, that this statement was wrong, for about three different reasons, primary amongst them being that Grace was officially missing.

Karyn didn't look pitying or puzzled, however. She just gave me a long, pensive look, her lips set in a small line and one of her thumbs sort of resting on the bottom of her chin. I felt, then, like she knew, somehow, about us, and that this was merely a pretense that Beck and I played with her.

Don't ask.

She said, "I was just wondering because, if you're not going to school right away, I was going to ask if you wanted to work full-time here."

It was not what I'd expected her to say, so I didn't answer.

Karyn said, "I know what you're thinking, that it's not a lot of money. I'll up your hourly by two dollars."

"You can't afford that."

"You sell a lot of books for us. It would make me feel better to know that you're always the one behind the counter. Every day you're sitting on that stool is a day I don't have to worry about what's going on in here."

"I -" Really, I was grateful for the offer. Not because I needed the money, but because I needed the trust. My face felt warm, a smile pending.

Karyn pressed on, "I mean, I feel a little guilty, trying to keep you out of college for another year, but if you're waiting anyway ..."

I heard the front-door bell ring as it opened. One of us was going to have to go up there, and I was glad for it. Not because the conversation was awkward or terrible, but the opposite. I needed a moment to process this, to hold all this at an arm's length so I could be sure of my face and my words when I spoke again. I felt like I looked too ungrateful, too slow. I asked, "Can I think about it?"

"I would've been amazed if you didn't," Karyn said. "You're a little predictable, Sam."

I grinned at her and turned to head back to the front, which is how I happened to be smiling when the police officer first saw me.

My smile melted away. Actually, it remained for just a moment too long, my lips pulled up to show an emotion that had vanished seconds before. The police officer could have been there for anything. He could've been there to talk to Karyn. He could've been there with just a quick question.

But I knew he wasn't.

I saw now that he was Officer William Koenig. Koenig was young, understated, familiar. I wanted to think that our previous exchanges would weight things in my favor, but his face told me everything I needed to know. His expression was the purposefully blank one of someone who was being made to regret his past kindnesses.

"You're a hard man to find, Sam," Koenig said as I slowly approached him. My hands felt sort of useless hanging at my sides.