And yet—for the first time since I’d been back in Holman Beach, I felt like I was exactly where I should be. A strange sense of peace settled over my body.
I was alone, awake, and suddenly I knew what I should do. It had nothing to do with pizza or Amy or even Uncle Dan, or maybe it had everything to do with them, yet it was the one thing that had always made sense to me. In good times and bad it had been my refuge: when I’d found Kristin fucking the plumber; when Ronan’s house had burned down; when Sarah Carpenter had wandered into the ocean and disappeared.
I searched for some paper but couldn’t find any, so I grabbed a pizza box and tore off its lid. A pen sat on the counter, and suddenly I was writing, scribbling on the back of the box, the blue ink scratching across the cardboard, the letters merging into words, the words into sentences, paragraphs taking shape—description, dialogue, action.
Act One, Scene One
A man stands alone in a basement holding a drawing showing the worst thing he’s ever seen.
. . . . .
When I finally left the storage room the Jaybird was empty, except for Jill, who sat alone in a booth listening to music on her iPhone. While I’d been holed up in back, writing about her mother and wondering what was wrong with Uncle Dan, she’d stepped up and defended the fort. A red “Closed” sign hung over the front door. The tables had been cleared, the ovens shut down and the dishwasher loaded, the spice shakers lined up neatly on the shelf, each spice in its assigned slot. Even the floor appeared freshly swept. It was almost ten o’clock—I’d been writing for nearly three hours, and in my arms were twenty pizza boxes, the inside cardboard filled with the bones of a new play.
“Hey!” Jill said, pulling out her ear buds as she hopped from the booth. “I waited for you. When you didn’t come out, I told everyone to go home. I tried cleaning up…you might want to check that I didn’t break anything, like the oven or something.”
I put down the boxes. “Where are your friends?”
She walked toward me, shoving her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “They left, but I thought I should stay here…with you.”
I put down the pizza boxes, checked the ovens and the stove; everything was perfect.
“Did I do okay?”
I gave her the thumbs up and walked out from behind the counter. She lifted the lid on one of the pizza boxes; her face lit up as if she’d stumbled on a unicorn.
“You were writing? I knew it! That’s how it happens, right? You get these flashes of inspiration and you need to get it down, no matter where you are. It’s almost like your brain is on fire, right?”
“Not really,” I said. “Usually it’s a grind, sitting at your desk staring at blank paper. This almost never happens but…I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
She closed the lid and stepped back. “It’s brilliant, I bet.”
“I’ll be surprised if it’s coherent.”
She undid her ponytail and shook out her hair.
“There’s something going on, isn’t there? It’s not just my mom thinking that someone is stalking her. I know about the girl—Sarah Carpenter. Mom told me about it, and I hear things. But there’s something more, isn’t there?”
I couldn’t lie to her. “Yes.”
Jill scratched her cheek. “I’m worried that my mom won’t be okay. She and I don’t talk about things, not really; I act like stuff doesn’t bother me…but it’s usually just an act. I found her in the tub, and maybe she wasn’t really trying to kill herself, I get that, but what if I’d stayed at Maddie’s that night?” Her voice cracked. “I don’t let my mom see it because she’s…you know…troubled or something, but most of the time I’m pretty scared. What if something happens to her?”
“Your Mom’s a survivor,” I told her. “She’s been through some…challenging stuff. It’s just a bad time right now. She’ll be better soon.”
Hollow clichés—I wondered if either of us believed it.
She rubbed her eyes, her mascara fading into dark circles, and I noticed she was barefoot, her Nikes under the table, bright pink socks rolled into a ball and jammed into the left sneaker.
“I know you’re with Kelly, and she’s great, absolutely, but…do you still love my Mom?”
So much for softball questions: Jill was dealing heat, a high hard one aimed straight at my head.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“She told me you proposed to her a zillion times. Maybe if you ask again…”
“I doubt that would be a good idea right now.”
She jumped toward me and kissed my cheek. “Why not? She might say yes, and I’d make an excellent step-daughter.”
The warmth of her body as she leaned close left me dizzy.
“I think I should drive you home,” I said.
Her hand brushed against my chest, her palm sliding down, fingers fanning out as they covered my heart, the tips of her nails pressing through my T-shirt—and shame on me for not stepping away, for not taking her lovely hand and giving it back.
“Amy must be worried. It’s late. Let’s get you home.”
“Amy is probably passed out on the couch,” she said. “But if you and she were together, snuggled beneath a blanket, maybe holding hands…I bet she wouldn’t drink anymore. If she was in the bathtub with you…”
“Jill…”
“I’m just saying, if she was in the bathtub with you, she wouldn’t have taken those pills.”
Guess again, I wanted to say. But the whole conversation was way out of line.
“Let’s get you
