Lock and Key

  When I got home that afternoon, I saw Jamie seated at the island with his laptop. As he heard me approach, he quickly leaped up, grabbing a nearby loaf of bread and holding it in front of him as if struck by a sudden desire to make a sandwich.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

  He exhaled loudly. “I thought you were Cora,” he said, tossing the bread down. “Whew! You scared me. I’ve worked too hard on this for her to find out about it now.”

  As he sat back down, I saw that the island was covered with piles of CDs, some in their cases, others scattered all over the place. “So this is your Valentine’s Day gift?”

  “One of them,” he said, opening a case and taking out a disk. “It’ll be, like, the third or fourth wave.”

  “Wave? ”

  “That’s my V-day technique,” he explained, sliding the disk into the side of his laptop. I heard a whirring, then some clicks, and the screen flickered. “Multiple gifts, given in order of escalating greatness, over the entire day. So, you know, you begin with flowers, then move to chocolates, maybe some balloons. This’ll come after that, but before the gourmet dinner. I’m still tweaking the order.”

  “Right,” I said glumly, sitting down across from him and picking up a Bob Dylan CD.

  He glanced over at me. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you don’t like Valentine’s Day. Everyone likes Valentine’s Day.”

  I considered disputing this, but as he’d said the same thing about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, I figured it wasn’t worth the argument. “I’m just kind of stuck,” I said. “I need to get something for someone. . . .”

  “Nate,” he said, hitting a couple of buttons on the laptop. I looked up at him. “Ruby, come on. We’re not that dense, you know. Plus half the house does look out at the pond, even at night.”

  I bit my lip, turning the CD case in my hands. “Anyway, ” I said, “I want it to be, like, this great gift. But I can’t come up with anything.”

  “Because you’re overthinking it,” he said. “The best gifts come from the heart, not a store.”

  “This from the man who buys in waves.”

  “I’m not buying this,” he pointed out, nodding at the laptop. “I mean, I bought the CDs, yeah. But the idea is from the heart.”

  “And what’s the idea?”

  “All the songs Cora loves to sing, in one place,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I wrote up a list, then found them online or at the record store. For the really obscure ones, I had to enlist this guy one of my employees knows from his Anger Management class who’s some kind of music freak. But now I finally have them all. ‘Wasted Time,’ ‘Frankie and Johnny,’ ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ . . .”

  ’"Angel from Montgomery,’” I said quietly.

  “Exactly!” He grinned. “Hey, you can probably help me, now that I think of it. Just take a look at the list, and see if I’m missing anything.”

  He pushed a piece of paper across to me, and I glanced down at it, reading over the familiar titles of the songs my mom had always sung to me, listed in block print. “No,” I said finally. “This is pretty much all of them.”

  “Great.” He hit another button, taking out the CD and putting it on the counter as I pushed out my chair, getting to my feet. “Where you headed?”

  “Shopping,” I said, pulling my bag over my shoulder. “I have to find something phenomenal.”

  “You will,” he replied. “Just remember: the heart! Start there, and you can’t go wrong.”

  I remained unconvinced, however, especially once I got to the mall, where there were hearts everywhere: shaped into balloons and cookies, personalized on T-shirts, filled with chocolate and held by fuzzy teddy bears. But even after going into a dozen stores, I still couldn’t find anything for Nate.

  “Personally,” Harriet said as I slumped onto her stool an hour later for a much-needed rest, “I think this holiday is a total crock, completely manufactured by the greeting-card companies. If you really love someone, you should show it every day, not just one.”

  “And yet,” Reggie said, from his kiosk, “you are not averse to running a two-for-one Valentine’s Day special on bracelets and assorted rings.”

  “Of course not!” she said. “I’m a businesswoman. As long as the holiday exists, I might as well profit from it.”

  Reggie rolled his eyes and went back to stacking daily multis. “I just want to get something good,” I said. “Something that means something.”

  “Just try to forget about it for a while,” she replied, adjusting a rack of pendants. “Then, out of nowhere, the perfect gift will just come to you.”

  I looked at my watch. “I have about twenty-six hours. Not exactly a lot of time for inspiration to strike.”

  “Oh.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Well, then I’d get him some of those macaroons you bought me at Christmas. Those you can’t go wrong with.”

  In the end, though, it didn’t come to that, although what I did end up with was almost as pathetic: a gift card to PLUG, the music store. It wasn’t phenomenal, not even decent, and as I left the mall feeling thoroughly defeated, all I could hope was that Harriet was right, and I’d come up with something better in the short time I had remaining.

  The next morning, though, this still hadn’t happened, a fact made even more obvious when I came down for breakfast and walked right into Jamie’s first wave. Four dozen roses in varying colors were arranged in vases all around the kitchen, each tied with a big white bow. Cora was at the counter, reading the card off of one of them, her face flushed, as I helped myself to coffee.

  “He always overdoes it on Valentine’s,” she said, although she looked kind of choked up as she tucked the card into her purse. “The first year we were married, he got me a new car.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Yep. Totally overwhelmed me.” She sighed, picking up her mug. “It was so sweet, but I felt terrible. All I’d gotten him was a gift card.”

  I swallowed. “I have to go.”

  What I needed, I decided as I headed down the walkway to Nate’s car ten minutes later, was to just stop thinking about Valentine’s Day altogether. Which seemed easy, at least until I opened the car door and found myself face-to-face with a huge basketful of candy and flowers.

  “Sorry,” Nate said from somewhere behind the tiny balloons that were poking out of the top of it. “We’re a little cramped in here. Do you mind holding that in your lap?”

  I picked up the basket, then slid into the seat, pulling the door shut behind me. The instant it was closed, the smell of roses was overpowering, and as I shifted in my seat I saw why: the entire back was piled with baskets of assorted sizes, stacked three deep. “Where’s Gervais?” I asked.

  “I’m here,” I heard a muffled voice say. A huge bunch of baby’s breath shifted to one side, revealing his face. “And I think I’m having an allergic reaction.”

  “Just hang in there for a few more minutes,” Nate told him, opening his window as we pulled away from the curb. His phone rang, rattling the console, and I peered around the flowers in my lap to look at him as he grabbed it, putting it to his ear. “Yeah,” he said, slowing for the next light. “I’m on my way to school right now, so in ten or so I’ll start down the list. Lakeview first, then over to the office complex. Right. Okay. Bye.”

  “You’re not going to school today?” I asked as he hung up.

  “Duty calls,” he said, shutting his phone. “My dad got a little overambitious with the response to the special, so we’re pretty booked. We’ll be lucky to get it all done, even with the two of us going all day.”

  “Really,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t worry,” he said as his phone rang again. “I’ll be done in plenty of time for our thing tonight.”

  But this wasn’t what I was worried about, and I wondered if he knew it. It was hard to tell, since he was talking to his dad again as he pulled u
p in front of Perkins Day, and Gervais and I extracted ourselves to disembark. As he headed off, sneezing, I put the basket I’d been holding back on the seat, then stood by the open door, waiting for Nate to hang up. Even as he did, he was already shifting back into gear, moving on.

  “I gotta go,” he said to me, over the flowers. “But I’ll see you tonight, okay? Seven, at the pond. Don’t be late.”

  I nodded and shut the door. He already had his phone back to his ear as he pulled into traffic. As he drove off, all I could see were a bunch of heart-shaped balloons in the back window, bobbing and swaying, first to one side, then back again.

  Jamie and Cora were out for dinner—in the midst of a wave, no doubt—so I was alone, sitting at the kitchen table, my stupid gift card in hand, when the clock over the stove flipped to seven o’clock.

  I stood up, sliding it into my pocket, then ran a hand through my hair as I stepped out onto the patio, Roscoe rousing himself from his dog bed to follow along behind me. Outside, the air was cold, the lights from Nate’s pool and house visible over the fence.

  Call it a bad feeling. Or just the logical conclusion to an unavoidable situation. But I think I knew, even before that first fifteen minutes passed with no sign of him, that he wasn’t just late, something was wrong. Before my fingers— even jammed into the pockets of my new jacket—began to get numb, before Roscoe abandoned me for the warmth of the house, before another set of lights came up from the opposite side, lighting up the trees briefly before cutting off and leaving me in darkness again. It was eight fifteen when I saw Cora appear in the patio doorway, cupping a hand over her eyes. A moment later, she stuck her head out.

  “Are you okay?” she said. “It’s freezing out there.”

  “How was dinner?” I asked her.

  “Fantastic.” She glanced behind her at Jamie, who was walking into the kitchen with one of those leftover containers shaped into a swan. “You should hear this CD he made for me. It’s—”

  “I’ll be in soon,” I told her. “Just a couple more minutes.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t wait too long, though.”

  But I already had. And not just that hour and fifteen minutes, but every moment that had passed since Thanksgiving, when I should have told Nate I couldn’t just stand by and worry about him. Instead, though, I had let months pass, pushing down my better instincts, and now, sitting out in the February chill, I was getting exactly what I deserved.

  When I finally went inside, I tried to distract myself with homework and TV, but instead I kept looking over at Nate’s house, and his window, which I could see clearly from my own. Behind the shade, I could see a figure moving back and forth. After a little while, it stopped, suddenly so still that I wondered if it was really anyone at all.

  It was over an hour later when the phone rang. Cora and Jamie were downstairs, eating wave-two chocolates out of the box and listening to her CD, their voices and the music drifting up to me. I didn’t even look at the caller ID, lying back on my bed instead, but then Jamie was calling my name. I looked at the receiver for a minute, then hit the TALK button. “Hello?”

  “I know you’re probably pissed,” Nate said. “But meet me outside, okay?”

  I didn’t say anything, not that it mattered. He’d hung up, the dial tone already buzzing in my ear.

  Billie Holiday was playing as I went downstairs and back outside, retracing my steps across the grass, which felt stiff and ungiving beneath my feet. This time, I didn’t sit, instead crossing my arms over my chest as Nate emerged from the shadows. He had one hand behind his back, a smile on his face.

  “Okay,” he said, before he’d even gotten to me, “I know that me being over two hours late was not exactly the surprise you were expecting. But today was crazy, I just now got home, and I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  We were in the swath of darkness between the lights from his house and those of Cora’s, so it was hard to make out all the details of his face. But even so, I could tell there was something off: a nervous quality, something almost jittery. “You’ve been home,” I told him. “I saw your light was on.”

  “Yeah, but we had stuff to do,” he said easily, although now he was slowing his steps. “I had to put things away, get the accounts all settled. And then, you know, I had to wrap this.”

  He pulled his hand out from behind his back, extending a small box to me, tied with a simple bow. “Nate,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” he told me. “It won’t make it all better. But it might help a little bit.”

  I took the box but didn’t open it. Instead, I sat down on the bench, holding it between my knees, and a moment later he came and sat down beside me. Now closer, I could see his neck was flushed, the skin pink around his collar. “I know you’ve been home for a couple of hours,” I said quietly. “What was going on over there?”

  He slid one leg over the bench, turning to face me. “Nothing. Hey, we’ve got two hours left of Valentine’s Day. So just open your gift, and let’s make the most of it.”

  “I don’t want a gift,” I said, and my voice sounded harsher than I meant it to. “I want you to tell me what happened to you tonight.”

  “I got held up dealing with my dad,” he replied. “That’s all.”

  “That’s all,” I repeated.

  “What else do you want me to say?”

  “Do you understand how worried I’ve been about you? How I’ve sat over here all night, looking at your house, wondering if you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m here now. With you, on Valentine’s Day, which is the only place I’ve wanted to be all day. And now that I am here, I can think of a million things I’d rather talk about than my dad.”

  I shook my head, looking out over the water.

  “Like,” he continued, putting his hands on either side of me, “my gift, for instance. Word on the street is that it’s phenomenal.”

  “It’s not,” I said flatly. “It’s a gift card, and it sucks.”

  He sat back slightly, studying my face. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So maybe we shouldn’t talk.”

  With this, I could feel him moving closer, and then his lips were on my ear, moving down my neck. Normally, this was enough to push everything away, at least temporarily, the sudden and indisputable closeness that made all other distance irrelevant. Tonight, though, was different. “Stop,” I said, pulling back and raising my hands between us. “Okay? Just stop.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” I repeated. “Look, you can’t just come here and tell me everything’s fine and kiss me and just expect me to go along with it.”

  “So,” he said slowly, “you’re saying you don’t want me to kiss you.”

  “I’m saying you can’t have it both ways,” I told him. “You can’t act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “You are, though,” I said. He looked away, shaking his head. “Look, when we first met, you practically made a practice of saving my ass. That night at the fence, coming to pick me up at Jackson—”

  “That was different.”

  “Why? Because it was me, not you?” I asked. “What, you think just because you help people and make their lives easier that you’re somehow better and don’t need help yourself? ”

  “I don’t.”

  “So it’s just fine that your dad yells at you and pushes you around.”

  “What happens between me and my dad is private,” he said. “It’s a family thing.”

  “So was my living alone in that place you called a slum,” I told him. “Are you saying you would have left me there if I had told you to? Or in the clearing that day?”

  Nate immediately started to say something in response to this, then let out a breath instead.

  Finally, I thought. I’m getting through.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, “why these two things always have to be conne
cted.”

  “What two things?” I said.

  “Me and my dad, and me and everyone else.” He shook his head. “They’re not the same thing. Not even close.”

  It was that word—always—that did it, nudging a memory loose in my brain. Me and Heather, that day over the fish. You never know, she’d said, when I’d told her one more friend would hardly make a difference. The sad way he looked at her, all those mornings walking to the green, so many rumors, and maybe none of them true. “So that’s why you and Heather broke up,” I said slowly. “It wasn’t that she couldn’t take what was happening. It was not being able to help you.”

  Nate looked down at his hands, not saying anything. Here I’d thought Heather and I were so different. But we, too, had something in common, all along.

  “Just tell someone what’s going on,” I said. “Your mom, or—”

  “I can’t,” he said. “There’s no point. Don’t you understand that?”

  This was the same thing he’d asked me, all those weeks ago, and I’d told him yes. But now, here, we differed. Nate might not have thought that whatever was happening with his dad affected anything else, but I knew, deep in my heart, that this wasn’t true. My mother, wherever she was, still lingered with me: in the way I carried myself, the things that scared me, and the way I’d reacted the last time I’d been faced with this question. Which was why this time, my answer had to be no.

  But first, I lifted my hand, putting it on his chest, right over where I’d noticed his skin was flushed earlier. He closed his eyes, leaning into my palm, and I could feel him, warm, as I slowly pushed his shirt aside. Again, call it a bad feeling, a hunch, or whatever—but there, on his shoulder, the skin was not just pink but red and discolored, a broad bruise just beginning to rise. “Oh, Jesus,” I said, my voice catching. “Nate.”

  He moved closer, covering my hand with his, squeezing it, and then he was kissing me again, sudden and intense, as if trying to push down these words and everything that had prompted them. It was so hungry and so good that I was almost able to forget all that had led up to it. But not quite.