Lock and Key

  “Well,” I said. “I guess I’m not most people.”

  I felt him look at me as I turned my head, looking out the window again. My knowledge of this part of town was fairly limited, but from what I could tell, we were getting close to Wildflower Ridge, Jamie and Cora’s neighborhood, which meant it was time to change the subject. “So anyway, ” I said, shooting for casual, “I do appreciate the ride.”

  “No problem,” he said. “It’s not like we aren’t going to the same place.”

  “Actually . . .” I paused, then waited for him to look over at me. When he did, I said, “If you could just drop me off by a bus stop, that’d be great.”

  “Bus stop?” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, just to a friend’s house. I have to pick something up.”

  We were coming up to a big intersection now. Nate slowed, easing up behind a VW bug with a flower appliqué on the back bumper. “Well,” he said, “where is it?”

  “Oh, it’s kind of far,” I said quickly. “Believe me, you don’t want to have to go there.”

  The light changed, and traffic started moving forward. This is it, I thought. Either he takes the bait, or he doesn’t. It was four fifteen.

  “Yeah, but the bus will take you ages,” he said after a moment.

  “Look, I’ll be fine,” I said, shaking my head. “Just drop me off up here, by the mall.”

  The thing about negotiations, not to mention manipulation, is you can’t go too far in any direction. Refusing once is good, twice usually okay, but a third is risky. You never know when the other person will just stop playing and you end up with nothing.

  I felt him glance over at me again, and I made a point of acting like I didn’t notice, couldn’t see him wavering. Come on, I thought. Come on.

  “Really, it’s cool,” he said finally, as the entrance to the highway appeared over the next hill. “Just tell me where to go.”

  “Man,” Nate said as he bumped up the driveway to the yellow house, avoiding holes and a sizable stack of water-logged newspapers. Up ahead, I could already see my mom’s Subaru, parked just where I’d left it, gas needle on empty, that last day Peyton had picked me up for school. “Who lives here again?”

  “Just this girl I know,” I said.

  As far as I was concerned, this entire endeavor would be quick and painless. Get in, get what I needed, and get out, hopefully with as little explanation as necessary. Then Nate would take me back to Cora’s, and this would all be over. Simple as that.

  But then, just as we passed the bedroom window, I saw the curtain move.

  It was very quick, so quick I wondered if I’d seen anything at all—just a shift of the fabric an inch to the left, then back again. The exact way it would have to for someone to peer out and yet still not be seen.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting to find here. Maybe the Honeycutts, in the midst of some project. Or the house empty, cleaned out as if we’d never been here at all. This possibility, though, had never crossed my mind.

  Which was why Nate hadn’t even finished parking when I pushed open my door and got out. “Hey. Do you want—? ” I heard him call after me, but I ignored him, instead taking the steps two at time and arriving at the front door breathless, my fingers already fumbling for the key around my neck. Once I put it in the lock, the knob, familiar in my hand, turned with a soft click. And then I was in.

  "Mom? ” I called out, my voice bouncing off all the hard surfaces back at me. I walked into the kitchen, where I could see the clothesline was still strung from one wall to the other, my jeans and shirts now stiff and mildewy as I pushed past them. “Hello?”

  In the living room, there was a row of beer bottles on the coffee table, and the blanket we usually kept folded over one arm of the sofa was instead balled into one corner. I felt my heart jump. I would have folded it back. Wouldn’t I?

  I kept moving, pushing open my bedroom door and flicking on the single bulb overhead. This did look just like I’d left it, save for my closet door being left open, I assumed by whoever packed up the clothes that had been brought to me at Poplar House. I turned, crossing back into the living room and walking over to the other bedroom door, which was shut. Then I put my hand on the knob and closed my eyes.

  It wasn’t like making a wish or trying to dream something into being real. But in that moment, I tried to remember all the times I’d come home and walked to this same door, easing it open to see my mom curled up in her bed, hair spilling over the pillowcase, already reaching a hand to shield her eyes from the light behind me. This image was so clear in my mind that when I first pushed open the door, I was almost sure I did see a glimpse of red, some bit of movement, and my heart jumped into my throat, betraying in one instant all the emotions I’d denied to myself and everyone else in the last week. Then, though, just as quickly, something shifted. The objects and room itself fell into place: bed, dark walls . . . and that window, where I now remembered the bit of broken pane, half-taped up, where a breeze still could inch in, ruffling the curtain. I’d been mistaken. But even so, I stayed where I was, as if by doing so the room would, in the next moment, suddenly be anything but empty.

  “Ruby? ”

  Nate’s voice was low, tentative. I swallowed, thinking how stupid I was, thinking that my mom might have actually come back, when I knew full well that everything she needed she’d taken with her. “I’ll be done in a sec,” I said to him, hating how my voice was shaking.

  “Are you . . . ?” He paused. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, all business. “Yeah. I just have to grab something. ”

  I heard him shift his weight, taking a step, although toward me or away, I wasn’t sure, and not knowing this was enough to make me turn around. He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, the front door open behind him, turning his head slowly, taking it all in. I felt a surge of shame; I’d been so stupid to bring him here. Like I, of all people, didn’t know better than to lead a total stranger directly to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they’d be able to find their way back to it.

  “This place,” Nate said, looking at the bottles on the table, a lone cobweb stretching across the room between us, “it’s, like—”

  Suddenly there was a gust of wind outside, and a few leaves blew in the open door, skittering in across the kitchen floor. I felt so shaken, unsettled, that my voice was sharp as I said, “Just wait in the car. All right?”

  He looked at me for a second. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure thing.” Then he stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Stop it, I told myself, feeling tears pricking my eyes, so stupid. I looked around the room, trying to clear my head and concentrate on what I should take with me, but everything was blurring, and I felt a sob work its way up my throat. I put my hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking, and forced my feet to move.

  Think, think, I kept saying in my head as I walked back to the kitchen and began pulling stuff off the clothesline. Everything was stiff and smelly, and the more I took down the more I could see of the rest of the kitchen: the pots and pans piled in the sink, the buckets I’d used to collect water from the bathroom, the clothesline, now sagging over my head. I was doing just fine, I’d told Cora, and at the time, I’d believed it. But now, standing there with my stiff clothes in my arms, the smell of rotting food filling my nostrils, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  I reached up, wiping my eyes, and looked back out at Nate, who was sitting behind the wheel of his car, a cell phone to his ear. God only knew what he was thinking. I looked down at my clothes, knowing I couldn’t bring them with me, even though they, the few things in the next room, and that beat-up, broken-down Subaru were all I really had. As I dropped them onto the table, I told myself I’d come back for them and everything else, just as soon as I got settled. It was such an easy promise to make. So easy that I could almost imagine another person saying the same thing to themselves as they walked out that door, believing it, too. Al
most.

  I was not looking forward to the ride home, as God only knew what Nate would say to me, or how I would dodge the questions he would inevitably ask. So I decided, as I locked the door behind me, to go with a route I knew well: complete and total denial. I’d act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if this trip was exactly what I had expected it to be. If I was convincing enough, he’d have no choice but to see it the same way.

  I was all casual as I walked back to the car, playing my part. When I got in, though, I realized it wasn’t even necessary. He still had the phone clamped to his ear and didn’t even glance at me as he shifted into reverse, backing away from the house.

  While he was distracted, I took one last look at that window into my mom’s room. Talk about denial; even from a distance and in motion, I could tell there was no one inside. There’s something just obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

  “It’s not a problem,” Nate said suddenly, and I glanced over at him. He had his eyes on the road, his mouth a thin line as he listened to whoever was speaking. “Look, I can be there in ten minutes. Maybe even less than that. Then I’ll just grab it from her, and—”

  Whoever it was cut him off, their voice rising enough that I could hear it, though not make out specific words. Nate reached up, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, hitting the gas as we turned back onto the main road. “No . . .” He trailed off. “I just had to run this errand for school. Yeah. Yes. Okay.”

  He flipped the phone shut, dropping it with a clank into the console between our seats. “Problem?” I said.

  “Nah,” he said. “Just my dad. He’s a little . . . controlling about the business.”

  “You forgot to frost some cupcakes?”

  He glanced over at me, as if surprised I was capable of humor. “Something like that,” he said. “I have to make a stop on the way home. If you don’t mind.”

  “It’s your car,” I said with a shrug.

  As we merged onto the highway, the phone rang again. Nate grabbed it, glancing at the display, then flipped it open. “Hello? Yes. I’m on the way. On the highway. Ten minutes. Sure. Okay. Bye.”

  This time, he didn’t put the phone down, instead just keeping it in his hand. After a moment, he said, “It’s just the two of us, you know. Living together, working together. It can get . . . kind of intense.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Maybe it was because my mother was on my mind, but this came out before I even realized it, an unconscious, immediate reaction. It was also the last thing I wanted to be talking about, especially with Nate, but of course then he said, “Yeah?”

  I shrugged. “I used to work with my mom. I mean, for a while anyway.”

  “Really?” I nodded. “What’d you do?”

  “Delivered lost luggage for the airlines.”

  He raised his eyebrows, either surprised or impressed. “People really do that?”

  “What, you think they just get teleported to you or something? ”

  “No,” he said slowly, shooting me a look. “I just mean . . . it’s one of those things you know gets done. You just don’t actually think of someone doing it.”

  “Well,” I said, “I am that someone. Or was, anyway.”

  We were taking an exit now, circling around to a stop-light. As we pulled up to it, Nate said, “So what happened?”

  “With what?”

  “The luggage delivery. Why did you quit?”

  This time, I knew enough not to answer, only evade. “Just moved on,” I said. “That’s all.”

  Thankfully, he did not pursue this further, instead just putting on his blinker and turning into the front entrance of the Vista Mall, a sprawling complex of stores and restaurants. The parking lot was packed as we zipped down a row of cars, then another before pulling up behind an old green Chevy Tahoe. The back door was open, revealing an extremely cluttered backseat piled with boxes and milk crates, which were in turn filled with various envelopes and packing materials. A woman with red hair coiled into a messy bun wearing a fuzzy pink sweater and holding a to-go coffee cup in one hand was bent over them, her back to us.

  Nate rolled down his window. “Harriet,” he called out.

  She didn’t hear him as she picked up a crate, shoving it farther back. An empty coffee cup popped out and started to roll away, but she grabbed it, stuffing it in another box.

  “Harriet,” Nate repeated. Again, no answer as she bent deeper over a crate.

  “You’re going to have to be louder,” I told him as he was barely speaking above a normal tone of voice.

  “I know,” he said. Then he took a breath, wincing slightly, and put his hand on the horn.

  He only did it once, and it was quick: beep! Still, the woman literally jumped in the air. Completely vertical, feet off the ground, coffee spilling out of the cup backward, splattering the pavement. Then she whirled around, her free hand to her chest, and goggled at us.

  “Sorry,” Nate called out. “But you weren’t—”

  “What are you doing? ” she asked him. “Are you trying to give me a nervous attack?”

  “No.” He pushed open his door, quickly climbing out and walking over to her. “Here, let me get that. It’s these three? Or the crates, too?”

  “All of them,” the woman—Harriet?—said, clearly still flustered as she leaned against the Tahoe’s bumper, flapping a hand in front of her face. As Nate began to load the boxes into the back of his car, I noticed she was rather pretty, and had on a chunky silver necklace with matching earrings, as well as several rings. “He knows I’m a nervous person,” she said to me, gesturing at Nate with her cup. “And yet he beeps. He beeps!”

  “It was an accident,” Nate told her, returning for the last box. “I’m sorry.”

  Harriet sighed, leaning back against the bumper again and closing her eyes. “No,” she said, “it’s me. I’m just under this massive deadline, and I’m way behind, and I just knew I wasn’t going to get to the shipping place before they closed—”

  “—which is why you have us,” Nate finished for her, shutting his own back door with a bang. “I’m taking them over right now. No worries.”

  “They all need to go Ground, not Next Day,” she told him. “I can’t afford Next Day.”

  “I know.”

  “And be sure you get the tracking information, because they’re promised by the end of the week, and there’s been bad weather out West. . . .”

  “Done,” Nate told her, pulling his door open.

  Harriet considered this as she stood there clutching her coffee cup. “Did you drop off that stuff at the cleaners yesterday? ”

  “Ready on Thursday,” Nate told her.

  “What about the bank deposit?” she asked.

  “Dad did it this morning. Receipt is in the envelope in your mailbox.”

  “Did he remember to—”

  “—lock it back? Yes. The key is where you said to leave it. Anything else?”

  Harriet drew in a breath, as if about to ask another question, then slowly let it out. “No,” she said slowly. “At least not right at this moment.”

  Nate slid behind the wheel. “I’ll e-mail you all the tracking info as soon as I get home. Okay?”

  “All right,” she said, although she sounded uncertain as he cranked the engine. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Call if you need us.”

  She nodded but was still standing by her bumper, gripping her cup and looking uncertain, as we pulled away. I waited until we’d turned onto the main road again before saying, “That’s resting assured?”

  “No,” Nate said, his voice tired. “That’s Harriet.”

  By the time we pulled up to Cora’s, it was five thirty. Only a little over an hour had passed since he’d picked me up, and yet it felt like so much longer. As I gathered up my stuff, pushing the door open, his phone rang again; he glanced at the display, then back at me. “Dad’s getting
nervous,” he said. “I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

  I looked over at him, again taking in his solid good looks and friendly expression. Fine, so he was a nice guy, and maybe not entirely the dim jock that I’d pegged him as at first glance. Plus, he had helped me out, not once but twice, and maybe to him this meant my previous feelings about a carpool would no longer be an issue. But I could not so easily forget Peyton earlier on the other end of that pay-phone line, how quickly she had turned me down at the one moment I’d really needed her.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said.

  Nate nodded, flipping his phone open, and I shut the door between us. I wasn’t sure whether he had noticed I hadn’t answered his question, or if he’d even care. Either way, by the time I was halfway down the walk, he was gone.

  Earlier that morning, after we’d set up my schedule, Jamie headed off to work and Mr. Thackray started to walk me off to my English class. We were about halfway there when I suddenly heard Jamie calling after us.

  “Hold up!”

  I turned around, looking down the hallway, which was rapidly filling with people streaming out of their first class, and spotted him bobbing through the crowd. When he reached us, slightly out of breath, he smiled and held his hand out to me, gesturing for me to do the same.

  My first instinct was to hesitate, wondering what else he could possibly offer me. But when I opened up my hand, palm flat, and he dropped a key into it, it seemed ridiculous to have expected anything else.

  “In case you beat us home,” he said. “Have a good day!”

  At the time, I’d nodded, closing my hand around the key and slipping it into my pocket, where I’d totally forgotten about it until now, as I walked up to the front door of the house and pulled it out. It was small and on a single silver fob, with the words WILDFLOWER RIDGE engraved on the other side. Weird how it had been there all day, and I hadn’t even felt it or noticed. The one around my neck I was always aware of, both its weight and presence, but maybe that was because it was closer to me, where it couldn’t be missed.