“Of course,” Rima said, looking her over again, forehead creased. She hesitated, then went to her binder. Shepulled a thick sheaf of paper from the middle. “Here,” she said, proffering the pages to Caroline. “Why don’t you make a copy of mine? I have my notes on the scene changes in the margins.” Her mouth pursed again. “I don’t know how Sophia will feel about you running props during production, but maybe—”
Caroline couldn’t tell whether Rima’s offer was genuine or made out of obligation. Maybe she ought to just leave now and tell Adrian, if he ever asked, that she’d done what she said she would.
“You guys could probably use the help during rehearsal though,” Caroline said, not sure if that was actually correct.
“Yes, always,” Rima said. She paused. “Was it a lot of money? I’ll get it reimbursed for you.”
“Oh, um, really it wasn’t,” Caroline lied, not wanting to make it any more awkward. She squirmed and hefted the play. “I’ll make a copy and bring this back.” She walked briskly away, leaving the room before she realized that she didn’t know where a photocopier was in the theater complex. She could hardly go back and ask Rima though; she’d been weird enough already.
So she left the theater and set off for the business campus at a fast walk, aiming for the document center in the basement of the administration building.
It got dark so early during autumn in the Northeast. She still wasn’t used to it. Though it was barely five, the sun was down, and the campus was emptying out as people returned to their apartments and dormitories. Caroline braced her face against the wind. She wished she’d worn her big puffy coat, but she’d been afraid that she’d rip it on the crate. Crap, she hadn’t warned Rima about the crate.
She took the stairs to the basement two at a time, mindstill fretting over whether Rima would scrape a hand on the wood. She landed at the base like a vaulter, only then realizing that her phone was buzzing in her purse. The caller was her oldest sister. The screen displayed a picture of Kayla holding Caroline’s first niece in the hospital nursery.
Caroline immediately answered, checking as she did that the document center was still open and empty. She perched next to a spiral-binding machine, heart rate rising past the anxious tempo it had already set.
“Hey, what’s up?” Kayla asked, as casually as though it had not been over six months since they’d last spoken.
“I— Nothing much,” Caroline replied haltingly. She’d assumed that it would take an emergency to get a call from certain members of her family. Kayla especially. Her sister hadn’t even come to say goodbye when Caroline left for Boston.
Kayla exhaled, and Caroline heard vague traffic noises in the background. Based on the hour, Kayla was probably on her way home from her job as a receptionist at a Templeton construction firm.
“Yeah, so,” Kayla said, pretending that they were in the middle of some long conversation, rather than speaking after months of cold silence, “since you’re making Mom and Dad go up to see you for Thanksgiving, does that mean you’ll be home for Christmas? Matt was wondering if we could rent a place down by the lake for New Year’s.”
“I’m not making Mom and Dad come,” Caroline protested, attacking the predicate first.
Kayla snorted. “Or you’re boycotting Uncle Jay’s house, whatever. When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know,” Caroline said truthfully. She’d thought aboutnever.Neverhad been the plan when she climbedout the window to escape her dad and her uncle and the papers they wanted her to sign. Butneverwas feeling like an awfully long time recently, because it was hard going days without talking to anyone. “I think I’m going to France or Switzerland over Christmas,” she decided to explain. Adrian hadn’t mentioned it again, but there was no reason to think he was opposed, and it was still a couple of months off.
“Why Switzerland? What’s in Switzerland?”
“That’s where they make Swiss chocolate,” Caroline said, regretting how snotty she sounded as soon as the words were out. “I mean. Um. Art Basel. It’s an art show.”
“You’re going to Switzerland by yourself?”
Caroline hesitated, wondering if Kayla was concerned or just probing for information.
“No, with a friend,” she replied.
There was a moment of silence while Kayla waited for more detail, which Caroline did not provide.
“This isn’t the guy you met on the Internet who you told Mom about, is it?”
Caroline scowled. “So what if it is? Why can’t I go to Europe with a friend?”
Kayla made a deep noise of discomfort. “You don’t know anything about this stuff yet, okay? People can be really terrible, especially strangers you meet on the Internet! Does he know about your money?”
Caroline sucked in a breath to defend Adrian, who’d never asked for a cent more than they’d agreed, but it occurred to her that she was the person Kayla really thought was going to screw things up. “Okay, well, how am I supposed tolearnabout this stuff? How was I supposed to meet anyone at home? Dad didn’t even let me go to high school or live in the dorms in college—”
“Do you notremembersophomore year? When people were pushing you into lockers and tossing your backpack in the dumpster every day? That’s why Dad pulled you out,” Kayla insisted. That made their dad sound like such an altruist, as though he hadn’t been thrilled that Caroline could put in extra hours of tennis practice once she was just doing classes online.
“Maybe the people at our high school just sucked,” Caroline said, even though her eyes had started to prickle at her sister’s interrogation.
“And all the people you played tennis with in college just sucked too?” Kayla pressed, probably thinking of the girls who’d pretended to forget Caroline’s name every fall for four years, or the guy she’d thought was her boyfriend but hadn’t been.
Caroline’s chest heaved. “I just didn’t know how to handle people yet.”
