There are some things, she thinks,you can’t let go.Morrow presses Send, then drops the phone back into the tote, leaving it behind as she joins the cluster of her fellow hostages once more.
From a few feet away, Blythe looks at each of the women around her and wonders how long they will all be here. Other than Nadine, she doesn’t even know their names. She would feel silly asking. This is not a social gathering. It’s a hostage situation. The two words strung together,hostageandsituation, fall on her, heavy and dark. Does this mean she is a hostage? Like in the movies? Blythe can’t process that this is really happening. To her.
At the windows, Tommy is clearly drunk, now pacing and muttering, with no plan—at least that Blythe can see—in place. She doubts this outcome was his goal. She doubts he had a goal at all beyond convincing Nadine to tear up those papers. The situation just got out of hand. Blythe can sort of understand this. She understands better than most how things can get out of hand. But that is no reason to pull a gun on people and make things worse.
She decides she should probably do what Morrow just did while Tommy’s not watching. She plucks her phone from her back pocket. The first thing she does is hit the single button on the side five times, sending a silent alert to authorities. She doubts the older women know how to do this, so she figures she should. Unless he spots her with her phone, Tommy won’t be the wiser, and she can’t take the risk that the women who got away didn’t call the police.
At least now she has the assurance that comes with doing something, anything to help herself. And isn’t that what she was here to do in the first place? To help herself? With that thought she goes to her most recent text. She glances to make sure Tommy is still preoccupied before she reads the words in the little speech bubbles.
First she scans the ones exchanged between her and her mom as she stood in line, waiting her turn. There are her words of doubt, her mother’s words of assurance. The last text from her mom says simply:
What can it hurt?
She checks to make sure Tommy’s back is still turned before looking at her last text, sent moments before everything happened.
Her: I’m at the post office. I’m sending it now.
Him: Thank you. That means a lot.
Now she writes,Still in the post office. I mailed it. But now I think I’m in a hostage situation.She wants to add a joke, make light of it. Like,So if I die it’s all your fault.But she doesn’t. Because this isn’t something to joke about.
She watches to see if the ellipsis that tells her he is writing back appears on the screen, hoping he’ll respond before Tommy spies what she’s doing. But no dots appear. She decides it’s too risky to keep her phone out any longer, so she sticks it back into her pocket just as Tommy turns back to his captives. His face looks like he is surprised they are all there.
“What?” he asks the room. He huffs and stomps over to the counter where he left the bourbon just before the woman with the basket walked in. He goes to reach for it at the same time that he realizes it’s not there. Blythe looks at Nadine, who is looking at Tommy, her eyes wide, her mouth a straight line.
“Gimme my bottle,” he says to her.
“I didn’t touch your bottle,” says Nadine.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” he says. “Where’d you hide it?”
“I didn’t, Tommy,” she says and sighs heavily. “Doesn’t matter to me if you drink the whole bottle. You can drink yourself to death for all I care.” She shrugs. If she is frightened, she’s doing a good job of hiding it. Nadine points to the shipping area where Tommy fired the gun. “We were back there, and then we came in here. I didn’t have time to touch your precious bottle.”
Nadine might not be scared. But Blythe is. Tommy is unhinged and armed. Anything could happen.
And to think last night she’d spent the evening believing her engagement dinner was as bad as her life could get. Now she would happily return to Aaron’s family home and the cringefest that was supposed to be a special celebration. In her own defense, she wasn’t the one who’d invited her mother.
She was going to tell Rosie, her future mother-in-law, that her mother had to work, which wouldn’t have been a big leap. Her mother works all the time. This would not have been the first significant event she’d missed. But Rosie had intervened, going so far as to friend her mother on Facebook and inviting her beforeBlythe could offer the excuse. To Rosie, known for the from-scratch cakes for every special occasion, slow-cooked pot roasts for Sunday dinner, and family photos placed everywhere because, as she always says, “Memories are what make a family,” there was no question her mother would make the nearly three-hour drive to Sunset Beach to celebrate her only child’s engagement.
And so, thanks to Rosie’s insistence, Blythe’s mother had showed up at Aaron’s parents’ house, registered its quaint modesty, and shifted her countenance to permanent “resting disapproval face” for the night. Blythe had clocked it from the moment she entered the room, her stomach twisting at the sight, taking the joy right out of the joyful celebration.
It is because of her mother that she is here. Her mother, plus unwisely opening a bottle of wine back at her house after the party, topped off with Blythe’s relentless inability to stop vying for her mother’s approval. She looks at the place on the counter where Tommy’s bottle was before it disappeared and thinks about the place behind the counter where Nadine dropped her package. She wonders if Nadine would allow her to take her package back now. Does she want to take it back?
Before she can ponder the answer to that question, her phone vibrates in her back pocket. She wants to see if he has answered the text she just sent, to seehowhe will respond, which will tell her a lot. Maybe all she needs to know. But first she needs to divert Tommy, who is searching for his bottle all around the room. Blythe musters up her courage and tells a lie. It isn’t the first she’s told today. The other one she feels bad about, but this one she doesn’t.
“I think that lady who ran out the back had it with her,” she says, ignoring her pounding heart. “Pretty sure I saw a bottle in her hand.”
Tommy looks from Nadine to Blythe, then back again. He shakes his head and makes apssstsound, then goes to the windows to resume his pacing and muttering, giving up his search. Nadine mouths, “Thank you,” to her, and Blythe nods, then retrieves her phone from her back pocket, sure it is him. Maybe he will say something that will make her feel like she has come here and done the right thing. But it is just a text from the dentist’s office, reminding her she has an appointment tomorrow, an appointment she’s starting to wonder if she will make.
Chapter 9
Not very far from the post office, Hope is walking to work. She is not hurrying because she has left herself enough time to make it at a regular pace. Tired from her run, she thought about driving to work just this once. But one of the small pleasures of living at 108, of living in this small town, is her ability to walk to work. This was something she could not do back home, and Hope does not take it for granted now.
As she walks, her mind goes back to those flowers. She is feeling a little guilty about not putting them in water before she left. She could’ve taken the time to take care of the flowers and driven to work, but she didn’t. She is pondering why, wondering if she just doesn’t care, if she is that heartless, when her phone rings. She does not have to look at it to know who is calling. Hope left a lot behind when she fled Philadelphia, but not her husband, Alex. He hasn’t let her. The flowers are just another example of his persistence. When she left, he’d told her to take all the time she needs, but she’s pretty sure he never expected it to take this long.
She thinks about ignoring the call—she’s almost to work, after all; it isn’t a good time—but she knows she’s just putting off the inevitable. Better to get to work without the guilt over neglecting the flowersandignoring her husband who sent them hanging over her head her whole shift. He has been understanding. He’s kept his word and given her all the time she needs. The least shecan do is answer when he calls. It’s bad enough she has left his flowers, a romantic gesture many women would swoon over, to potentially die.But maybe they won’t, a little voice inside her says.Maybe you’ll be surprised.
“Hello?” she asks, as if she doesn’t know it’s him.
