I started down the steps, and when I felt grass beneath my feet, my instinct was to stop, stay where I was. Instead, I started moving faster, enough to blow my hair back and feel a breeze on my skin. I knew I must look ridiculous, a girl in a formal dress, running alone down the grass. But at least I was doing it myself, each step a choice as I got closer to the water.
“Saylor?” April called out, spotting me, but I didn’t look for her, or anyone else, as I banged down the dock, gaining speed. I just had my eyes on the end, that leap to come, and in my mind I could see it as jumping past so many other things as well: the view behind the wheel, my neatly organized closet and room, Trinity’s judging face. Blake leaning in for that kiss, then Roo fixing my strap so carefully while I stood by, frozen. You can make your life, or life can make you. Was it really that simple of a choice?
As I hit the dock’s end and jumped, I wanted to see it, that change from passenger to driver, Emma to Saylor, watching to doing. So when I hit the cold lake and went under, I kept my eyes open.
Fourteen
Things move fast once you decide to get behind the wheel. Or maybe it just seems that way.
“Good. Now, wipe it with those newspapers. Rub in circles.”
Gordon did as she was told, her skinny arm moving across the mirror as Trinity, stretched out across the bed with her feet up, watched. “Like this?”
“Yes,” I said as I passed behind her with the bathroom trash can, then dumped it into the garbage bag by the unit’s door. “Be sure to take all the dust to the edge and off. That way you don’t leave any.”
“Listen to you,” Trinity said, turning a page in the magazine she was reading. “You sound like an expert.”
“I had a good teacher,” I said.
“Puh-leese,” Bailey groaned from the bathroom, where she was scrubbing the shower. “Don’t flatter her. She’s already acting enough like a princess.”
“I’mpregnant,” Trinity pointed out, unnecessarily. Herstomach was like a mountain when she was prone, blocking the view of her face from the end of the bed.
“And I’m working two jobs and we have Gordon on as child labor,” her sister replied. “So everyone’s suffering, not just you.”
It was true. Not so much about the suffering, but the extra hands on deck. The morning after the first official North Lake Prom, Trinity had woken up with some light spotting, which prompted a panicky trip to the ER. She wasn’t in labor, but they did put her on bed rest. That left only Mimi and me to clean rooms, so Bailey had been coming in afternoons after her shift at the Station as well as her days off, with Roo and Jack filling in as they could as well. When Gordon got strep throat and couldn’t go to camp, she’d been recruited as well. Somehow, we were getting both turnover and housekeeping done, although with two beginners and one super-reluctant veteran, I wasn’t exactly sure how.
The truth was, everything had been chaotic since that morning, and not just because of the bed rest and new workload. There was also the issue of my dad and Tracy’s return from Greece, scheduled for late that evening. The plan had been for them to return to Nana’s, who had just gotten home from her own trip, then come fetch me so we could all move over to the new house. But the “easy” remodel of Nana’s condo had hit a permitting snag. With our new house also still needing some work to pass inspection, I was now the only one with someplace to stay.
“I mean, we can do a hotel,” my dad had said the daybefore, calling from Athens, where he was about to board his plane. “But your grandmother...”
He didn’t finish this thought, not that he had to. Nana was used to a certain level of comfort. All she wanted to do was get back to her newly redone home, and now she couldn’t even do that.
I, however, felt like I’d been given a break by the universe. If the house wasn’t ready, I could just remain here for a while longer. When I floated this by my dad, though, he was not convinced.
“You’ve been there three weeks,” he told me. “We don’t want you to outstay your welcome.”
“I’m helping,” I pointed out. “They need me to clean rooms at the motel anyway.”
“You’re cleaning rooms at Calvander’s?”
Whoops. I bit my lip, realizing I shouldn’t have shared this. “Just because they’re short-staffed. With the baby coming and everything.”
“Baby?”
“Trinity. Celeste’s daughter? She’s having a baby really soon.”
“Who?”
I sighed, switching my phone to my other ear. Downstairs, I could hear Oxford in the kitchen, making coffee and rustling around with the paper. Even though it hadn’t been that long since I’d arrived, it was already hard to imagine a morning now that didn’t start this way. “The point is, I’m happy to stay here and I’m sure it’s okay with Mimi.”
“But what if I don’t want you to stay?” he replied.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
I heard some friction on the line. “Because,” he said, his voice quiet, “we’re starting a new life in a new house, as a new family. It seems only right we do it together.”
“But you just said the house wasn’t ready.”
