I looked away.
“Fletcher. Daddy wants to say hi to you.” Margaux’s voice came from inside.
I straightened up.
August didn’t look at me. She kept her eyes on the water. “Go,” she said. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
I went in.
I couldn’t sleep.
Margaux was out the second her head hit the pillow, the four glasses of wine having done the trick. She breathed slow and even next to me while I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling and waited for the dark to do what it always eventually did.
It always caught up.
That was the thing about the dark. You could be fine all day. You could be in a kitchen making salad, you could be on a patio listening to someone talk about flower spreadsheets, you could be watching a sunset turn pink over the water, and you could feel, for minutes or even hours at a time, like a person who was mostly okay.
And then it came back.
I got up. I got dressed in the dark, slow and quiet. I picked my car keys up off the nightstand.
The house was still. I went down the stairs and through the front door and I closed it behind me without a sound.
The driveway. The car. The dark road out of Sable Cove.
I drove.
I didn’t have a direction. I never did, on these nights. I just drove until the house was far enough behind me that I could breathe, and then I kept driving because stopping didn’t help. The road was empty at this hour, just the headlights and the dark and the sound of the engine.
The man who was dead because of me lay buried two hours from here.
And here I was, enjoying a summer retreat with my family.
It was not fair.
Nothing about it was fair.
I drove on a road next to the coast, the ocean somewhere to my right, black and invisible and loud. I thought about August on the patio with her chin up and her eyes clear and her plans for a flower shop, and I thought about Paul Greer in the ground two hours away, and I thought about what I was and what I had done and what I could never undo.
She could not be near me.
Every time I got too close to wanting something good, I would remember this. I would remember what I had traded for a clean balance sheet and a pat on the back from my father. I wouldremember the name. I would come back to this road in the dark and I would remember.
I drove until the clock on the dashboard said 3 a.m.
Then I turned around and drove back.
***
Chapter 7
August
Margaux was helping Jennifer in the kitchen.
Callie and I were setting the patio table. Callie had the placemats. I had the cutlery. We both stopped at the same time and looked through the open french doors at Margaux, who was standing at the counter next to Jennifer, wearing a plain white linen top and wide-leg trousers, handing Jennifer things from the counter when she asked for them.
Callie looked at me.
