Noah went through the cabinets, making a mental note of what ingredients we had and what we needed to stock up on.
‘We’re good on tahini, olive oil, chickpeas, paprika …’ Doors and drawers banged as he searched. ‘Okay, maybe we can do a quick run to the sundry store. We can take the golf cart. Mom left the keys.’
The keys were still, somehow, miraculously glowing in the sun.
That reminded me – Finn had offered to give me a driving lesson on the golf cart, but had never gone through with it. Maybe …
‘I can see the gears turning,’ said Noah. ‘What’s going on in that head of yours?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Can I drive?’
Noah looked surprised. ‘You, behind a wheel?’
‘It’s just a little wheel, though. And we’d be going in basically a straight line along an empty road. It’s not like I’d be commuting to work on it.’
‘I hope not, because the charge wouldn’t hold long enough to get you back into the city.’ He gave me a sidelong look.‘All right. Just so long as I have your full permission to grab the wheel in the event that … a deer runs out in front of us or something.’
‘Or something, huh.’ I grinned. ‘Very gracious.’
‘I’m entrusting you with my life, Molly.’ His expression was serious, but I could see the mirth in his eyes.
I grabbed a handful of reusable shopping bags and followed him out to the garage, where the cheerful pink golf cart waited. Along with a bunch of Charlie’s effects, I realized, as I ran my gaze over the neatly stacked and labelled boxes. Noah swallowed as he saw them, then steeled himself.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked gently.
He nodded. ‘I mean, no, not really. But I’m getting through the days. Painting is helping. Studying for law school is helping. Being around people I care about is helping.’
He didn’t mean Meryl, because Meryl wasn’t in the picture any more. He meant me.
I ducked my gaze, painfully aware of how close he was standing. My ring smarted.
‘Earth to Molly?’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry. Just … thinking.’
Noah nodded, his gaze flicking over to his dad’s boxes. ‘The memories are hard, I know. I keep trying to come to terms with the fact that things will never be the same. But it’s more easily said than done.’
More easily said than done. Wasn’t that life in a nutshell, I thought.
He blinked, as though emotionally shaking himself off. ‘Well, shall we blow this joint?’
‘Yes, but very, very slowly,’ I said as I climbed aboard the golf cart and pressed the ‘on’ button. I clicked the key over to ‘forward’, then lightly tapped the accelerator. The golf cart crawled across the polished concrete.
‘I’m doing it!’ I squealed, bobbing up and down in my seat as we inched out of the garage and down the driveway.
‘Just be gentle when we turn out onto the street,’ said Noah, whose knuckles were white against his seat. ‘These things have a pretty low centre of gravity, but they can topple if you’re not careful.’
I chewed on my lip in concentration as I swung the golf cart to the left. I took the turn so wide that I almost knocked over a trash can and then a mailbox, but the golf cart prevailed. So did a nearby hedge.
‘How am I doing?’ I asked as we chugged along the street, veering slightly to the left or right here and there, but on average moving in a straight line.
‘You’re doing a great job,’ said Noah, who looked as though he’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes.
‘You should sketch this,’ I said, grinning. ‘Mom will never believe it without evidence.’
Waiting for his response, I took my eye off the road. Apparently, even when you were cruising at about five miles an hour, this was a bad idea, because a picket fence suddenly loomed before us. It turned out that in a scary situation my default mode was flight, because I dropped my hands from the steering wheel and shrank backwards.
Noah leaned over me, grabbing the wheel and scooting my foot off the accelerator, letting the cart roll to a safe stop. A woman walking a chihuahua while simultaneously texting gave us a wide berth. I suspected she was reporting us for reckless driving on the local Facebook page.
