It was eight o’clock that evening, and Merritt sat at the workstation in the back of Hellenic Hardware, polishing a Greenman door knocker. Soaked, polished, and oiled, the door knockers burned with the same luster they must have had when they were first forged. Ordinarily, she would have been delighted. The day before she had learned that Avery would be at the reunion, she had cleaned forty-eight ceramic fuse holders. It had taken all day. She had been perfectly happy…well, maybe not perfectly happy, but she’d enjoyed every fuse. Now everything grated on her. The heat of the day hung in the air. The Pride House interns had been dreaming of the Nostalgia-rom fundraiser they were nominally involved in planning, and they wouldn’t leave. She heard something clatter.
“What are you still doing here?” Merritt called more sharply than she intended.
One of the interns bounced over to her, a mop of silky blond hair falling in his eyes. He was nineteen. He’d been homeless for almost two years before Tate Grafton had caught him stealing scones from one of her coffee shops and had brought him to the Pride House. Merritt thought two years on the street would harden anyone, but Alex was enthusiastic, childlike, and incompetent. Usually she found the combination endearing.
“I told you to go home an hour ago.”
“I love it here.” Alex bounced on his toes. “Me and Cassie are working on decorations for the Nostalgia-rom, and Cassie was wondering if we could move the windows.”
Merritt took off the reading glasses she wore for the detail work of restoration. She set them down with a sigh. “The Nostalgia-rom is on September twenty-second. Last day of summer. It’s July. Go home.”
Alex twisted his hands behind his back as he bounced. “We need room for another bar. I am going to get lit!”
“You’re not,” Merritt said. “You’re nineteen.”
“But I’ve got an ID.”
“And I know who you are. Cut it up, or I’m telling your counselors.” Merritt looked back at her work, tracing the curves of the Greenman’s face with a Q-tip. “Go. It’s late.”
She had had a fake ID when she was a teenager. She remembered buying whiskey for Avery. They had sat beneath the Saint Johns Bridge—their bridge—drinking out of plastic cups. Merritt had felt embarrassed. All the girls at Vale nipped a little champagne, but the whiskey had suddenly seemed like a ruffian’s choice. Avery looked so debonair in her pink-and-gray argyle sweater. Merritt hadn’t gained any weight since she was sixteen, but she had grown taller and her jeans had exposed an inch of ankle.
Avery had sipped her whiskey. Do your parents let you drink?
Peach schnapps in my baby bottle. Merritt had wanted Avery to laugh, but Avery had taken her hand.
No! Really?
Merritt conceded that yes. On the yacht before her first boarding school, her mother would pour a little schnapps into a cup of juice and tell her to go play on her own. She hadn’t meant to tell Avery, and she’d tried to laugh it off. Avery had put an arm around her shoulders. That’s child abuse, she’d said very seriously. Do you want me to tell someone? Merritt had breathed in Avery’s perfume. What are they going to do? she’d joked. Take me out of the home? Then she’d lain down on the grass and nestled her head in Avery’s lap. It had felt self-indulgent, like she was taking advantage. How could kind, concerned Avery say, I’m sorry your parents tried to liquor you up, but your head is awfully close to my crotch. Move! But Avery hadn’t seemed to mind, and she had stroked Merritt’s hair and traced the contours of her face: her eyebrows, her jawline, her lips, until the pleasure of her caresses was too much and Merritt had stood up and paced down to the river.
But she was never going to see Avery again, so it didn’t make sense to linger in these memories. She would never see her again, except that she kept googling images of Avery Crown. Maybe she had OCD. Compulsions: something you couldn’t not do. One last time, she told herself. Then she was done. Forever.
Merritt picked up her phone. The images loaded slowly. What was she looking for? Proof that Avery hadn’t stolen the Elysium? Proof that she had? Proof that Merritt herself should have been kinder?
Go back to Alistair.
I am not your friend.
I’ll tell them.
I don’t want you in my life.
Her own words had begun to haunt her. She accused Lei-Ling of believing everything on television. There were ten people living in a cave in Nevada who still thought reality TV was real. But maybe Iliana was right. Did reality television hosts actually do any of the things they seemed to do? She’d been mean. She never yelled at women. Iliana would say she wasn’t just yelling at Avery, but she was yelling at her mother and her boarding schools and Uncle Oli for dying.
She stared at her phone. The images had loaded. She recognized most of them. A hundred glamour shots. A few outtakes. Avery and Alistair sitting on a curb looking tired but happy, Alistair passing a coffee cup to Avery and Avery looking at him as if to say, We can do this.
Merritt scrolled down, then stopped short. She hadn’t seen the next photograph. It was Avery lying on pavement, blood on her cheek. She kept scrolling. An ambulance. A stretcher. Alistair clasping Avery’s hand as EMTs carried her off. Merritt touched one of the photos and it redirected to a blog called The Ponza Scheme. The text read, Singer-songwriter DX may have mastered the highest jump in the Care for Kids Fun-Raiser Bike Ride, but television hostess with the mostest Avery Crown was not so lucky. Bystanders said it was clear that the Decor Diva couldn’t make the jump and she went for it anyway. Competition with her BFF, DX, or something more?
Merritt gripped her phone. The article was dated that day. That afternoon!
Merritt raced through the possibilities. Surgery? Brain damage? She saw Avery’s body in the dim light of the Jupiter Hotel. Avery had wanted her. For one delicate moment between orgasm and sleep, Merritt had been perfectly happy. Her heart seized with tenderness. She had planned on being angry at Avery for years, but not forever. Somehow she imagined they would always reconnect. At another reunion perhaps, she would see Avery at a distance, hesitate for a minute, then walk toward her, time slowing around them. I didn’t think I would see you again, she would say. And Avery would open her arms. Merritt, I missed you.
Merritt’s hands were trembling so much it took her several seconds to search for directions to the Extended Stay Deluxe.
“What about we paint the whole floor blue?” Alex was at her side again. “And then we get one of those projectors—”
Merritt stood up and grabbed her shop keys off a hook by the cash register. “Don’t touch anything. Lock up and get out of here. You. Cassie. Now.”
“You’re going to let me close the shop?”
Merritt was already running for her truck.
Rush hour had slowed the city to a crawl, and Merritt beat her palm on the steering wheel. She had missed Avery so much. The realization hit her like a wrecking ball hitting a load-bearing wall: It might be too late. She thought she had time to be angry, but what if she didn’t? Merritt prayed as she pulled onto I-84. If she’s okay, I’ll do anything. She would sell the hardware store. She would drive down to California, to some dusty-stucco, barred-window barrio. She would work construction like she did when Uncle Oli died. She would get a burner phone and eat from the mini-mart. She would live in a hovel. If only Avery was okay, she would give everything up. She offered a silent prayer.
* * *
She realized how foolish she was when she reached the Extended Stay Deluxe. Avery had said she was staying in room 1313. Doubly unlucky. But Avery was in the hospital. Maybe she’d been airlifted to Seattle. She wouldn’t be at her motel on Airport Way.