December 23
Laura
It was hard to concentrate on anything but the night ahead as they drove up to Beacon, but Laura didn’t have a choice. Charlie kept asking her questions about all the roadside stops they’d make when she was going up to visit her grandmother as a child, and she kept having to make up lies.
“Yes, we used to go to that Stewart’s Drive-In all the time, and my dad would get a float but with chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, and my mom thought it was super gross,” Laura said as they passed the old stand. Or, “I don’t know this stretch as well; Gram used to take some country back road that she never told anyone about because she was afraid it would get filled with traffic.”
The truth was that Laura had never been to Beacon, New York, in her entire life. She picked it because it was far enough away for Charlie to have trouble getting home if he wanted to run away—or rather, when. There wasn’t a bus stop in town and the trains stopped running at nine o’clock in the evenings. The cabin she found might have belonged to someone’s grandmother, at some point, but her own Gram died long before Sarah and Lexi were born and ironically lived in California for her entire life. This was a small cabin at a good price on a remote piece of land where there was no cellphone reception. That last detail had been the selling point for Laura when she searched for weekend rentals online—that and the fact that there weren’t any photos of the owner’s family in the pictures she could see online. Laura would tell Charlie that her family rented the property out when they could so they didn’t keep any photos of themselves around, for safety. She would also tell him that this was her first time coming up alone, so she didn’t know exactly how to open the house or turn everything on—her parents or Gram always did those tasks. Otherwise she had taken care of studying the map to the grocery store, pizza place, lake area, and The Roundhouse for their dinner date so she would seem like a total local.
Though, so far, none of that prep seemed like it was going to matter. Charlie believed every word of what Laura was saying. She assumed that was because all he could really focus on was what he thought was going to happen that night. Laura had been hinting at the fireplace, the wine she’d smuggled, and the little, red something she was going to wear after dinner…the hints worked. The truth was that Laura was planning for a little, red, lace surprise before dinner. She had a feeling that Charlie wouldn’t exactly be in the mood after their meal.
Charlie’s reaction was the one wild card in this entire plan. Laura could not predict it, but she decided that, no matter what happened after she said everything she planned to say, it didn’t matter. She could vanish just as easily as she arrived if need be. But deep down Laura didn’t think there would be the need. She had crafted a pretty impressive offer for Charlie, and she did not believe he would refuse.
Laura slouched down in the passenger seat of her car and covered her shoulders with the blankets Charlie brought. He insisted that they drive the whole way with the top down even though it was the end of December. She insisted that they drive her car because it was new and more reliable—and because she would be holding the keys if his reaction was to try and escape.
The heat was blasting and they were both wearing sleeping bag-style coats and hats with the floppy fuzzy ears and gloves. Charlie had on one of those ridiculous face guards that covered everything but his eyes, nose, and mouth, but as Laura looked over at him, she could still see his big, goofy smile. It hadn’t changed since the day she met him in Mrs. Berenson’s seventh grade class—aside from these past four months, of course.
Sorry, Charlie, Laura thought to herself. That smile will probably be wiped away again for a few months more, but eventually it will be back, and you’ll realize I was right all along.