“Then maybe you should have come with me to Montreal back then. You’d have made a way better journalist, Luc Bergmann. Oh, right. You got rejected.”
Luc winces. “Look, Stephanie, I get it, you hate this place. You’re better than us. But then you expect everyone here to bring you the answers you’re looking for on a silver platter. And why should they do that, if you despise them so much?”
“You sound just like Laura.”
“Then maybe you should listen to Laura every once in a while.”
“Oh, if I listened to Laura, I’d never get anywhere in life, that’s for sure.”
He gives me that look again. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, but the implication is thick in the air. I didn’t get very far in life regardless. And he may be right, but hey, at least I tried.
“If you want to talk about aiming low, maybe glance in the mirror,” I snap.
He starts the engine. “Where do you want to look next?”
But I let the question sail over my head. “Marrying Cath? Of all people, Cath? You didn’t have to follow me to the city or stay here and wait, but did it have to be Cath? You always hated her, remember? You said she was a shitty person and a psycho and that she’d ruin my life!”
Luc stoically pulls away from the curb and drives down Main in the direction we came from. He’s at the speed limit this time, even a little over.
“What? No answer?” I know I’m going too far, but I can’t make myself stop.
“She’s not that bad,” he says lamely.
“Yes, she is that bad! She was always that bad!”
“It didn’t stop you from being best friends with her,” he points out.
“Yeah, in high school!”
I feel shitty just saying it. He’s right, and I don’t really have an excuse. He shoots me a glance that says it all. “You know, Stephanie—”
“High school isn’t the real world,” I blurt. “This town isn’t the real world. And you’re the last person who should be lecturing others about how to live their lives.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the tendons pop in his jaw. Main Street whirs past the window. Then the rows and rows of bungalows disappear too. We emerge on my street, lined with other mobile homes.
I almost die of relief when I see the beat-up old Honda in Laura’s driveway.
“I guess she came back home,” I say.
“Uh-huh.”
“That means that’s it for us.”
“Yup.”
I feel like a colossal piece of shit, but my pride won’t let me admit it. “Thanks for driving me around,” I say lamely.
“No problem. Do you need help getting out?”
Stupid Luc and his stupid manners. It makes it so hard to hate him. “No. Thanks, though.”
I climb out of the truck and come this close to tripping over my crutch and falling on my face right into the gravel. I guess I deserved that.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll see you around.”
I watch him drive off as I hobble to the front door.
I tug on the handle. The door rattles in its frame but doesn’t open. Shit. You’ve got to be kidding me.
It takes way longer than it normally would to retrieve the poorly hidden key and, balancing on one leg, get the lock to open. By the time I manage this feat, I’m sweating and hella angry at Laura. First, church visits, and now she’s locking doors. She has a lot of explaining to do.
But the house greets me with emptiness.
I lean my crutch against the wall and struggle out of my jacket. “Laura?” No answer. Goddammit. “Laura!”
Where the hell is she? She could be on the back porch, but she would have heard me come in.
“She’s a little out of it, I’m afraid,” says a familiar voice.
Frank emerges from the back room, in civilian clothes.
“Oh,” I say.
“Your call worried me,” he says. “It really did sound like she was in the state of mind to harm herself. So I went to have a look around, asked some people, and finally found her, drunk out of her mind. I thought it was a better idea to drive her home. I didn’t want anything bad to happen.”
“You took her car?” I ask.
