Fletcher
I opened my eyes at six in the morning and my first thought was — August.
Not the ceiling. Not the light coming in under the curtains. Not the sound of the ocean or Margaux breathing next to me.
August.
How was she? Was she okay? I had held her on that rug last night with her knees gone and her eyes full of something I had not been able to name, and she had looked at me like she was very far away from me even though she was right there, and I had not been able to stop thinking about it for the entire night.
Sleep had come around three. When it came, I dreamt I was at the Millhaven Farmer’s Market. August’s booth was there — but August wasn’t. I walked the whole market looking for her. Every booth, every aisle, every turn. I kept walking. I kept looking. She wasn’t anywhere.
I woke up from that dream feeling worse than I had before I slept.
Margaux was still sleeping, breathing slow and even, her hair spread across the pillow. I got up carefully. I got dressed. I went downstairs.
The house was quiet. Six in the morning quiet, the kind that meant everyone was still somewhere between asleep and awake. I went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine and stood there listening to it run.
Something was fluttering on the counter.
A piece of paper, held down by the corner of the cookie jar, moving slightly in the draft from the open window above the sink. I walked over and picked it up.
Dear Jennifer and Douglas, I had some urgent work come up at home. Thank you for everything — for always making me feel so welcome. I’m so sorry to miss the goodbye. All my love, August.
I read it twice.
I put it back down on the counter.
She had heard me.
She had been behind that curtain.
She’s a nobody.
I took the stairs two at a time. Maybe she hadn’t left yet. Maybe she was still in her room.
The door to her room was open. I could see it from the top of the landing. Open, not closed. I went down the hallway and stood in the doorway and looked at the room. The bed was made. Not just straightened — made properly, the way you made a bed when you were leaving somewhere and didn’t want to leave a mess behind. Her bags were gone. The windowsill was empty. The water glass she’d put the dahlia in was still there, sitting dry on the sill.
She was gone.
I knocked on Callie’s door.
Then I knocked again, harder.
Callie opened it. Her hair was everywhere and her eyes were half-closed and Poppy appeared behind her shoulder like a small, sleepy ghost.
“Where is August?” I said.
Callie looked at me. Then she looked at August’s open door down the hall. She woke up faster than I’d seen her wake up in thirty years of being her brother.
“What—”
“Did she say anything to you last night? Did she tell you she was leaving?”
“No. Fletcher, what—”
“Check your door. Her note.”
Callie looked at the floor. There was a folded piece of paper that had been slipped under her door. She picked it up. She unfolded it. She read it. Her face did something complicated.
