“Why would she just go?” Callie said. “In the middle of the night? Without saying anything?”
I looked at the note in her hands.
“When I was on the patio last night,” I said. “Was August near the door?”
Callie looked up slowly.
“She was going to come out and say something to Margaux.” Callie’s voice had gone very careful. “She felt bad that Margaux felt unwanted. She was going to—” She stopped. Her eyeschanged. “Fletcher. Was Margaux saying something about her that she might have heard?”
“It’s not Margaux,” I said. “It’s me.”
I didn’t say anything else. I turned around and went back down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the front door.
I got in the car.
I put the key in. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands. I stared at the driveway.
I turned the key.
The engine came on.
I was about to press the gas pedal with all the force my feet could muster, when it occurred to me.
What am I doing?
The question arrived before I could stop it. I sat with the engine running and the driveway in front of me and I thought about what came after this. I would drive two hours to Millhaven. I’d knock on her door. She’d open it. And then what?
I’m sorry, August. I’m sorry for what you heard. I said all that because I wanted to protect you. From the world, and from myself.
And then what?
Would I tell her I’d been in love with her for five years? Would I tell her that she was the only person who completed me? Would I also tell her about the dark road after midnight I took almost everyday and about Paul Greer’s son growing up without a dad because of me?
If I pulled her toward me, all of it would come with her. Everything I was. Everything I’d done. Every dark thing I had been carrying alone because it was mine to carry and not hers.
She did not deserve a man who got someone killed.
I turned the engine off.
I sat in the quiet car for another minute. Then I got out and went back inside.
Callie was in the kitchen.
She had changed into a tank top and shorts and she was standing with her arms crossed and she looked at me when I came through the door with a look that asked a question she already knew the answer to.
I said nothing.
“You’re not going after her,” she said.
“It’s better this way.”
“Fletcher—”
“It’s better this way, Callie.”
She shook her head. Slow and deliberate. “You’re impossible,” she said. “You know that? You are a coward. You are an actual, complete coward.”
“Callie.”
