He came back to my face like he was just catching up.
"Yeah." A slow exhale. The corner of his mouth turned up. "Of course. Sorry."
"Don't be."
He set his mug down and pushed off the counter.
"Come on. I'll walk you out the front."
He led me down a short hallway lined with photographs I didn't let myself look at too long. Past a living room with a couch and a folded blanket on the arm of it, and a guitar case leaningagainst the wall. Past a closed door, I assumed was a bedroom, which I tried very hard not to think about.
Moose padded behind us like a dog on a state visit. He looked back at Penny once on his way past her rug.
At the front door, Easton stepped around me and opened it.
He stood with one hand on the frame.
"Friday," he said.
"Friday. With pants."
A beat. He worked very hard at keeping a straight face, failing at it the way he'd been failing at it all morning.
"Pants is a strong opening offer."
"You'll have a shirt on."
He scratched the back of his neck and looked at the floor between us.
"Two of 'em, if it helps."
I almost laughed.
"Thank you," I said. "Again. For the shirt. And the not-laughing-too-hard."
"Anytime."
I gathered Moose by the collar, stepped past him onto the porch, and made it two steps down before the door clicked shut behind me.
I walked down his front walk in his T-shirt, with my dog under my fingertips, and made it to the end of his driveway before I heard the car.
I didn't have to look. I knew the sound. I knew the car. I could already see how the next two minutes were going to go.
I looked anyway.
Audrey's gray Subaru was rolling up Maple at the pace of a hearse. It slowed when she saw me. It pulled to a stop at the curb in front of my own house, directly across the street from where I was standing.
The driver's window came down.
Audrey leaned her elbow on it and looked at me from across Maple Avenue. Scrubs. Full lipstick. A paper bag from the bakery on her passenger seat. Audrey didn't leave the hospital in anything less than a performance condition.
I considered running. I considered fainting in the driveway. I considered casually walking back up Easton's front walk, knocking on his door, and asking him to also lend me a pair of pants and a passport.
I did none of those things.
I crossed the street.
I crossed it slowly because there was nowhere to hide and no version of this where speed would help. I crossed the way you cross a field when the whole town is watching, which, given that the Hallorans' window faces Maple, was probably technically true.
