Page 56 of The Quiet After The Fall

“Anyway.” I straighten, hitching my bag higher. “Marcello’s is fine. My mom’s excited, so.”

“Yeah.” She pushes off the car and pulls me into a hug before I realize what she’s doing. “Happy almost birthday, Sawyer. I’m glad we’re not in medieval times. But if we were, I’d gladly drink some mead with you and scour the taverns for available lads.”

I shake my head. “Thanks, Gia. Maybe we can scour the taverns here in this century another time?”

“Sounds good,” she says. “I’m off to work. Miriam’s 5:00 dinner waits for no one.”

I wave her off and reach my car. Memories play through my mind of better times. Knox pulling Owen out of the water by his ankle. My dad burning the hot dogs and insisting they were well done. Victoria passing me sunscreen more often than I needed, going on about the importance of it for anti-aging.

The sunshine, the laughter, the love.

I sit there for a few minutes, letting the air-conditioning cool down before driving.

When I get to my street, I pass it without fully thinking things through. Then the next one flies by. Before I realize, I’m past the town limits and veering onto the highway. I know exactly where I’m going and there’s no explanation why.

Only one place in Lake Mercer has a vacant room. The Stop & Go Motel. I almost turn around and head back to Ashford, but then I think about how depressing Mom will be tomorrow, celebrating my birthday for the first time without Owen. She’ll drink too much wine, and get all nostalgic, not in the fun way, more in the sloppy weeping, woe is me way. I can’t deal with that when I’m already messy enough for both of us.

Plus, my subconscious brought me here for some unknown reason, but when I spotted the sun setting over the lake in the distance, it felt right in my bones.

So what if the motel hasn’t been updated since Clinton was president? Who cares about that alleged murder in room six? It was probably a story Knox made up to mess with me. Highway noise…I can handle it.

I’m here and I’m staying.

The woman at the desk barely looks up from her phone as she checks me in. She just hands me a key card with my room number written on it—not six, thank God—and tells me checkout’s at eleven.

I get to the room and sit on the edge of the bed, realization hitting me.

I have my purse. My keys. My phone is at forty-two percent. The clothes on my back, which is a sundress that barely covers anything since Irene likes to keep her classroom at eighty degrees.

No toothbrush. No pajamas. No charger. No plan.

I laugh at myself a little, alone in this room that smells like wet towels and stale cigarettes.

Then I grab my purse to head to the store.

The little market on Main Street is the kind of shop that sells an entire wall of saltwater taffy, every trinket known to man, and one brand of everything useful. I find the toiletries aisle in the back, between endcaps of sunscreen on sale and a rack of keychains shaped like fish, and crouch down, holding my basket to squint at the toothbrush options.

There are two. A children’s one with a cartoon crab on it, and a regular one in neon orange.

I’m reaching for the orange one when a hand comes in from the left and takes it.

I turn my head to see the face attached to the hand and suck in a sharp breath.

Knox is crouched next to me, reading the packaging, pretending he has no idea I’m here. My stomach does a flip that I refuse to acknowledge, which is immediately canceled out by the urge to knock the toothbrush out of his hand.

What the hell?

The aisle is only a touch wider than my hips, stuffed with so much crap, two people can barely pass each other. There’s nowhere to go to avoid whatever this will be.

“That was mine,” I say. The corner of his lips tip up as soon as I acknowledge his presence. “I grabbed it first. Take the crab one.”

“No. You take it.”

I grab the crab toothbrush and hold it up between us. “This has googly eyes on it.”

“More fun that way,” he says.

“I don’t want fun. I want the orange one.”