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She didn’t go in. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk and her hands in her pockets and walked at a perfectly normal pace, and she was almost past the window when the door opened behind her and the bell rang its low, plain tone.
“Allison.”
She turned around.
Doug Dawson was standing on the sidewalk in the snow in his shirtsleeves.
She stared at him. Everyone in Merrybrook knew that Doug Dawson did not leave the counter. Doug was part of the counter. She had honestly never seen him from the waist down.
“We did inventory in November,” Doug said.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
“He’s not busy,” Doug went on. His breath fogged in the cold. He didn’t seem to notice he was freezing. “He’s never been less busy in his life. He’s adjusted the same shelf in aisle four so many times it’s more level than the floor. He’s changed his coffee time.”
“I don’t...” Allison started.
“Rick Brennan came in Monday,” Doug said. “Told him you laughed at your phone like you’d won the lottery, two minutes after he walked out of The Brook. And he’d already seen you turn that phone face down when he walked in.” Doug held up one hand before she could answer. “I don’t know what was on your phone. It’s none of my business. But I’ve known that boy since he was thirteen, and he has been walking around for three days like somebody told him the lake dried up.”
Allison stood very still on the sidewalk.
The phone flipped over so fast it slapped the table. You okay. I’m fine. Him leaving. And then her laughing, out loud, loud enough to turn the whole room around, a minute after he was gone.
She saw it the way he must have seen it.
“Oh no,” she said softly.
“Mm hm,” Doug said.
“It was my ex,” she heard herself say. “He texted me out of nowhere. I told him never to text me again. He wrote back wow ok, and I laughed because it was so small. Because I spent two years on that.” Her voice wobbled. “It wasn’t anything. I didn’t tell Shane because it wasn’t anything.”
Doug looked at her. His face did something almost kind.
“Then you ought to tell him that,” he said. “Not me.”
He glanced back through the window at the empty counter, as if it might wander off without him.
“He’s at the lake every morning before it’s light,” he said. “North shore. Take the north road out past the last house, there’s a pullout on the left. His truck’ll be there. The spot’s back in the trees, down where the old spruce come right to the water. I’ve never been out there. Roy told me about it once.” He paused. “If you’re going to have it out with him, have it out there. He can’t walk away from the lake.”
“He’ll be angry you told me.”
“He’ll get over it.” Doug turned toward the door. “I’ve been minding my own business about that boy for twenty-five years. I figure I’m owed one.”
He went back inside. The bell rang.
She watched him through the window as he walked back behind the counter, picked up his pen, and bent over his inventory sheet like nothing had happened at all.
Chapter 26
Just Say It
She set her alarm for five thirty.
She didn’t need it. She was awake at four fifty, staring at the ceiling, running through what she was going to say and throwing every version of it out.
She made coffee in the dark and poured it into her thermos. She put on two sweaters under her coat and the knit hat and her warmest socks. At the last second she grabbed her sketchbook off the kitchen table and tucked it under her arm. She didn’t know why. She took it everywhere. She needed something to hold on to.
The north road was black and empty. Her headlights made a small tunnel through the dark, snowbanks on both sides, spruce trees standing up like walls. Past the last house. A pullout on the left.
