Page 26 of Dead of Summer

“Of course.” David chuckles. He sways as he puts his fingers up into air quotes.

“Normal people.” Looking at him closer Orla wonders if he might be on the verge of some sort of breakdown.

His eyes are webbed with angry red lines.

He teeters on his heels like he might fall over.

She recognizes the signs of someone who is sleep-deprived and stressed.

Orla leads him into the kitchen and pulls a lowball glass out of a cabinet. She hesitates, knowing she shouldn’t, and takes out a second glass as well.

“Oh, Orla, I’ve missed you,” he says, leaning back against the counter as she drops ice into the glasses.

Orla’s heart thumps, wanting him to shut up and to continue talking in equal amounts. She opens the bottle and tips a generous pour into her glass and a slightly smaller one for him.

“You were always my best friend on Hadley. So strange without you here all these years.”

Orla tries not to let the compliment affect her, but it does.

David Clarke was always good at flattery.

It was the kind of thing that could make a person start to get ideas about themselves; if they weren’t careful, they might even start to think that they were special.

Orla moves away from him, going back into the living room with the drinks so he can’t see the sudden flush that’s come into her cheeks.

David drops onto the couch and makes himself at home, leaning back and propping his feet across the coffee table. His shoes are dripping wet. Thick clumps of sand break free from the treads and land on the wood.

“Cheers.” He reaches his glass out, clinking it with hers.

How many years had she imagined it like this, minus the dirty shoes?

David Clarke and her sharing a drink with no one else in sight.

Orla’s fingers tremble as she tilts the glass back, letting the tequila flow against the back of her throat.

It is smooth and delicious. After the spike of adrenaline, it tastes like pure relief.

“So. What are you doing here?” she demands, dropping into the chair across from him.

“That’s not very nice,” he says, pretend hurt. He was always a bit of a baby when he was drinking. She’d forgotten that about him until now.

“You’re wasted,” she says with a snort.

“I thought you’d be glad to see me. Can’t I come visit an old friend?” He swirls his glass arrogantly.

Orla glances at the grandfather clock in the corner. “At one thirty in the morning?”

“Well, you ran off at the beach. Didn’t let us finish the conversation. What was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, right. I’m sure your girlfriend wanted me to bring my towel over and sit down with the two of you.”

He ignores her tone, looking around the room as though seeing it for the first time.

She flinches when he sees her drawing out on the coffee table.

“I always think about you being in this house. So funny you’ve actually been in New York all this time, but I always picture you here.

We left things so strangely between us all those years ago.

And then both of us ended up in New York.

How come we never got dinner?” His hairline is receding slightly, she notices.

It doesn’t diminish her attraction to him.

“ Get dinner? ” she asks, incredulous. Orla is starting to get the impression he is toying with her. “Why would we have?”

“I don’t know, I suppose we have a lot in common being from this place. And of course, there is Alice. Do you think about her?” He veers off topic.

“Of course I do,” she snaps. “She was my best friend.”

“What do you remember about that night?” he asks. Orla looks away, wishing for the very first time in her life that he would leave.

“Not much,” she lies. She remembers all of it. The hand on Alice’s knee. Her hand around the glass. The spectacular dress, falling off her shoulder. The way her eyes moved below her lids trying to stay awake. The fear in David’s eyes when Orla turned to him.

“Why are you asking me now?” she says, snapping back to the unlikely reality of him holding the glass in her parents’ living room.

“I’ve just been thinking about it lately.

” He’s going somewhere with this that Orla isn’t sure she wants to follow.

He is close to her now. He smells like a combination of expensive things, crisp cotton, luxurious body products.

David’s shirt hangs half opened in front of her.

Orla has the desire to raise her hand to his chest; she could push a finger through the space, touch his skin underneath.

His neck is perfect. Inhuman. She pulls back, horrified by herself.

After all this time, after what happened to Alice. No.

Orla stands abruptly and crosses her arms over her chest. “Why are you here, David?”

He smiles crookedly into his drink. “Like I said, just catching up with my old friend.”

“I don’t believe you,” Orla says. “What do you remember?”

Men like him always ignore the questions they don’t want to answer.

It’s a shame really , Orla thinks, watching David cross the room and pour another drink.

He has a presence so few do, not to mention the resources.

He could have done so much more with himself, could have been something other than his father’s protégé.

Her heart thumps as his eyes fall on her unfinished drawing. She should have gotten rid of it.

“Very nice, Orla.”

He smiles a bit ruefully at it, like he is looking at the colorings of a small child.

“I saw your show.”

“What?” She feels the room begin to spin. “When?”

“The one you had in New York, the first one.” He sips his drink, watching her closely. “That was the big one, wasn’t it? The one that made your career?”

Orla’s chest seizes up at the mention of that first show of pencil drawings. She cringes at the memory of the opening. The fancy dress she’d worn, the hands she’d shaken. The photos snapped for the society pages.

“I didn’t see you there,” Orla says, not believing him.

“No, I was going to say hi. I thought I might even try to reconcile, but then you were just so popular. Surrounded by all those artsy Brooklyn people. The belle of the ball . I watched you enjoying yourself and I thought, she’s made it.

I was thrilled for you. But then I saw the art.

There were so many familiar faces on that wall.

All from Hadley. I thought it felt a bit…

familiar. But then I saw the one of Jean.

You know which one I mean. The black-and-white one, with the little lines around the hair.

It’s a stunning image. Impossible to forget, really.

” He gives her a hard look. “They were Alice’s. ”

“I made them my own,” Orla starts to protest. She puts her empty glass down, feeling woozy.

“Oh, Orla. Let’s not,” David tsks. He leans arrogantly against the mantel, his head lolling around. She wants to smack it. “We both know Henry would never have sat for a portrait for you.”

“You never said anything.” Her cheeks are hot with the shame of it all. She had tried to cover it up for so long, thought that if she proved herself as a competent artist without Alice, she could somehow erase what she’d done.

He looks down into his glass and frowns.

“There was a moment when I was angry. I left with every intention of calling the gallery the next morning and telling them you were a fraud but then I thought, why bother? Why not just give it to her? She’s been through a lot, and she has so little of, well… anything.”

Orla turns her head away, trying not to let it show how much the words hurt her.

She’d tried to leave it all behind her. As her career limped forward it was all anyone ever wanted to talk about—the creepy pen drawings of all the people from Hadley that Alice had spent that last summer making.

People who meant nothing to the collectors who have them hanging in their private collections but who are easily recognizable to anyone from here.

How could she have been so careless? She had thought after all this time that she was safe. But she was wrong.

“Will you say anything?” she asks in a whisper.

She wants to stop him, to block his exit.

To hold him hostage and make him listen to her until he understands why she did what she did.

Until he can see the way she cared for him, the way she would spend each summer endlessly waiting for him to pay attention to her.

“No. Not unless you do.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She stares at him.

“You know exactly what I mean.”