Page 53 of Under the Stars

Audrey

Springfield, Massachusetts

Sedge’s grandmother stops by to visit me in the hospital.

We’ve met before. It must have been about a week ago.

I’d gone to the Mo to do some inventory and ordering and when I came back, I found Meredith in the sunroom chatting with this elderly woman in bright pink capri pants and one of those J.McLaughlin tops in an orange-and-pink geometric pattern.

There you are, Audrey, Meredith said, in a voice that suggested drama. This is Mrs. Peabody.

At the time, Sedge was off island—Boston, I think—and it was clear to me that this was an unauthorized visit. I had turned down all previous invitations to swing by Summerly and meet the Peabodys, and he’d respected that— I get it, they’re a lot to take in, he would say.

Now Mrs. Peabody rose from her chair to inspect me, all ninety-nine years of her. Her eyes were milky but missed nothing. I shook her small, firm hand and said I was glad she’d stopped by, I’d heard so much about her, blah blah.

She cut me off. “Well, you’re certainly pretty enough. Sedge tells me you’re a cook?” The word cook came out crisp at the edges.

“That’s right,” I said.

Meredith drawled, “In the same way Secretariat was a horse.”

“My father was an estate manager,” said Mrs. Peabody. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not.”

She nodded. “You’ve got backbone, anyway. Would you mind walking me to my car? I have a bridge tournament at one sharp and the poor dears can’t start without me.”

We walked outside to her car, which turned out to be an old Volvo station wagon driven by a woman of about sixty, who cast me a beady look through the window.

“Daughter-in-law. Don’t mind her,” said Mrs. Peabody. “Now. Sedge.”

“Is a big boy,” I said.

“Who makes terrible choices in women. He has a way of seeing the good in everybody.” Mrs. Peabody grimaced. “And then he wants to save them.”

“It’s funny, everybody keeps telling me not to break Sedge’s heart,” I said. “Nobody seems that worried about my heart.”

“That’s because Sedge is more loyal than my last Labrador,” said Mrs. Peabody. “Which is saying something. So you’d better not be playing him for a chump, do you hear me? Because I can tell he likes you a good deal more than he should.”

“What do you mean, more than he should?”

“Because you’re a bolter, that’s why. It’s not your fault. You come by it honestly. Your mother’s a bolter, her mother was a bolter—”

“My grandmother was not a bolter. They carried her out of Greyfriars feet first.”

“Not houses. People. Men. Poor old Clay.” She shook her head. “If you ruin Sedge the way she ruined Clay, I’ll make sure you regret it. That’s not an idle threat. Anyway. Nice meeting you. Goodness, I think it’s about to rain. You might want to take in that Chewy box before it gets wet.”

—

Now she stands next to my hospital bed, examining me with those milky green-brown eyes. “You see? I was right. Bolter. ”

“I didn’t bolt. I was kidnapped.”

“And he followed you. Like the idiot he is. Thinking he could save you.”

“He did save me.”

“Well, who’s going to save him ? You’ve killed him, Audrey. Just like your mother killed that poor boy.”

“My mother ? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. It’s all over the internet. The accident in the boat. Of course she pretends it never happened. Probably thinks it wasn’t her fault. And you’re just the same, aren’t you?”

“It is my fault. And I’m sorry, I’m more sorry than you can imagine—”

“Save it. She killed that boy, and now you’ve killed my boy, my darling grandson—”

“I didn’t kill him!”

“You’re just like her.”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you are. There’s no escaping DNA, Audrey. Like mother, like daughter.”

“That’s not true. I’m not Meredith! I—”

A pair of hands lands on my shoulders. “Audrey! For God’s sake, wake up!”

I open my eyes. Mike’s face looms above me, heavy with shadow and worry.

“You okay?” he says.

I sink my bones back into the hospital mattress. “Yes. Fine.”

Mike releases my shoulders. “You’re supposed to wake up, anyway. Every hour. Concussion protocol or some shit.”

“I’m fine.” I’m not. My head throbs, my brain sloshes against the cage of my skull. Grief sits on my chest.

“ I’m fine. ” Mike slumps onto the chair next to the bed. “Listen to you. The hell you’re fine.”

“I mean you don’t need to worry about me. I’m not—you can get some sleep, you can go home—”

“ Home. Jesus, Audrey. You’re my daughter. I’m supposed to be here . With you .”

“Wow,” I say. “When did you wake up to that revelation?”

Mike squints at the wall over my shoulder. “Fair,” he says.

I close my eyes—a mistake, because when the room disappears, when my father’s face disappears, I see Sedge. I see Sedge’s body jerk, I see the red burst on his stomach, see him drop backward in the hot summer grass.

The weedy beep of my heartbeat seeps out from the monitor. The air smells of hospital. I might throw up.

“Water?” asks Mike.

I shake my head and throw the blanket off my legs.

“What are you doing?”

“Can you help me get up?”

“Honey, you’ve got a needle stuck in your arm—”

“I need to see him. I need to see where they put him.”

Mike’s hands fall back on my shoulders. “Sweetie, you can’t, all right? Just go back to sleep. You need to rest.”

“I swear to God, Mike—”

“He’s got everyone he needs, honey. He’s got his sister with him. Monk and Mallory are there. Nothing you can do.”

“I need to see him! I need to explain.”

“He doesn’t need that from you, okay? Anyway, there’s a policeman outside your door. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Why is there a policeman?”

“Because you’re under arrest, remember? Possession of stolen property?”

I lift my hands to grip Mike around the biceps, such as they are. “Where the hell is he? I swear to God!”

“Honey, Sedge is—”

“Not Sedge. David. So I can fucking kill him.”

Mike sighs and shoves me back against the pillow.

“For crying out loud, Audrey. If anyone’s going to kill that douchebag, it’s me, okay?

Oh, shit. Here we go. Hold on.” He grabs a couple of tissues from the box on the bedside table and shoves them at me.

“Jesus, kid. I didn’t mean literally crying out loud. ”

Now my chest starts to shudder, which makes my head throb even harder. Mike jiggles with the bed rail and swears and finally climbs over it to wedge himself next to me on the bed and draw my sobbing body against his chest.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this.” He strokes my hair. “But here goes.”

His shirt smells of whiskey and sweat. Bartender smell. It touches some nerve in my memory, like I’ve been here before, smelled his shirt while I bawled my eyes out. Heart torn from my ribs. Sedge. There is nothing in the world that can comfort me, no smell on earth.

“Your mama wasn’t sure she wanted to keep you,” he says.

“I mean, we didn’t plan to have a kid. I guess you know that.

I told her it was her decision and all. But man, I was hoping she would keep you.

I prayed every night. And I don’t even pray.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I wanted you for your sake or because I wanted something that would keep her with me, keep her tied to me somehow, so I could prove to her—show her—anyway.

She made the call. Made an appointment with the Planned Parenthood in New London.

I was torn up as shit, but I told her I would go with her and everything.

So I pick her up in my truck and we drive to the ferry and while we’re waiting there in the ferry line, waiting for the cars to finish unloading so they can board us, this squall comes out of nowhere.

Like hurricane force. Wind and rain and lightning.

I have never seen anything like that squall in all my fucking days.

Hail starts coming down. I swear to God, I thought it was going to tear a hole in the roof.

I thought that wind was going to pick up my truck and dump us into the harbor.

Meredith, she just grabs my hand. Goes all white and shit.

Stares through the windshield and digs her nails into my skin.

I didn’t even feel it. Lasts maybe a quarter of an hour.

Can’t see shit. When it clears, the ferry’s gone.

Cable snapped. Luckily they got an anchor down before it went on the rocks.

But they had to cancel sailings for the rest of the day. So we never made that appointment.”

I have gone still against the thud of Mike’s heart. You would never believe how gentle his hand feels in my hair.

“I drove her home,” he says. “Couple of trees down, but no major damage. Just hail everywhere, like a blizzard came through. I said to her, let me know when you can get that appointment rescheduled, okay? And she looks at me and says, I’m not.

And I say, Why the hell not? She says it’s a sign.

An act of God. And you know Meredith is about as religious as my fucking cat, right?

I’m like, Mair, honey, it’s just a storm.

Summer squall. But she shakes her head and gets out of my truck and walks into the house, and seven months later you were born, and that was the best day of my life, I swear to God. ”

“Mike.” I spit out a mouthful of shirt. “Are you literally trying to make me feel better by telling me this story? That Meredith didn’t want me and I’m only alive because of a random weather event?”

“I don’t know what I’m trying to say, honestly. Just that we’re all sitting on this planet, lucky to be alive. And I need you to hold on, okay? Whatever happens. Whatever mess we’re in, we’ll find our way out.”

“Stop it, Mike. Okay? You can’t fix this. Nobody can fix this.”

“We’ll find a way to prove those paintings—”

“Mike,” I say. “Just shut up.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Can you find a way to fix Sedge, Mike? Can you do that?”

Mike untangles his hand from my hair and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Rearranges me in the blankets and slumps back into his chair.

“I keep seeing him in my head. Over and over. The look on his face when the bullet hit him. The shock. And I did this to him, Mike. I did this.”

“You’re saying you pulled the trigger yourself?”

“No. But—”

“Then you didn’t do this. Sedge knew what he was doing. Knew what he was getting into. He did it anyway. Do you know why?”

“Mike—”

“I’ll tell you why. Because he loves you.

He fucking loves you, the numbnuts. I know you hate to hear that.

You and your mom. You think love puts you under some kind of obligation, that it’s like a balance sheet and you take somebody’s love and you have to pay for it somehow, you have to give something back, something you might not want to give, and I’ll tell you this right now, Sedge Peabody drove up that highway for the express purpose of laying down his life for you, and there was not one second he stopped and said to himself, Well, shit, she’s going to owe me for this one.

Did not cross his mind, I guarantee it. Because that’s how love works.

Love does not keep a balance sheet. Love does not keep score.

Love just gives. And once you and your mom get that into your thick fucking skulls, you might stand a chance of being happy someday. ”

“Yeah, well. You’re forgetting I tried that already. I married somebody, remember? I loved him. And look how that turned out.”

Mike shrugs. “That’s the catch. Always a catch, right? It only works if they love you back the same way. Maybe you still give. But all you get back is hurt.”

A cart clatters down the hallway outside. The noise makes me wince. Mike slumps in his chair, staring at the door. A policeman stands on the other side. I caught a glimpse of him when the nurse came in to check my pupils and blood pressure a while ago.

My soupy brain scrambles after all these words. Mike’s exhausted face, staring at the door. There is something more to this conversation, something I can’t quite put together.

“Are you talking about Meredith?” I ask. “How you feel about Meredith?”

Mike’s gaze shifts back to me. “How I feel about Meredith is my own fucking business.”

“She’s not even capable of love, Mike. The only one she really loves is herself.”

Mike folds his arms and shakes his head slowly. “You’ve got it ass-backwards, Audrey. As usual. There’s one person in the world she loves, one person she’d slit her wrists for, and it’s not Meredith.”

“Who? You? ”

“Jesus Christ, Audrey,” he says. “Did your entire brain get knocked out through your ear? It’s you . It’s always been you.”