Lock and Key (26 page)

“I did,” he said, going back to dropping things into the bags. “But that was before I quit swim team. Now I’ve got to get in strictly on my grades, which frankly are not as good as my swimming.”

I considered this as he moved down the next row, still adding things to the bags. “So why did you quit?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was really into it when I lived in Arizona, but here . . . it just wasn’t that fun anymore. Plus my dad needed me for the business.”

“Still, seems like a big decision, giving it up entirely,” I said.

“Not really,” he replied. He reached down, picking up another box. “So, was it bad when you came in last night?”

“Yeah,” I said, somewhat surprised by the sudden change in subject. “Jamie was really pissed off.”

“Jamie was?”

“I know. It was bizarre.” I swallowed, taking a breath. “Anyway, I just wanted to say . . . that I appreciate what you did. Even if, you know, it didn’t seem like it at the time.”

“You weren’t exactly grateful,” he agreed.
Clunk, clunk, clunk.

“I was a bitch. And I’m sorry.” I said this quickly, probably too quickly, and felt him look up at me again.
So embarrassing,
I thought, redirecting my attention to the bag in front of me. “What are you putting in there, anyway? ”

“Little chocolate houses,” he replied.

“What? ”

“Yeah,” he said, tossing one to me. “See for yourself. You can keep it, if you want.”

Sure enough, it was a tiny house. There were even windows and a door. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?” I said.

“Not really. This client’s a builder. I think they’re for some open house or something.”

I slid the house into my pocket as he dropped the box, which was now almost empty, and pulled out another one, which was full of brochures, a picture of a woman’s smiling face taking up most of the front. QUEEN HOMES, it said. LET US BUILD YOUR CASTLE! Nate started sliding one into each bag, working his way down the line. After watching him for a moment, I reached across, taking a handful myself and starting on the ones closest to me.

“You know,” he said, after we’d worked in silence for a moment, “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you by showing up yesterday. I just thought you might need help.”

“Clearly, I did,” I said, glad to have the bags to concentrate on. There was something soothing, orderly, to dropping in the brochures, each in its place. “If you hadn’t come, who knows what would have happened.”

Nate didn’t speculate as to this, which I had to admit I appreciated. Instead, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

I looked up at him, then slid another brochure in. “Sure.”

“What was it really like, living on your own?”

I’d assumed this would be a question about yesterday, like why I’d done it, or a request for further explanation of my twisted theories on friendship. This, however, was completely unexpected. Which was probably why I answered it honestly. “It wasn’t bad at first,” I said. “In fact, it was kind of a relief. Living with my mom had never been easy, especially at the end.”

He nodded, then dropped the box onto the floor and pulled out another one, this one filled with magnets emblazoned with the Queen Homes logo. He held it out to me and I took a handful, then began working my way up the line. “But then,” I said, “it got harder. I was having trouble keeping up with bills, and the power kept getting turned off. . . .” I was wondering if I should go on, but when I glanced up, he was watching me intently, so I continued. “I don’t know. There was more to it than I thought, I guess.”

“That’s true for a lot of things,” he said.

I looked up at him again. “Yeah,” I said, watching him continue to drop in magnets, one by one. “It is.”

“Nate!” I heard a voice call from outside. Over his shoulder, I could see his dad, standing in the door to the main house, his phone to his ear. “Do you have those bags ready yet?”

“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, reaching down to pull out another box. “Just one sec.”

“They need them now,” Mr. Cross said. “We told them ten at the latest. Let’s move!”

Nate reached into the new box, which was full of individually wrapped votive candles in all different colors, and began distributing them at warp speed. I grabbed a handful, doing the same. “Thanks,” he said as we raced through the rows. “We’re kind of under the gun here.”

“No problem,” I told him. “And anyway, I owe you.”

“You don’t,” he said.

“Come on. You saved my ass yesterday. Literally.”

“Well,” he said, dropping in one last candle, “then you’ll get me back.”

“How? ”

“Somehow,” he said, looking at me. “We’ve got time, right? ”

“Nate!” Mr. Cross called out, his tone clearly disputing this. “What the hell are you doing in there?”

“I’m coming,” Nate said, picking up the empty boxes and beginning to stack the bags into them. I reached to help, but he shook his head. “It’s cool, I’ve got it. Thanks, anyway.”

“You sure?”

He glanced over his shoulder at his dad, still standing in the doorway, then at me. “Yeah. I’m good. Thanks again for your help.”

I nodded, then stepped back from the table as he shoved the last of the bags into a box, stacking it onto the other one. As he headed for the door, I fell in behind him. “Finally,” Mr. Cross said as we came out onto the patio. “I mean, how hard is it—” He stopped, suddenly, seeing me. “Oh,” he said, his face and tone softening. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

“This is Ruby,” Nate said, bringing the box over to him.

“Of course,” Mr. Cross said, smiling at me. I tried to reciprocate, even though I suddenly felt uneasy, remembering that night I’d seen him in this same place with Roscoe. “How’s that brother-in-law of yours doing? There’s some buzz he might be going public soon with his company. Any truth to that?”

“Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“We should go,” Nate said to him. “If they want us there by ten.”

“Right.” Still, Mr. Cross stayed where he was, smiling at me, as I started around the pool to the gate. I could see Nate behind him in the house. He was watching me as well, but when I raised my hand to wave, he stepped down a hallway, out of sight. “Take care,” Mr. Cross said, raising his hand to me. He thought I’d been waving at him. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I nodded, still feeling unsettled as I got to the fence and pushed my way through. Crossing the yard, I remembered the house Nate had given me, and reached down to pull it out and look at it again. It was so perfect, pristine, wrapped away in plastic and tied with a pretty bow. But there was something so eerie about it, as well—although what, I couldn’t say—that I found myself putting it away again.

“Okay,” I said, uncapping my pen. “What does family mean to you?”

“Not speaking,” Harriet replied instantly.

“Not speaking?” Reggie said.

“Yeah.”

He was just staring at her.

“What? What were you going to say?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Comfort, maybe? History? The beginning of life?”

“Well, that’s you,” she told him. “For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.”

“Really,” I said.

“We’re passive-aggressive people,” she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. “Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I’m not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother.”

“How many kids are in your family?” I asked.

“Seven total.”

“That,” Reggie said, “is just plain sad.”

“Tell me about it,” Harriet said. “I never got enough time in the bathroom.”

“I meant the silence thing,” Reggie told her.

“Oh.” Harriet hopped up on the stool by the register, crossing her legs. “Well, maybe so. But it certainly cuts down the phone bill.”

He shot her a disapproving look. “That is not funny. Communication is crucial.”

“Maybe at your house,” she replied. “At mine, silence is golden. And common.”

“To me,” Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, “family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.”

Harriet studied him over her coffee cup. “What do your parents do, again?”

“My father sells insurance. Mom teaches first grade.”

“So suburban!”

“Isn’t it, though?” He smiled. “I’m the black sheep, believe it or not.”

“Me, too!” Harriet said. “I was supposed to go to med school. My dad’s a surgeon. When I dropped out to do the jewelry-design thing, they freaked. Didn’t speak to me for months.”

“That must have been awful,” he said.

She considered this. “Not really. I think it was kind of good for me, actually. My family is so big, and everyone always has an opinion, whether you want to hear it or not. I’d never done anything all on my own before, without their help or input. It was liberating.”

Liberating,
I wrote down. Reggie said, “You know, this explains a
lot
.”

No kidding,
I thought.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harriet asked.

“Nothing,” he told her. “So what makes you give up the silent treatment? When do you decide to talk again?”

Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. “Huh,” she said. “I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, just as you’re getting pissed off at another.”

“So it’s an endless cycle,” I said.

“I guess.” She took another sip. “Coming together, falling apart. Isn’t that what families are all about?”

“No,” Reggie says. “Only yours.”

They both burst out laughing, as if this was the funniest thing ever. I looked down at my notebook, where all I had written was
not speaking
,
comfort, wellspring,
and
liberating
. This project was going to take a while.

“Incoming,” Harriet said suddenly, nodding toward a guy and girl my age who were approaching, deep in conversation.

“. . . wrong with a Persian cat sweatshirt?” said the guy, who was sort of chubby, with what looked like a home-done haircut.

“Nothing, if she’s eighty-seven and her name is Nana,” the girl replied. She had long curly hair, held back at the nape of her neck, and was wearing cowboy boots, a bright red dress, and a cropped puffy parka with mittens hanging from the cuffs. “I mean, think about it. What kind of message are you trying to send here?”

“I don’t know,” the guy said as they got closer. “I mean, I like her, so . . .”

“Then you don’t buy her a sweatshirt,” the girl said flatly. “You buy her jewelry. Come on.”

I put down the feather duster I was holding, standing up straighter as they came up to the cart, the girl already eyeing the rows of thin silver hoops on display. “Hi,” I said to the guy, who, up close, looked even younger and dorkier. His T-shirt—which said ARMAGEDDON EXPO ’06: ARE YOU READY FOR THE END?—didn’t help matters. “Can I help you? ”

“We need something that screams romance,” the girl said, plucking a ring out and quickly examining it before putting it back. As she leaned into the row of lights overhead, I noticed that her face was dotted with faint scars. “A ring is too serious, I think. But earrings don’t say enough.”

“Earrings don’t say anything,” the guy mumbled, sniffing the incense. He sneezed, then added, “They’re inanimate objects.”

“And you are hopeless,” she told him, moving down to the necklaces. “What about yours?”

Startled, I glanced back at the girl, who was looking right at me. “What?”

She nodded at my neck. “Your necklace. Do you sell those here?”

“Um,” I said, my hand reaching up to it, “not really. But we do have some similar chains, and charms that you can—”

“I like the idea of the key, though,” the girl said, coming around the cart. “It’s different. And you can read it so many ways.”

“You want me to give her a key?” the guy asked.

“I want you to give her a
possibility
,” she told him, looking at my necklace again. “And that’s what a key represents. An open door, a chance. You know?”

I’d never really thought about my key this way. But in the interest of a sale, I said, “Well, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you could buy a chain here, then get a key to put on it.”

“Exactly!” the girl said, pointing a finger at the nearby KEY-OSK, which sold keys and key accessories of all kinds. “It’s perfect.”

“You’ll want a somewhat thick one,” I told her. “But not too thick. You need it to be strong and delicate at the same time.”

The girl nodded. “That’s it,” she said. “Just what I had in mind.”

Ten minutes and fifteen dollars later, I watched them as they walked away, bag in hand, over to the KEY-OSK cart, where the girl explained what she wanted. I watched the saleswoman as she pulled out a small collection of keys, sliding them across for them to examine.

“Nice job,” Harriet said, coming up beside me. “You salvaged the sale, even if we didn’t have exactly what she was looking for.”

“It was her idea,” I said. “I just went with it.”

“Still. It worked, right?”

I glanced over again at KEY-OSK, where the girl in the parka was picking up a small key as her friend and the saleswoman looked on. People were passing between us, hustling and bustling, but still I craned my neck, watching with Harriet as she slid it over the clasp, carefully, then down onto our chain. It dangled there for a second, spinning slightly, before she closed her hand around it, making it disappear.

I’d just stepped off the greenway, later that afternoon, when I saw the bird.

At first, it was just a shadow, passing overhead, temporarily blotting out the light. Only when it cleared the trees and reached the open sky did I see it in full. It was
huge
, long and gray, with an immense wingspan, so big it seemed impossible for it to be airborne.