Chapter 8: Running Again

"I'm not running," I said. "I got a better job."

"Where?"

"Florida."

"Blair's father's place in Naples."

I didn't answer.

He laughed, but there was nothing in it.

"Of course. She told me at dinner she'd found you something. She said it like she'd done you a kindness."

"Maybe she did."

"You were going to let me find out from a note on the kitchen door."

"I wasn't going to leave a note."

"No," he said. "You never do."

Above us, through the thin ceiling, Poppy was still crying.

Not loud now.

Hiccupping, into her pillow, the way she did when she'd cried so long she'd forgotten what it was about.

Lawrence looked up at the ceiling.

His hand closed on the new rope.

"Is that her?"

"She's tired."

"She's crying because of the boat."

"She's five. She cries about lots of things."

"I told her she could tie it up."

"You shouldn't have told her anything."

"Why not?"

"Because you're not staying either!"

It came out of me too loud.

"You're here for one summer. You'll fix the porch and marry Blair and go back to Boston."

"And she'll stand on that dock in September waiting for a man who already forgot her name."

He stared at me.

"Is that what you think I'd do?"

"I think that's what people like you do."

"People like me." His voice dropped. "I'm not the one with the boxes, Mara."

I had nothing to say to that.

He walked to the cafe table by the window and put his hand flat on top of the box marked POPPY.

"This is what you do," he said. "Something gets hard, and you pack a car."

"You don't know anything about it."

"I know you were twenty-five and I was twenty-seven and I'd have done anything for you. Anything. And you didn't even let me try."