Chapter 15: The Picnic

I looked at him.

"It wasn't me at that motel, Brett."

"Doesn't matter." He let go of the door. "It only matters who says it first."

The doors closed on his smile.

For twelve days I stayed away from all of them.

I didn't call Scott, and he didn't call me.

On the second Friday in August a package came to the shop downstairs.

It had been forwarded from the gray house, with my name crossed out and rewritten in Scott's mother's handwriting.

It was Joey's birthday present.

I'd ordered it in May from a woodworker in Astoria, and it had been back-ordered all summer.

A little wooden sailboat with a red sail, and a lighthouse that lit up when you pressed the top.

The Dalton summer picnic was the next day.

This year I wasn't invited.

"I'll just leave it at the gate," I told Cal. "He can open it or not."

He drove me up to the West Hills on his way to a twenty-four-hour shift.

I could hear a band in the backyard, and kids shrieking in the sprinklers.

"You want me to wait?" Cal said.

"You'll be late. Go."

"Call me if anything happens."

"Nothing's going to happen. I'm handing somebody a box."

I went along the side of the house on my crutches with the present in a tote bag on my shoulder.

The side gate was a tall iron one, with the backyard behind it.

Maybe sixty people, the staff and their kids, and half the church.

Brett was at the grill in an apron, with a beer.

Scott's mother was at the dessert table in a white linen dress, cutting a cake.

Joey was on a blanket in the shade with two other boys and his bear.

A woman was standing near the gate with a glass of lemonade, a little apart from everyone.

She was tall, with short dark hair and a diamond on her left hand. Brett's fiancee.

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