Left in the Sand, Found by the Sea novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Forty-One Dollars

The Sarno driver brings her suitcase, a ring and a fortune in cash, and Orla refuses it all in front of the street while Eli goes blank at the name, until Bianca's sunrise photo with Rocco lands on every friend's feed.

The driver did not come in, because Winnie Pratt was standing in the doorway.

I came down the stairs in the flannel nightgown and found the two of them facing each other across the threshold.

He was a heavy man in a grey suit, one I had seen at the back of every Sarno family party for four years.

I had never heard him say a full sentence.

He was holding my suitcase in one hand and a thick envelope in the other.

"Miss Colby," he said. "Mr. Rocco asked me to bring your things."

"He could have brought them himself," I said.

"He wanted to."

"Then why didn't he?"

The driver looked at the envelope.

"His father won't let him on the coast road. Not for anything."

"Why not?"

"That isn't mine to say."

Winnie took the suitcase from him with both hands and set it behind her without taking her eyes off his face.

"It's heavy," she told me. "Take it before he changes his mind."

I took the handle.

It was my bag and all my clothes, and I was so glad to see it that my throat closed.

The driver held out the envelope.

"There's also this, miss. He asked me to give it to you in person."

I opened the flap.

Inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills, banded, more money than I had earned in three years of weekends.

Under the money was a small velvet box.

I opened it.

It was a ring, a large diamond set in gold.

There was a card tucked behind it in Rocco's loose, fast handwriting.

I'm sorry. Come home and I'll fix everything. I'll do the beach. I promise.

"He said you'd know what he meant by the beach," the driver said.

I did.

It was the thing I had wanted for four years, and he had handed it over only after I left.

Behind me, Winnie had gone quiet.

Two men in rubber boots had stopped on the sidewalk to see what was happening, and a woman with a stroller had stopped behind them.

I realized the whole street was watching a girl in a nightgown hold a ring in front of a man in a suit.

Winnie put a hand on my back.

"You don't have to do this in public," she said quietly.

"Yes, I do," I said.

I shut the ring box and laid it on top of the envelope.

I handed both back to the driver.

"Tell Rocco I paid for my own bus."

"Miss, he'll want to know what you said."

"Then say that. Tell him it was forty-one dollars, and I'd like it back."

One of the men in rubber boots made a small sound into his sleeve.

The driver looked at the money in his hand.

"He won't take it back either way," he said. "He'll only send more."

"Then he can keep sending it. I'm not opening the door again."

The driver nodded once.

He seemed almost relieved, and that bothered me later.

He went down the steps and the black sedan idled at the curb with the money inside it.

"Sarno," someone said behind me. "That's a Sarno car."

I turned around.

Eli Donati was standing at the bottom of the steps with a paper cup of coffee in each hand.

He must have been walking up with them for Winnie and me.

His face had gone completely blank.

"Eli," Winnie said. "Your coffee."

He looked down at the cups in his hands.

Then he set them on the bottom step, one beside the other, and said, "I have a ferry engine open."

He walked away down the hill without looking at me or at the car.

"He doesn't usually leave coffee," Winnie said.

I picked up the cup that had my name written on it in his block capitals, and I drank it standing there, because it was hot and mine.

The sedan finally pulled away.

Winnie pulled me back into the kitchen and put eggs in front of me and did not ask a single question.

I ate all of them.

I opened the suitcase on the bed afterward.

The lace set was still at the bottom, folded in tissue paper.

I put it in a drawer and shut the drawer a little harder than I meant to.

I dressed in jeans and a clean T-shirt, and I stood at the window with my phone in my hand.

I had forty messages.

Most of them were from people from school, the ones who had been on our group chat, all of them saying the same thing in different words.

Have you seen this?

I opened the one from my roommate.

It was a picture on Bianca's page, posted at sunrise.

It showed the canyon rim, gold and red, and Rocco in his leather jacket with Bianca tucked against his side, both of them grinning at the camera.

She had tagged him.

The caption said: Graduation sunrise with my favorite person. Some people just don't know how to have fun.

It already had four hundred likes.

Every one of them was a person who knew I was supposed to be in that photo.

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