Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,50

was not very welcoming. She was just waiting to get this over with, it seemed. Micah said, “Hey.” And then, since she still hadn’t spoken, “Here you go!” and he thrust the bag at her.

She accepted it and said, “Thank you. You didn’t have to bring them.”

“Oh, I wanted to,” he said. “I mean—”

“Right. You could use the drawer space.” She glanced down into the bag. “I should have thought to take all of this with me when I left.”

“How could you have thought of it?” he asked.

“What?”

“I mean, you didn’t know when you left that you weren’t coming back again, did you? Or, that is…did you know?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Because I thought we’d been having a perfectly nice evening,” he said.

Out here on the landing, his voice had a kind of resonance. He worried Mrs. Rao could hear him, and he wished Cass would just invite him in. But she went on standing there with the bag of clothes and her watering can. “Remind me,” she said. “Was this the evening when you suggested I should go live in my car?”

Micah felt his face turn hot.

“That was a joke,” he told her. “A stupid one, I realize. I owe you an apology. I know you were stressed about your apartment. I shouldn’t have teased you.”

Saying “Sorry” never came easy to him, as Cass most certainly knew. He held his breath and waited for some softening in her expression.

It didn’t happen, though. Instead, she said, “No, you were right, Micah. I guess I was trying to change the rules, as you put it. That was pretty dumb of me.”

“Oh, no problem!” he told her.

Then her expression did alter. He couldn’t say just how, but he sensed some shift in the very atmosphere on the landing. She said, “Thanks again for bringing my things. Bye.”

And she stepped back inside the apartment and closed the door in his face.

For a full minute, Micah stood motionless. It took him that long to collect himself. Then finally he turned and started back down the stairs.

Before he let himself out of the house, he slipped her key off his keychain and laid it on the side table. He wouldn’t be using it again.

* * *

—

On Northern Parkway, the curb lane was closed. Several repair trucks were parked alongside the median strip, so that drivers had to herringbone into the single lane still open. Micah braked and sat waiting, staring straight ahead through the back-and-forth of his wiper blades. The wait was so long that when he heard a text arrive, he decided to risk checking it. Who knew? It could be Cass. (Come back! she might write. I can’t think what made me act that way.) Without shifting his gaze from the windshield, he took his phone from his pocket and pressed his thumb to the Home key. Then he darted a glance at the screen.

But it was only Rosalie. Guess what i found in the safe 3 watches and the ugliest brooch u ever saw in ur life a peacock made of emeralds. This is FUN!

He raised his eyes again to the windshield.

“Did you ever go shopping with your mom when you were a little kid?” he wanted to ask someone. (Ask Rosalie? Ask Cass?) “Did you ever walk with her down a crowded sidewalk, back when you were so small that really you were just walking with her shoes and the hem of her coat? And then—how did this happen?—you chanced to look up, and you were horrified to find that it wasn’t your mom; it was some completely other woman with different-colored hair. It wasn’t who you wanted it to be at all!”

Which was why, when finally he could inch the car forward, he put his phone back in his pocket and took his foot off the brake and never sent an answer to Rosalie.

7

BY SUNDAY MORNING the rain had stopped, but the sky was still a grayish white and the air had a dank