I put myself in the window of the café on my street corner I’d be able to see her when she passed by. So whenever I wasn’t teaching I’d be there, in the café on the corner, looking for a glimpse of that waterfall of gold hair. And you know, Floyd, I swear that was all I wanted. I just wanted to see her.
But for some reason that day, I found myself rising from my chair. There she was standing between two parked cars, waiting to cross the road. Her blonde hair was tied back and hidden somehow inside her hood or the back of her jacket and I wanted . . . I swear, I just wanted her to see me, to acknowledge me in some way. And I approached her and there it was, like a punch to the gut: Jesus Christ, she doesn’t know me. Not for the first second or two. I watched the memory slot into place like a slide in one of those carousels from the olden days and then of course she was all smiles and kindness. But it was too late. She had completely failed to verify my existence.
If only she had known, Floyd, if only she had known how much I’d needed her to do that, then maybe none of it would have happened. Maybe Ellie Mack would have gone to the library, got to sit all her GCSEs, got to marry Theo, got to live her life.
But, unfortunately, that’s not the way it worked out.
34
Poppy serves dinner for Floyd and Laurel on Friday night. She lights candles, wraps a bottle of wine in a linen napkin, and pours it from the base, like a sommelier. She doesn’t eat with them because that would ruin the role play, merely hovers at a discreet distance, clears the table between courses, asks how their food is. Her hair, Laurel notices, is in a topknot, rather than the more formal hairdos she normally favors, and she has a tea towel tied around her waist in an approximation of a waiter’s apron. She looks very grown up. Very pretty. More like Ellie than ever. Laurel can barely tear her eyes from her.
She makes love to Floyd that night.
She is wrong, she concludes, lying in his arms afterward. She is wrong about it all. The lip balm means nothing. Maybe Noelle bought herself fruity lip balms. Maybe her whole house was full of fruity lip balms. The fact that Poppy looked like Ellie was also neither here nor there. People looked like people. That was a simple matter of fact. And maybe SJ had imagined Noelle’s flat stomach.
And this man, this man right here with his lovely jumpers and his gentle touch, this man who sends her smiley-face emojis and cannot live without her, why would he have invited her into his life if he was somehow involved in Ellie’s disappearance? It makes no sense at all.
She falls asleep in the crook of his arm, her hands entwined with his, feeling safe.
“I love you, Laurel Mack,” she thinks she hears him whisper in the middle of the night. “I love you so much.”
The uncertainty returns the following morning. She is the first up and the house ticks and creaks as all Victorian houses tick and creak. The kitchen is filled with cold white morning light and last night’s candles and background music are a distant memory. She quickly makes two cups of coffee and takes them upstairs to the warm cocoon of Floyd’s bedroom.
“I have to go somewhere today,” he says.
“Somewhere?” she says. “That sounds mysterious.”
He smiles and pulls her to him. They sit up side by side in the bed, their feet and ankles entwined. “Not really,” he says. “I’m meeting my financial advisor.”
“On a Saturday?”
He shrugs. “I always see him on a Saturday. I don’t know why. But I’ll only be a couple of hours. I wondered if maybe you’d be able to stay here and sit with Poppy? While I’m gone?”
“I’d love to,” she says and they drink their coffee. From upstairs they hear the sound of Poppy rising. They hear her footsteps on the stairs and then her knocking on the bedroom door. Laurel pulls Floyd’s dressing gown tighter across her breasts and Floyd calls out for her to come in. Poppy runs in and throws herself between them, right onto the sex-scorched bedsheets, against the pillows that Laurel had gripped last night and buried her face into.