“If you bought it, you can sell it,” I replied. “Buying and selling is what you do best.”
He started to say something but stopped. And suddenly there it was—a look in his eyes identical to the one Lily wore when she didn’t know what to do. I had seen it the morning Lily died, when she hadn’t known which dress to wear for her playdate, and the day before that, when she couldn’t find her magic ring and couldn’t possibly go to school without it. I had seen that look the spring before, when she joined a soccer class and found herself with twenty other kids and thirty soccer balls going every which way. I couldn’t count the number of times I had seen it and adored that she looked like Edward. Her hair was blond to his sable, her legs lean to his muscled. But they both had silvery-blue eyes, and the looks that came from those eyes were the same. It had been that way from the moment of her birth, had surely been so even in utero—
I felt a sudden chill. My eyes fell to the wide-planked floor. One image and a quick calculation later, I breathed again. I wasn’t on birth control, but if ever I had a safe time of the month, this was it. Had it not been, I’d have gone to the drug store first thing tomorrow. I would not—could not have a child—not again.
Edward knew what I was thinking. Used to be, all I had to do was conjure up fro-yo and he was on his way to the ice-cream shop. Our minds had always run in the same direction, and they did now. He stared at me for a painful moment before breaking away and reaching for his jeans. “It’s pouring. I’ll drive you home.”
I felt a sharp stab of fear. “No! My house is mine!” I blurted. “You can’t go near it!” I grasped at the rational. “If you drive me home, my truck will be here and I need it to get to work. My work is important, it’s what I do now, I like it, and they like me.” Just then, I couldn’t have said what day of the week it was, much less whether I had bookings the next day. I only knew that I needed to get back to a life I could control.
But he continued to dress, reaching now for the pool of flannel that was his shirt.
“Edward!” I shouted. “Listen to me. I don’t know why you’ve come, I don’t care why you’ve come, but I can’t live with you here. You have to leave.”
His arms were in the shirt, but it hung open. “I can’t leave,” he said.
“If you won’t, I will.”
* * *
I mean it, I fumed silently as I drove. I could leave. Between Edward’s arrival and Chris Emory’s mess, Devon wasn’t the refuge it had been such a short time ago. I could definitely leave, could leave in a heartbeat.
When I saw the glow of headlights in my rearview mirror, I was angry enough to pull to the side of the road. I was out of the truck when the Jeep came alongside and was leaning toward the side window as it lowered.
“Go home,” I told him.
“It’s dark. You didn’t know who it was. What if I’d been a rapist?”
“This is Vermont, Edward. We don’t have rapists around here, and even if we did, no rapist would be out in this rain. I knew it would be either you or the police. Give me credit for that.”
“Get in. We need to talk.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?” I cried sharply, but added a saner, “I’m fine. I can take care of myself. Please go home.”
I didn’t wait for an answer, just climbed back in the truck, drove along the shoulder of the road until I was clear of the Jeep, and returned to the pavement. I was relieved when his headlights shrank with distance and, once I rounded the curve, were gone.
* * *
I mean it, I vowed more than once during the fifteen-minute drive, and thought it again when I turned onto Pepin Hill Road and started up. If I had reinvented myself once, I could do it again. My tires spun in the slick mud, then caught, spun again a few seconds later, then caught. If I found work here, I could find work elsewhere. If I made friends here, I could make them