Shauna cranes her head, worry etched across her elderly face. “Prudence?”
Shaking my head, I back away from her. Stumble off the stoop and grab my bike. I swing my leg over the seat and pedal away as fast as I can, trying to drown out the memory of Quint’s harsh words.
I’m a good person.
Selfish. Critical.
I am a good person.
Judgmental. Self-absorbed.
I. Am. A. Good. Person.
A liar. A hypocrite. A mistake.
My vision is blurred. I can’t keep going. I pull over onto the sidewalk and drop my bike against a palm tree before collapsing beside it. The sobs overtake me.
“I’m a good person,” I cry to myself, to no one. Maybe to the universe, if it’s listening.
But a question digs at me. Quint’s words, barbed and hateful. His accusations. My own insecurities.
I believe I’m a good person.
But what if I’m not?
FORTY-THREE
“You’re donating a basket,” I say, my jaw unhinged. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
My dad gives me a sympathetic look, even as he’s tucking a gift certificate for Ventures Vinyl into an envelope. “I understand that things didn’t end well between you and the animal rescue, but that’s hardly the animals’ fault.”
“They accused me of stealing!”
He tucks the card into the basket, along with a John Lennon bobblehead doll and a guitar-shaped Christmas ornament, among the other musical tchotchkes. “Okay. You tell me. In all honesty. Are they doing good work there? Are they deserving of people’s donations or not?”
I press my lips together. It feels like a betrayal. My own parents—who can barely support themselves—opting to donate a gift basket to the gala’s auction? It’s bad enough they put one of the posters in the store window. That they have flyers promoting the gala next to the cash register. Whose side are they on, anyway?
But I can’t tell him that the center doesn’t need the money or that they won’t do something worthwhile with their donations. I think of Lennon, my sea lion, that I haven’t seen for almost three weeks, and that I hope with my whole heart is doing well, and I know Dad is right. Just because Rosa and Quint accused me of stealing money doesn’t mean the animals should be punished. They’ve suffered enough.
I groan. “Fine. Whatever. Do what you want.”
“I usually do.” Dad hums along to the record playing over the store speakers as he puts the finishing touches on the basket. “I’m going to run home in a bit, grab some lunch. You need anything?”
“No. I’m fine.”
Fine, fine, fine. I’m always fine these days.
Grumbling, I stomp back behind the counter. Jude is standing in front of a box of records that were brought in yesterday. Dad has started letting him price the new stock, teaching him how to evaluate the condition and look up the market value. He’s holding a Motown record in his hands, but he’s watching me, concerned.
He’s been concerned ever since the Incident. He knows, more than anyone, how crushed I was. I still haven’t told anyone about me and Quint—what would be the point? But while my parents think I’m upset over being wrongly accused of something I didn’t do and then fired for it, Jude can tell there’s more to the story. I’ve walked in on him and Ari in the store’s back room a couple of times, talking in worried, hushed tones, and I know they were talking about me. I’ve done my best to ignore them.
At least they believed me when I told them I didn’t steal the money. Ari perhaps said it best—“You may be ambitious, Pru, but you’re not steal-money-from-a-struggling-nonprofit type of ambitious. Anyone can see that.”
Her words made me feel a tiny bit better. But it also made me wonder. If anyone could see that, then why couldn’t Quint?
Quint, who had been there the whole time. The beach festival, the cleanup party, the gala planning, the rescue center the night of that storm … He, more than anyone, should have seen how hard I was working to help those animals. He, of all people, should have known that I didn’t steal that money. That I wouldn’t.
But he hadn’t stood up for me. He hadn’t believed me. And not only that—he’d been mean, in the most ruthless way.
My eyes still sting when I remember the things he said. The words were intended to cut deep, and they did.
In less than two days, I’d experienced the best and worst moments of my life. Their memories are intertwined so tight