Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,88
call us back before we even get to the car.”
“Probably,” said Kayla, but Laura could hear in her voice that she was pretending to have confidence that she didn’t feel, and that brave effort on Kayla’s part was what finally pierced her with real terror.
All the fear she’d felt up until this point in Marie’s life, she realized, had been tempered by a deep-seated belief that everything would actually be okay, that nothing truly bad could or would happen to her own family. But that wasn’t true now; it had never been true. The compulsive loops of worry had been a shield, but they hadn’t worked. She almost ran out of the building. She left the notebook behind.
18
Matt was waiting for them at the garage with a bag packed with basic clothes, toothbrushes, and contact lens solution, as she’d requested. He also had a backpack of his own stuff with him. Laura stared at the bag and at Matt.
“You’re coming?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You don’t know what you’ll have to deal with when we get there, I can help with the driving, and I already took the day off work.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
They stared at each other for a moment and Laura became aware of how rarely she really looked at Matt. His face was just as it always had been, his friendly, softly lined, stubble-pocked face that could have desperately used a good scrub with an exfoliating cleanser and a dose of moisturizer, neither of which he would ever use. She thought very fleetingly of that morning and Leo. It already seemed like an extremely long time ago.
Matt’s dark eyes were opaque to her, even as she searched in them for something to latch on to, something he could be to her in this moment besides an extra driver. It would be nice to have an extra driver. But they really couldn’t afford for him to miss two days of work in a row; he was paid by the hour. Laura had paid sick leave. And she really didn’t want his help—it would come with a tax, she knew, of his interference, his judgment, his witnessing her fear.
“Honey, it would be nice to have one of us here to hold down the fort. And we need you to go to work tomorrow.”
“We can handle my missing one day, Laura. It’s not going to mean that Kayla has to go to community college.”
“I’m right here,” said Kayla, who was leaning up against the car, not looking up from her phone.
“Well, Kay, explain to your mom that you think I should come get Marie with you guys. I’m her father?” he said, letting upspeak sneak into his voice as it always did when he was nervous or unsettled.
“You are,” said Laura, “but I have to handle this on my own. You can have everything all nice for us when we get back. Fold the laundry. Get groceries. We’ll keep you posted about everything that happens.”
“I’m staying out of this,” said Kayla, but when Laura booped the car’s doors unlocked, she got into the passenger’s seat. “We’ll probably be back really soon, right? I could probably not even have to miss a full day of school?”
“You don’t have to come with me, either, if you don’t want to,” said Laura, “but it was your idea.”
“Oh no, I’m coming. Bye, Dad! Love you!” She closed the door and sat in the turned-off car, looking at her phone.
Laura moved toward Matt to hug him, but his body did not respond to the hug. This wasn’t good, but she didn’t have time to care. Trying to parse her feelings for Matt, which had until recently been the cozy, non-worrying equivalent of a big, bland meal, was a layer of complication her brain couldn’t process at this time.
“Please do let me know as soon as you’ve spoken to her.”
“Of course,” said Laura. “Please try not to worry.”
“About her or you?” he said quietly as she got into the car, and she pretended not to have heard him.
* * *
They’d barely gotten outside the city when Daisy called. Kayla answered the phone, which was excruciating for Laura; she had to wait a maddening minute trying to parse the possible meaning of Kayla’s mm-hmms. When Kayla hung up before Laura got a chance to talk to Daisy, Laura was so upset that she almost inadvertently swerved into the SUV in the next lane.
“Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
“Because you’re driving? You said it’s illegal to