Dark Water - Laura McNeal [38]
When we were safely on the road and headed in the direction from which Mary Beth’s car had come, I felt the strangeness of knowing something I hadn’t told.
“Young people do what they want always,” Agnès said, turning briefly to glance at me. She wasn’t smiling this time. Instead, she looked a little sad. “But I will tell you a saying my father told to me. Amour fait beaucoup, mais argent fait tout.”
I waited because the only word I understood was “love.” “Which means?” I asked.
“Love does much,” she said, “but money does all.”
Twenty-four
On Saturday, my sentence was over. Still my mother didn’t get up from her desk or leave, and as the hours passed, I felt like a helium balloon in her hand, bobbing around the house. Noon. One o’clock. Two. At two-thirty, she started to change her clothes for birding with Louise. “Are you and Greenie doing something tonight?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know. I have to call her.”
“I haven’t seen her much. Did you have a fight?”
“No,” I said. “She has a boyfriend.”
“Is he nice?”
“Not really.”
She applied lip balm, sunscreen, and a hat. “Want to come with us? The lagoon is beautiful this time of year.”
“Nah,” I said. “Sorry.”
I could tell she was remembering the preschool me, the one who cried and cried about being separated from her until finally she withdrew me from the program and let me stay home. Every day for the first week of blissful reunion, I clapped her cheeks, brought my lips close to hers, and said, “I can’t get enough of you.”
“Bye,” I called out to her from the porch, and she hesitated, then walked away.
I stuffed my backpack with bottles of purified water, a tube of antibiotic cream, some Luden’s Wild Cherry cough drops, and a roll of bandages so old they might have been Lavar’s. They were still pretty clean, though.
I swung my leg over the bike and headed away from the house, anxious to see Amiel, but there in my path was my uncle, blasting toward me on his motorbike.
“Hey, Pearl,” he said, stopping the bike and removing his helmet. “I understand you helped Abdiel yesterday.”
“Amiel?” I asked.
“Yeah, Amiel. Agnès isn’t too great with blood. Is he okay?”
I nodded.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I’m supposed to take his bicycle to him, right? That’s what Agnès said.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. The backpack full of chilled water bottles pressed against my spine.
“You can show me where he lives, right? When did you become a cyclist, anyway?”
Part of Hoyt’s charm was his constant question-asking. He was like a caffeinated gambler at a slot machine.
“I was just going for a ride,” I said.
“Well, why don’t you ride his bike, and I’ll pick you up after you drop it off, okay?”
“Well, I guess I could.”
“Tell me how far it is and so forth, the address, and I’ll give you a head start. I’ll come get you.”
I shifted the weight of the bottles on my back and was alarmed by the loud bubbly sound they made.
“I was going to Greenie’s afterward, though.”
“Hey, that’s no problem. I could take you there afterward.”
“Well, it’s not …” I wasn’t good at improvisation. I paused as if I were working out a logistical problem. “You know, I think I could walk from where Amiel lives to Greenie’s, really. And then her mom could take me home.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah! Positive. I’ll just, you know, get a ride back.”
“You call me if she can’t give you a ride, okay? I’ll come get you. Maybe buy you a donut.”
While my uncle watched, I climbed onto Amiel’s bicycle. I waved goodbye. I rode over the freeway and up Mission with cars swishing past me every two seconds, and then I peeled away to coast down into river world, where I was about to break my promise to Amiel about not bothering him.
The oak trees along the road were black-limbed and the air was cold. Now and then a squirrel streaked across my path or a crow pecked at a walnut on the blacktop, flapping away just before my tires reached the bits of broken shell. It was so quiet I could hear their feathers like a woman’s taffeta dress.
I knew the trail by now, and riding was much faster than walking, so when I found myself