CHAPTER 3
LUCY
Summer had officially arrived, even if the calendar said otherwise: School was out, it was hot, and I had set out the first jar of sun tea. Bess and I had a few days free before starting our jobs, and we spent one of them floating down the North Fork. We stopped to swim at Blind Hollow and paddled our canoe into the dark chill of the old moonshiner’s cave as far as we dared without flashlights. It was a Thursday and traffic on the river was sparse, mostly fishermen looking for walleye and small-mouth bass. We ate lunch on a pebbled shoal and napped for a while in the sun. When Gabby picked us up that evening, we were sunburned and sore, and by the time I reported to work Monday morning, the skin on my face and shoulders had started to peel.
I walked into Crete’s office at the back of the store, and he got up from his desk to give me a bear hug, lifting me off the ground just like he did when I was little. “Glad you’re finally here, kid,” he said.
“Me, too,” I said. “Thanks for talking Dad into it.”
“Honey, I could talk your dad into anything. Just don’t tell him I said so.” He winked. “So, you ready for your first day?”
“You bet.”
There was a sharp knock, and I turned around to see Daniel Cole standing in the doorway. My breath caught in my throat.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Daniel said to Crete. “Judd said to tell you the boat’s ready.”
“Thanks,” Crete said. “Lucy, you know Daniel? He just started last week.”
They both turned to me, and I hoped my sunburn masked the sudden blush that heated my face. Daniel had graduated from Henbane High the previous year. He’d never spoken to me at school, though he’d given me a pensive half-smile the few times our eyes met in the hall—not ignoring or avoiding me, like most people did. He was always alone when I saw him, but it didn’t seem to bother him, not belonging to any particular group, and I admired him for that.
Everybody knew that Daniel’s mom took food stamps and his dad and three older brothers were in prison. But I knew him another way. He occupied a line in my book of lists, kiss number four from the time I played spin the bottle. The first three were classmates who never paid any attention to me at school, and one of them was so embarrassed to be kissing me that he only pecked me on the cheek. Daniel had been sitting outside the circle the entire time, not participating, but when the bottle pointed in his direction, he grudgingly came forward and slid his hand along my jaw, gazing down at me with a grim expression before leaning in. It was awkward at first, but almost immediately something shifted, and for the first time in my admittedly brief experience with boys, I felt a kiss beyond the reach of lips; it spread through me, warming, loosening, and my insides fluttered, thwap thwap thwap, like a deck of cards collapsing in a dovetail shuffle. I’d clutched his shirt to pull him closer. Everyone laughed when he gently—firmly—pushed me away, but I was too stunned to care what they thought. Daniel disappeared from the party without speaking to me, and I tormented myself for weeks afterward, embellishing his name in my notebook, replaying the kiss in my mind, scrawling a self-conscious list of reasons he didn’t like me.
I tried to appear uninterested. It didn’t help that he was even better-looking than I remembered, with his dark chocolate eyes and shaggy hair and tautly muscled arms. He watched me with what looked like amusement, and I remembered to speak.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lucy.”
“Hi.” He smiled and extended his hand. “I remember you.”
My stomach knotted. I shook his hand with an extra-firm grip, like my dad taught me, but Daniel was stronger, nearly cracking my knuckles, sending nervous aftershocks through my body.
“Well, we better get busy,” Crete said.
Daniel headed out, and we followed him until he disappeared into the boathouse. Crete’s truck was parked out back, a boat trailer hitched to it. “Get on in,” he said.
We climbed into the cab. “Where’re we going?”
“I thought for your first day, we’d start with something easy.” He grinned. “How about some fishing?”
“That doesn’t sound like work,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining.”
He laughed and held a finger up to his lips. “Don’t tell your dad. And put on some sunscreen. All that skin peeling off makes you look like a goddamn leper.”
We fished until lunchtime, not catching anything worth keeping, and then headed back to Dane’s for hamburgers. Crete set me up at the front register, and I spent most of the afternoon staring out the window, hoping to catch sight of Daniel. Crete drove me home after work, telling me that he’d be gone the next day and Judd would be in charge. I ran straight into the house to called Bess, and we spent a good hour discussing the way Daniel’s hair hung down in his eyes (sexy), and the fullness of his lips (not too full), and the dimple that appeared in his cheek when he smiled (also sexy).
Bess complained that no hot guys ever came into the Laundromat. She’d spent her first day, and probably would spend every day after that, watching granny panties and overalls swirl around in the machines.
There was no mention of Cheri on the Springfield nightly news. Her murder was no longer the top story, and more and more time had started to creep in between updates. I wondered how long it would take her to fade into legend, just like my mother.