Page 45 of The Luminaries
She really thinks she might detonate. “I wouldn’t know,” she bites out, and then she starts wheeling the bike away from him, her stride long and borderline desperate.
Jay saunters easily alongside her. He looks amused, which only makes her angrier. “So if you don’t have time to go to the forest, does that mean you also don’t have time to train today?”
“No,” she snaps before she can consider this. She squeezes her brakes and stops. They are at the edge of the parking lot, cars rumbling away. There go Emma and Bretta in Katie’s Prius, waving frantically at Jay. Or, maybe they’re just waving at Winnie, since they both seem to be grinning more at her than at him.
She waves in return. Smiles too, and something about that movement is like water hitting magma. She cools, solidifies. Then reassesses all she has just said.
“The next trial is tonight.” She pulls off her glasses and rubs her eyes with the knuckles of her hand. “I have to go to the Wednesday estate before that to get some gear that actually fits.”
“A good plan.”
Winnie shoves the glasses back on. They are, of course, smudged now. “Tell me honestly, Jay—what’s the point in practicing more? I don’t know what I thought I could accomplish in three days, but now I realizenothingis what I could accomplish in three days. I’m so sore just the act of lifting my arm here”—she attempts to raise it over her head—“sends my body into power-down mode.”
It really does. She wants a nap very badly.
“No, more training won’t do much,” he admits. A new sort of frown pinches his brow. He slides his hands into his jeans pockets, shoulders bunching high. “But I do think seeing where that safe spot is would be good. We can get there from the Friday estate, if you’re really worried about the sensors. There are gaps over there.”
“No.” Winnie wags her head. If this spot is in the heart of the forest, it will take too long to reach from the Friday estate. And she reallyisshort on time. “We’ll go the main way. Can you pick me up in…” She grabs his wrist and lifts his old watch to read. The bandage from yesterday is gone, but a faint red line puckers out from under the ticking face.
He swallows.
“Two hours,” Winnie says. That should give her plenty of time to visit the Wednesday estate. “At my house.”
“You bet,” he replies, and for half a minute, they just stand there, his wrist in her hand. Their eyes meeting in the cold.
She withdraws first, a new sort of heat gathering inside her, and he quickly turns away. His long legs carry him into the parking lot. No goodbye, just a hand scrubbing at his hair and a pace that could only be described aspurposeful.
“Driving high is dangerous!” Winnie calls at him once he reaches Mathilda.
He glances back while he unlocks the door, a crooked twitch on his lips that almost seems to say,You adorable little human. Is that why you’re so mad?Then he calls out, “It is indeed, and I would never!”
Soon he’s gone, leaving Winnie all alone in the cold, waiting for a different ride she really hopes is coming.
Aunt Rachel does come. She’s a few minutes late (clearly this runs in the family), but Winnie is too happy for the blasting heater in the Civic to complain. Plus, even with Rachel’s apology from last night, Winnie is still terrified of her.
“I don’t know where Marcus went,” Winnie says, thrusting her fingers into the heater vents.
“Oh, he’s with his dad on the weekends.”
That’s right; Winnie had forgotten: Rachel and Elijah Thursday got a divorce last year, and in the Luminaries, kids automatically go into the mother’s clan—even though Rachel and Elijah technically have shared custody.
“I love Marcus,” Rachel says, crossing over parking spaces with no concern for the lanes, “but fourteen.” She flings Winnie a look that says,Teen boys, am I right?
Winnie obliges with a snort of commiseration even though she really has no idea what fourteen-year-old boys are like. When Darian was fourteen, she’d been only nine andveryobsessed with convincing everyone that Pokémon had roots in the Luminaries.
She still stands by this theory.
Rachel drives like Winnie imagines she hunts: fast and with lots of rolling stops. She gets carsick at the various roundabouts, and it occurs to her that Rachel is so different from Mom. Mom would never speed; Rachel clearly forgets a speed limit even exists. And pedestrians? What are those?
When at last the Wednesday estate comes into view in the early-afternoon light, Winnie is wondering if she can justwalkhome after this. Hell, she’d take Jay’s motorcycle over another trip in the navy Civic.
Rachel parks in a lot set off from the main house. It’s mostly empty—and newly paved since the last time Winnie was here; the old potholes that always ate away the Volvo’s front tires are now smooth as cake icing. Silver maples and black locust trees hug the lot, their leaves just starting to emerge, while the manicured rows of tulips show green shoots that will soon burst with purple and pink and red.
When Winnie and Aunt Rachel emerge from the lot’s walking path and onto the main driveway, Winnie’s breath catches as the full expanse of the brick estate appears before her. The tall windows and hedges are so perfectly square, you’d think a Thursday had trimmed them, and over the large double doors hangs the same black bear that waits in Winnie’s bedroom.
If the Thursday estate is a modern-art museum, the Monday estate is a college campus, and the Friday estate is a haunted mansion, then the Wednesday estate is Pemberley fromPride and Prejudice.It usedto be that coming here for clan dinner was the highlight of Winnie’s week. Sitting in the massive dining hall with its wood beams arching high while course after course was served on gorgeous china with the Wednesday bear painted around the edges—it made Winnie feel like a character in a novel. Theheroeven, and until now she’d had no idea how much she’d truly missed it.
For the first time since Thursday night, she doesn’t regret what happened. She doesn’t care that she has been living a lie. She’s just so happy to come home.
