Page 87 of Caught in a Storm
She keeps looking outside. The birds have returned to the basketball hoop. The neighborhood has settled. “What?”
“I need you,” says Nikki.
If Billy were here, he probably would’ve been quiet, Margot thinks. He’d have made everyone espressos. He’d be sitting now in The Rocker. He’d apologize for the mess, do his best to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome. He’d speak up here, though, because they’d both be aware of Margot’s notebook, which rests on the music stand less than a foot from Nikki’s face. He wouldn’t speak to them, only to her, and it’d just be a whisper in her ear. But, Margot, you don’t need her. You know that, right?
“I appreciate you coming all this way, Nikki,” she says. “I mean that. And you look great, too.”
Nikki’s face is hopeful, expectant. Axl sets his hand on the Steinway and waits.
“But I think you should both leave.”
Chapter 48
Robyn really wishes she’d cleaned out her car.
She keeps the outside spotless, thanks mostly to the drive-thru car wash at the Royal Farms she passes on the way home from her office. The inside, though, is a swirl of work papers, marooned to-go coffee cups, and an assortment of backup footwear. She laughs now at the symbolism—the vehicular version of herself.
Looks pretty good on the outside, right? she thinks.
“What’s funny, love?” asks Lawson.
“Oh, nothing. Sorry about the mess.”
Lawson smiles down at the pair of black flats between his feet. “I’ll survive. These are nice, by the way. Classy.”
She keeps looking at him out of the corner of her eye as she drives. He probably notices, because how could he not? She keeps veering into other lanes. A guy in a Tesla honked earlier, glaring as he passed. But then he squinted for an unsafe amount of time as he tried to figure out if it was really Lawson Daniels in the passenger seat.
“Appreciate the ride,” says Lawson. “I wasn’t in the mood to chat with a driver.”
“Yeah, happy to,” she says.
Half an hour ago, Robyn and Aaron were talking to Caleb in the kitchen, explaining themselves. “I’m still your co-dad,” Aaron was saying. “Always. You know that, right, buddy? I’m gonna keep being a part of your life. This is just a living change, not a life change.”
“I know,” said Caleb. “I just don’t understand what happened. Did one of you, like, do something?”
Caleb was taking it better than Robyn expected he would—like an adult, not a kid. He was taking it so well, in fact, that it made her realize that all of this—the secrecy, Billy moving in above the garage—was unnecessary, especially since Caleb is now, apparently, going to college three miles away. Maybe the “nontraditional household situation” he’d been born into had prepared him for instability at every turn, as if she and Billy went and built a life for him on a plot of hastily smoothed-over sand.
“No,” said Aaron. “Not at all, Cay. It’s not like that.”
“Sometimes people just…” Robyn trailed off. She’d rehearsed the phrasing, but it sounded weak now in her own mind, not big enough to topple their lives over.
Aaron finished for her. “Grow apart. It happens. Not everything is about someone being bad. There isn’t always a villain. Sometimes two good people fall out of love.”
Then there was a knock at the front door, followed by Lawson’s voice. “ ’Ello?”
He needed a ride to the airport. Not the normal airport, the little one where the private planes go. It seemed strange that he needed their help, as if being famous would somehow make him able to teleport himself across midsize metropolitan areas.
They’re just out of the most congested part of the city now. Robyn steers them onto 395, following the nav on her phone. A series of enormous industrial gas tanks sit at the southernmost part of town, one of which is decorated with a mural of blue crabs.
“You love those pinchy buggers here, don’t you?” Lawson says.
Robyn admits that they do. “You weren’t here for very long, were you?” she asks. “Less than a day.”
His arm rests on the console between them. His left hand is just inches from Robyn’s thigh, which, despite everything, she’s distinctly aware of. “Bit of a legal issue back home. Contract dispute. I’m sorry to leave, though. I like this little place. Maybe next time you can show me how people eat crabs. I can’t imagine the logistics of it.”
He’s just being polite, but it’s a fun fantasy. A restaurant on the water. Everyone looking at them. It must be how Billy has felt these last few weeks: special by proximity.
Traffic is thick but steady. The adrenaline from the morning’s events has left her body. That, combined with her car’s gentle vibration against the road, has a lulling effect, and they drive mostly in silence for several miles. Lawson fiddles with the radio, settling on news. The nav directs her off the highway.
