Page 57 of High Season
Gabby is making breakfast when there’s a knock on the door.
The three of them still. Calvin’s hand hovers midway to the coffee pot. Gabby turns off the hob, a pan already spitting. They don’t get visitors.
“Maybe it’s Nic?” Gabby says, a trace of hope in her voice.
Josie knows that it isn’t. She has been waiting for this. She has known, somehow, ever since she came back, that this would happen.
“I’ll go,” says Calvin.
“No,I’llgo,” says Gabby, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “I can say you’re not here, if it’s…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. That is how Josie knows that the two of them have been waiting for this, too.
Gabby goes out into the hallway. They hear the click of the latch. The name of the newspaper that the man announces. The pause before Gabby responds.
“Josie Jackson?” she says, as if she doesn’t recognize the name.
“I got a tip-off that she might be back?” the reporter says. “I drove down right away. With all the renewed attention on the case, the timing was just perfect.”
Gabby’s voice comes out clear this time, strong.
“You think Josie Jackson would come back?” she says. “With the way people feel about her round here?”
“The person who called this in was absolutely certain,” the reporter says. “Said they used to know her when she was a kid, and they spotted her in town yesterday. I figured she must be staying here. Thisisstill her family home, right?”
“That’s private information,” says Gabby.
“Any idea if she’s back in town? You haven’t heard anything?”
“I told you, there’s no chance Josie Jackson would be back here. She’d be run out of town.”
“Well, if you do hear anything…”
“I won’t.”
When she rounds back into the kitchen, Josie and Calvin are silent at the table.
“He’s gone,” she says. “I just watched him drive off. Don’t look so worried.”
She bustles back to the hob, presses down on the gas ignition.
“He’ll be back,” says Josie.
A ring of blue flames blooms beneath the frying pan.
“You don’t know that,” says Calvin. “It’s one rogue reporter. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“How many eggs do you both want?” Gabby says, picking up a fork from the countertop in a voice that suggests the conversation is over.
And because Josie doesn’t want to ruin things—because she doesn’t want to spoil Gabby and Calvin’s morning off, doesn’t want to splinter this small fantasy of normality—she asks for two eggs, please. She doesn’t mention the reporter again. She doesn’t tell Calvin how naïve he’s being. She doesn’t tell them that, in the moment she heard the name of the newspaper, she felt the small dream that she had allowed to take root last night fall away. That she knows, even though neither of them will say it, that Gabby won’t want her working in the café now that people are looking for her. That she probably won’t even be able togoto the café anymore, or to the beach. That she’ll have to find somewhere new to live, because she knows that it isn’t fair on Calvin to stay here. To drag him through this all over again.
She doesn’t, as she wants to, tell Calvin that they have the capacity to ruin your life, these people. That once they find you, they won’t leave you alone. That word of where you are, and what you are doing, will spread like mold blooming across the surface of food left out in the heat. That once they have you, they won’t let you go.
Instead, Josie eats eggs and bread. She drinks coffee. She holds on to this moment, this tiny slice of tranquility—a Saturday morning breakfast, a mug of fresh coffee—because she knows how fragile it is. She knows how quickly it will pass.
She knows, already, that her time here is running out.
After breakfast, Josie walks alone to a rocky outcrop that sprawls out beyond the beach, far from the hordes of people who fill the sand.
