Page 2 of The Faceoff

The bell jingles again.

A tourist couple wanders inside clutching iced coffees and wearing matching sailing jackets the particular shade of navy that announces we are on vacation and we have made certain choices. I spend the next twenty minutes helping them find local history books while Margaret rings up customers. Normal. Comfortable. Safe.

The kind of afternoon I’ve grown weirdly protective of over the past three months.

Which is, if I’m being honest with myself, a little pathetic. Being attached to a routine. Getting sentimental over a cash register and the smell of a room.

But I’ve had enough experience with people leaving to know that buildings stick around longer.

The thought sneaks up on me the way it always does, quiet and precise.

My mother.

My father.

My brother — though Danny’s is a different kind of leaving, the kind that comes with a phone call every Wednesday and a return date penciled into a calendar somewhere, which I know isn’t the same as staying but is close enough that I’ve made peace with it.

I force the thread away before it can pull.

Not today.

Today is a good day.

Today my roommates are coming home.

The Sailmaker has been unbearably quiet all summer, the way a house with four people in it becomes wrong-shaped when three of them are gone. Sure, June stayed for part of it, appearing at odd hours with a coffee cup and a paperback and the gentle company that requires nothing from you. And Wren came back for a week between hockey camps, leaving her equipment bag in the hallway and her practice schedules on the refrigerator. But Margo spent most of the summer interning in Boston, sending daily voice memos that were essentially just her narrating whatever was happening around her. I listened to all of them. Every single one.

I am not going to examine what that says about me.

A vibration buzzes in my back pocket.

Group chat.

MARGO

WE’RE TEN MINUTES AWAY.

WREN

Drive faster.

MARGO

I’M NOT DRIVING.

JUNE

Please don’t encourage reckless behavior.

MARGO

BOOOOO.

MARGO

SLOANE. DID YOU BUY SNACKS?

Yes.