Chapter Eighteen
By the time Scott arrived at Catherine’s, Libby’d had so much wine that she’d decided it best she didn’t drive home, so Scott had driven her, and a friend of his had followed in her rental. After they left, she sat in the cottage with a swimming head and the quiet buzz of the lamp beside her, feeling very alone. She knew better, but with the help of the wine, she decided to text Pete. Catherine had been lovely, but she felt as though Pete was her best friend there. Her fingers moved unsteadily across the letters: I’ve been thinking about you. How are you? I’m bored. What are you doing right now?
She stared at the screen, her little blue text bubble the only thing on it. The minutes seemed like hours. She got up and got herself a glass of water. When she came back to the small sofa in the living room where her phone rested, she picked it up to be sure she hadn’t missed the ping. Nothing.
She sat for quite a while, drinking her water and holding the phone. As she diluted the alcohol in her body, she came to the conclusion that she shouldn’t have texted him. He knew as well as she did why they couldn’t be together, and it seemed that being friends was as hard for him as it was for her, so he was distancing himself. She knew him well enough to know that. She’d told him over and over how she wasn’t the same person anymore, so she had no right to text him as if she were still that girl who’d loved him.
After an hour of clicking through the shows on television and coming up empty, Libby decided to turn off the TV and call it a night. She picked up the remote just as she heard a knock at the door. She peeked out the window but she couldn’t see the person, so she stood there, deliberating. Another knock. She looked out again and this time she could see who it was. Pete was shifting impatiently from one foot to another. He ran his fingers through his hair, looking back and forth behind him. Libby opened the door.
“Has Pop come by here? I can’t find him,” he said. There was a tiredness in his eyes; the usual spirit that she’d seen in his face was absent tonight.
“No,” she said, suddenly worried beyond words. She glanced down the dark drive toward the street looking for him, hoping to see him wandering along.
“Damn.” He looked around again, his shoulders slumped, defeated. “I thought that if he’d forgotten again, he’d come back here, since this was his home with Nana, and if he did remember where he was, perhaps he’d come to see you on the off chance.”
Libby slipped her flats on and grabbed her keys. “I’ll help you find him.” She locked the handle and shut the door behind her. “Leave your car; we’ll look for him on foot. We can split up.”
They paced briskly down the walk and out to the street where the darkness wrapped around them like a woolen blanket. “Which way should we go?” she asked, her stomach filling with anxiousness.
“Let’s head toward town.”
As they headed down the road in silence the loose gravel of the asphalt beneath their feet, she felt more terrible with every step. There she was, telling Pete how different she was as an adult, how much had changed for her, yet she hadn’t stopped, yet again, to consider his point of view. Look how much had changed for him. He’d lost his grandmother, who was as close to him as his own mother, and now, in front of his eyes, he was losing his grandfather. Like Libby, there were remnants of who he was, but he, too, was someone else now. They continued down the street toward town, two people who used to know each other, bound by only memories, walking along in the empty space.
They arrived at the first intersection and Pete started looking in the windows of all the shops. Libby followed his lead, searching the faces of everyone she saw, willing Hugh to come out of one of the doors. Where would he have gone? She racked her brain for an answer. The intensity behind Pete’s movements was making her even more nervous. He knew more about Hugh’s prognosis than she, and if he was this worried, there was reason. She wanted to find him, if anything to take the concern out of Pete’s eyes, because it was killing her. He’d never looked so vulnerable, so unsure.
“How long has he been gone?” she asked, cupping her hands on her forehead and peering into the market window.
Pete looked down at his watch. “About two hours.”
Libby worried for Hugh. It was dark, the spring air was a little chilly. There was so much water and dense forest around them. If he had forgotten, would he know where he was when he became himself again? Only a few hours ago, nothing was wrong except her circumstances—which seemed so silly now that she’d been struck with the worst worry she’d ever felt, apart from the worry she’d had as a child as her daddy drove away to start his new family.