Where Darin Went

02: FREDDIE ISSUES AN APOLOGY

Lula sighs resentfully, “I’m not doubtin’ ya, hon, but I’m tellin’ you—”

“—That this is one hard fish to catch,” George remarks.

But she’s unflinching. “Well, I’m going to put my faith in this,” Emme says to both Lula and George, whose look of disapproval has seemed to melt away slowly into pity, and it’s really the last thing Emme would’ve like to see. “Okay?"

“Oh, honey,” Lula says with a sigh, reaching to just brush Emme’s hands on the counter. “Y’all don’t need to tell us about faith.”

“I’ve got faith in a lot of things, sure,” George goes onto say. “I’ve got faith in my Lord. I got faith in this here shop, and those trees out there, those flowers, and that sun up above us. And I’ve got faith that the world will keep on spinnin’ long after I’ve left this planet, and long after you two as well – but you know what?” He laughs, smiling in a heavily sad kind of way, “I ain’t never put much faith in people.”

Emme and Spencer both frown, the hardened creases of her face softening. Emme’s heavy eyes fall on his, and all she can manage to do is push the envelope on the counter further towards him to where it’s teetering on the edge.

“I’ll be expecting this next week, then,” Emme says softly, nodding towards the two. And with that, she turns on her heel and grabs Spencer by his wrist, marching back out into the heat before anyone could convince them otherwise.

✎

Emme’s done her best to appease Spencer after a long few minutes walking back from Lula and George’s by stopping in their favorite coffee place for a much needed respite. They get their usual, sit in their usual spot, and make their usual chit-chat before Spencer breaks out into either: a) an outrageous rumor he’s heard through his mother that can’t possibly be true, or b) an outrageous rumor that he’s started. This time it’s the latter.

“Yeah, so before school ended, I’d heard Francesca Smull say that my clothes made me look like a poor man’s Prince – which is totally untrue, I mean, you know that ruffled shirt has style.”

But Emme’s not really listening this time, because she’s instead staring out the window, wondering where Darin might be and how she might get there. Spencer certainly wasn’t thrilled about the prospect, and her entanglement with the police was now out of the question since her confrontation with Freddie Symanski – an experience which she’s kept secret from Spencer – and it didn’t seem as if anyone really had much faith in her plan at all.

But it wasn’t very much like she had a choice whether or not to seek out Darin. She felt a compulsion to; an obligation to.

“So I may or may not have told Madilyn D’Agostino that she was pregnant. It was just a joke, but the other day when I was in town and saw Ricky – you remember Ricky, he’s my ex from Hilton Head last summer – he knew about it. Emme. Ricky goes to school in South Carolina,” he says, immediately collapsing into laughter. Emme nods in response, taking a long sip of her iced tea before looking back towards the window. Spencer sighs, bumping her leg under the table. “Emme. What’s wrong? Talk to me. Usually you’d find that hilarious."

Emme sighs, gazing down at her cup, watching intently the swirls and patterns that exist in the intricate world of its own. She bites down on her lips, hard, “Don’t you get tired of coming here all the time?"

“What do you mean?”

She sighs, “We come here, like, every day. We order the same thing, like, every day. And every day, you gossip about people from our school – but I’m so tired about hearing about people from our school.”