B L A I R E
•
I can't believe that Mum died at the end of March and it's already May. I've lived through the whole of April without her. A whole month she never got to see, never got to experience. She'll never know that the Notre Dame caught fire; she'll never see the first ever photo of a black hole; she'll never hear Taylor Swift and Brendan Urie's duet.
It hits hard when I come down for breakfast and Elizabeth has the radio on, and Me! is playing. Mum loved Taylor Swift. She used to call her Tay, like they were best friends, and she thought it made her cool to be a sixty-something who was into current pop culture. On long drives, we used to load up Red, 1989 and Reputation, and sing at the top of our lungs.
And now there's a whole new album, and the first time I hear Soon You'll Get Better – just a few days ago, at Sukie's house – I bawled my eyes out.
"Morning, Blaire," Elizabeth says, turning down the radio. "You're going out?"
"To the café," I say with a nod, swiping a banana from the bunch in the middle of the table. I'm starting to feel more comfortable here, like this is my house too. I don't need permission to eat a banana, to go out and see my friends.
"Have fun," she says. "Is there any chance you could go to the shop for me?"
"Sure. What do you need?"
She digs through her pockets for her card and holds it out to me. Usually she gives me cash, always just enough for whatever she asks for. She must trust me more now, I think. We've made it to the next level. "Whatever you want for supper tonight. It's your choice."
"Okay." That's a lot of responsibility. "Is there anything you don't want?"
Her nose crinkles as she thinks for a moment and with a shake of her head says, "No. Get what you want, and I'll cook it."
In which case, I may need to stock up on herbs and spices. "Thanks. See you later, Elizabeth."
"Oh, and Blaire?" she calls as I'm leaving.
"Yeah?"
"Treat yourself. Whatever you want from the café, it's on me. Use my card."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course." She smiles. It's small, her lips are shut, but it's a smile. She's done that a lot more the past few days, and it's both disarming and comforting. "Are you seeing Sukie?"
"I hope so."
Her subtle smile grows a fraction, eyes shining. "I hope you have a good time."
I can see in her eyes that she knows how I feel, and if Elizabeth can tell that I like Sukie when we've spent the past five weeks barely talking, then there's no hope that everyone else hasn't already figured it out. My cheeks start to get warm, and I take that as my cue to leave.
Sukie and I don't have plans to meet today, but I know she'll be at the café and I haven't been able to stop reading The Key to Anchor Lake since I checked it out yesterday morning – except the moments I had to give my tired eyes a break, and I curled up on the sofa with The Anchor Lakey piping into my ears.
Last night, I listened to episode sixty, and my heart broke to hear Oli promise to return, a promise I know he's broken. Sure, he came back for Christmas, but not since then. Not since he left a souvenir he can't undo.
I cycle slowly today, enjoying the warm sun on my face and taking it easy so I don't overheat. Apparently, the temperature's supposed to get up to almost twenty degrees today, so I've taken the plunge and switched out my black leggings for cropped white ones. I even shaved my legs last night, as pointless as it seems when they're already prickly again, less than twelve hours later.
When I make it to The Flour Patch, after spending the whole ride deciding what to buy for supper tonight, Sukie isn't behind the counter. Just a sullen-faced boy I've seen here before. Simon, according to his name tag.
I glance around the café in search of her, and my eyes land on Niko and Cat sitting on the sofa in front of the window. She's playing with the end of one of the box braids cascading over her shoulder and he's tying his hair up into a floppy bun, and when he finishes, he leans over and plants a kiss on her blood-red lips.
Well, holy shit.
I had no idea they were together.
Cat spots me, and she waves, beckoning me over. "Hey, Blaire! Wanna join us?"
I take a seat opposite them, dumbfounded. "Hey, guys. Are you a couple?"
Niko laughs and drapes his arm around Cat's shoulder. "I don't know. Are we a couple, babe?"
Cat rolls her eyes at him, and puts her hand over his. "Considering we've been dating for two years and we live together, I think we're a couple," she says.
"I had no idea."
"Sukie'll do that to you," she says. My blush flares, eyes widening, but then she adds, "She gets you so twisted up in The Anchor Lakey that it's kind of impossible to see anything else."
Oh. Okay. Maybe she doesn't know that if I'm not thinking about The Key to Anchor Lake or The Anchor Lakey, then I'm thinking about Sukie. And seeing as she's so entwined in both the book and the podcast, she's basically on my mind a hundred percent of the time.
Cat excuses herself to the loo and when she's gone, I ask, "Did you meet because of Sukie?"
Niko grins, eyes crinkling. "Nope. I did a job for Cat, laying down a new hardwood floor. And the chemistry was undeniable." He winks and says, "I'm not one to kiss and tell, but ... well, let's just say that what happened next involved a lot of the same words."
I piece it together and a laugh bursts out of me when I realise what he's saying. "Oh my god. Lust at first sight then, I guess?"
"One hundred percent. Can you blame me?"
"Not at all. Cat's stunning."
He gives me a satisfied nod. "And then of course, we kind of entered the land of cliché and went and fell in love. We moved in together last year, and we've laid down a lot more hardwood floors since then."
I choke, and he laughs. Cat comes back, eyeing us like we're a couple of naughty kids.
"What've you two been talking about?"
"Just our origin story, my darling," he says with a cheeky grin, kissing her cheek when she sits down next to him. Cat groans, shaking her head, so I change the topic.
"Hey, is Sukie around today?"
Cat grimaces. "You didn't hear?"
My heart stops, my skin going clammy in an instant, my mouth drying out. "What?"
Cat nods at the other end of the café. I didn't notice Sukie there before, and relief floods my chest to see that she's fine, sitting there in her apron, talking to ... oh.
Oli's back.
"What's he doing here?" I whisper, leaning close to Cat and Niko.
"His first year's over," Niko says. "I guess there's only so long he could avoid his impending fatherhood."
"Holy shit."
"He got here, like, fifteen minutes ago," Cat says. "Didn't even say hi to us, even though I know he saw us. He went straight up to the counter and asked where Sukie was, and I swear she looked like she was gonna shit herself when she came out and saw him."
I risk another glance in their direction. Sukie's back is to me, so I can't see her face, but I can see Oli's. He looks pathetic. He's hunched over the table, hugging his arms to himself, eyes cast down. It's hard to quantify this pitiful boy in front of me with the guy I know from the podcasts, the one who is confident and funny and seems to care so much about Sukie.
"Is she okay?" I ask.
"Oh, yeah. Sukie's strong as hell," Cat says. "She can hold her own. I'm more worried that she'll lose her job if she kicks him in the nuts while she's on the clock."
"She should totally kick him in the nuts," Niko says. "It's taken him this long to own up to the fact that he's going to have a baby, so he shouldn't be able to make any more."
"Strong words, Mr Rozhdestvensky," Cat says.
"Strong feelings. He's twenty – he's old enough to face the consequences of not wrapping it before tapping it."
"Actually," Cat says, "I'm pretty sure they did wrap it. I remember Sukie saying it was just her luck that the one time she slept with a boy, fully suited and booted and ready to roll, she got pregnant."
"Okay, my point still stands. He's old enough to face the consequences of sex that involved two fertile people, a ready egg, and an enthusiastic sperm."
Cat pulls a face that matches mine, scrunching her wide, flawless nose. "Too much, Niko. Too much."
I get myself a latte and a cookie and I return to them, the three of us waiting until Oli leaves and Sukie's free. It doesn't seem like that'll happen any time soon, though, and I can't hear a word of what they're saying in hushed voices. In a town where everyone knows everyone, the middle of the café probably isn't the best place to air their dirty laundry.
"Hey, Blaire," Niko pipes up. "Before Oli got here, Sukie was saying that you noticed something about the book."
"Oh! Yeah! I mean, I don't know if it really is something," I say, a fresh rush of excitement flooding my veins as we veer onto my current favourite topic. I dig the book out of my bag, where I'm keeping it in its own book sleeve to protect the battered pages.
I talk them through my theory, both of them glued to my words and my hands as I rifle through the pages for the sticky notes marking my places, and I keep one eye on Sukie the whole time. Just in case. The fact that they've been friends for years doesn't mean he's incapable of flipping out on her, especially if he decides she's ruining his life by keeping the baby he's refused to acknowledge until now.
"I guess this gives us something else to get our teeth into," Niko says when I've caught him and Cat up.
Cat leans forward, elbows on her knees, scanning my haphazardly-written notes. "If it's about the people who died rather than the year they died, or what killed them, then we need to figure out who they are. Which ones matter? Which ones are Mary's focus?"
"Exactly." I pull over my notebook, the page half-filled with mindless doodles, and write down THE PEOPLE OF THE KEY TO ANCHOR LAKE. Underneath it, I write WHO IS MARY S NESBITT? On a new line, I write WHERE IS BETSY MARTINS?. "Obviously she matters. Right?"
"Right."
And then I see it, like one of those word wheels in the newspaper. Sometimes it takes me forever to unscramble the letters to make a word; sometimes I see it right away. I laugh. Not an amused laugh, but a shocked one. Cat frowns.
"What?"
"It's the same," I say. "Oh my god. It's the same fucking name."
"What is?" Niko asks, twisting the notebook.
I cross out the letters of Betsy Martins one by one, rearranging them on the line below until they spell out another name: Mary S Nesbitt.
"What the fuck!" Cat covers her mouth with both hands as though she can stuff the word back in. "Oh my god."
"That can't be a coincidence!" I cry out, writing out the names again and again in case I'm wrong. But I'm not. They're the exact same letters. "Holy shit. It can't be, right?"
I don't even notice that Sukie has come over until she asks, "What's this?"
"Wait, where's Oli?"
"He's gone home," she says. I want to ask how it went, what he said, but she gets there first. "What're you guys up to?" She leans over my shoulder, peering at the notebook, a frown spreading over her face.
"Mary S Nesbitt and Betsy Martins," I say. "They're anagrams."
She pales. "No. No way. What the hell?!"
"They're anagrams," I repeat, fizzing with too much excitement to find the right words.
Sukie's shaking her head. "Are you sure? Mary's name looks too long. There are too many letters."
I do it again. I write out MARY S NESBITT at the top of a fresh page, and starting with the B, I cross out each letter and write it in its new order. It's a perfect fit. Sukie slumps onto the chair next to me, her jaw hanging open, her head in her hands.
"They're the same person," she whispers.
"That answers one question," Niko says, tapping my messy handwriting at the top of the page. "The mystery of Mary is no more. She's Betsy."
I can't speak. I can't believe it. Next to me, Sukie looks shellshocked, like she has just witnessed the world fall apart in front of her eyes.
"She's a survivor," Cat says, touching the edge of the book with renewed awe, "and this is her tale."
*