“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” Kelly gave her a look. She knew about Rachel’s brief, pathetic affair—if you could call it that—with the much older and very married Jay Steeler. But even she didn’t know how Rachel had unraveled after the night they’d spent together, how often she’d called him, how she’d once driven all the way down from Chicago just to sit outside his house, trying to work up the courage to confront him.
“This isn’t about revenge, if that’s what you mean,” Rachel said.
“Good. Because you know what my mom would say.” Kelly sat up with a grunt, leading with her stomach. “It’s okay to glance in the rearview mirror. But start staring, and you’ll veer off the road.”
Rachel sat up too, stretching. Unbelievably, it was only four thirty in the afternoon. “I’ll remember that on the way home,” she said.
They had one more stop to make.
The Sandhus had invited Lucy and Rachel to join them for dessert when they returned from Willard County. Rachel had agreed, partially out of guilt; in the paranoid days after she’d received a second anonymous letter in the mailbox, she had briefly suspected Akash. He so clearly had a desperate crush on Lucy.
Heartache could do funny things to a person. Especially a teenaged boy.
Rachel and Lucy parked the car, and Lucy ran inside to get the cookies she’d insisted on baking. She emerged moments later, her cheeks whiplashed from the wind, her hair standing up with static as if alarmed by the change in temperature. They tromped across the service road andcut across the Sandhus’ backyard. The grass cracked with ice. It was the kind of cold that shocked every breath into the pantomime of a ghost.
Inside, Aman and Sabrina Sandhu were in the kitchen, working diligently through a wreckage of dirty dishes.
“Thank goodness,” Sabrina said. “You’re right on time. I don’t think I could hold off the kids much longer. Leila has been asking for pumpkin pie since before we carved the turkey.”
“The kids” were Akash and his two older sisters, both home from college with several friends in tow. Lucy kicked off her shoes and bounded into the living room to join them. Rachel heard a vocal flurry of greeting—introductions, laughter—and felt an immense sense of gratitude, true thankfulness, flame to life inside her. Kelly was right. This was where life happened: here in the present, with friendly neighbors and warm kitchens and stacks of dirty dishes.
Rachel should be content to stay here.
She peeked her head into the living room and saw Lucy comfortably settled next to Akash on the couch, one arm slung casually behind his head, leaning close to look at something on his laptop screen. Akash, meanwhile, sat rigid, as if afraid he might shatter their proximity by breathing.
Poor Akash. He was a good kid.
As she set out the small plates, Rachel latched on to snippets of conversation from the living room. The kids were discussing something called “Market Catch.” She kept hearing a single name, repeated like a bass line under some growing disagreement.
It was that swimmer, the one everyone was excited about. The one she’d met on Halloween. A tall, goofy-looking kid with sloped shoulders and hands too big for his body. Noah Landry.
They were arguing about Noah Landry.
Then Akash stormed into the dining room, speaking over his shoulder.
“He’snotthat nice,” he said. “It’s a front. He’s putting on a good front.”
He blew past Rachel without a word and disappeared into the kitchen. He had a brief exchange with his mother, then returned, still looking sullen, carrying a coffeepot and a handful of dessert spoons.
“You okay?” Rachel asked. She could tell Akash was still seething.
He didn’t answer right away. He went around the table depositing a spoon at every plate, slightly harder than was necessary.
Then he said, “Noah Landry isn’t the guy everyone thinks he is. He’s a narcissist. He just hides it.”
“Okay,” Rachel said. She had no idea why Akash was telling her.
Akash straightened. “Tell Lucy,” he said. “Tell her that Noah Landry always wins.”
So. Rachel had been right about Lucy. She was anxious about a boy—abouttheboy, the great Noah Landry who everyone was talking about—and Akash, poor kid, was obviously heartsick about it.
Noah Landry always wins.It was a funny thing to say. Inconsequential, in a way. Still, as Akash turned out of the room again, Rachel wondered why it felt like a warning.
Two
We
For a month, we plowed through the competition.
