Page 13 of What August Heard
I felt August go still next to me. I didn’t look at her.
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice had gone slightly smaller.
I looked at her then.
Her cheeks were pink. She was staring at the sandcastle like it had just said something interesting.
I looked back at the east wing.
Why did I say that.
I knew why I’d said it. I’d said it because Margaux had aimed at August and I’d stepped in front of it. I’d said it because it was true and I’d been thinking it since she walked onto this beach. I’d said it because I was sitting in the sand next to her and she smelled like sunscreen and something floral and I had been cataloguing freckles and bruises and the way she tucked her hair back and I needed to say the thing out loud so it had somewhere to go instead of just sitting in my chest getting bigger.
I was furious at myself for saying it.
I was more furious at myself for meaning it.
I looked at Margaux. She was watching August with a smile that had nothing warm in it. Her eyes were moving over August slowly, like she was calculating something.
I picked up the plastic shovel and went back to the east wing.
This trip was turning out to be a mistake.
I had known it before the car left Millhaven. I had known it in my office, standing next to the dahlias, flinching at my own phone screen.
I had brought her anyway.
***
Chapter 5
August
He called me beautiful.
He said it out loud. With his mouth. In front of people.
I was staring at the sandcastle, and all I could hear wasshe looks beautiful in anything she wearsgoing around in my head like a song stuck on repeat. I had heard that correctly. I had not imagined it.
I looked up at Callie.
Callie was already looking at me. Her eyes were doing the thing they did when she had approximately forty things to say and was physically restraining herself from saying all of them at once. She cleared her throat. Short, pointed, deliberate. She wanted me to step aside.
I looked at Poppy.
Poppy cleared her throat. Same sound. Same energy.
I stared at Poppy. She was nine years old. How did she know our throat-clearing code? We had never taught her our throat-clearing code.
Poppy looked back at me with an expression that said she knew many things and this was the least of them.
“August,” Callie said in a loud voice, meaning it was my clue to join her wherever she was going to go. She looked at me hard. “Do you want to take a dip?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sure. Absolutely.”
“I feel like a dip too,” Poppy said, already standing up and brushing sand off her knees.
The three of us walked toward the shoreline. I didn’t look back. I could feel eyes on my back the whole way down to the water, like a hand pressing between my shoulder blades.
