“You can take the whiskey,” she said, pulling out a bottle from her purse. “It was making my shoulder ache.”
“What are you buying whiskey for?” I asked as we made our way through the parking lot. Not toward a car, because I walked the ten minutes it took to get to work. Even in the rain, it was fine as long as you didn’t try and take the shortcut across the field.
“You got plans tonight?” she asked, setting quite a pace back home.
“You mean apart from that conference call with Paris and pilates at the country club?” I asked.
“Good. You have plans with me then. We’re just going to make a start tonight. We won’t get it all done, but we can get an idea.”
I peered into one of the shopping bags she was carrying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t groceries. “Make a start on what?” I said. “I’m happy if whiskey is part of the equation but all I want to do is go home and watch Bravo.” Anything to keep me distracted from thinking about London. About Dexter. About the life I’d left behind. At some point I’d maybe start designing again. I had a couple of ideas but no energy to put down on paper something I wasn’t going to be able to make.
Buck was at the entrance of the park. “Hey, Buck, can’t stop. Gotta get back and pack,” Autumn said, pulling me by the sleeve when I slowed to say hi.
What the hell was up with her. “What have you been buying? You better not have thrown away your textbook money on something stupid and whiskey.”
“Come on and I’ll show you,” she said, marching toward our trailer.
It seemed like time slowed with every pace toward home. It was the last place I wanted to be. Being indoors, I was faced with how starkly different my life had been this time last week.
She was first up the steps, through the door and was emptying her bags before I’d even finished taking my hoodie off.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she spread out what she’d brought back on the table. There were about a hundred Sharpies, each a different color, and a ruler and sticky notes. And then a huge roll of paper.
“Is this an elementary school art project?” I asked, pulling out two shot glasses and setting them next to the whiskey.
“Nope. This is planning HQ.”
I poured out the whiskey, careful not to spill a drop.
“What are we planning? How to not run out of Sharpies?”
She ignored me, came over, picked up her shot glass and held it up. “Here’s to getting out of here,” she said and tipped back the shot.
I’d drink to that. And I did.
The warm, sleepy liquid slid down my throat, loosening my limbs and making the world slightly more bearable. A couple of more shots and I might be able to call Mom and Dad to make sure they were packing.
“So,” she said, screwing the lid back on the bottle. “No more until we’ve done some work. We need to keep a clear head.”
I was hoping a lot of whiskey was the plan to get out of here, but apparently Autumn had something else in mind.
“Come on.” She shooed me over to the dining table like I was cattle.
Autumn clearly meant business. And I figured it was easier to just play along. I’d sneak a couple more shots and just let her talk. And then I’d go to bed, hopefully before the dark and quiet could leave room for thoughts of Dexter to take over in my mind.
She sat opposite me and rolled open the large sheet of paper. “So, I’ve been doing some research. We can do flights to London for five hundred dollars as long as you don’t mind a bit of a layover.”
London? I sat back, the soothing effect of the whiskey lifting like a pigeon when a car backfired. I was totally confused. Autumn removed the lid of the bright pink Sharpie with a pop and wrote “out” at the top left of the page, underlining it twice.
“You want to fill me in on what we’re doing here,” I asked, a little uncomfortable. I didn’t understand what London had to do with a pile of Sharpies, and there was no need to figure out the cost of flights. If I ever went back, inflation would have been around the block a few times and who knew what the price would be. “Because I really want to go and watch some housewives scream at each other.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She looked at me as if I was being deliberately dumb. “We’re hatching a plan to get your ass back to London.”
I groaned and went to stand.
“Sit down,” she snapped. My sister never snapped at me and I could count on the fingers of one hand how often she’d told me what to do.