Sara opened several drawers, looking for her swimsuit. She said, "Maybe that's all it is for me, too. Maybe I'm just having a good time."
"I wish I could believe you."
"I wish you could, too," Sara told her. "Because it's true."
"I don't know, baby. You have such a gentle heart."
"It's not that gentle anymore."
"What happened to you in Atlanta doesn't change who you are."
Sara shrugged, tucking her swimsuit into the case. It was how other people had changed that made what happened even more horrible. Sara was angry as hell that she had been raped, and livid that the animal who had attacked her could, and probably would, get out of jail in a few years with good behavior. She was pissed off that her whole life had been turned upside down, that she'd had to resign her internship at Grady Hospital, the job she had worked toward her entire life, because everyone in the ER treated her like broken china. The attending who had worked on Sara could no longer look her in the eye, and her fellow students wouldn't joke with her for fear of saying the wrong thing. Even the nurses treated her with kid gloves, as if being raped made Sara some sort of martyr.
Cathy said, "Is that all I get? That look from you that says you don't want to talk about it?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Sara told her, exasperated. "I don't want to talk about anything serious. I'm tired of being serious." She tugged at the zipper on the suitcase. "I'm tired of being the smartest girl in the class. I'm tired of being too tall for the cute boys. I'm tired of dating men who are worried about my feelings and wanna take it slow and be gentle and process what we're doing and plan our future together and treat me like I'm some delicate flower and -"
"Mason James is a very sweet boy."
"That's the point, Mama. He's a boy. I'm sick of boys. I'm sick of people walking on eggshells around me, trying to protect my feelings. I want somebody to shake things up. I want to have fun." Without thinking, she said, "I want to fuck around."
Cathy gasped – not because she had never heard the word before, but because she had never heard it from Sara. Sara could think of only a few occasions when she had used the expletive, but never in front of her mother.
All Cathy said was, "Language, please."
"You don't mind when Tessa says it."
Cathy wrinkled her nose at the logic. "Tessa says it like she means it, not like she's trying to shock her mother."
"I say it all the time," Sara lied.
"Do your cheeks always get that red when you do?"
Sara felt her cheeks go redder.
"From here," Cathy coached, pressing her hand below her diaphragm. She gestured broadly with her other hand, singing an operatic "Fuck."
"Mother!"
"If you're going to say it, say it with gusto."
"I don't need you to tell me how to say it," Sara snapped, and when Cathy laughed in her face, she added a mumbled "Or how to do it."
Cathy laughed harder. "I suppose you know all about it now?"
Sara jerked the suitcase off her bed. "Let's just say some of that expertise rubbed off."
"Oh-ho-ho," Cathy chuckled appreciatively.
Sara tucked her hands into her hips. "We do it all the time."
"Is that a fact?"
"Night and day."
"And day?" Cathy laughed again, sitting back on the bed. "Scandalous!"
"It's not like I'm seeing him for the scintillating conversation," Sara bragged. "I don't even know if he went to college."
From the doorway, Tessa said, "Sara?"
"As a matter of fact," Sara continued, wanting more than anything to take the smug look off her mother's face, "I'm fairly certain he's not even that smart."
Cathy smiled like she knew better. "That so?"
Tessa tried again. "Sara?"
"Yes, that's so, and you know what? I don't even care. He's probably stupid as a box of hair and I don't give a rat's ass. It's not like I'm dating him for his mind."
Tessa said, "For chrissake, Sara. Just shut up and turn around."
She did as she was told, regret taking hold like a fever.
Jeffrey was leaning against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a half-smile on his lips that did not quite reach his eyes as he nodded toward her suitcase. "Ready to go?"
A gentle mist of rain met them as they drove out of Grant County, and Sara watched the wipers sluice water off the windshield at steady intervals, trying to think of something to say. With each pass, she told herself she was going to break the silence, but the next thing she knew, the wipers were swiping across the glass again and nothing had been said. She stared out the side window, counting cows, then goats, then billboards. The closer they got to Macon, the higher the number got, so that by the time they took the bypass, Sara had reached triple digits.
Jeffrey shifted gears, passing an eighteen-wheeler. He had not spoken since they left Grant, and he chose to break the ice with "Car handles well."
"Yes," Sara agreed, so glad he was talking to her that she could have cried. Thank God they had taken her car instead of his truck or there was no telling how long the silence would have lasted. To keep the conversation going, she said, "German engineering."
"I guess it's true what they say about doctors driving BMWs."
"My dad bought it for me when I got into medical school."
"Nice dad," he said, pausing before he added, "Your mom seems nice, too."
Sara cleared her throat, unable to recall any of the apologies she had been rehearsing in her mind for the last hour. "I would have preferred for you to meet her under different circumstances."
"I never expected to meet her at all."
"Oh, right," she said, flustered. "I didn't mean -"
"I'm glad we got to meet."
Sara nodded, thinking that the fewer times she opened her mouth, the less likely she was to put her foot in it.
"Your sister's cute."
"Yes," she agreed, knowing a lesser person would hate her sister by now. Sara had been hearing the same thing all her life. Tessa was the cute one, the funny one, the cheerleader, the one everyone wanted to be friends with. Sara was the tall one. On a good day, she was the tall redheaded one.
Before Sara could phrase something more elegant, she blurted out, "I'm so sorry about what I said."
"That's okay," he told her, but she could tell from his tone that it was not. Why he had still wanted her to go to Florida with him was anyone's guess. If Sara had any self-respect, she would have let him leave without her. The forced smile he had kept on his face as he loaded her bags into the trunk could have cut glass.
"I was just trying to…" She shook her head. "I don't know what I was trying to do. Make an idiot of myself?"
"You did a good job."
"It's part of my personality to want to excel in everything I do."
He did not smile.
She tried again. "I don't think you're stupid."
"As a box of hair."
"What?"
"You said 'stupid as a box of hair.' "
"Oh. Well." She laughed once, like a seal's bark. "That doesn't even make sense."
"But it's good to know you don't really think that." He glanced behind him and passed a church van. Sara stared at his hand on the shift, watching the tendons work as he passed the cars. His fingers gripped the shaft, his thumb tapping lightly on the knob.
"By the way," he told her. "I did go to college."
"Really?" she asked, unable to check her surprised tone. She made it worse by saying, "Well, good. Good for you."
Jeffrey gave her a sharp glance.
"I mean, that's good as in…well…because it's…" She laughed at her own ineptitude, putting her hand over her mouth as she mumbled, "Oh, God, Sara, shut up. Shut up."