Chapter 51: Gavin

Gavin turned his key in the ignition and sat back, thinking he’d let the engine warm up for a moment before he began driving. “Am I taking you home?” he asked Skylar.

“I suppose,” Skylar answered. “Where else would you take me?”

Hope rose in his stomach, or maybe that was just gas bubbles from the artisan root beer he’d drunk. “We could go to my grandpa’s cabin. I’ll build a fire, and we could, you know… hang out.”

Shyness muzzled him and kept him from saying what he really thought they could do together, alone in a cabin with nothing but firelight and their body heat to keep them warm. But apparently Skylar didn’t need him to spell things out; she seemed fine, rejecting him in the abstract. “I don’t think so, Gavin,” she said. “We’d have to park so far away, and then hike, and by the time we got to the cabin it would be time to turn around.”

“Or…” He let his hand graze her thigh. “…we could spend the night there.”

She shook her head. “I have a Brontë test coming up. It’s important and I need to study.”

“You have a test for your online course?”

“Yeah, I had to schedule it, and they monitor when I begin and when I end, and it’s like, a third of my grade. If I reschedule, I’ll automatically go down a grade.”

“And you scheduled it for tomorrow?”

Skylar kept her gaze straight ahead, watching the frost on the window recede as hot air blasted from the car’s vents. She blew a strand of hair off her cheek. “The test is on Friday, actually, but I need to get a good night’s sleep so I can spend all day tomorrow studying.” She wrapped her arms over her chest and rubbed the sleeves of her parka, a gesture to keep warm. “It’s cold sitting here. Can we get going?”

Wordlessly, Gavin put the car in reverse and pulled out of his parking spot. They spoke very little on the ride home; in fact, neither of them said a word. But when he pulled up to her curb, Skylar turned to him and Gavin saw that look in her eyes, the one she often had when they first started dating, the one that said he was important to her.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Of course not,” he told her. “I understand that you have to study. Your class is important. And if you get a good grade maybe that will mean getting into Northwestern or The University of Chicago.”

“Yeah, who knows?” She leaned in and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips. “Look, I’d invite you in, but with Mitch and Magda around, it would just be awkward. But I promise we’ll spend more time together soon, okay?”

Gavin agreed and smiled to reassure her that everything between them was good. Then he watched as she climbed out of the car and walked toward her front door. Through the window, he spotted Mitch passing by, peeking out to see that Skylar had returned home. Magda stood behind him. Gavin’s reaction was visceral, like he’d just watched a parent slap his child or had seen a sack of puppies dropped into a lake to be drowned. He couldn’t help it; his every instinct told him one thing: Mitch was evil. But what was there to do about it? What should he do right now, tonight?

He wasn’t going to go to his grandfather’s cabin alone, and he really couldn’t stomach going to parents’ house again, so Gavin drove to the bakery. Even though he wasn’t scheduled to work, he figured he may as well have some alone time to experiment with new recipes. That was when he came up with his best ideas. It could be sort of meditative, baking in the middle of the night, just him and his recipe notebook. He used his key to let himself into the bakery’s back door, turned on some music, and measured out the ingredients for blackberry cheesecake muffins. The first batch was too moist and fell apart easily but he got the right balance on the second batch, and Gavin was just cleaning up when Elizabeth arrived.

She took off her coat, placed it on the rack, and grinned when she saw him. “What smells so good?”

“Blackberry cheesecake muffins.” He gestured to the platter where they were cooling. “Have one.”

Elizabeth picked one up and bit into it, her eyes widening in delight as she chewed. “Delicious!” she exclaimed after swallowing it down. “I hope you remember the recipe, because once people try these, they’re going to demand more.”

Gavin stood at the sink, rinsing out the bowl where the muffin batter had been, watching as white liquid clumps disappeared down the drain. “How are you, Elizabeth?”

Her head snapped toward him, as if surprised by his question. “Okay, I guess. Why do you ask?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look tired.”

She ran a hand through her hair and leaned against the table where they knead dough. “I am. Grief makes you tired, you know? I don’t think the pain of losing my Jo Beth will ever go away.”

Gavin remembered back to not so long ago, when she’d been so worried about Jo Beth, calling her throughout the day, trying to decide if she should go to Brazil or not. Once Elizabeth had made the decision to buy her ticket for the next day, her mood had lightened and she’d seemed optimistic at the idea that she could do something concrete to help her daughter. He’d promised to look after the bakery and had even put together a care package of treats for her to take to Jo Beth. Fast forward to now, the present moment, and it was clear that Elizabeth’s life had gone off the rails. Gavin knew there was nothing he could do to help; fact was, his previous efforts had gone astray and in the end, he’d been sort of destructive.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I wish I could make things better for you.”

She came over and hugged him. The hug was like fresh baked bread: comforting and hopeful at the same time. “You already make things better for me,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll do once you leave for Chicago.”

Their hug fell away and then the moment of affection was replaced by a subtle, pressing guilt.