She nods, pulling it away from me.
"There's something else."
"What?" I ask, kind of scared of the answer.
"He just asked me so casually," Allison says, tossing her volume of hair from one side to the other. "We had dinner at this restaurant overlooking the water. We watched the sunset together. We came home, we made love, and he told me how much he loved me and we held each other for a while, and then he excused himself. But instead of getting the ring, he just got down on one knee and he asked me. And honestly, I thought that, well, not kidding, but it just seemed so casual. But he said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and what did I think about that."
"What did you think about that?" I parrot back to her.
She tosses her hair to the other side again and lifts up her chin slightly in the air, rolling her eyes to one side, imagining the moment once again. "So I said yes."
"You said yes."
She looks at me.
"Yes, I know that I'm repeating myself. I'm just in shock. Sorry, you had a lot more time to process this," I say.
"Yeah, I know."
"It's fine. I'm just ... But wait. I don't understand. Why didn't he show you the ring?" I ask. "So you said yes before you saw it?"
She nods again. Her eyes lighting up.
"I think he wanted me to say yes to him. And I did. Well, to be more precise, I said, 'Sure.'"
"You said, 'Sure,' instead of 'Yes, I do'?"
"I know. I mean, he makes me feel so informal about everything. It's like nothing really matters besides us and our friends and how we feel about one another. I don't know if you have been following me on social media, but I haven't posted anything in ages."
"Actually, I did notice that," I point out. "I was going to ask you, but ..."
"I mean, have you ever known me to not share every part of my life? And with Richard, it's like I just want to keep him to myself. I mean, he has this grand house and these fabulous friends and I don't want to share any part of that. Not with some strangers, just with close friends."
"Of course." I smile. "So tell me more about how the ring came out."
"Well, after I said, 'Sure,' and we kissed, we got back in bed and we were making out, and then he slipped his hand underneath my pillow and he said, 'I think you have something here.'"
"Oh my God. That's so cheesy.” I laugh.
"I know. But it was so fucking romantic, too."
“So, what happened?"
"Well, what happened was that he showed it to me and he said it's mine, since I'm now his fiancée."
"Oh my God. Just like that?"
"Yeah. Just like that.” She nods.
"Let me see that thing again," I press.
She puts up her hand. Her fingertips are a little bit rough looking. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw them unpolished and imperfect in any way. Come to think of it, everything about her is different.
She's wearing a little bit of makeup, but hardly the pounds that she used to be famous for. She could do all the lashes, all the contouring, all that stuff that the YouTube channels are made for and she looked stunning, but kind of too made up as well, if you know what I mean.
Richard seems to have brought out another side of her. A homey, silly, funny side. This is how she is at home. And to be this way with a man like Richard, well, that is just wholly unexpected.
"Well, congratulations," I say, shaking my head. "I wish I could give you a hug, but ..."
"Well, now that you're here, I definitely want to see you before you go back."
She says the words as if it's such an obvious thing when I actually have no idea. I bite my lower lip. "You are going back to Seattle, right?"
I shake my head. "I have no idea. I don't really know what's there for me. I mean, I was doing this favor for Dante. I was trying to make all these amends, find out the truth about this person that his company invested in, but now with my brother's case being so up in the air and not knowing whether he's actually alive or dead, I don't really care about Vasko anymore.”
She nods and tilts her head slightly, her hair falling into her eyes.
"At the same time, I don't want to leave him hanging. And the job does pay really well and I wouldn't have too many other options otherwise."
She nods, absentmindedly this time, looking somewhere off screen.
"Ugh, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to rain on your parade. I'm just ... I love talking to you and I'm so happy for you.” I try to leave it at that.
After we hang up, I sit in my car and stare out the window, watching people line up for the Starbucks drive-thru. Back in the day, cars were a means of transportation, but that was about it. And now, they're your own mini-apartment. You have an armrest, you have cupholders, you have a perfectly designed layout so that you can be as comfortable as possible, so why ever get out, right?
The Frappuccino has made me impossibly jittery and I don't want to drive back home in this ravished state. I start the engine and go through the drive-thru, ordering two orders of Egg Bites, bite-sized little balls of egg and spinach and mushrooms. They're a little crunchy on the outside, but the protein evens out the sugar high. The black coffee does a bit to help with the process as well.
I drive back home to Mom's house, wishing that I could afford to stay somewhere else on my own tonight. I know I have to tell her about Michael. I have to fill her in about everything that has happened. When I throw the fourth Egg Bite into my mouth and chew through its goodness, it occurs to me that perhaps everything that Sergeant Mallory discovered isn't terrible news.
Yes, Dante and Lincoln have lied about a lot and kept a lot of secrets, but the good news is that Michael wasn’t in that car.
I don't know whose body it is, but it wasn't my brother's. Maybe that's all the good news that I need for today. Because if it's not his body, then there's a chance that he isn't dead. There's a chance that he's out there breathing and living his life.
But why?
Why would he want everyone to think that he had died?
A cold shudder rushes through me. Maybe he has committed a crime. Maybe he saw someone commit a crime and he had to go away.
But if that were the case, why couldn't he tell me and Mom what he was doing?
A little bit of darkness washes over me.
Yes, there's a chance that Michael is alive. But there's also a chance that he is dead and somebody else's body was put there.
Or maybe we'll just never know either way.
That possibility scares me most of all, but I refuse to call it an eventuality.
Walking up my mom’s steps to the front door, I convince myself to look at the bright side.
This is what Michael always did. He was an optimist at his core.
One time, we went on a trip to Florida. Mom had saved up a ton of money for us to stay in a motel near St. Petersburg. We all stayed in one room and there were bedbugs, and we even found a mouse living near the wall unit air conditioner. I'm saying it's a mouse because Michael decided it was a mouse, not a rat. And it rained for six days straight, the whole time that we were there, from morning to night.