Just Fall Read Free Page B

selection of implements. Hammers and screwdrivers. Pliers and wrenches. Saws and sandpaper, nails and screws and bolts. They spent the afternoon hanging pictures, installing hooks, building a shoe rack. Rob in charge. Ellie his eager assistant. They worked well together and as they did, settled into each other. Stopped feeling like strangers. Anxiety faded. Thrill remained.
    —
    Now, in the Dollar General store, Ellie hesitates in front of a selection of screwdrivers. They seem handy, utile. And also a reminder of a time when she felt secure. She lifts a screwdriver from the rack and taps the flat tip lightly against her palm. She replaces it and selects a Phillips head with a clear red plastic handle. Presses the point into the soft flesh of her wrist. The pain is sweetly exquisite. She adds the Phillips head to her basket.
    She pays in cash, carefully counting out the candy-colored East Caribbean dollars. She slips back into the car and out of the lot, her survival tools in shiny green plastic bags piled reassuringly on the seat next to her. She feels exposed in the convertible and closes the top. Cranks up the air-conditioning to create a protective bubble, the thrum of the car, the whoosh of the air.
    A little while later, Ellie pulls up near the Soufrière post office. The gauzy scarf is wrapped in a turban around her head, completely hiding her blond hair. The oversized sunglasses, owl-like, obscure her face. Her lips are painted white with zinc sunblock. The bling-studded nails are affixed to her fingertips; the crystals send shivers of dancing light with every move she makes. She exits the car. Adjusts her breathing to the hot afternoon air, which is moist and startling after the icy air-conditioning of the convertible. She reaches in to extract the padded envelope. It’s addressed with nondescript block letters.

    The town of Soufrière is a colorful jumble. Royal blue, tangerine, hot pink, lavender, the small buildings are as cheerful in their paint colors as they are decrepit in their repair. The post office is an exception. Gray and severe, but well maintained. As Ellie crosses the street to enter it, a pack of stray dogs blocks her path, tails and noses raised, sniffing, jaunty, tongues lolling in the heat, on the hunt for scraps of food. They seem good-natured, but still she pauses, there are just so many of them. She counts as they go by. Eleven. A ragtag canine family. They make her feel lonely.
    The words she’s written run through her mind: You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But Rob has told me that in this situation you are our only friend.
    Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi. Ellie thinks it and nearly giggles. She reminds herself to keep it together. Hysteria is not her ally.
    She enters the post office. It’s dark and cool. A ceiling fan spins lazily overhead. The sole clerk, inky dark skin, a thousand braids, some dyed a virulent orange, long curving nails painted in a zebra print, looks up, and does a quick second look, her eyes skidding past the obscured face and weird white lips, alighting on Ellie’s nails. Ellie’s long, gaudy fake fingernails adorned with crystals. Perfectly tacky. And a perfect distraction.
    The kind of screaming detail that draws the eye, so that it is the only thing remembered by someone giving a description, a distraction easily added, then easily discarded when necessary. A lesson Rob had taught her in wholly different circumstances, in a place and time that now seem eons away. As Ellie’s eyes adapt to the dim light, she reflects on that day briefly, wondering if even then he was trying to prepare her in some way for this incredible, horrible unknown. She shivers. Shakes it off and gets to business.
    The transaction is swift. First, Ellie pays cash in advance for a month’s rental of a post office box. She neatly writes the box number on the padded envelope as the return address. Then she opens the box, places another envelope inside, locks the box, and puts the