Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

He looked away from her. His arm hurt.

"The photograph of Chloe. " he began, but couldn't finish. Not telling her, he realized, was the only kindness he could give her.

"I had to hide before," Anna said. She cleared her throat and continued in a steadier voice. " After I left Utah that time, when I was seventeen. I ran and hid for years, and I just couldn't do it again. You don't know what it's like. Always looking over your shoulder, looking out for strange cars, the way all the windows have eyes. This time there wouldn't have been any money, Gavin, this time we would've been in hiding forever, Chloe and I. New names, no friends, no more family, no money, and this time I'd be with a child who was old enough to understand and old enough to give us away, and the people we left behind would be in danger, like I said. There wasn't a choice."

Chloe stirred in her sleep and they were both silent for a moment, looking in her direction.

"I'm sorry," Gavin said. "I don't think you had to do what you think you had to do."

Anna said nothing. What were they capable of, Anna and Daniel and Liam? If you've gone all the way once, isn't it easier to do it again? He was chilled in the dim air of the motel room.

"It was your idea," he said, "wasn't it?"

"It wasn't anyone's idea." She sounded immeasurably weary. "We were talking about what to do, the three of us—"

"You, Daniel, Liam Deval?"

"Right. I can't remember anyone bringing it up, but the idea was there, in the room. We were talking and it was something we were skirting around. No one said it directly. It just. it slowly became something that had been decided on. If we hadn't done this," she said, and there were tears on her face now, "how much danger would we have been in? What might have happened to Chloe, to Sasha, to Daniel's kids? 'You pay with money or you pay with your family.' That's what he said to Daniel."

"But it was the wrong thing to do," Gavin said. "It's the worst thing anyone I know has ever done."

Anna had gone still. She was watching him intently. Could she throw something at him? Everything within her reach was suddenly a weapon; the toaster, the heavy glass in her hand, the hard bowl on the dish towel by the sink. Gavin backed away from her and opened the door. He was afraid to look away until he'd closed the door between them, and he glanced twice at the motel on the fast walk back to his car but the door remained shut, the curtain over the window unmoving.

Gavin drove to his apartment. He hadn't accumulated much. He made a neat stack of his clothes and bedding in the backseat of his car, working quickly. His socks and underwear went into a cardboard box behind the front passenger seat. He hid his laptop under a pillow on the backseat and packed a plastic bag with half a loaf of bread and some peanut butter, all the bottles of water from the fridge, an unripe banana and an orange. The kettle, which was of course easily replaceable but was his favorite of all the kettles he'd ever owned, a pleasing fire-engine red. His magnificent 1973 Yashica and the gold pocket watch he'd found at a stoop sale in New York, the glass dog stolen from his mother, the photograph of Chloe. When he was finished all that remained was the sofa that had been there when he moved in, a cheap bed and dresser and coffee table from Ikea. On the way out he dropped the apartment key through the mail slot.

H e d r o v e to the Starlight Diner and parked in the shadows by the back door. No trace remained of the crime scene. The diner was quiet at this hour, a midnight lull. When he came in Sasha was standing by the cash register with another waitress, the older blond woman with turquoise eye shadow whom he'd met once or twice before. Gavin waved at them and sat in a banquette where he could see the parking lot.

"Will you sit for a moment?" he asked, when Sasha came to his table. She did, sliding onto the padded bench across from him. She looked worse than she had the last time he'd seen her, paler, dark smudges under her eyes.

"You look tired," he said. He realized it was a tactless thing to say as the words left his mouth, but she didn't seem to take offense.

"I was up all day playing poker." Something tugged at him when she said this— a long-ago conversation he'd had with her outside the school, money lost in a high school poker game— but the memory was fleeting and vague.

"Where's Grace?"

"I don't know. I drove her home that night."

"Sasha, you told me once that you hated the plan."

She glanced at Bianca, but Bianca was across the room and couldn't hear them.

"I did," she said softly. "I do. Yes."

"Did you know what the plan was?"

"That's just it," she said. "I thought I did, but I think the plan was

actually something different." Her hands were clenched on the table. "Did you know what the plan was, Gavin?"

"I didn't know anything."

"I thought it was just money." There were tears in her eyes. "Anna and Daniel, I thought they were just paying back a debt. I didn't know."

"Sasha," he said, "we were friends back then, weren't we? In high school?"

"That was a nice time," she said. He hadn't expected her to turn nostalgic on him. Her eyes drifted toward the window, and he saw how tired she was. She was losing focus, not as sharp as she had been a week or two ago, not even as sharp as she'd been in high school. She closed her eyes for just a moment and touched her fingertips to her forehead. "I'm sorry," she said. "I haven't been sleeping much. Do you ever miss the quartet?"

"We were good."

She smiled. "We were. You remember our last concert?"

"Behind the school. How could I forget? It was the only time I ever played in the back of a pickup truck."

"I think about it sometimes," she said. "Taylor singing, the fireflies, everyone dancing."

"Sasha," he said, "have you thought about going somewhere else?"

"I have." She was still gazing out the window. "I'm leaving soon," she said.

"When?"

"I don't know, I just want to get away from all this." She looked at him. "I can't go to the police," she said. "She's my sister. You don't know what she's done for me."

"I want to ask you a favor," Gavin said. "As a friend."

"What kind of favor?"

"Sasha," he said, "I want you to leave town tonight. Please. Don't tell anyone you're going."

"Tonight?"

"Will you do it?"

"Why.?"

"Because you're complicit," he said, "and because I don't know if you're safe here."

"But you're not going to say anything about this, are you? What would happen to Chloe?"

The thought of his daughter made his heart seize up.

"Just say you'll do it, Sasha, please."

"Okay," she said, "I'll leave town tonight." A brightness in her eyes that he hadn't anticipated. She was frightened, he realized, but also excited. How many times in your life do you get to flee town? How often do you get to lose everything and start all over again?

G a v i n h a d already researched the boundaries of police precincts in this part of Florida and now he pulled out of the parking lot and turned right on Route 77. He crossed the first boundary within a few minutes— Fellever Road— and kept driving. It wouldn't hurt, he thought, to cover some distance. He stopped for gas and a road map. The suburbs were shining, glass and stucco and lights along the freeway and palm trees silhouetted along the edge of the sky. He was traveling north. He had a few thousand dollars, the savings from his work with Eilo. He would stop and call Eilo to explain and then keep going, up out of this land of palm trees and alligators, somewhere far. He was thinking about Chicago. He didn't think his life would be easier there but he was certain it would be different.

Gavin crossed the Sebastian city limits. The city-limits sign was in