The Six Rules of Maybe

to catch his words, whatever they were.
    “Are you all right, Hayden?”
    He shook his head.
    “Hayden?”
    “Shit, Scarlet,” he said. “Shit.” And that was all. Then he opened the refrigerator and took out the orange juice, as if that had been his plan all along.
    During the summer, there was only one thing worse than going to the place where everyone from my school hung out, and that was going to the place where everyone from my school hung out while I was wearing a bathing suit. Summer was supposed to be a reprieve from school, I thought, not a two-month warmer version of it. Every time Nicole had asked me to go to the Parrish Island Community Pool, I had a lie handy. I told her I was working much more than I was, or that I was babysitting Jeffrey and Jacob, which you couldn’t pay me enough to do. But it was becoming a lie traffic jam, and so I knew I had to agree, just once. Then I’d be free to start up the lies again. This was a clunky but workable system. You throw in a yes, and that allows you about five more no’s in the future.
    A bikini requires you to feel comfortable with a bikini, but a one-piece looks like what your mother would wear, so I compromised and wore my tank suit that’s technically two pieces but looks like one. Even my bathing suit walked a line of dishonesty. When I went downstairs that morning, Juliet clicked the hang-up button of the phone fast and started one of those cover-up conversations that are the verbal equivalent of the dog kicking dirt backward after he’s just pooped in the yard.
    “Pool or the beach?” she asked. “Pool’s so much nicer. Nosand.” Her hands were moving nervously, setting the phone exactly straight against the counter edge.
    My stomach dropped. It was the fourth or fifth time in the four days since the ferry ride that I’d caught her with that phone in her hand, or against her ear, listening to something as if her life depended on it. I knew what was happening and where this was headed. Sometimes you just know before all the facts are in, the way rats are supposed to know to flee a ship before it’s about to go down. I would never understand her and Buddy Wilkes. Never. “Who were you calling?” I asked.
    “I wasn’t calling anyone,” she said.
    “That’s why you’re holding the tele phone,” I said.
    She put her hand on her stomach then. It made me think of the cemetery, when Buddy Wilkes had put his hand there too. I hadn’t wanted to think what I’d been thinking. I counted back the number of months since Juliet had visited us last. I remembered a weekend at home, a night she’d gone out with friends and didn’t return until 2:00 a.m. No, it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
    “My hus band. If it’s any of your business.”
    “Will Quail’s got a phone on his boat?”
    “Cell phone, idiot,” she said. “Hayden does have one, even if you’ve never seen it. He uses it for emergencies.”
    I remembered this from my psychology books. How to tell if someone was lying. They used too many details. They covered up their nose or mouth with their hand, which Juliet did just then.
    “You’re pretty mature for someone who’s about to be a mother ,” I said. I slammed my way past her, grabbed some drinks out of the fridge, and left out the front door. I knew it was a hypocritical thing for a liar to feel, but I hated being lied to.
    Every morning, I took Mom to work in case we needed her car,so I headed for her Honda Accord parked at the curb and that’s when I saw Mr. Martinelli with the black-and-red FOR SALE sign gripped in his teeth, his hands holding two fat strips of silver duct tape. He had on jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. I don’t think I’d ever seen Mr. Martinelli in something so festive before. He usually wore tan button-up sweaters and serious janitor-green pants. Maybe he had found it in the back of his closet during all the cleaning.
    The set of silver stairs that allowed you to reach the door of the Pleasure Way was already set out, looking like a step-right-up welcome to future buyers. Mr. Martinelli took the sign out of his mouth and slapped it onto the side of the RV.
    “You’re selling it?” I shouted.
    “It’s a beauty,” he said. But there wasn’t anything like regret in his voice. In fact, it was as happy as a dozen cupcakes.
    “I thought you were going to go to Montana this summer to see your daughter.”
    “Who wants to sit in that tank for twenty-two hours?” he said.
    “I thought you