“Oh? What’s his name?”
“Mike West. He’s never mentioned knowing you, but ya know…”
“He might not want to own up to being friends with a serial killer?” he finished with a raised eyebrow.
I cringed. “Something like that.”
Charlie waved his hand. “It’s okay. I understand. No, really,” he said, noticing I was ready to cut in and apologize. “I’m not angry at the way people responded to those accusations. I can’t say I would’ve done differently in their shoes, especially to a stranger.”
I pulled up a picture on my phone of Dad and me, side by side with matching grins on our faces. Charlie took hold of it gingerly, in that awkward way that suggested he had no idea how to use modern technology.
“No,” he said after a few seconds. “He doesn’t look familiar. I wasn’t really friends with any of the pilots.”
Nodding, I took it back. “I’m sorry if the movie upset you. If it makes you feel better, technically, I’m four years older than you. So really, I’m the old man here.”
“Grumpy enough to be,” he faux-grumbled, eyes twinkling. “So it doesn’t bother you, then?”
I let my arm drop around his shoulders, soothing his opposite shoulder. “No, Charlie. It doesn’t bother me. I wonder sometimes…” I stopped, unsure whether he’d want to go there.
“What?”
“I wonder what you would’ve done with your life; if you would’ve stayed in Ponderosa, maybe had a family. I wonder if our paths would’ve crossed differently.”
His face grew soft and pensive.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, it’s okay. I can’t really picture that other life. I was very angry for a long time that I didn’t get to have it, whatever that unknown future was, but…” he shrugged and fussed with the blanket sprawled over our laps. “I’m not angry anymore, Reece. And I think you and I were always going to meet each other, somehow.”
I stared at his mouth. “I think so, too,” I whispered.
Charlie eyed me as well, lingering on my shoulders and chest before he dragged his eyes away. “So,” he said, clearing his throat, “can we watchBraveheartnow?”
I grinned and dug into the popcorn bowl perched on his lap. “Buckle up, baby. It’s a doozy.”
“Ican’t believe you can watch any movie you want, whenever you want. How are they all in there?” Charlie asked after we finished, pointing at my laptop suspiciously.
“Well, they aren’t like downloaded onto the computer. They’re on a streaming platform you subscribe to, or you can rent one.”
He looked at me like I’d spoken a new language. “How, though?”
“Uhh…That’s a good question. I have no idea how the internet works. Satellites, I think? It just does,” I answered, shrugging.
“Is that how the other thing you have works, too? The one that’s also a phone?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s the internet, too. It doesn’t usually work so well this far out in the middle of nowhere, but I have a signal booster and a hotspot set up, so I have internet access. Mom would’ve flipped out if I couldn’t communicate with anyone all summer.”
“I couldn’t,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, we had the radio to communicate with the ranger station and other lookouts, but otherwise we didn’t talk to anyone unless they hiked out.”
I shuddered. “I don’t know how you handled that. I’d probably go crazy without being able to talk to anyone for that long.”
“It was nice for a little while,” he answered quietly.
Time to change the subject.“It’s not just movies and shows we can find, though. There are books, articles, and other videos people make that aren’t movies, like entertainment and funny home movies, and stuff. You can email or message people, like sending letters through the internet,” I added, at his confused look. “There's, well, there’severything.It’s the internet.”
He cocked his head. “How do you know who you’re sending messages to?”
“Well, if you know their email address or you’re friends on social media, you can message them directly. Otherwise, you look them up.”
