“Matchmaking, you mean?”
He laughs in response and my cheeks heat up so quickly, I must look like a tomato pie. Damn Nadia and her busybodyknowing. I could’ve done without hearing Adam think about how hilarious I am as a romantic prospect. Or maybe it’s not so bad. I’m pretty sure every moth has evaporated now.
“Sometimes she is. Latine elders, especially the women. It’s how they are. They’re always trying to get in their kids’ business, whether we like it or not.”
Adam chuckles. “Sometimes Gramps gets like that with me. It’s annoying as fuck.”
I think of when I was a ghost, watching William yell at Adam about “jerking women around.” I wonder if Adam has ever been in love. “It really is.”
When we get in the car, I shove all the festival shit Nadia gave me into my purse and turn to him. “So. Where are we going?”
Adam turns his head to look at me. “It’s completely up to you. But I was thinking…Cranberry Falls.”
I nod. “You want to go to the scene of the crime, so to speak.”
“Only if you’re comfortable with it. Otherwise, I was thinking I could ask you some questions someplace less emotionally resonant for you. Maybe the beach.”
I shake my head. “We can go to Cranberry Falls. I’ve gone back, like, a hundred times already. It’s no big deal.”
Adam turns on some oldies radio station, one that plays the likes of Creedence Clearwater, Jimi Hendrix, and Fleetwood Mac, and we spend most of the drive in silence, just listening.
Cranberry has two state parks, one called Cranberry Wood, and the other Cranberry Falls. Cranberry Wood is on the west side of town, and it’s mainly made up of biking trails, a few hiking trails, and some pickleball courts near the main parking lot. Cranberry Falls is much more popular. It has a few hiking trails—obviously, since Teal and I were on one of those when I fell—but the big appeal is Crescent Beach, a hidden, seemingly secret little stretch of white shore. Though it is the main appeal of Cranberry Falls, Crescent Beach isn’t ever near as busy and crowded as the beach downtown. It doesn’t have the downtown shops, and you can’t buy food here, you have to pack it, but for many people, it’s worth the effort.
When Adam and I get out of the car, it’s clear that’s where most of the people in the parking lot are headed. They have little red wagons full of snacks and kids, and they take the trailhead markedCrescent Beachwith a crescent moon painted in white on the sign, over the top of the wood-etched words.
Adam and I take the one calledFallsinstead, marked withthree long, vertically painted curvy lines—leading to the waterfalls the park is named for.
“Do you think it’s weird that I fell in a place called Falls?” I ask as we begin, the tall pine trees already shading us from the late-morning sunshine.
Adam gives me a side smile. “I think…a lot of things seem to be more coincidental, or poetic, than they should be sometimes.”
I hum in agreement and follow him as we ascend. He holds his arm out for me at the narrow spots, which is thoughtful but unnecessary. I wasn’t lying before. I’ve come back here a million times since my return. I know this terrain by now the same way I know the secret places in the neighborhood and what the neighbors keep in their junk drawers, from my Ghost Times.
Whenever I visit Cranberry Falls, it’s always to do the same damn thing. I go to where I fell, right next to where the city has now placed a huge new metal and wood railing, and try to…well. I’m not sure, exactly. Remember? Or maybe get something back that I’d lost? I don’t know. It’s similar to when I climb onto the roof a couple evenings a week and watch the distant sea, just barely making out the distant lines of bright seafoam. Being high up feels natural now. Maybe I’ve grown into my namesake. And maybe that’s why I took the attic room a few months after Sage moved out of it, too. I feel strangely at home when there is a great deal of space between me and the black earth.
“So tell me more about your gift, Sky.” Adam offers his arm again, and I gently place my hand upon it. He’s so warm, I can feel it through his windbreaker.
“Um…okay. You want to know anything specific?”
Adam shakes his head. “Just whatever you want to say about it. I’ll ask questions if they arise.”
I glance around as the trail leads us through a bit of flat land. The trees are old and thick here, reminding me of where I’d spent eight long years. That’s one place I haven’t gone back to yet, that ancient, hollowed oak where Sage and Nadia found me. Again, I don’t know why. But I have a feeling it’s got something to do with ghosts.
“Nadia says all human lineages can be traced to something not quite human. Plant, animal, mineral.” I sidestep some Spanish moss, long and rough as an old man’s beard. “Cloud. Lightning. Stone. This explains…well, do you know the feeling of doing something or being near something and it feels like you lose yourself in a sense of belonging?”
Adam’s quiet for a few minutes, and then he laughs. “Yeah. Knitting.”
I’m so surprised by his response that I stop short before continuing on. “Knitting?”
“I took it up after I stopped drinking. I’m fucking terrible at it, Sky.”
He laughs again, the strands of sunlight coming through the canopy making it look like his eyes have stars in them. I lower my eyes to his dimples and imagine very briefly how it would feel to kiss them. I shake my head and look away.
“But while I’m knitting, I lose myself and find myself at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but I feel as though I become more and less than human when I’m clicking my grandmother’s old knitting needles.”
I smile. “That explains it really well, actually. That’s kind of what our gifts feel like. Or at least mine does. I feel like I belong to the World of Criaturas, and that belonging somehow makes me more and less human at the same time.”
“So I belong to knitting, then. The world of knitting.” He scoffs like he’s making a light joke.
