“I just answered that question.”
“I mean why are you worried about what happens to those people?”
He lifted his napkin from his lap, dropped it on the table, and took a sip of wine before refilling both our glasses.
“I visited a couple of the Mi’kmaq reserves four years back. I saw them from the inside, and I learned what matters to the people there and how important their roots are to them. I couldn’t just look away.”
“That was four years ago. Was that the same time you went to PEI with my brother and sister?”
“Yeah, but that’s another story. A much longer, more personal one.”
“One you don’t want to tell me.”
“One I don’t know how to tell you, Harper.”
He got up and opened a window. I, too, felt it was getting a little stuffy inside. As the fresh air streamed in, I heard him walking behind me, then felt his hand on my shoulder. An electric shock traveled from my feet to the top of my head.
“Come outside. It’s nice. I’ll pick up all this later.”
I grabbed my glass and followed him out to the porch, where we sat on the steps. It smelled of cut grass, damp air, and salt. I could see the dark outline of the coast lit up by the moon and the reflections of the stars in the clear sky on the surface of the water. There weremillions of tiny bright spots over our head.
The waves were breaking against the rocks. Time seemed to have stopped. Is it possible for two people to communicate while saying nothing? I was starting to think so that night. Glances and timid expressions seemed to give birth to a real connection, an invisible thread joining the lives of two beings. Uniting us, one stitch at a time.
“What else do you want to know?” he asked me.
Enjoying the view of his profile as he looked straight ahead, I said, “If your main work is nonprofit, what do you live on?”
“I got lucky, and an environmental foundation bought my capstone project.”
“Wow. It must have been really good.”
“It’s a marine research center, designed on a limited budget with recycled materials, everything sustainable and off the grid. Its focus is on recovering endangered species. They paid me enough that I don’t need to be in a rush. Let’s put it that way. And if things get tight, I’ve almost got them on the hook for another project I finished last year.” He took a sip of wine. “Though, truth be told, I wouldn’t want to sell it.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe it’s just a stupid dream, I don’t know… But I’d like to do it on my own, from beginning to end. It’s good enough that I think I could find investors for it.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I have to force it out of you?”
“It’s a model for a small town, but dedicated to culture. With art schools focusing on painting, music, sculpture, writing, galleries, concert halls, gathering places, and student residences. I know it’s ambitious. But there’s nothing like that in the world! I don’t want recognition or anything like that. If I wanted my name in the papers, I’d just design skyscrapers and luxury hotels and corporate headquarters. I want to do this, because…because without art, life wouldbe a mistake.”
His dreams—his mind—had captivated me. His kindness. His sensitivity. And his intelligence, which I saw glimmer in that quote he’d just used to express his thoughts.
“Friedrich Nietzsche said something like that, didn’t he?”
“Bingo.”
I felt a wave of emotion, something completely new, in my abdomen. It rose up into my chest and throat, almost oppressive in the way it flooded all of my senses.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“No reason,” I responded. But my cheeks were burning.
I didn’t tell him I was trying to figure out how to convince myself that the guy next to me was the same one I had met one September afternoon when I was just twelve years old. The one who had broken my heart. That broken heart I had struggled to piece back together and that was now throbbing harder with every detail of his soul Trey gave me a glimpse of. That heart that was revived thanks to a hope in him I’d never fully let die.
“Harper, seriously, you’re making me nervous.”
“I’m not doing anything!”
