“Who is she?” he asked.
I drew back. “Excuse me?”
“Grace Emory. You’re her friend. What don’t we know?”
That quickly, I was alarmed. “Um, like what?”
“Like where she came from or what she did before Devon.”
“Does it matter?” Edward asked, but David’s eyes held mine.
“If you want your story to be complete, there has to be a past.”
“That’s not how Devon works,” I tried, but he talked right over my words.
“No one knows squat, like where she grew up and why she has no family—like who the kid’s father is. For all we know, it’s Zwick. Sure, the boy hacked other accounts, but they could have been red herrings. What he did to Zwick was pretty ugly.”
“What heallegedlydid, David,” I said. “And nothing that happened to Zwick is any uglier than what he is doing now to a fifteen-year-old boy.”
“QED. Zwick is known for ugliness. Maybe the kid inherited it.”
“Are you planning to write about this?” Edward asked with a qualm I was glad to hear.
David shot him a glance, which wasn’t the wayIwould reward a loyal reader, but the man was bizarre. “No. But it’s an interesting premise, is it not?”
“It’s a wacky premise,” Kevin said, having walked over in time to hear enough. “Zwick wouldn’t go public if he was Chris’s dad. Why would a father put his son through this? Sorry, Davie. You won’t get a bestseller out of this one.”
“My point,” said the writer Dylan Ivory, “is that things aren’t always what they seem.”
I wasn’t laughing now.Things aren’t always what they seem.Nor did I have a comeback.No, they weren’t.He was building a story around Grace and Chris. Another time it might be around Edward and me.
In that instant, I felt like a fraud.
Kevin must have sensed it, because he slipped a comforting arm around my waist. At first I thought it was Edward. But no. Edward was watching, but the arm was Kevin’s.
In the next instant, Nina’s amplified voice rose over the rest of the conversation. Shortly thereafter, we were seated in the nave, and Cornelia was beside me, holding my hand, asking how I was with the kind of concern that might have made me wonder, if I hadn’t been worried about Edward. I saw friends in pews front and back, but I didn’t see him. I had to search, smiling when catching the eyes of others, and then search more, before I finally spotted him at the back of the hall with Liam. Only then could I face front and settle in.
The meeting itself was a settling experience. Cornelia whispered little facts, like how much had been spent on the last school renovation, who was supplying fire trucks to neighboring towns and at what cost, and the scene created by competing food trucks when last they had been allowed near the green. Kevin was in charge of munchies, alternately pulling candied walnuts, cookie halves, and Hershey’s Kisses from his backpack.
We voted yes on renovations to the elementary school, no on funding a new fire truck, yes on both raising the police department budget and allowing food trucks to park in the center of town during summer months, but with restrictions on the latter relating to hours, size and color of truck, and type of food.
It felt trivial in comparison to a Federal charge of hacking, but the sheer normalcy of it revived me. Small matters were the currency of daily life here.
Actually, that told only half the story, I realized as the evening wound down. In the language of currency, trivial matters were loose change. The big money was being with people I liked.
For that reason, I lingered with friends after the meeting adjourned.One by one, they left, but still I stayed. The church was the epitome of normalcy. I felt safe here.
“All set, babe?” Kevin asked when less than a handful of people remained.
I was in the outer lobby then, and, waving as those stragglers went out the door, I joined Kevin at the coat rack. Ours were the last parkas there. Hangers clinked as he freed mine and opened it for me.
“Your brother headed home. He said he’ll see you there.”
Liam.I grimaced as I inserted one arm, then the other. “I kind of forgot he was here.” Such was the power of compartmentalization. With both Liam and Edward out of sight during the meeting, I had barred them from my mind and, in so doing, had recaptured a little of the me I was in Devon. But now came the other me, worming its way right back in.
“No sweat,” Kevin said. “He did good, by the way. He’s a fabulous cook, and people like him. I probably would, too, if he hadn’t been such a shit to you.”
I shot him a chiding look.
