“I’ll wear a mask,” she says.
“You’re not strong enough.”
“Piffle.”
“Maddie.”
“I’m bored! I need to get out of this house, and I need to get away from you! I don’t know who you are anymore! You used to tell me everything.”
Pascal sits at her feet like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.
“You want out of this house?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Fine. Mask up. But Pascal and I are going with you so we can talk on the way there. I don’t trust that you have the energy for this.”
She grumbles, but grudgingly acquiesces.
On the way to the parade, I tell her everything. About how my boss basically forced me to take a vacation in Songbird Ridge. About how I stayed in the cabin up until her first episode on Valentine’s Day. About how I was going to try to apologize to her that night, and everything fell apart.
She listens without interrupting.
We make our way to Main Street and sit together on the curb, away from where our friends are sitting, so that we can talk without being overheard.
The parade begins with a huge float shaped like a cloud, a rainbow, and a pot of gold — all constructed from tissue paper and glowing with lights within. The grand marshal is last year’s Dogwood Festival queen, and I realize I don’t even know her name because I barely know who anybody is in this town anymore.
“I heard you came to see me during the pandemic, but then you chickened out and didn’t talk to me,” Maddie says during a lull in the noise.
“That was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure you were healthy and safe. You looked … better than ever. And my stupid ass thought you were thriving without me. So I stayed away.”
Maddie draws her knees up to her chin and rests her forehead there. She lets out a big sigh, then turns to me.
“Ewan, I wasn’t okay. Inside, I was freaking out. Nobody was okay. It messed us all up. And I’m sorry that I didn’t text you either. That was me being resentful and stubborn.”
I didn’t come back to my hometown to hear an apology from Maddie. I want to say as much, but the high school marching band just started playing a U2 song, extremely loudly and with lots of brass.
“I’m sorry, too,” I mouth.
Maddie dabs at her eyes with the meat of her palm, her cheeks blazing.
Then, she reaches for my hand.
There’s that damn hope again, rearing its head.
“So, show me your house.”
Maddie has held on to my hand the whole walk back to our street. I’m watching her like a hawk to make sure she’s not short of breath or feeling ill.
“You want to see my house?”
She nods. “I want to see where you’ve been watching my every move from.”
Once inside my house, she kicks off her shoes and looks around at the bare white walls, basic showroom furniture.
“It’s a lot bigger than mine,” she says.
“I thought it would be nice to have a place big enough…”
