Instantly, I feel like an asshole.
“Sorry. I mean, you’ve got stolen trash in the back of your pickup truck,” I say. “I’m not sure you should be an authority on anything.”
Wyatt makes a face, then a different face. “Sorry,” he finally says. “I swear I know better.”
“You know better than to steal trash or know better than to tell me how to live?”
Wyatt rolls his eyes and slows down to turn off the highway. “One apology’s not enough? You need an itemized list?”
“I wouldn’t mind it.”
“Fuck off,” he says, but he’s grinning. “You know what? I changed my mind. Go have lunch with your dad. Have lunch with your dad every day, and don’t complain about it to me.”
“Then what would I talk to you about?” I ask, and he snorts. “I want to see my mom and Bastien and make a good impression on Gerald, and I promised Castillo I’d have lunch with her.”
Wyatt raises one eyebrow at that, and I sigh.
“Who are you, my mom? No, dude.”
“I can’t make facial expressions now?”
“Wyatt,” I say slowly. “Do youreallywant to get into making facial expressions about hanging out with female friends?”
He doesn’t answer for just long enough that I worry I’ve pissed him off.
“You packed yet?” he asks instead.
“Sort of.”
That gets me a look across the cab of the truck.
“I made a list,” I say, and Wyatt sighs.
“Sure you did,” he says.
CHAPTER FIVE
MADELINE
I’m standing aboutthree feet from the table, arms folded over my chest while I consider the flower arrangements, when the smoke alarm starts shrieking.
I wince, shove my fingers into my ears, and look up at the smoke detector, like that’ll make it stop. It doesn’t. It does announce “Fire. Fire.” in a worryingly robotic monotone, though.
“Sorry!” my dad shouts from the kitchen. “Last week when I made that peach pie, some of it bubbled over onto the stove element, and I forgot it was there. It’ll burn off.” I hear the faint hum of the fan over the stove, which won’t really help, but it’s a nice thought.
“Open the window!” I shout back, because I have to say something.
A moment later, my aunt Susan comes bustling out of the kitchen and hands me a laminated placemat with a map of America on one side and a map of the world on the other. She nods at the windows on the far side of the room.
I open all three of them and assume the standard position: fanning as much fresh air as I can toward the smoke detector. On the other side of the dining table, Susan is doing the same infront of the sliding-glass door while occasionally casting rueful glances toward the kitchen, from where my dad might be calling out updates on the Burnt Peach Stuff in the Oven situation. I don’t know—I can’t really hear him. At least it’s a nice evening for late August in coastal Virginia. I can even smell the sea air—sort of, maybe, if I use a little imagination—and it feels pleasantly cool and not too humid, or at least not like I’m stifling myself in a hot, wet towel.
This part of Virginia was built on swampland, but for once I’m not being reminded of that fact.
After another thirty seconds or so, the smoke alarm stops shrieking. Though neither Susan nor I were born yesterday, so we don’t stop fanning. We know better.
“I think it’s gone!” my dad shouts from the kitchen. “Sorry about that, I did mean to clean it off, but…”
“Did the salmon survive?” Susan asks, trying to look stern while still waving a placemat. I think hers has the alphabet printed on it; besides these two, my dad still has one with animals and one with vehicles. They are, I believe, used almost exclusively for Smoke Detector Events. Nothing else works quite as well.
