But when she turned around to face him, she was all smiles again, raising her chin and swinging her flower crown softly by her side.
Hehatedit. He’d had enough of smiling for one night, and he didn’t want to think too hard about how, with Nora, not smiling would’ve somehow felt like a truce.
“Oh, hi!” she said, that same high, false note of cheer that’d been in her voice when he’d first shown up tonight. “I needed some air.”
Will stayed silent, watching as she realized what she’d said: a pause, a blink . . . a minute, nearly undetectable cringe.
“Uh, inside air, I meant.” She reached up, fidgeting again with that band holding her dress up. “Are you having fun?”
Once again, he didn’t answer, because he didn’t really know how. He kind ofhadbeen having fun, until he saw her up there, looking small and smiling and fragile.
She cleared her throat. “Okay, I can see you’re mad. But I didn’t tell Marian to call your number first, I promise.” She paused again, looking down. At some point, she’d slipped into a pair of sandals, and she shuffled her feet now, pulling the hem of her dress from beneath the sole of one. “That was a coincidence.”
“I don’t care about the number. I did fine up there.”
She swung her crown again, her lips pursing and pulling to the side, the dent in her cheek showing. “Youwerepretty good. Kind of a sad poem you got, though.”
Now he was the one shifting in his shoes. Jesus, he was really going to have to read that poem later. Still, this was the first thing she’d said to him that didn’t feel like it was part of the show, and it was easy enough to bluff this one, given what had made him come after her in the first place.
“Same for you, it seemed like.”
She met his eyes briefly, then lowered her gaze again. Another fake, brittle smile, a shaky laugh. “Who knew so many poems about summer were sad?”
“Nora.” He didn’t know why he said her name, especially like that. Like he was scolding her. Like he could see right through her.
She waved a hand. “It’s silly.”
“I doubt it.”
She raised her head and her eyes met his, and like a punch right to his hiccupping heart, he could see that they were shiny, wet with a new rush of tears.
“Nora,” he said again, but this time, it wasn’t a scold.
“I don’t—I don’t want to talk about this.” She put up a hand, and that’s when he realized he’d stepped forward again. “Especially with you.”
Ouch.
He stepped back, clearing his throat, embarrassed. How many ways did he need to be shown that this woman did notwanthim here? Well, he should be grateful. What a good reminder. He needed to turn around and walk down the cherub-surveilled hallway and get back to fucking work.
“No, wait,” she said, stopping him. “I’m sorry. I meant—um. Because of what you told me. About being an . . .” She trailed off, obviously uncomfortable saying the word he’d basically grenaded at her the other night. She switched the flower crown to her other hand, shaking loose some of its petals in the process. “It’s not the same . . . losing a grandmother, I mean.”
He stilled, relaxing his posture. So it wasn’t that she didn’t want him there, at least not for now. He still should go; he still should get back to work.
But he didn’t go. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, right at one end of the line of mailboxes, and tucked his hands in his pockets. He thought about that tear he suspected she’d been wiping away, and he could not for the life of him bring himself to turn around and go back to Donny’s place.
“I don’t really think grief cares so much about titles. It sounds like you were close.”
She tipped her chin down in a nod. “She was ninety-two years old. It’s really . . . I’m fine, you know? She had a good, long life, and she wasn’t well, right there at the end. So it’s . . .”
She trailed off again, and then she gave a shrug that was so, so familiar to him. He’d given that shrug to people for what had felt like his whole entire seventeenth year of life.He’d been sick for a while, he remembered saying to people.It’s good he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, he remembered people saying to him.
“It’s still awful,” he said. “No matter what way it happens. No matter when.” He thought of the poem she’d read.Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Now that, he thought, was a sad poem.
She nodded, and then she moved to the side, mimicking his posture—leaning a shoulder against the wall, right at the other end of the line of mailboxes. She didn’t smile, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Probably I shouldn’t have said ‘orphan,’ before,” he said, honoring this unsmiling honesty with an offering of his own. “My dad passed when I was seventeen, my mom about a year later. I was an adult by then.”
