She folds her napkin again. Clears her throat. Waits.
“You want to talk for the story,” I say, finally catching on.
She shrugs. “I am the last con, right?”
I stare at her, still surprised.
“I once told you this job was about the truth. Do you remember that?”
“Of course I do.” I thought about that advice the first time I saw Jess. I knew even then that the truth for her was something different for me.
“Well, I’m no hypocrite. So it’s time I tell it.” She gestures toward me with her right hand. A quick flick of her fingers, and then I realize what she’s suggesting.
“You want me to do the interview?”
“Who else would I want to have do it?” She says it as though I’m being absurd. As though there’s no other real option. “You’re the one who brought the Baltimore story back to me in the first place.”
I wince. It is a too painfully familiar thing for Salem to say to me. I think I mumble something about me receiving a random email not really counting as my bringing anything to her, but I can’t quite be sure what she hears. Mostly I wish I had my own napkin to fold.
Mostly I wish for a million other things, and all of them have to do with Jess Greene.
In the silence, I can feel Salem watching me. Between the two of us, I’m pretty sure the nameHawkfits her better.
“Adam,” she says.
I swallow, but don’t say anything. It probably wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, for a six-foot-five former linebacker to cry a little in public. But I still don’t want to do it.
“Have you heard from her?”
I shake my head. Jam that thumb into my knee, just in case.
“I didn’t figure you would. I’ll reach out to them in a few weeks, I think. Touch base with both of them after they’ve had some distance, you know? See what they’re thinking about the . . . material we’ve gathered.”
“I don’t think I should be a part of that.”
“Probably not.”
Leave to it Salem to give it to you straight. Next up, she’ll probably tell me exactly how many days it’s going to hurt this bad. She’ll be wrong, unless she says it’s going to hurt every day. Forever. A new wound that’s not ever going to heal.
Except then I realizewhyshe would be wrong. I realize what she must think.
“It isn’t the same, you know,” I say. “Whatever you felt for Baltimore, when you got wrapped up in the story. That’s not the same as how I feel about Jess.”
I expect her to say what she said in New Mexico, or at least something similar—that it’s hard to say for sure, that I can’t tell because I’m too close to it.
But she surprises me.
“I know it’s not the same.”
“You do?”
She takes a big breath, blows it out slow.
“You know, Rhode Island is a good place to think. To talk to someone—someone you’re married to—about stuff you should’ve talked about a long time ago. It’s a good place to think about what it means to really love someone.”
It’s probably not so much Rhode Island specifically, I think. Probably it’s the seaside setting. The distance from your job, being in a house that you don’t have to take care of. The privacy.
“When I think back over our trip—I think I learned a few things I didn’t expect to, being around Jess Greene. Being around you being around Jess Greene. I know you love her, Adam. I could see that.”
