So I don’t look at him when I answer.
“I don’t really know if she’s okay. She won’t talk to me.”
It’s not much of a confession. Adam was in the car, after all. And when we stopped for a meal, Tegan announced—to Adam and Salem, not to me—she wanted to sit by herself. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise him to know she ghosted me in the hotel room we were sharing, too.
“I guess I deserve it,” I add.
To the palm trees, I lie to myself.You’re talking to the palm trees and the pool and the night air.
“You were just trying to help.”
A palm tree would never say that, obviously. But I’m still pretending.
“I don’t think she sees it that way. Right now I don’t think she sees anything I’ve ever done that way.”
My head is a highlight reel of mistakes I’ve made with Tegan. It’s not even hiding the postcards from Mom or snapping at Curtis MacSherry. It’s wearing a black dress to a Mommy & Me tea party. Not knowing what to say when she announces she wants to sit by herself.
I can understand why Adam goes palm-tree silent. When have I ever given him any indication I want him to press me on anything, to ask me a follow-up? When have I ever, in the days since I’ve known him,offeredhim any information?
I turn my head toward him without lifting it from the chair. I’m reminding myself, I guess, who he is. I’ve given him an opening for any number of questions I’m sure he wants the answer to.
What was it like for you, to take over Tegan’s care?
What kind of relationship did you have with Tegan before your mother left?
Do you regret not telling Tegan sooner, what you’d realized about who your mother left with?
But he doesn’t ask any of that, because he knows I won’t respond.
He just says, “Teenagers, right?”
And it is the perfect response. The most knowing response. Probably the only response that would not make me feel embarrassed or threatened or angry. It isn’t a prodding, inauthentic effort to bond, like the clumsy one Salem made in the van on our first day of this trip.
It’s offering me a way out.
“You have a lot of experience with the species?”
He chuckles again, shakes his head once. “Not really, I guess. I was one, once. Spent a lot of time around other ones while I was.”
Of course that’s true for pretty much every person who lived through their own teen years, but I get the sense Adam means more than just classmates and friends. He was an athlete, after all, and a good one. Part of a complicated network of guys his own age, for years and years.
I think of MacSherry saying that word to him,teammates.
I hated that.
“Your sister,” he says, a note of caution in his voice, “She’s a good one. Smart, curious. Independent.”
I make a noise, not unlike the one that blew up our meeting with MacSherry earlier. Smart and curious and independent is what got us here, and it’s not as if we’ve been having a great time.
But also, I’m warmed by the compliment to her. Teganissmart; sheiscurious. She’s grown into herself, is sure of herself.
I’ve always loved it, when people see Tegan’s strengths.
“That doesn’t happen on its own,” he adds, and I can tell by the tone of his voice.
He means me.
He’s saying Tegan is all those good things because ofme.
