This time, I don’t have it in me to make a snort of dismissal. In fact, I have to turn my face back up to the sky, because I feel an alarming and sudden press of tears behind my eyes. I won’t let it go any further than that. Crying is for the shower, which is basically the unlocked pool gate of locations for having emotions. You can maintain a lot of plausible deniability about the moisture on your face in there.
Still, it opens something in me, to hear him say this. The truth is, ever since I walked into Tegan’s room and saw her bags packed, I’ve felt slingshotted back in time to ten years ago, when I was barely an adult myself, trying to figure out how I was going to raise my sister on my own. I’ve beenlivingin that highlight reel of mistakes, seeing nothing but all the things I’m certain I’ve done wrong, the things that would’ve made it okay in Tegan’s mind to write me a note and leave for weeks while I was off at work one day.
Probably Adam is giving me more credit than I deserve, probably he’s doing his best to be nice to me so I don’t go off the rails again, wrecking whatever interview comes next. But right now, I’ll take it.
I’ll take anything.
“Thank you.”
I’m relieved when he doesn’t take advantage right away. He seems to be letting me live in this palm-tree pretending moment, where I can simply lie here and take the compliment. Press pause on the highlight reel. I’m so desperate to stay that I do something unexpected.
I ask him a question.
“Do you normally go running at midnight, or is this a special occasion?”
I don’t look over at him, because I don’t want to see it if he’s pulling a shocked face. That’s probably what the extra beat of silence is before he finally answers.
“Not normally, but . . .” He trails off, and I hear the lounger creak beneath him. “I get sore from driving. My back, my legs. Old injuries. It helps me to get out and move.”
Because of the football, I imagine saying, but don’t.You said injuries were a reason you didn’t go pro, I imagine saying.I read about it.
But obviously, I don’t.
“Helps me think.”
I close my eyes, blocking out the palm trees. It’s a good compromise, because I don’t want to look over at him for what I’m pretty sure he’s going to change the subject to. I’m pretty sure I know what he needed help thinking about.
“So, tomorrow.”
I don’t open my eyes. “I already told Salem what I know about Pensacola.”
It was one of the few things I said, after we left Curtis MacSherry’s. I told Salem that Mom had a friend from high school with a condo here, or at least she did when I was sixteen, Tegan three. She wanted to take us both there for a week in the summer, a “girls’ trip.” When I went to her house for my weekly visit, which my dad still insisted on, she showed me pictures of the condo, of the beach view. She said her friend Julia was so nice to let us use it. She said Julia had married very well.
I told Salem we never ended up going.
I didn’t tell her why, and I think she was still too mad about the MacSherry interview to ask.
But the why is pretty boring, anyway. Mom got a new boyfriend that summer, a guy named Glenn. He didn’t want to go to Pensacola, so we didn’t. Tegan was too young to care. I remember being relieved.
When Mom sent me the postcard from here all those years ago, I thought for sure she must’ve come to that condo, thought she must’ve gone to see her friend Julia. She’d written,It’s as beautiful here as it always looked in the pictures! Miles and I are reconnecting with loved ones. I’m thinking of you both.
After what Curtis MacSherry said, though, I’m less certain about what that postcard meant.
But that’s not really my problem.
“I won’t get in your way. Or in Salem’s way. I know you have to look at all these gift shops or whatever.”
I wonder if he notices I don’t make any promises about Tegan. Maybe I should, but when I think of it—when I think of her earlier today, desperate to get information from a dirtbag grifter—the stone lodges in my throat again.
I’m having such trouble letting go.
Adam clears his throat. “What if we split up?”
He’s said it differently than he says most things. There’s not necessarily a slowness to the way he speaks usually, but there’s a . . . carefulness. A calmness, like what I tried to compliment him on from the meeting with MacSherry.
Now, though, he’s spoken quickly. Rushing it out before he can change his mind.
I finally open my eyes and sit up. I almost swing my legs over the lounger but stop when I realize that would definitely result in my bare legs touching Adam’s. That would be disastrous. I canfeelthe way it would be disastrous.
