I don’t want to pull up to this house, don’t want to open this car door and get out to see Adam Hawkins’s family step off that gorgeous, decorative front porch and open their arms to him, don’t want to meet a group of people who were kind enough to produce a man who knows why it’d be relaxing to tease someone about their favorite candy, a man who knows to pack the recording equipment way in the back. I don’t want to stand in this Hawkins-huge expanse of fresh, alive color in my black jeans and black top, don’t want a fuckingflower farmerto see these half-done tattoos I got three days before my mother upended my life by leaving home with Lynton Baltimore.
I want to turn to Adam and say,This is too big, too open; I’m scared of this.
For once, I don’t think about Tegan first—don’t think about her inevitable disappointment if I stop this now, if I say I’ve changed my mind.
“Adam,” I say, and he looks toward me, and whatever I was going to say dies on my lips, because he looks so . . .
He looks sohappyto be here. To be home. He looks as though he’s going to get out of this car and finally step into a space that’s big enough to fit him.
“Yeah?”
He’d do it; he’d turn the van around. The same way he would’ve stopped Salem, Curtis MacSherry, Luís.
The same way he took us out of Florida, as soon as he got the chance.
I swallow heavily, face the windshield. Stare at that nice house again.
“Never mind,” I say, even as I have the sinking feeling that, at least for me, the break is already over.
* * *
ADAMmust’ve given everyone instructions.
Detailed ones.
Over the course of the next couple of hours, Tegan and I meet more than a few members of the Hawkins family. His oldest sister, Beth. Her husband, Mace. Their three kids—Sam, Katie, Ginny—all under the age of eight. Adam’s mom and dad, Claire and Adam Senior, who drive over from the small home they now live in on the north end of the property. Adam Senior’s mother, Margie, who gets picked up by Mace two days a week from her retirement community to spend time with family. At one point, Adam’s other older sister, Carly, FaceTimes Beth from St. Louis, where she works as a pediatric surgeon.
Not a single one of them mentions Salem, or the podcast. Our mom. Lynton Baltimore.
Not a single one of them mentions why we’re all here in the first place.
They simply . . . welcome us in. Serve gigantic casseroles around a big dining room table. Talk about themselves, their (to me, at least) faraway neighbors, the farm. They laugh—and sometimes scold—at things the kids do. They argue about changes to area farmers’ markets. There’s a long diversion about irrigation. We hear about how Beth does most of the hands-on farm operations, and Mace does most of the business side of things, and the child care. We learn Adam Senior hates being retired, so he still mostly works all day, and that Claire has gotten into painting. Even at the mention of this—painting, for God’s sake—no one brings up that we’ve basically come straight from a painter’s studio, that a painting was a break in this big story the three of us are chasing.
Maybe Adam’s told them nothing. Maybe this is just the most insular—but still somehow incredibly friendly—family to ever exist.
But I doubt it.
I doubt he left anything to chance.
It all should go a long way to easing the feeling that settled over me when we got here. I should be relaxed, at ease, enjoying the pound cake Beth’s just brought out and the conversation no one seems to expect me to participate in. I should love the way Tegan is always either laughing or lit up as she listens, and I should feel great that no one’s looked askance at my tattoos, especially since this house has at least one bright, full-color bouquet in every room I’ve seen so far.
I don’t, though.
I’m confused and awkward and overwhelmed. I’m watching a play that’s been staged only for me. I’m the toughest crowd to ever show up for the performance.
“Excuse me,” I murmur, wiping my mouth on my napkin and rising from the table. I don’t think anyone hears me, but then Beth calls out with directions to the restroom, and all I manage is a nod before I head that way.
A bathroom break isn’t really enough, and when I re-emerge, instead of returning to the dining room, I take a left and move toward the front of the house. At first I think I’ll step out onto the front porch, but at the last second, I decide I can’t face it—that big, open stretch of land outside. So before I reach the front door I go to the right, ducking into a dimly lit room that I’m guessing—from the tidy desk and old steel file cabinet—serves as Beth’s office.
Perfect, I think, liking how everything’s safely tucked away.
Except when I turn to take a load off in a comfy-looking chair near the window, I’m instead confronted with a wall of shelves, and unfortunately, they’re not lined with closed-up books. Instead, they’re decorated with pictures and trophies and framed certificates, featuring or for Adam.
All-Missouri Defensive Player of the Year. Butkus Award. USA TodayHigh School Defensive Player of the Year. All American. Bednarik Award. Wuerffel Trophy.
In his photos, he looks bigger than he is now. Harder. No neck to speak of, and his hair a lot shorter. I prefer the way he wears it now, not that it’s any of my business. Also not my business is that in the rare pictures where he’s smiling, it’s not the same smile he smiled at me over dinner last night, or over the center console today.
Maybe tonight would’ve been easier if I’d been sitting next to him. Not holding hands, which surely needs to be a one-off. But next to him, at least.
