Suddenly, the parts of her that had been so fully in charge for the last twenty-four hours—her overinvested heart, her disobedient body—seemed to quiet. Now, it was her brain turning back on, back up to full volume.
Shouldn’t I know?
“You…you don’t?” Layla said. She was already calling to her mind everything shehadlearned about Griffin yesterday: his absent dad, his ultrareligious grandparents who’d functionally abandoned his mother when she got pregnant at nineteen. His lonely youngest years, his mom working multiple jobs, and then, moving to a new neighborhood and meeting Michael. His good grades, a gifted program, a scholarship to Rensselaer. His current house—“Small. Simple,” per his description—and how he could walk to the farm his mother lived on. Her ranch home, her boyfriend named Peter who was a large-animal vet and who was only allowed—his mother’s rules, not so fully freed of her parents’ attitudes, as it turned out—to stay over twice a week. His work and how hemissed it, but how he couldn’t see himself going back to it full-time, not really.
Of course, she noticed what he hadn’t said. She noticed that there seemed to be a gap of several years he simply did not acknowledge to her. A big skip between those years after college, to now.
But yesterday, that had felt fine. Comforting, even. A signed permission slip for a field trip where she didn’t have to say a single word about her marriage, or her divorce.
Em shook her head, her lips pursed. “I know there was a house fire. I know that’s how he got hurt.”
Layla’s body was back in it now: her stomach clenching uncomfortably at this new knowledge—a house fire—combined with such an inadequate phrase for what had happened to Griffin as a result. It felt like breaking an unmade promise, to hear it this way.
A house fire.
He got hurt.
“And one of their friends from high school died during it,” Emily added. “Which is horrible.”
Layla blinked, unaccountably stunned. Sheshouldn’tbe; she knew she shouldn’t be. She had seen Griff’s body, had seen those scars up close, even had her fingers against more than one of them at various moments over the course of last night. She knew you didn’t get scars like his without something catastrophic happening, something that could kill.
Thank god he didn’t die, she thought automatically, even as her heart twisted with the knowledge that he and Michael lost someone in such a tragic way.
Emily sighed gustily. “Last night when we got back from dinner, I tried to talk to him about it again, but it’s really the only thing he’ll shut down with me about. He said that fire was theworst thing to ever happen to Griffin, and he deserves his privacy about it. That I need toleave it alone. That’s what he said! Leave. It. Alone.”
Everything that had felt separate within Layla—heart, body, brain—now seemed to coalesce into a churning, strengthening whirlwind. In the midst of it, she couldn’t grab on to any one thing: her forged-in-family concern for Emily, her brand-new protectiveness over Griffin, her own pressing but possibly inappropriate curiosity.
She wanted to know so much about Griffin—about all those years he hadn’t told her about. About the house fire, about whoever he lost, about everything after.
But also, should she evenwantto know?
Hadn’tshebeen the one to say that yesterday was temporary, that today would have to be back to normal, that after last night, it could only be about Michael and Emily from here on out?
After this week, she probably wouldn’t have reason to see Griffin Testa ever again.
Would she?
“I mean, do you think he should tell me?”
Emily’s whispered question was a reminder that Layla had, in the midst of her whirlwind, gone awkwardly silent. She inhaled, repeated Emily’s question back to herself silently to drown out all the other ones she wasn’t going to get answers to right now.
She had to answer this for Emily, and not make it about Griffin.
“I think he shouldn’t be putting you in situations where you’re in the dark,” Layla said. “Griffin”—she hoped Em couldn’t hear the catch in her throat when she said his name—“deserves privacy, of course. But also, when it comes to Michael, you shouldn’t have to feel like you’re walking around land mines you don’t know the location of all the time.”
“Yes!” Emily said, relief in her tone at being understood.
It came out loud enough that a few others looked over, so Layla smoothed her expression into a smile, made it look, she hoped, like she and Em were whispering over something like wedding night lingerie, or why men could never find the ketchup without help, even when it was always in the exact same place in the refrigerator.
Em lowered her voice again. “Remember when you came for Christmas the first time, and Jamie explained to you in the car on the way over why Dad and Uncle Steve don’t talk about Gramma MacKenzie? It’s like,thatis what I want, you know?That’smarriage!”
Layla was thinking,Your dad and your Uncle Steve had a stupid fight over Gramma MacKenzie’s ugly dining room set. It wasn’t a house fire where someonedied, Em.
But before she could find a better alternative for that bit of sharpness, Emily groaned and shook her head.
“Ugh,” she said. “Sorry to bring it up. After yesterday and everything.” She grabbed one of Layla’s hands, a look of soft apology—pity?—in her eyes. “How areyou, Lay?”
It was a few seconds before Layla put the pieces of this together. TheitEm was sorry for bringing up was Layla’s marriage. TheAfter yesterdaywas about the museum, about Layla leaving under the weighted reminder ofThe Kiss, under the watchful gaze of her ex-husband. And probably everyone else.
