“I think those are things you can change,” she said.
“Nobody changes that much.”
Neither of them felt like talking after that. Cary sat on the couch, holding Shiloh by the ankle. Shiloh rested her head on the couch and watched his hand.
Forty-One
Shiloh met Cary for dinner again.
And then he came over again, to have dinner with her and the kids. Shiloh made Monte Cristo sandwiches, with powdered sugar and rhubarb jam. Cary had never tried rhubarb. He liked it.
They watched a Disney movie. Gus was clingy and wouldn’t leave Shiloh’s lap.
She and Cary ended the night on the couch, talking. Not touching. When he said goodbye, his hand brushed over the back of her neck.
The next day, he moved his mom into the rehab center.
It was a rough transition. Cary was worried about her. He spent the night in her room.
He texted Shiloh a few times over the weekend. He was angry with his sister. He was angry with her husband. One of his mom’s ex-husbands had resurfaced. Cary hated him.
Shiloh wondered if Cary had been this angry all the time back in high school—and she just hadn’t fully appreciated it.
He was headed back to his ship next week, no matter how his mom was doing. He was frustrated about that. He was anxious. But he was also looking forward to it, Shiloh suspected.
There were moments when Cary seemed so strange to her. This grown man. With a life so far away that she hadn’t really tried to understand it. He seemed colder than she remembered him. More remote. Packed too tight for her to ever tease him loose.
But then sometimes he was the opposite... Forthright and vulnerable. Cracked open in a way the old Cary never was. He was less contradictory in her memory—maybe she’d flattened him out over the years.
She and Cary seemed to be moving past... the past.
Shiloh was trying to fold it all in. To integrate: Cary as she remembered him from high school. The Cary in her dorm room. The Cary who came home with her after Mikey’s wedding, with all of his revelations. This Cary. Who seemed to have forgiven her. Who kept grounding himself on her hips and shoulders and ankles.
“Shiloh! Get a sitter! We’re going to Family Fun Time!”
Shiloh held the phone to her ear. “Mikey?”
“Yeah, Mikey. And Cary! The gang’s all here. Let’s do it, man. We’re coming to get you.”
“Now?”
“Now. Can you come?”
The kids were in bed. Her mom wouldn’t mind. “Yeah. I can come.”
“Bet!” Mikey said.
Shiloh was already in her pajamas. It was a Monday night. She changed into jeans and a short-sleeved flowered dress. Her hair was damp. She pulled it back into a long ponytail. Platonic eyeliner seemed in order. And big hoop earrings. She looked in the mirror. She still had some of her old bangles from high school. She loaded up one wrist.
She was sitting on the porch when Cary’s rental car pulled up, and Shiloh broke into a grin when Mikey got out of the passenger seat.
“Hey, girl!” he called.
She stood up, laughing.
“I said we should make you squeeze into the middle, but Cary didn’t want you to break the cupholders in his rental car.”
“Killjoy,” Shiloh said.
