“Thank you,” Emmy managed. “It was great. My first time eating here.”
“Happy to oblige. Thanks for squeezing us into your adventure today.”
“Speaking of that,” Emmy said, grasping at the opening Jared had unwittingly gifted her. “I think Will and I should get going. I’m exhausted. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”
They said their goodbyes, though Will’s was wooden and perfunctory. Fortunately, neither Jared nor Bright seemed to notice his change in mood. After a quick hug from Bright, they went to their separate cars. Emmy got in and buckled up. Then she waited.
Will couldn’t bring himself to start the engine just yet. He stared straight ahead, his hands resting loosely on the steering wheel. He could feel Emmy’s anxiety rolling off her in waves. It wasn’t like she was to blame for Bright’s comment, but it still fell to her to fill in some gaps for him. She would hate that. No matter what he’d said to her before they’d gone into the restaurant, he knew she still feltresponsible for every hard turn his life had taken since she’d appeared in it.
“It’s after dinner now,” he said, still not looking at her. “What was it you didn’t want to tell me? The thing that was making you nervous about our road trip.”
She looked down at her hands where they rested in her lap, and he heard her release her breath slowly. “Cobalt, Massachusetts, isn’t a real town,” she replied quietly. “I was afraid that if we left… I thought maybe the town would disappear. If the rest of the country was exactly the same as in the real world, I thought maybe leaving Cobalt would cause the inconsistency to… correct itself.”
He absorbed this new revelation, let it roll through him, and he understood why she had wanted to keep it from him. But when compared to Bright’s earlier words, the new knowledge about his hometown was negligible. It didn’t matter that the town wasn’t real. Nothing he knew or loved was.
Twenty-One
When Emmy woke up the next morning, Will was gone. There was no note stuck to the fridge, no dishes in the sink to indicate he’d eaten breakfast, and no car in the driveway or garage.
She refused to let her brain go to the worst-case scenario, though she couldn’t help but remember her plea the other night. She’d asked him not to take unnecessary risks, and he had agreed. But that was then. It was impossible not to worry that certain new information had shaken him enough to break that promise.
To keep her mind busy, she made a list of practical steps she would take before jumping to the most extreme conclusions. She might not have a designated tomato drawer in her own home, but she was killer at making lists.
First, she sent him a quick text asking if he was okay. While she waited for a response, she went about making and eating breakfast. Through sheer force of will, she refused to look at her phone until after she’d put her dishes in the sink a good thirty minutes later.
No response.
Step two was to call him. It went straight to voicemail.
Step three was to contact Jared and see if he’d heard from Will, or if he knew where Will would go when he was caught in the throes of emotional turmoil. Then she remembered that she did not have Jared’s number. The only contacts in her phone besides Will were his mother and Bright. She and Bright had exchanged numbers during their impromptu TV and snack session the other day, but Bright didn’t seem like a good choice for this particular problem. She barely knew Will. Emmy saw that Joanna had texted her sometime last night, okaying the estimate for the landscaping. Her visit to the farm now felt like it had occurred a lifetime ago. But it was fortunate that Joanna had approached her at all, or Emmy would never have gotten her number. Who would know Will better than his mother?
Joanna picked up on the second ring. “Emmy! I’m so glad you called! Did you get my text? Bill and I are so excited to see what you come up with.”
“Hi, Mrs. Ba—Joanna, I know you wanted to talk about the landscaping in your yard, but I have a quick question about Will.”
“Oh, sure. Is everything alright?”
“I think so, but he seemed upset about something last night, and I was wondering…” She didn’t know how to phrase the question. Bright’s words had clearly been the trigger, but she couldn’t exactly ask the woman if her son had a tragic backstory. “Did anything… bad happen to Will when he was younger? Something that might still be hurting him?”
There was silence for a moment. “If he hasn’t told you, honey, I don’t know that I should.”
“Normally, I would absolutely agree with that. I don’t want to invade Will’s privacy. Please believe that. But yesterday I noticed something was bothering him, and today I can’t find him. I’m worried about him, and I don’t think he should be alone right now. If there’s anything you can tell me…” She let the thought hang unfinished.
“The cemetery,” Joanna said quietly. “Try looking in the cemetery.”
Emmy spent five minutes trying to come up with a way of getting to the cemetery. She had no doubt there was only one in a town this small, except maybe the occasional little private one outside a church. The problem was she had no car, and Cobalt, she’d learned, did not have much to offer in the ways of ridesharing services. She did, however, have better walking shoes than last time she’d been stuck in the house without transportation. The only other issue she could think of was that she was about to be outside alone without Will to run meet-cute-interference for her. It was a risk she would have to take. Wearing her sturdy pair of sneakers, her hair tied back in a ponytail, she set out at a brisk walk.
It couldn’t have taken a full fifteen minutes before she heard a truck driving up behind her.
“Third time’s the charm. I’m going to have to say this is fate.”
Emmy barely spared a glance for Paul as he leaned out the window, his smile a little smug, with just a touch of “I can’t wait to be your white knight” thrown in.
“This is the only road into town. I think we can give fate a pass on this one.”
“I could give you a lift this time.”
“No, thank you.”
