He’s quiet for a second. “Carousels.”
I open my mouth to laugh.
“Not the spinning,” he says before I can get there. “The horses. The faces on the horses. They look wrong.”
I press my lips together.
“They’re screaming,” he explains. “Look at them next time. They’re all screaming. What kind of person puts a child on a screaming animal?”
“Griffin.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I was six. I screamed back. My grandmother was furious.”
I can’t hold it anymore. The laugh bursts out of me. “She made you get back on it, didn’t she?”
“Twice.”
“Classic Betty.”
“Said if I let it win, I’d be running from things my whole life.” He grabs another T-shirt. “Which was a lot of emotional weight to put on a carnival ride.”
“Did it work?”
He considers. “I don’t run from carnival rides anymore.”
“Victory.”
I’m still smiling. The dryer behind us ticks down its last few minutes. Outside, the light has turned to amber.
“Noah pushed me onto a carousel when we were twenty-two,” Griffin says.
I chew slowly on a chip before asking, “What happened?”
“I got off after one rotation and told him if he said anything, I’d tell Donna about the car incident.”
“What car incident?”
His eyes widen. “An entirely different story.”
“Griffin—”
“No.”
“I’m the confessional,” I remind him.
“The confessional is closed on the car incident.”
I narrow my eyes. “Does Madison know about the car incident?”
“Why would Madison know?” Something moves across his face. “Did Noah tell Madison?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never heard of the car incident until thirty seconds ago. Tell me.”
He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Noah’s first car—”
“The Toyota?”
Griffin nods. “He decided he was finally going to be a man of mystery. He took a girl—I think her name was Tiffany—up to the old overlook behind the water tower.”
