Let them know what it feels like to be a Goode.
Maybe they’ll see how terrible it really is.
Near sunset Archer is still on the back porch, his eyelids slipping closed, the shotgun resting on his lap. I touch his shoulder. “Go inside,” I say. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch,” I assure him.
He mumbles something, shaking his head. But I grab his arm and help him stand, then lead him into the house. Inside I shove him into his room and close the door; I suspect he’ll sleep for twelve hours.
But I don’t go back out onto the porch. I have no interest in holding the gun and keeping watch over the tulips. Instead I carrymy sketchbook out onto the front porch, ease into the wooden swing that my grandfather built long before we were born, and stare out at the black length of Swamp Wells Road. This is the view I prefer.
A road under the weight of stars.
A road that will lead me out of this town.
It’s just a little delay,I tell myself. Another day won’t make a difference.
With my headphones on—Sinéad O’Connor wailing about loneliness—I tilt my head back, the last of the setting sun now gone, and let my eyes stray across the star-pricked horizon. The quiet soothes my thoughts, and I watch as clouds pour across the skyline, dark and heavy, a summer storm gathering strength. They come almost every night this time of year. Rain and wind to cool the sweltering heat. And sometimes there is lightning, too, thunder that shakes the whole house.
I start to open my sketchbook, when my eyes catch a flash of movement—a shadow out on the road.
I sit up, squinting through the dark.
It could be Clementine, returned for more tulips—greedy, unable to keep away.
But the silhouette isn’t trying to hide, to keep to the shadows; the person stands in the open, and now they’re looking up at the house. I can’t be sure if they can see me in the dark, or if they’re just staring at the cursed Goode home.
I remove my headphones, keeping still and quiet, watching, and the shadow takes a step up our driveway, then another, moving toward the house.
I should wake Archer—if someone is coming to cut through ourfence and steal more tulips, I won’t be able to defend them on my own.And I’m not sure I even want to.
But the person stops, abruptly, looking back over their shoulder.
I don’t understand what they’re doing.
They turn, and just as swiftly they start back toward the road—like they’ve changed their mind.
I stand up and peer down the drive—confused—and for the second time the figure pauses, hesitates, turning slightly to look back toward the house. And when they do, I see it: the outline of a book held in his left hand, just before he slides it into his back pocket.
“Oak?”
He spins around, and in the dark he looks not quite real—like the night will swallow him up at any moment. I walk to the front steps, and he must see me, because he moves closer, stopping only when he reaches the edge of the creek running below the front porch.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He lifts his chin, hair brushed back from his forehead, and every feature of his face feels familiar. As if it’s a face I’ve known my whole life.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” he says, feet shifting in the dirt, voice windswept, roughened from the miles of pavement he’s walked to get here. “I should have been more careful, I shouldn’t have tried to…” His eyes skip past me to the house, then back. He was going to say that he shouldn’t have tried to kiss me, and I wonder if he’s afraid of the same things I am—that maybe he wanted to press his lips to mine onlybecauseI’m a Goode, because of the tulips—or if he’s afraid of something else.
“You walked all the way here from Favorville just to tell me that?”
He clears his throat. “I usually walk at night… and read.”
I think about the book in his back pocket, about the dark stretch of road that leads from his county to mine. I think about the night air in his lungs, the thoughts stirring inside him. And all the things he might be thinking right now.
“I think books prefer the quiet, and the dark. It lets the pages breathe,” he says, a soft twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he’s saying things he didn’t anticipate.
But I smile, liking this description. Liking the way words form on his lips. Liking the shyness that skips through his eyes, there and then gone. Like he’s not used to the feeling, and he doesn’t know how to push it away.
“I wasn’t sure if I should come up to your house, once I got here.” He looks me clear in the eyes now, the shyness gone. “I started to turn around and walk home.” He glances past me to the porch swing. “I didn’t think you’d be out here. That anyone would see me.”
