“Paul.” Surprisingly, I smile a bit. “Paul. My mom got worried when Dad and I didn’t come home. She thought we might have had car trouble, and she obviously couldn’t leave the house in the middle of the night with Erica asleep, so she called Paul to trace our route. See if we’d broken down. And he found me, scared and alone and traumatized because I’d been sitting with my dead father and I was only eleven years old. He stayed calm, lifted me from the car, managed to get through to 911 out of my earshot, held me in his arms and away from the paramedics when they arrived. He did everything right. I only saw him once after that night when we had the memorial at the house. That’s why it’s so wonderful to see him again and also so painful.”
It’s comforting when Danny moves to sit beside me in this perfectly grimy, old boat. “I cannot even conceive how difficult it would be for an adult to go through what you did. But for someone your age? That must have been impossibly awful.”
My voice comes out in a whisper. “I’ve never told anyone about that night. Not even my best friend.”
“Not your mom?”
I shake my head. “No. She never asked.”
“Wait, what? I don’t…”
I don’t blame him for faltering for words. “She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t. She still can’t. We don’t ever talk about my dad. An unspoken rule and whatnot.”
“I didn’t know any of this. We all heard that your dad had a heart attack. And that was that. Kind of a simple story, I guess.” He pushes my hair behind my ear. “I had no idea how much worse it was. I’m glad you told me. Honored.”
When his hand sets against my back and he pulls me in, I don’t resist. It’s a relief to unload what’s been ripping apart my heart for so many years.
“Maybe you’ve finally figured out part of the reason that she left,” he whispers.
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t call for help. Help that might have made a difference.”
Suddenly, my body tenses. He’s right. If only I could have made a phone call, maybe my dad would be alive. “Cell service. I didn’t have cell service. It was so spotty here back then. It wasn’t in LA.”
I can feel him nod against me. “Yes. I mean, it’s still not reliable in Wake. If any of you’d needed help again, to call someone, it wouldn’t have been guaranteed.”
“But it’s guaranteed elsewhere.” As much as I resent my mother for moving us across the country so quickly, maybe she was trying to protect us. To prevent any other tragedy from hitting our family. Maybe.
Exhaustion takes over, and I slump into his hold even more. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re out here on the lake at night, as you’ve seemingly done before. A boy creepily moving a boat under a virtually abandoned house, taking it out at odd hours of the night because he doesn’t sleep well. That sounds normal as fuck, doesn’t it?” It feels beyond my control as I trail my fingers across his shoulders, his biceps, over his perfect forearms. I take his hand in mine. “So, you have demons, too, I guess. I mean, your mom has been gone a lot; you never knew your dad. That’s all got to be rough.”
He sweeps a finger over the top of my hand. Over and over. And I can tell that he’s thinking. Figuring out what to say, if he’ll say anything. Then, he sends his gentle touch up and down my arm until he pulls me in and holds me.
The soft kiss that he leaves on my cheek makes me shudder.
“A little insomnia, a little love of night views. But no demons. It’s a good life.”
Danny might be good at so many things, but he’s a wildly shitty liar.
