Page 134 of Wayfarers

“I’m not feeling like I misread this moment, I feel like I misread us. Our whole deal. This journey.”

“You’re acting like you hate me now.”

“As you’ll recall, the last thing I said before kissing you was that I could never hate you. That wasn’t just something I said to seal the deal. I meant it.” Winslow looks at me with his brown, soft eyes, almost as if to say, Sorry, buddy. Try licking her hand next time. Always works for me.

Sylvie starts the van.

Sylvie

My head is quiet. Like how you go deaf after an explosion. Everything in Springfield is ten minutes away from everything else and we’re at the restaurant before Knox finds the wherewithal to say anything more.

“Quinoa’s,” I say, maneuvering the van into a too-tight spot. “This won’t take long. And then we’ll get you to North Carolina. Or, if you don’t want to deal with me anymore, I can get you a plane ticket with the credit card.”

“Deal with you?” Knox asks. “Sylvie, why won’t you talk to me?”

But I clip Winslow to his leash and I’m out of the van, long strides up to Quinoa’s, empty on this Friday. My mom’s silver Range Rover is parked by the door. The license plate reads MANIFST. Knox rushes forward to get the door, but we’re not going in the front. Around the back is the patio with my mom’s favorite table, the one that looks down on the river. And there she is.

“Sylvie,” she says, breathy, too thin in her Balmain blazer. Then pulls up short. “And this is?”

I say, “Knox,” and I know he’s told me his last name, this boy bewildered beside me, but I’ve lost it somewhere. My ears ringing.

A second too long, and he says, “Rayburn, Knox Rayburn,” and extends a calloused hand to my mom to shake.

“Miranda Blake,” she says, and to me: “I didn’t know you were bringing a friend.”

We sit. “This was such a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I tell her.

“You were going to call me, though?”

“Of course,” I lie. “Just didn’t know what time I’d get into town.”

I tie Winslow to the table. He’s wagging frantically at my mom, but she doesn’t notice. The menus at this vegetarian restaurant are leather-bound. Maybe it’s vegan leather. Who knows. Knox handles his like it’s a holy book. I know he’s never been to a bougie place like this before.

My mom is studying him with the avidness of a circling hawk, and I take the chance to study her. She looks happy, but then, she always looks happy. Her nails are French-tipped, which gives away nothing. My mom’s nails would be French-tipped in a nuclear bunker.

“So,” she says, not bothering to pick up her menu. “Where did you two meet?”

“At a campsite in Michigan.”

“Oh,” she says. “Are you on your own pre-college adventure too?”

“No, ma’am,” Knox says, and doesn’t offer more.

“He’s so polite,” my mom says to me.

“He is,” I say grimly.

Knox

“Knox, where are you from?” Miranda asks.

“North Carolina,” I say quickly. When I see Sylvie staring at me, I realize I probably told her some variant of “all over,” which was more truthful (at least emotionally) but which now sounds like the lie.

Miranda brightens and touches my good arm. “Oh, I went with Brandon, my life partner, to Asheville for a yoga retreat a couple years ago. It was so healing and centering. It’s really a magical place.”

I decide not to tell her that’s where I lived until we fled. “My grandma lives a couple hours from there, in Murphy. That’s actually where we’re headed.”

“Is that right?”