Page 137

“You get along with your brother, though,” she says. “Drew.”

I grin. “Yeah, I do. Especially now he’s older and less of a little shit. I mean, he’s still a little shit. But, you know. Less of one.” She huffs a laugh. “I’d do anything for him, honestly.”

“Okay,” I say, turning the phone face-down. “Your turn. Show me where you grew up.”

“That’s not really a question with one answer.”

“Why not?”

She takes her phone out. Doesn’t open anything yet, just turns it over in her hands.

“We moved a lot. Following my dad’s music. Six cities. Nine schools, because some cities got two,” she says it flatly, like reading off a chart. “There’s no house I grew up in. There’s just a list of places we left.”

I nod, not sure how to respond.

“But,” she says, and unlocks the phone, “there was one I liked.” She scrolls before reaching the one she wants. “This one. Columbus. We were only there about a year, but⁠—”

It’s the most painfully normal house in America. Beige siding. A basketball hoop over the garage that’s clearly never been used. A lawn maintained to within an inch of its life.

“It’s a nice house,” I say.

“It was so boring,” she says with unmistakable affection. “Every house on the street looked exactly like this one. Same lawns. Same garages. Same families waving at one another while they collected the mail.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“It was perfect. Probably the happiest I ever was as a kid.”

Her thumb traces the edge of the screen.

“My dad’s life usually moved between extremes. Either the band was about to make it, and everything was exciting, or they were broke, and he had another plan to fix it. A tour. A new manager. A residency somewhere none of us had heard of. We never knew which version of the future we’d wake up to.”

Her voice remains measured, but I hear what sits beneath it.

“Columbus was different. His gigs were going well, royalties were coming in, and for one year, we stayed still. I came home to the same bedroom every afternoon. I knew where the cereal was going to be. I knew who would sit beside me at lunch the next day.”

She looks at the photograph again.

“Sometimes I lay on my bedroom floor and listened to nothing happening. It felt like the safest sound in the world.”

Something tightens in my chest.

“That’s what I want one day,” she says. “A boring house. Neighbors I know for ten years. A life where nothing falls apart without warning.”

I’ve spent my whole life running toward noise.

Bea has spent hers dreaming about silence.

“Show me you as a kid,” I ask.

“Absolutely not.”

“Doc.”

“There is no universe in which I show you me as a kid.”

“Were you a serious child? I bet you were a serious child. You were the kind of kid who corrected the teacher.”

“Worse. I was the kind of kid who corrected the teacher quietly, after class, so the teacher could save face.”