Page 98

We came out into the warm early June air and started for the house. I had to fight the urge to take her hand.

Touching her in public was second nature to me now. But that’s because most of the time we were in public, one of my family members was there, and touching was necessary to hold up our façade. We didn’t have that here. Daniel and Alexis knew about our arrangement, so I didn’t have an excuse to put a hand on her back, or brush her hair off her face, or sit close enough that my leg pressed into hers. It was the only thing I hated about being in Wakan.

I’d suggested taking a picture for Instagram earlier for the sole reason of getting the hug that I couldn’t get when I arrived. And then I didn’t want that hug to end. I wished we could have shut the door and stayed in that bed. I wanted to hibernate with her. Forget the rest of the world existed.

I squinted at something large standing under a light post across the street. “Is that…a pig?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s Kevin Bacon. He’s Doug’s. He’s like the town mascot or something. He just runs around and takes selfies with tourists.”

He was huge. At least three hundred pounds, and wearing a reflective vest.

“Can we pet it?” I asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

We crossed the street and the pig grunted at us as we came up. He was enormous and pink. I crouched and ran a hand over his head and he snuffled around us, looking for food. He found the mints I had in my pocket and I pulled them out and unwrapped them and let him eat them from my hand.

His vest had a Kevin Bacon hashtag and a Venmo on it.

“I have to give it to Doug, he is a hustler,” Briana said, eyeing the Venmo. “Doug would punch me in the face for a billion dollars.”

“Then I’d have to punch Doug in the face for free.”

She gawked at me trying to look serious, but she was fighting a laugh. “You’re punching the wrong person. I’m the billion-dollar punch—though I do understand the impulse to punch Doug for nothing. But still.”

I chuckled, petting Kevin’s wiry fur.

“No, but seriously,” she said. “We need to get on the same page with this.”

I shook my head. “I’m not doing it. I’m not punching my wife.”

“Nick would do it.”

“Well, it sounds like there’s a lot of things that Nick was okay doing to you that I would never do.”

She bobbed her head. “Okay, good point.”

“And why is the money that important?” I said, standing. “You make a good living. You don’t need a billion dollars.”

She looked up at me. “Jacob, I grew up poor. Extremely, extremely poor. Like, food-instability poor. No matter how much I have, I will never turn down the means to never live like that again.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize your childhood was that tough.”

She shrugged, looking at the pig. “It was. I mean, it was good. But it was hard. I had to start working at a pretty young age to help my mom. She used to clean houses, back before she got her nursing degree, and I’d go and help her.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten? Eleven?”

God. I couldn’t imagine working that young.

“It was better for Benny,” she said. “By the time he was ten, Mom had a good-paying job and I was working at Starbucks and waiting on tables. I’m glad he had it easier.”

I was glad he did too. But I hated that she’d struggled.

I would do anything to keep her from struggling.

We made our way onto the bike path that led back to the house. The moon was out. We were walking under some trees along the river, and I slowed a bit so it would take longer. When we got home, she’d probably go to bed, and then I wouldn’t see her until tomorrow.