We walked through the woods toward town together, my best friend Connor and me. Or I guess it should be “Connor and I.”
We walked a quarter mile or so without any words spoken. I was beginning to think bad thoughts based on the silence.
“What did you think of her?” I asked when I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I wanted to ask what they’d talked about. But I knew it wasn’t any of my business. It hurt to know that, but it was still the damned truth.
“It was interesting,” he said.
Then he acted like he planned not to say another word.
“Good interesting?”
“Not sure.”
We walked in silence until we could see town stretched out below. Connor stopped, as though taking in the view. So I stopped, too.
“We don’t talk like that in my family,” Connor said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know how to say it. It’s like, at my house, the more it matters, the more we don’t talk about it. That lady, she’ll say anything. She’ll talk about anything. The hardest thing in the world, she just spits it right out. It was kind of . . .”
I waited. For an uncomfortable length of time. To find out what it “kind of” was.
“. . . upsetting,” he said at last.
I started to say I was sorry. But I never got that far. He spoke again, interrupting my thoughts about apologies.
“Will you take me out there again tomorrow? I don’t think I could find the place just all on my own.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take you out there any day you want.”
I had a dozen questions, but I didn’t ask any of them. I didn’t want to jinx it.
Chapter Twelve
That’s Not Him
It was at least two weeks later, and it might even have been three. It was one of those mornings when—after I’d done my run and taken the dogs home—I was jogging down the path toward town and ran into Connor walking up the same path to the lady’s cabin.
He stopped when he saw me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said in return.
I always wanted to ask him a million things. What they talked about. Whether it was helping him. What it meant that he kept going there on his own. If there was any room for me in this new equation.
Yes, much as I hate to admit it, I was feeling jealous and left out. It’s not pretty, but there it is, and it’s the truth.
“You doing okay?” he asked me.
He. Asked me. If I was okay.
Just for a minute I almost blasted out the truth: That it was killing me. That I felt like I’d given him the best tool I had to understand my life, and now I no longer had it for myself, because how could I ask the poor lady to save two pesky young guys at once? And that I couldn’t stand not knowing how it was going, what was being said. It was my thing, my idea. And I didn’t even get to ask if I should feel good about it. It was driving me crazy. Stone crazy.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
In my defense, I kept my crap to myself. At least I was that much of a friend.
“Good,” he said.
“You?”
“Not sure. I’m here, anyway.”
I didn’t know if he meant here on this path through the woods, going out to talk to the lady again. Or here on the earth in general. And I didn’t ask.
“Know what I was thinking?” I asked him.
“No. I don’t. What were you thinking?”
“That your grandmother used to be like that. She would say anything that came into her head. She didn’t hold back.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. He clearly had not thought of that on his own. “She did. Didn’t she?”
Connor had adored her. But then she went and died when we were seven. The fact that he had no living grandparents might have factored into my thinking about taking him to meet Mrs. Dinsmore. But it had not occurred to me at the time that she had a lot in common with the grandparent he’d loved the most.
I waited to see if he could make some kind of connection. Maybe realize that he liked her for that reason. But he didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore, and I couldn’t tell if he connected those details or not.
The conversation stalled. Connor shifted from foot to foot, and I could see he wanted to move on.
“Maybe I’ll come by later,” I said.
“Yeah, good.”
But I didn’t go by later. Because my whole world had changed by later. Hanging out at Connor’s house was soon the last thought that was likely to cross my mind.
When I walked through the kitchen door, my father was home. And it was a weekday. A working day. So that was strange. But not as strange as the fact that my parents were talking to each other. And quietly at that.
They were sitting at the kitchen table, leaning close together. As though there had already been someone in the house who might overhear.
I heard my father say something about a general discharge, and how it follows a person through the rest of his life. I didn’t know what he meant. It sounded like a medical condition.
Now, I’m not one to talk much about people’s energy, or aura, or whatever you want to call it. I just take people straight on without all those extra levels of . . . whatever. But I still have to say it: In that moment, there was something invisible hanging in that room that just bowled me over. I could feel it. And it nearly knocked me down.
They looked up and saw me standing there.
“Lucas,” my mother said.
I wanted to ask what was going on. What was wrong. But I didn’t. And I think the fact that I didn’t had something to do with the whole Connor and Mrs. Dinsmore thing. I had begun to assume that pretty much nothing was any of my business. I had
