But it wasn’t all right. Adam said absolutely nothing to Gansey. Not while curled in the backseat of the car. Not while sitting at the kitchen table as Margo brought him coffee. Not after standing by the sofa with the phone clutched to his ear, talking to a doctor, one of the Ganseys’ old family friends.
Nothing.
He’d always been able to fight for so much longer than anyone else.
Finally, he stood in front of Gansey’s parents, chin lifted but eyes faraway, and said, “I’m very sorry for all the trouble.”
Later, he fell asleep sitting up on the end of that same sofa. Without any particular discussion, the Gansey family in its entirety moved the conversation to the upstairs study, out of earshot. Although several engagements had been canceled and Helen had missed a flight to Colorado that evening, no one had mentioned the inconvenience. And they never would. It was the Gansey way.
“What did the doctor call it?” Mrs. Gansey asked, sitting in the armchair Helen had slept in earlier. In the green light through the verdant lampshade beside her, she looked like Helen, which was to say she looked like Gansey, and also to say she looked a little bit like her husband. All of the Ganseys sort of looked like one another, like a dog that begins to look like its owner, or vice versa.
“Transient global amnesia,” Helen replied. She had listened to the phone conversation and following discussion with great interest. Helen very much enjoyed climbing down into other people’s lives and muddling about there with a pail and a shovel and possibly one of those old-fashioned striped bathing suits with the legs and arms. “Two-to six-hour episodes. Can’t remember anything past the last minute. But the victims — that was Foz’s word, not mine — apparently know they’re losing time while it’s happening.”
“That sounds dreadful,” said Mrs. Gansey. “Does it get worse?”
Helen doodled on the desk blotter with a two-inch pencil. “Apparently not. Some people only have one episode. Some people get them all the time, like migraines.”
“And it’s stress related?” Richard Gansey II broke in. Although he didn’t know Adam well, his concern ran deep and genuine. Adam was his son’s friend, and so he had inherent worth. “Dick, do you know what he might be stressed about?”
It was clear this was a problem that all of the Ganseys were intent on solving before Gansey returned to Henrietta with Adam.
“He just moved out of his parents’ house,” Gansey said. He had started to say trailer, but he didn’t like to think of what his own parents would do with that visual. He thought for a moment and then added, “His father beat him.”
“Jesus Christ,” his father remarked. Then: “Why do they let these people breed?”
Gansey just looked at his father. For a long moment, nothing was said.
“Richard,” his mother chastised.
“Where is he staying now?” his father asked. “With you?”
He couldn’t know how much or why this question smarted. Gansey shook his head. “I tried. He’s staying at a room that belongs to St. Agnes — a local church.”
“Is it legal? Does he have a car?”
“He’ll be eighteen in a few months. And no.”
“It would be better if he stayed with you,” Richard Gansey II observed.
“He won’t. He just won’t. Adam has to do everything himself. He won’t take anything that looks like a handout. He’s paying his own way through school. He works three jobs.”
The other Gansey faces were approving. The family as a whole enjoyed charm and pluck, and this idea of Adam Parrish, self-made man, appealed to them immensely.
“But he has to have a car,” Mrs. Gansey said. “That would surely help. Can we not give him a little something to help him get one?”
“He won’t take it.”
“Oh, surely if we say —”
“He won’t take it. I promise you, he will not take it.”
They thought for a long moment, during which Helen drew her name in large letters and his father paged through A Brief Encyclopedia of World Pottery and his mother discreetly looked up transient global amnesia on her phone and Gansey contemplated just throwing everything he possessed into the Suburban and driving away as fast as he could. A very small, very selfish voice inside Gansey whispered, What if you left him here, what if you made him find his own way back; what if he had to call you and apologize for once?
Finally, Helen said, “What if I gave him my old college car? The crappy one I’m going to donate to that broken-car charity if he doesn’t want it. He’d be saving me the trouble of arranging the tow!”
Gansey frowned. “Which crappy car?”
“Obviously, I would obtain one,” Helen replied, drawing a fifty-eight-foot yacht on the blotter. “And say it was mine.”
The older Ganseys adored the idea. Mrs. Gansey was already on the phone. The collective mood had buoyed with the implementation of this plan. Gansey felt it would take more than a car to relieve Adam’s stress, but the truth was that he did need a vehicle. And if Adam really did buy Helen’s story, it wouldn’t hurt a damn thing.
Gansey couldn’t shake the image of Adam by the side of the interstate, walking, walking, walking. Knowing he was forgetting what he was doing, but unable to stop. Unable to remember Gansey’s number, even when people did stop to help.
I don’t need your wisdom, Gansey.
So there was nothing he could do about it.