I wanted the words back. I wanted them stuffed deep back inside me, never to be uttered again. From the look of Boone, he wouldn’t have minded that either.
All lightness left his expression, his laughter coming to a halt. “Withholding the truth is different than telling a lie, Clara.”
“Not much,” I whispered, staring out my window and trying to see what was happening right then instead of what had transpired in the past.
After that, we were quiet. Too much past had been brought up. The present couldn’t hold any more without bringing everything to a screeching halt.
Only a few minutes after that, Boone pulled into an empty gravel parking lot and parked beneath a patch of shade thrown by one of the big trees lining the property.
“We’re here,” he announced, staring and clutching at the steering wheel like he wasn’t ready for whatever was coming next.
In front of us was nothing but what looked to be a mass of undeveloped land, but behind us, just past the parking lot, I saw a large building surrounded by what looked to be several overgrown sports fields. My gaze ran the length of the steeple. “Is that an old church?”
“Yeah, it had been vacant for close to a decade though, and with all of the empty land around it and its proximity to the neighborhood, its past use was easy to overlook.” Boone’s fists continued to slide up and down the steering wheel, his gaze unwavering.
I took a look around. Though its location was just on the edge of the city, there were still plenty of houses well within view, and plenty more well within walking distance. This was a part of town I’d rarely visited—only when I’d been with Boone.
“Can I see it?” I asked softly.
Boone’s knuckles were so white, the bones looked about to break through his skin. “Of course.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why we came here, right?”
“If it’s too hard, I understand.”
Boone looked at me from the corners of his eyes. “I’ve been through harder.”
I swallowed and nodded. I knew he had.
After a few more seconds, he let out an exhale that sounded as if he’d been holding his breath the entire drive here, then he threw open his door. He didn’t say anything else, but he waited for me at the bumper of the Chrysler. I found him leaning into the trunk, his arms crossed loosely and his expression almost peaceful as he inspected the property in front of us. Whatever tension he’d felt inside the car was erased now that he’d given himself permission to look at the center.
“The Charleston Center for Kids,” I read the sign out front, which looked as though it had been freshly painted not long ago.
“Yeah, the legal people told me I should go with the word children instead because it was more ‘dignified’ sounding, but I told them I didn’t want kids to come here thinking they had to be dignified. The whole point was for them to be able to act like kids for however long they were here . . . not behave like children.”
I smiled as I read the sign again. Boone had put more thought into the name of this place than I guessed he’d spent during an entire year’s worth of high school geometry.
“It’s amazing, Boone.” My gaze swept up and down the fields—for soccer, football, and baseball—and ended on the converted church. It also had what looked like a fresh coat of paint, and the windows gleamed from having been recently cleaned. “When you said you’d owned a kids’ center, I envisioned something a quarter this scale.”
Boone nudged me before starting toward the building. “You wouldn’t be the first person in my life to underestimate me.”
I followed him, liking the way the gravel crunched beneath my sandals. It sounded like a musical instrument, something living and something that was happy to be alive. I hadn’t stepped foot outside of the parking lot, and already I was in love with the place.
Boone paused at the edge of the parking lot to pluck a few weeds popping through the gravel. “It’s amazing how something so small can take over an entire area in no time at all if you don’t take care of it.” He plucked a couple other weeds before continuing toward the building.
The wooden steps didn’t even creak as we climbed to the entrance of the center where, by the looks of it, at least a hundred kids had dipped their hands in paint before pressing them onto the walls. Little hands, big hands, a couple hands missing a finger, in every hue and shade that ran the length of the rainbow. It was an inviting place, somewhere I imagined a kid would grin as they entered, unlike the handful of centers and shelters I’d visited in other parts of Charleston. Where somber and melancholy had seemed to be the themes at those centers, warmth and joy had clearly been the themes here.