Sickness roils in my stomach. “Gone.”
All kinds of questions percolate in his gaze, but this isn’t something I can confide over bowls of soup. In fact, nobody here knows about my life before I moved. At first it was because I was struggling so hard to keep my head above water, and then my silence came from shame. I didn’t want anyone to know the girl I was before. In order to survive, I had to reinvent myself. I glimpse the moment he decides my mother abandoned me … and she did, when I was a baby. But the whole truth is so much worse.
“What about your dad?”
That’s simultaneously easier … and harder. “When I was seven, he died in a car wreck.”
“Oh God, Sage.”
This, I can talk about with him, an offering out of respect for what he shared the other day. “I was in second grade … the police came to school.”
In halting words, I tell Shane how I sat outside the principal’s office after the teacher pulled me out of class, wondering what I did, why I was in trouble. Up until that point, my life was pretty normal. Like other people, I had one parent at home. My dad had a mail route; I took the bus to after-school daycare, where he picked me up around four thirty. But that day, I sat for half an hour outside the main office waiting for someone to explain all the whispering and sad looks. Eventually, a policewoman came and said, “I’m sorry, honey.”
I stayed at school for a long time while they tried to figure out what to do with me. My dad didn’t have any near relatives on file, so I ended up with a foster family in the district. The courts thought it was best not to disrupt my routine any more than necessary, but I’d just lost my dad. Everything was messed up, and it got worse when the system located my mother.
I stop talking then. This feels like a fair distribution of facts; he knows one of my secrets and I know one of his. I take a deep breath because it’s hard talking about my dad. He was a good guy, who made pancakes with smiley faces on Sunday mornings. He took me to the park and he helped me with my homework. But when your whole world hinges on one person, it’s like a house of cards that collapses at the first gust of wind. Yet when things were at their worst with my mom, I clung to those memories. In the end, they weren’t enough to keep me from the flames.
“Wow,” he says softly. “You really do understand.”
I’m glad he didn’t offer sympathy for my loss. That’s bullshit. Most people who spout platitudes have no idea how you feel, the way loss chews at you until you’re a bottomless hole. They just want to fill an awkward silence.
“Maybe not exactly.” I’ve never nursed anyone I cared about, but I know the feeling once they’re gone.
“Closer than anyone else.” Shane’s got this look in his eyes, like he’s about to open some door between us.
“Are you done?” I ask.
He nods, so I take our plates and stack them in the sink. The rain patters on the roof, but it’s warm and cozy inside. I head back into the living room and turn on the TV. There’s never anything on—we don’t have cable since Aunt Gabby thinks it’s a waste of money—but we have a decent DVD collection. I drop onto the sofa and wave toward the shelves.
“Pick something.”
Shane puts in a slightly campy movie filled with aging action heroes. Then he sits beside me, though I didn’t leave him much choice by picking the middle of the couch. I’m glad when he puts an arm around me, so I can settle against him. We watch for a few minutes in silence, but I’m too conscious of his fingers on my shoulder to pay much attention.
Trying to seem relaxed, I turn my head to say something about the plot and realize he’s really close. In fact, I’ve caught him smelling my hair. He freezes like it’s not okay, and embarrassment raises red flags in his cheeks.
He pulls back with a mumble. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”