Peter took her rebalancing pause as an opportunity to speak. “Those three boys are named John, Jon, and John.”
Shayla nodded. “I know.” She’d talked to them while Peter had been giving more last-minute instructions to Lindsey. She’d brought them into the kitchen, showed them where she kept the snacks and told them to help themselves. “But they told me you have a lot of friends who were SEALs, and no one would mind helping out by rotating in for a watch—I think that’s what they called it. So letting everyone know feels like a recipe for disaster. I don’t want Tevin and Frank to be hurt, or confused, or…”
Peter nodded. “So, we tell the boys we’re dating.”
“And then what?” Shay said. She also didn’t want to lie to them. But what was she supposed to say? Hey, come meet this guy I’m sleeping with that I met two days ago. It’s just sex. But don’t you dare do what I do. Great talk. K, thanx, bye. “In a week or two from now, after Maddie’s safely home, and they start to wonder why we don’t actually go out on any dates—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. You know what? At that point, I’ll just tell them we went out a few times, and then decided to just be friends.” Which was the truth, if by we went out a few times, she meant driving to the mall searching for Maddie, and that visit to the high school office.
Peter cleared his throat. “Or…we could go out to dinner every now and then,” he said. “In addition to our daily meetings in my garage.”
Shayla laughed to cover the twisting feeling in her stomach. Dinner would mean that they’d actually be dating. She focused on the least frightening part of what he’d just said. “Oh, so we’re meeting daily now?”
“At least,” he said. “Except, I usually only go out to check the mail once a day. I suppose, in order to drop that hello code word more frequently, we could both develop an intense interest in yardwork.”
“You, me, and Mrs. Quinn. We could start a neighborhood club.”
Peter laughed as she braked to a stop at a red light. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, but she could see his intense worry for Maddie in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry to be focusing on this right now,” she told him softly. “I’ve just always tried to be honest with my children.”
He reached over and took her hand. “Shayla Whitman, will you date me? Please?”
And now her heart joined her stomach in its twisty, jumping dance as she nodded her answer. She couldn’t risk speaking, because she knew her voice would break.
“Good,” he said, kissing her hand before he let her go. “See, easy fix.”
Easy?
Not even close. Shay smiled grimly as the light turned green and she hit the gas. She’d written this storyline before. It was the same trope that Izzy and Lindsey referenced when teasing Adam about going to the hospital to pretend to be poor, beaten Daryl’s significant other. It even had a name—marriage of convenience—despite the fact that, in these modern times, marriage usually wasn’t involved.
But two characters were forced to pretend they were in a romantic relationship, and in the course of doing so, they fell hopelessly in undying love, and happy endings of all kinds—literal and euphemistic—ensued.
Except, in real life, it was likely that only one of them—in this case Shayla, because she was already more than halfway there—would fall hopelessly in love, and heartache would ensue.
And okay, that was overly dramatic and in need of revision. She might instead fall—happily—in undying lust, and mild disappointment might ensue. Yes, that was better. Also, who said dating had to be serious? Dating could absolutely be casual.
So stop whining, and worry instead about Maddie, Harry helpfully popped in to admonish her.
He was right. The most important thing was finding Maddie and bringing that girl safely home.
“Where is it?” Maddie looked at Dingo as he pulled off Old U.S. Highway 395. A sign announced they had reached the Manzanar National Historic Site, but…
“Maybe we have to drive further in,” Dingo suggested.
Maddie just shook her head. The mountains in the distance looked like the photos she’d seen on Great-Aunt Hiroko’s wall. But that was where the similarities ended.
Where were the rows upon rows of cabins, stretching out as far as the eye could see? There was a fence and a guard tower and signs pointing the way to the “Auditorium Interpretive Center,” and “Block 14,” the “Children’s Village,” and the “Hospital Site.” Aside from that, this was just a great big scrub-filled dusty field.
The speed limit was fifteen mph, and a woman in a volunteer shirt picking up trash along the side of the road gave them the stink eye and a slow down, you asshole gesture, because they were apparently going too fast. Dingo not only slowed, but he stopped and even backed up, rolling down his window.
“?’Scuse me, miss,” he said in his best fake Aussie. “How far is it to Manzanar?”
“You’re here,” she said.
“No, no,” he said. “I mean, to the part with all the cabins?”
“That’s just around to the right,” she said, pointing. “Just past the auditorium, at Block Fourteen. We’ve reconstructed two of the barracks, and moved one of the original mess halls back into the camp.”
“Reconstructed,” Dingo echoed. “D’ya mean the rest of ’em are gone?”
“They were torn down or moved, immediately after the war,” the woman said. “All that information is in the Center—in the auditorium. There’s a great film, we run it every half hour. It shows what it looked like back when—”
Maddie burst into tears. She’d been holding it in ever since she’d counted the money they’d taken from Fiona’s room, ever since she’d seen the picture of Nelson’s spray-painted message, $12K NOW. And now that she was thinking about it, she realized how stupid she’d been, not only to assume that all those cabins would still be here, but that they’d be a place where she and Dingo could hide and get some desperately needed rest.
What had she expected? That they’d just drive up, and it would be deserted but preserved, like time had stood still? God, she was stupid, but it had just seemed so perfect, her seeking sanctuary in this place where Hiroko and her great-grandparents had been harmed.
“Her great-grandparents spent the war here,” Dingo told the woman as Maddie continued to sob. “It’s an emotional experience.”
“Oh my God, honey, of course!”
“Is there possibly a place, maybe somewhere in the shade, where we can rest for a bit?” Dingo asked. “Maybe a…covered picnic area?”
“I’m afraid there’s not. We’ve got picnic tables near the main parking lot, but they’re out in the open,” the woman told him.
Dingo nodded. “Thanks so much, that’ll do. Excuse us, please.”
“Of course! Oh my God! Let me know if you need anything!”
He put the car back into drive and rolled his window back up.
“I’m sorry,” Maddie said. “I fucking hate it when I cry.” But she still couldn’t stop.