We pulled onto El Monte, and I watched the mile markers pass like I had every day growing up. On the radio, “Human Qualities” by Explosions in the Sky played as we drove toward the weeds, the dust, and the sun setting on the horizon. Neither of us spoke a word. The music told the sad story of the two kids on the dirt road with nothing but their books and each other.
As we sailed past the old egg ranch, long since abandoned, Jase turned his head, like he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. His chest rose and fell to the sound of the heartbeats through the speakers. I wanted to say something, but the silence between us was powerful. He grabbed my hand and held on tight.
Jase parked at the end of the long dirt road where the mailboxes used to be. There was nothing, just dust and the tree line in the far distance that marked the creek. “Let’s walk,” he said.
Walking hand in hand, I thought back to the bus ride and every day we spent on that road. “Whatever happened to the bus driver?”
“No clue,” he said. “She probably retired. She was a nice lady.”
“I know. I used to wish she would adopt us.”
He turned to me with a huge smile on his face. “Me too! I wanted to take all the seats out of the bus and live in it like it was a camper.”
“It would have been amazing.”
“Amazingly strange. We wanted the bus driver to adopt us so we could live in the bus with her.” He laughed. “How sad is that?”
I started laughing too.
We approached where our houses once stood, though now it was just a couple of concrete slabs, infiltrated by weeds. We walked around quietly for an hour. I let all the memories, good and bad, dance in and out of my thoughts.
Jase stood on a wood post. “I’m the king of the world!” he shouted.
King of my world, I thought.
“You’re still a dork,” I said.
“A lovable dork?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“You want to go look at the creek?” he asked.
“Isn’t that hard for you?”
“It wasn’t hard for me when I was fifteen. Why would it be hard for me now? I love it down there.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”
“But your brother . . .”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Yeah, my brother died there, but I choose to think about all the awesome things we did there together instead of giving false power to the site of his death.”
I’d had no idea how well adjusted Jase was about his brother’s death. Maybe, during all those years, I had made things bigger in my mind in order to avoid other issues.
We sat on the little wood dock, shoulder to shoulder, swinging our legs.
“The water’s low,” I said.
“It’s almost frozen,” he added.
“I feel like I’m supposed to say something.” I didn’t look at him, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was looking directly at me.
“You don’t have to say anything.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t doing this for me . . .”
“Then why?”
“I just want to spend some time with you. I want you to figure out what you want,” he said.
“That’s selfless of you, Jase, like all sacrifices you’ve made. You’re a saint. But honestly, what’s all of this for? What are you trying to prove by bringing me here, and with the book?”
“I know you so well. I know what you’re doing right now. You’re trying to push me away.”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
He pulled his hand out of mine and then stood up and walked down the dock, leaving me alone. When he reached the road, he called back, “You still don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?” I got up and hurried after him.
He turned around. “All of those things I said about Jax in the book, did you seriously think I was talking about me? When I said, ‘Despite his life, he kept getting sweeter and sweeter . . .’ Em, I was talking about you. All of the good things were about you. I just switched it around because I needed you to remember. I’m still mesmerized by how good you are, Emiline, but completely saddened by the fact that you’re so terrible to yourself. You’re not just Emerson, you’re Jackson too. I wrote this book for you so you could see that, and I wrote this book for me so I could heal.”
“You are good, Jase. You’ve always been good,” I choked out.
We walked back down the road in silence. He took my hand and led me toward the car and opened my door. The sun had set, and the moon was full in the sky. It was one of those rare, clear nights when the moonlight was bright enough to light the road ahead. Jax and I held hands all the way back to New Clayton.
When we pulled into the parking lot of my hotel, I turned to him. “You can stay with me, but I’m still with Trevor . . .”
“I know, and you’re going to do the right thing,” he said unbitterly.
“You didn’t expect that? You just told me how good I was. I thought you knew me so well, Jase, MD, psychologist/author extraordinaire.” He grinned, and I poked him in the chest. “Yeah, I said author extraordinaire, not that your head needs any more inflating.”
“I like feisty, Em.”
All the heaviness from before seemed to slip away as he followed me out of the car and up the steps to street level. “Look.” I pointed to the 7-Eleven on the corner.
“Dinner?” he said, eyes twinkling.