“I didn’t say that.” He presses his lips against mine, hard. “But you are, Bridge. You’re everything good in my life. You know that, right?” He searches my face.
I answer him with another kiss.
“Good.” His face breaks into a smile, and we settle back into our seats. He pulls away from the curb but curls his hand around mine and leaves it there.
“Where do you want to go?” I squeeze his hand.
“Wherever you want,” he says. “Just don’t want to go anywhere that reminds me of Dad. That okay?”
“Yeah, sure. What about Nina’s? We could get dessert.”
He shakes his head. “My dad and I had kind of a hard conversation in there once. Right before.”
“Got it. No Nina’s. So you probably don’t want to do an after-dinner beach walk, then. Or take out the canoe?”
“Ahh.” He looks pained. “Sorry.”
“Wil, it’s okay.” I don’t want to say it, and I don’t have to. There is no escaping your father. Wilson is everywhere. Wil won’t ever outrun him.
I get an idea. “If you want, I know a place down Atlantic you’ve never been. Has pretty good tea and cookies, actually.”
“Tea and cookies?” He looks at me with a crooked smile. “Sign me up.”
We pull into the Sandy Shores entrance during the commercial break between Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, which buys us ninety seconds of focused, productive Rita. When Rita sees me with a boy, she stage-winks at me, as if he’s not sitting between us. Then something clicks and I watch her recognize Wil. She bows her head when she presses the button to let us in.
“One of these days, I could have plans, you know,” Minna says when she opens the door. She’s Joni Mitchell cool in bare feet, loose hair, and a caftan that Leigh would pay too much for at Vintage Vixens.
“We took a shot in the dark,” I say. “Wil, this is my friend Minna.”
“Oh.” Wil can’t hide his surprise. “Ah, hi. I’m Wil.”
Minna bobs her head. “Hello, William.” I say a silent thank you that she doesn’t talk too loud or with a lilt to her voice or tilt to her head, the way everyone does around Wil these days.
“It’s short for Wilson, actually.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She shakes her head and waves us inside. “Anyone up for Dirty Scrabble?”
Wil elbows me. “We are most definitely up for Dirty Scrabble.”
“Minna. I don’t think this is appropriate,” I tell her once we’re seated in the living room with the Scrabble board, lavender tea, and the tin of caramel popcorn I gave her for her birthday.
“Dirty Scrabble is always inappropriate, Bridget. That’s the point.”
“So, how do you guys know each other?” Wil wrestles with the popcorn tin.
Minna puckers her lips at her tiles. “We met during Bridget’s juvenile delinquent phase.”
“Minna. God.” I reach for popcorn. “I was never a juvenile delinquent.”
“I seem to recall an arrest warrant that begs to differ.” Minna slides too many tiles onto the board. “JOHNSON.”
Wil laughs and Minna smiles big enough that her face breaks like dried Earth.
“I can’t argue with that.” Wil fist-bumps Minna. She goes along with it.
“No! That—no.” I shake my head. Wil records the points anyway. “Whatever. I forfeit.”
“So I guess you’re retired now?” Wil says to Minna, shuffling his tiles.
She nods.
“What did you do before?”
“Oh, lots of things. Receptionist work, mostly.”
“My mom does that. At a dentist’s office. Did you like it?”
She nods. “You know something, I did. And people liked me, because I could make them laugh over the phone.”
“I’ll bet.” Wil slides his hand across the settee and takes mine.
“And you. You go to high school and build boats,” Minna says. I should have known better: she would never pretend to know nothing about him. Unlike Henney, Minna says exactly what she’s thinking, exactly when she’s thinking it.
“We—I—do repairs, mostly. But I want to get into building. My dad owned the business and he was more into the repair side of things. Small-scale projects. But I like the idea of making something brand-new, instead of spending all my time fixing what’s broken.”
“I was on a sailboat once,” Minna says. “A Catalina 52. A friend and I sailed up the California coast for a few days after my husband and I split.”
“A Catalina.” Wil’s voice catches. “I’ve always wanted to work on one of those.”
“Hm.” Minna pauses. “I suppose the past few weeks have been hell for you.”
Wil pulls back a little, surprised. “Ah—”
“Minna.” I squeeze his hand. It’s damp. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Minna shrugs. “He doesn’t have to. But I won’t pretend.”
“It’s okay,” Wil assures me. “It’s actually kind of nice . . . People always ask, You doing okay? which feels like it only has one right answer. Or they say, How are you feeling? Which is just stupid.”
Wait. Have I asked those things? I wonder.
“How are you feeling? You’re feeling like shit,” Minna volunteers.
“Yes! Exactly. Most of the time, I’m feeling like shit.”
I look at Wil, at the storm brewing in his eyes.
“Actually, I’m feeling . . . complicated these days.” Wil stacks his Scrabble tiles in a tiny high-rise, then breaks them down again. “I only just told Bridge, but it turns out my dad was kind of an asshole.”
My brain wrestles with his words. Wilson and asshole have never belonged in the same sentence before.
“But, like, I didn’t know it for a long time. I really loved him for almost all his life.”
“You could even love him, still,” Minna says gently.
“I do.” Wil’s face twists into an unreadable mosaic. “Most of the time, I’m wrecked about what happened to him and I’m pissed and at the same time I love him, you know? He is—was—my dad, and he was a complicated guy.”
“Of course.” Minna glances at me. “The people we love are never just one thing.”
“And he was trying to do better. He was doing better, for a while. He just—”
Watching Wil is like watching the face of someone who is dreaming. His colors and lines shift slowly. If you didn’t look closely enough, you would miss it.
Minna is saying: “My husband was, like you say, an asshole. And I left. That was years ago, and it saved my life, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I miss having him there next to me. But only with my heart, and only for a second. Then I remember that—” Her voice breaks.
Wil’s breathing gets loud.
I say nothing, because something is happening between them, something Wil needs.
“I remember that I loved the man I wanted him to be.”
“Did you ever think that if you wanted him to be that way, if you wanted it enough, you could make it happen?” Wil’s bangs cling to his forehead. It glints in the lamp light, damp with sweat.