“I’m part of his congregation.”
She stared at him, waiting for a sign that he was joking, but none came, and her relief melted away. Brother Paul was undoubtedly Paul Annescott, who fancied himself a Bible scholar. He had reading groups in his home every week, but they were supposed to be academic, not religious. Katie wondered what William Tear would think if he knew there was an active Christian congregation in town . . . but no, Tear had said he would not intercede.
“You’re no more Christian than I am, Row. What is this?”
“I’ve been saved,” he repeated.
“Does that mean you’ll stop sleeping with half the town?”
“I’ve left my impure ways behind,” he replied, with a grin that Katie couldn’t decipher. She felt as though he were inviting her in on a joke that she couldn’t identify. When was the last time they’d been together, just the two of them? It had to be at least six months gone.
“What do you want, Row?”
“I’m leaving next week.”
Katie’s jaw dropped. Her first thought was that Row was going with Tear, but no, Tear would never take him along. After a moment she realized what he meant.
“You’re going on the mountain expedition?”
“Yes.”
Katie nodded, but that touch of disquiet inside her intensified. Jen Devlin’s expedition had been meant to leave this week, but they had pushed the date back now that Tear was leaving too. He had announced his plans to cross the ocean at meeting last week, and predictably, the Town had erupted in protest. Everyone seemed to sense disaster, but even the pleas of the entire Town could not sway Tear to stay.
“You’re no explorer, Row. What do you want with Jen’s expedition?”
“I want to get away.”
This made sense. The closer Row drew to moving out, the more officious his mother became. When Row was at work at the shop, Mrs. Finn would show up with something she claimed he’d forgotten, his lunch or his jacket. When Row went out with friends, his mother could sometimes be seen following him, tagging along perhaps a hundred feet behind, her eyes squeezed down into small, jealous triangles. Mum said Mrs. Finn was becoming unhinged, and it made perfect sense that Row would want to get clear of her hawklike vigilance; even the mountain expedition seemed like a good choice, since Mrs. Finn wasn’t hardy enough to attempt such a journey. Everything was utterly plausible, but Katie, who knew Row well, sensed a great falsity in his answer, some other reason glimmering just beneath. She wanted to dig for it, grab his shirt and demand the truth, but even then, he might not tell her. And Katie suddenly realized just how far their friendship had eroded in the past few years. She had no idea what Row was thinking, what he meant to do. The effortless simpatico they had enjoyed when they were younger was gone, and now Katie could only imagine what lay beneath that angel’s face. For a terrible moment, she wondered whether she had ever known Row, or whether she had simply invented the boy she thought she knew from whole cloth. Nothing seemed certain any longer.
“I’m going to miss you, Katie.”
She looked up and found Row watching her, a small smile playing on his lips.
“I’ll miss you too, Row,” she replied, not sure whether she meant it. After Tear left, she would begin guarding Jonathan in earnest, and though she had never guarded a person before, she understood the security problems posed by uncertainty. Her mind tipped sideways, and for a moment she was standing in the woods, staring at a monster in the moonlight. Uncertainty was dangerous, and Row was nothing if not a wild card.
What is a childhood friendship really worth? she wondered, staring at the ground. How much loyalty do I owe?
“When will you be back?”
“Jen estimates two months, three if we get caught in bad weather. They saw snow on top of those mountains, and that was in spring.”
“Well,” Katie said awkwardly, and in that awkwardness she felt as though a door was closing somewhere, walling off everything that had come before, all of the times they had snuck away from their parents and decided to run away, the forts they had built in each other’s backyards, the times Row had helped her with her maths homework, all the way back to that day against the wall of the schoolhouse when Row had smoothed a hand over her aching scalp and made her forget that someone had been cruel. The door closed, deep in her mind, with a hollow boom that Katie heard rather than felt, and when she blinked, she found that her eyes were full of tears. Row opened his arms and she stumbled into them, trying not to weep. Row wasn’t crying; she wouldn’t either.
“Be safe, Row,” she told him.
“You too, Rapunzel,” he replied, smiling. Reaching for one of her long curls, he gave it a tug, then turned and walked back into the woods, heading east, toward town.