I got out of work at four in the afternoon, right when my father was likely to be motoring in.
“I’ll meet you in the lot,” I said quickly, relieved that the boat was behind a shed at the Salt House. I didn’t have to worry about running into my parents. They never went there anymore anyway.
We said good-bye, and I watched Alex walk away, my heart racing so fast, it felt like it might break loose, push its way through my chest.
Back in the shop, Boon was in his office. I tried to slip past him, but he cleared his throat.
“Nice try. Get in here.”
I backed up and leaned against the doorframe in front of him. He was smiling, his dark eyes playful.
“He’s cute,” he teased. “I think your old man will approve.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. “He’s nobody. Just a kid from school,” I lied, trying to sound casual.
Boon lifted his eyebrows. “Then how come his license said he was eighteen?”
“You made him show you his license?”
“Of course,” he said. “His urine’s in a cup in the freezer too.”
I gave him a look. “Very funny, Boon.”
He laughed and shuffled papers on his desk, but I lingered in the doorway.
“Boon,” I said, and he looked up. “Can you not mention it?”
He looked confused for a minute. Then his mouth formed a straight line, and I sighed. I’d known Boon all my life. I knew every one of his looks.
“You know what he’s like,” I pleaded, before he said anything.
“That he’s protective? Yes.”
“You’re protective. He’s . . . I don’t know, weird about it.”
“Yeah, well, he is who he is,” he mumbled, half paying attention.
“That’s great,” I muttered. “Thanks for the help.” I didn’t know why it suddenly mattered so much. But it did.
Boon looked surprised. He leaned back in his chair and watched me. “What’s going on?” he asked finally.
“Nothing. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to not mention it to my dad. Forget it,” I said, turning to leave. I felt tears form behind my eyes.
“Jessica. Wait,” Boon said, and I stopped. “Come here,” he said, pointing to the chair across from his desk. “Sit.”
I crossed the room and slumped in the chair.
He watched me. “How are things at home?” he asked.
“Home? I don’t know. Fine.”
“They don’t look fine from where I’m sitting.”
I waited, didn’t answer. This was what my father called Boon’s meddling. I didn’t think it was meddling as much as Boon just being Boon.
He didn’t hold back any part of him. Physically either. Always touching people when he talked to them. An arm slung over a guy’s shoulder. A hand on your back.
My father was the opposite. He kept to himself. So much, it seemed he’d muster up as much as he could give and spread it only between me and Kat and Mom. My mother always said it was because he spent so much time alone on the water. That all that aloneness made him that way. I thought it was the other way around. I think my father went to the water to be alone. That he didn’t have to pretend to be anyone else out there.
Boon put his elbows on his desk. “I’m not expecting things to be great, with the year you guys have had. But I was hoping for getting better. I haven’t wanted to bother your mother with all that’s she’s dealing with. And your dad, well, let’s say he’s hanging on by a very thin thread, if you ask me.”
His words came out loud when he said this, unable to keep his frustration with my father out of his voice.
He paused, his voice more controlled when he continued. “I’ve been accused of meddling, so I’m trying to stay out of it. Just keep tabs on you and Kat, and let you all know I’m here if you need me. And you’ve seemed okay, Jess. Not perfect, but okay. You’ve always been pretty even, ever since you were a baby. Sort of unflappable, actually. But you’ve never asked me to lie for you.”
“It’s not lying. I mean, if he asks you, that’s one thing, but . . .”
“You don’t believe that,” he said.
“What?”
“By that definition, a lie is something you say, not something you don’t say.”
My head felt light all of a sudden. “Look. Whatever. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“You mean out of nobody.”
“Huh?”
“You’re asking me to not mention that you had lunch with nobody. The eighteen-year-old-friend-from-school nobody.”
“Boon—”
“Fine,” he said, going back to his papers.
I eyed him. “Fine as in yes?”
“Fine as in I won’t mention it. Only because I wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway. Not because you’re asking me not to. But”—he held a finger up, pointed at me—“behave yourself.”
I gave him a salute and went back to the front of the shop.
We had a steady trickle of customers for the remainder of the day. When my mind wandered to Alex, I told myself to stop it. Stop replaying the way he said my name. Stop picturing his kiwi-colored eyes. Stop tracing the slug-shaped scar on his knee. Stop all of it.
But my mind kept drifting back to him. Finally I let myself stay in the thought.
My insides felt stirred up, alive again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked forward to something, been excited about something. Maybe keeping Alex a secret from my father wasn’t the best plan. But I wasn’t willing to lose this feeling inside of me. It belonged to me.
It was my plan B.
?11
Hope
It was Peggy who suggested we walk.
She said after her first husband died, her walks on the beach in those first weeks kept her sane. She’d put Alex on the bus for school, get right into her car, drive to the long stretch of beach across town, and walk until her legs ached. Not even her pregnant body, with her swollen ankles and huge belly, eight months at the time, slowed her down.
It saved her, she said. All that vast blue spreading out next to her and the crashing of the waves pushing the fog from her head.
And it gave her someplace to go instead of back inside the house, where a hospital bed sat in the living room and pill bottles lined the kitchen counter.
Her husband had wanted to die in the house they’d built together. But the cancer had taken even that from them and his last weeks were spent in a hospital room, his body pumped full of so much morphine, he looked at her and Alex like he didn’t know them.
Like they were strangers.
Peggy and I walked in the mornings after we dropped the kids at camp. Our hair tucked under baseball hats or pulled back messily. Our bodies thrown into mismatched shorts and tank tops, sometimes stained, usually wrinkled, as if we knew the words we’d say out loud would somehow seep into the clothing.
I learned that she’d met Ryland at an AA meeting several years after her husband died. She’d volunteered to go with a friend who was nervous about attending her first meeting. Almost a decade had passed, and she’d never seen Ryland drink. Until now.
Now Peggy said, since moving to Alden, she never saw him sober.