“He would say you don’t owe him anything.”
“Well, I do. I loved Aunt Frankie, I really did. But she was seventy-five when I moved in. And it was only me and her and her bridge partners on Tuesday and Sunday nights. Then she was gone and that was it for real family. I almost wish I hadn’t been so happy here. Maybe I wouldn’t have missed you all so much.”
Roland had watched her the entire time she’d been speaking. She didn’t look at him, and gazed instead at the moon dancing over the water.
“You aren’t happy, are you?” Roland asked.
“What?”
“Since the second I saw you, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what’s different about you now. I mean, other than you’re older and taller and prettier.”
She let the “prettier” pass without comment.
“And you figured it out?” she asked.
“Think so. You’re sad. You never used to be sad. Even when you first came here, you weren’t sad. Scared, but not sad.”
She walked over to him in the doorway and let him see her face, her dry eyes, the smile she didn’t have to force around him.
“I’m a little sad,” she said. “But don’t worry. Sad’s the weather, not the climate.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice softer, almost a whisper. She could believe then he’d been a monk. Such a voice surely had God’s ear.
“More mad than sad,” she said. “It’s not fair, you know. I should have grown up in this house.” She turned away from Roland and went to the north-facing window.
The windowsill did double duty as a bookshelf. Old books lined the ledge, novels they’d read in school, tattered paperbacks with pencil markings and yellow highlighting on the pages. Flowers for Algernon, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. All of Deacon’s twisted sci-fi favorites.
“You think you get used to it, to losing people you love. I lost my mom,” she said. “Lost you all. Lost my...”
“What?”
“My aunt,” she said hastily. “She died a year after I started college.”
Roland nodded but the skeptical look remained.
“You should get used to it,” Allison said. “But you never do.”
“I don’t think you should get used to it,” Roland said. “You’d have to be pretty heartless to get used to something like that.”
“I wish I were heartless some days.”
“Don’t,” he said, and he said it so sternly and sharply she looked up at him in surprise. “Don’t ever wish that.”
He held her gaze and didn’t look away, didn’t let her look away. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him so serious, so solemn.
“You have a good heart,” he said. “A lot of people don’t. You shouldn’t wish a good heart away.”
“You’re such a monk. I was being jaded. Ignore me.”
“Twenty-five is too young to be jaded.”
“I have my reasons.”
Roland waited, sitting on the windowsill. He didn’t need to ask—she didn’t want him to. And yet she suddenly felt the urge to reveal everything.
“I got dumped,” Allison said. “Two days ago.”
Roland’s eyes widened.
“Two days?”
She shrugged. “It happens.”
“How long were you together?”
“Six years.”
Roland looked equal parts amazed and horrified. “Six? That’s longer than a lot of marriages.”
“This was nothing like a marriage.”
“It wasn’t serious?”
“It was very serious,” she said. “Hard to explain. But, if you’re glad to see me, you should be grateful to him. I wouldn’t have been able to come out here if he hadn’t ended things.”
“Well, I am glad.”
She threw a pillow at him.
He caught it deftly and tossed it back onto the bed.
“I mean—I’m not glad you got dumped. That’s brutal. Especially after six years. But definitely glad it brought you here. And you have a free pass to be as jaded and bitter as you want to be.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on Kentucky time, which means it’s two hours past my bedtime.”
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“Tired tired or tired of me?” he asked.
“Definitely not tired of you. But I am tired. And if I keep talking I’ll talk about things I don’t want to talk about.”
“Then I’ll let you sleep. I’ll crash in Deacon’s room tonight since Dad’s not here. It’s the one right across the hall. If you need anything, knock.”
“Same here.”
They said their good-nights and Allison took a quick shower to get rid of the last of the sand before putting on her pajamas. They were cotton—white shorts and a camisole top—and covered enough skin she wouldn’t feel strange walking around the house in them. She lay in bed and turned off the light—a milk glass lamp with a blue glass shade—and tried to sleep. While her body was exhausted from the time difference and the travel, her mind wouldn’t shut off. Roland a monk. Dr. Capello dying. Kendra and Oliver long gone. McQueen living his new life with his new lady and the baby on the way. Her brain spun like a roulette wheel, and no matter what number it landed on, she lost.
After half an hour, she switched on the lamp again and went to her suitcase to look for a book to read. None of the ones she brought made for good bedtime reading. They were too serious, too scholarly. She needed a comfort read. She got out the copy of A Wrinkle in Time Roland had sent her and started reading it again for the second time that day. She didn’t get very far, two whole pages, when she heard a soft tapping on her door.
“Come in?” Allison said.
“Someone wants to see you,” Roland said, pushing the door open. He was in his pajamas, too. Plaid pants, bare feet, sleeveless T-shirt. He’d shaved, the lack of stubble making him look five years younger. And in his arms he held a cream-colored cat.
“No way,” she said. “Is that Potatoes O’Brien?”
“It’s just Brien now,” Roland said. “We dropped the Potatoes O. I caught him lurking outside your door like a creeper.”
Roland carried the cat over to the bed and sat down with him.
“Can I pet him?” she asked. “Or will he scratch me?”
“Brien doesn’t scratch anybody,” Roland said. “He’s a pacifist. See?” He lifted Brien’s paw and it hung in the air before he dropped it down to his furry belly again. “Pathetic. Grow a spine, man.”
“He’s sweet,” she said, grinning as she petted the old boy, happily sinking her hands into his soft warm fur. “And old. How old is he now?”
“Dad got him for Deacon for his tenth birthday, I think,” Roland said. “He was a kitten so...about eighteen. But the vet says he’s healthy.”
“Hi, Brien,” Allison said. The poor cat blinked sleepily. “You remember me? I remember you.”
“I remember you,” Roland said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, trying to hide her smile.
As she petted and scratched Brien, Roland looked at her.
“What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You look really young without any makeup on,” he said.
“Well, you look almost sixteen again now that you shaved off your scruff.”
“Don’t take this wrong way, but this all feels really weird to me,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “What about you?”
“I was kind of thinking the same thing. One second you’re like a total stranger to me,” she said. “The next, it’s like I never left.”
“Exactly. One second you’re this sophisticated twenty-five-year-old woman in diamond earrings and fancy suede boots. The next, you’re an obnoxious ten-year-old driving me up the wall again.”
“Who do you like better?” she asked.
“I missed the obnoxious kid. I’m enjoying getting to know the lady in suede. You sure you can’t stay longer?”
Allison propped herself up on her pillow and looked at him.
“I’m staying tonight, for old times’ sake. See Dr. Capello tomorrow. But after that, I think I should move on. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Roland. I want you to know that.” He’d been so kind to her, so brotherly, so honest with her since she’d arrived, she hated to tell him this had to be it.