For the first time, it occurs to Will to wonder whether he, himself, today, can think of a circumstance in which he’d scream at a child of this age. Not just his own child, to whom one would think he’d have a particular attachment—atanychild of this age. At, quite frankly,anyof the children he has found himself imagining in this long, anguished moment, rooted to the spot as though turning into another of the orchard’s many trees, exchanging muscle and sinew for fiber and pulp.
He wouldn’t, is what he concludes, a little startled by it. He would not yell at any of those children, not in any circumstances, not unless their lives depended on him doing so. Even then, he’d probably try to find another way. They were justchildren—they couldn’t be expected to process that kind of aggression, to not take it personally. It wouldn’t befair, to treat them they like they were adults just because it would beeasierif they were, or because he, himself, didn’t have the emotional intelligence to do anybetter…
“Will, hey.” Casey’s voice is low, warm with a concern so alien to the world of Will’s childhood that it wrenches him back to the present with the immediacy of a rip cord, the parachute of Casey’s attention billowing out to catch him before he can land too firmly in the past. “Are you okay? Sorry to say it, but you seem like maybe you’re freaking out a little.” Tightly, Will nods, not trusting himself to speak without hyperventilating, sobbing, or otherwise exhibiting humiliating symptoms of a panic attack. But Casey just says, “I thought so. Take a few deep breaths with me, okay? I’m a deep breathing expert, believe it ornot. I’ve been told I don’t look the type, but I went through anextensivemeditation phase, and I still keep up a pretty consistent practice…”
Casey keeps talking for several minutes, calm and relaxed, about breathwork and clearing one’s mind, not seeming bothered at all by the fact that Will’s deep breaths are occasionally verging on gasps. Though his heart is still hammering with adrenaline, Will realizes as he starts to come back to himself that Casey’s arm, which was reaching for his water bottle the last time Will clocked it, has wrapped itself around Will’s shoulders at some point in the proceedings. It’s a sign of how deeply he’d fallen away from himself that it didn’t register immediately—even scrabbling like this, still half-panicked and trying desperately to let it go, now that he’s noticed Casey’s arm around him, he cannot shake a white-hot awareness of every place they’re touching.
“I…” Will says eventually, feeling slightly queasy. He swallows; his mouth is dry. “Sorry, I—she—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—lose my grip.Sorry.”
“It’s really okay,” Casey says, soft. Then, his voice taking on a slightly rumbling quality, he adds, “Does she always talk to you like that?”
“Oh,” Will says, waving a hand and trying to smile. He gets the sense he doesn’t quite pull it off. “Not…exactly. Most of the time there’s just kind of the implication that she might? This is the first time she’s actually, uh. Yelled at me.” Will swallows, and, guiltily, adds, “That I know of, anyway. I kinda stopped listening to the voicemails a few days ago, because they started getting really intense, so. Maybe she’s been screaming for days.” He shakes his head, abruptly annoyed with himself, and straightens up. “And anyway it doesn’tmatter, it’s not about her, it was just—unfortunate timing, that’s all. It’s just that being screamed at, like that, in this house…” He shudders in spite of the warmth that seems to radiate from Casey, as though caught upin that golden hair is a little piece of the sun itself. “It…brings stuff up, that’s all.”
“Hmm,” Casey says. Regrettably, he steps away from Will, flips off the still-lit stove burners under the now lightly smoking breakfast Will entirely forgot he was cooking, and leans up against the nearest counter, bracing his weight on his palms. He seems to be thinking about something; Will, still trying to get a handle on the mechanics of normal breathing, leaves him to it.
Finally, Casey says, “God help me, there just isn’t any other way around it.”
Will stares at him, confused. “Around what?”
“You gotta tell me about what happened with you and Bill,” Casey says, and then sighs. “And I gotta tell you what happened withmeand Bill. We can’t just keep avoiding it like it’s not going to come up—that never works out, not for anyone.” He makes a face when Will immediately grimaces. “Oh, Iknow, don’t give me that look! You thinkIwant to talk about it? I’ve been avoiding it for areason, the whole thing is so awkward, I’d rather chase Betsy Lundgren’s stupidpigsaround again, but.” He gestures at Will, and then at himself. “It’s obviously bothering you, and Iknowit’s bothering me. When I thought you were just going to leave and that was going to be it, that was one thing. But after last night—well. I don’t know howyoulike to navigate this sort of situation, but me personally? I’m not one for tiptoeing around issues until they blow up in my face. Only smart move is to barrel right at it, headfirst. Get it over with so we can get on with things.”
In spite of some lingering anxiety, Will can’t help the little smile that steals over his face at this assessment, since it’s such a clear summary of Casey’s whole personality. Will, himself, has never once thought the smart move in basicallyanysituation was to barrel right at it headfirst but: “Yeah, God. Okay, you’re probably right.” He takes a breath, trying to steady himself, which becomes a huge, cracking yawn. Then, hating howfaintly it comes out, he says, “Sorry, can we… I heard you, right, good logic, we’re agreed, but…um. It’s early? And I burned breakfast? So. Maybe I could get some coffee first? And food…of some kind. Just because, I mean, I want to talk about it, but I’m kind of…” God help him, the edge of all that buried emotion is tugging at some rarely touched vocal cord, and Will winces when Casey’s expression softens at the sound. “I’mfine, just, not super awake, is all. Okay? Is that okay?”
There’s a beat, and then, softly, Casey says, “Sure, that’s okay. Tell you what—we’ll both go. Cardini’s? I’ll drive if you go in.”
“God, yes,” Will says eagerly, wanting to cement this path before it’s lost to him. It’s too eager, maybe, because it makes Casey laugh, but Will doesn’t care—fifteen minutes later, he’s sitting in the front seat of Casey’s pickup, his window halfway down to let the cool autumn air rush over him, music playing gently over the radio. After a minute or two, Casey says, “Oh, that’s funny,” and turns the volume up, starts singing along. It’s one Will doesn’t know, but it seems to be about a man called Casey Jones who is driving a train in some unfortunate drug-related circumstances and needs to make some hasty choices. It’s catchy, and Casey himself—the real one, that is, not the one from the song—has a nice voice, a rich, uncomplicated baritone that he doesn’t seem to think about too much. Will feels himself relax by increments as he sings along, although the words themselves don’t tell a particularly happy story.
When it ends, Casey huffs out half a laugh, shakes his head, and says, “I was named after that song, you know. My middle name is Jones and everything.”
In spite of himself, Will’s mouth drops open very slightly. “You’re kidding.”
Pulling up to a stoplight, Casey slants him half a smile. “What?” he says, making his eyes wide and innocent. “Do younot think that every child should aspire to driving a train while high on cocaine? That’s very limiting of you.”
Will snorts out half a laugh, and then, before he can stop himself, says, “Honestly, the things I aspired to as a childarenearly that grim, so. When I was eight, it was the great dream of my life to replace all the busted-out fences on this farm—driving a train, even blitzed out of my mind, would have been reaching for the stars.” It’s too honest, the sort of thing Will wouldn’t say to anyone but Selma, and he has to bite his cheek to keep from wincing when he finishes spitting it out.
But Casey, to his surprise and, honestly, pleasure, meets him beat for beat, not a moment of hesitation before he says, “Yeah, I know how that is. I think when I was eight what I wanted most in the world was to see Jerry Garcia play live, which in and of itself wasn’t a terrible aspiration, except that at that point he’d already been dead for years, and I didn’t have any idea who he was. I knew that’s what a person wassupposedto want most in the world, just like the right answer to ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ was ‘I want to be chill, man.’” Casey must notice the confusion Will’s sure he’s not managing to keep off his face; he laughs, not entirely pleasantly. “I had a very different childhood to yours. Not that I know so much about yours, but I think it’s a safe bet, anyway. Mine was pretty…pretty far from the standard, or at least that’s what I’ve been reliably told. It all feels fairly normal to me.” He shrugs, his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead of him. “Best I can tell that’s almost always true, right? Even for the people whose childhoods werereallytraumatic—you talk to them and they say it was whatever, no biggie, nothing to worry about, let’s change the subject. I guess you get used to what you get used to, right?”
“I went to undergrad with this guy who was obsessed with the idea that human evolutionary success was entirely a result of adaptability,” Will says, shaking his head to remember it. “Luke Graves—he was interesting, honestly, but hewouldgoon. But the idea was that what made a human being a human being, on a fundamental level, was the ability to look at almost any given situation and figure out a way not just to get on with it, but to forget there was ever a time before it wasnormal.”
“He sounds like he was a real hoot at parties,” Casey says drily.
Will chuckles, shaking his head. “Actually, proving his point, you…got used to him? A little something to eat, a little something to drink, a little light existential chatter with Luke—oh.” He realizes, abruptly, that Casey has parked the car outside Cardinal Bakery, and is looking at him patiently across the gearshift, no longer driving at all. “Right, uh—you drive, I get. You want anything in particular?”
“Eh,” Casey says, with an easy grin. “So long as there’s coffee, I’m good; anything else is a bonus.”
Will feels a little spike of odd, irrational irritation at this, laced with a fondness that’s strangely hard to bear. He swallows back the urge to say,But I asked you what youwant, isn’t there anything you’dlike, can’t youevermake it easy foranyoneto doanythingfor you?And, instead, smiles. “You got it.”
Still, spike of irritation aside, he’s in a good mood when he walks through the Cardinal doors. An oddly good mood, to be honest, given the way his morning started and the way it’s likely to go after this. Will can’t imagine he’s going to have a good time dragging up the past for Casey, who is, in all likelihood, going to take Bill’s side. That will be bothreallyembarrassing and, if Will doesn’t miss his guess, a lampoon through the balloon of silly, desperate hope he’s been trying frantically to keep tethered to the earth with fraying rope. Even Will is not so self-punishing as to imagine he could stomach building something on ground that profoundly cursed.
But that’s later, after coffee, after breakfast. This might be Will’s last morning in Glenriver for some time—a thought that makes him feel brittle and half-sheared, as though the nextstrong wind is going to send him toppling—and he is, by God, going to enjoy it. This, right now, is Will’s golden moment, his final chance to savor the way these last two weeks have felt before it all goes wrong, and, for his sins, he is going to let himself have it.
He’s humming under his breath as he walks to the counter and waits in line, a tuneless, half-remembered version of the song Casey was named for, heard only once but rattling around still in his head. When he reaches the front, he cracks a couple of jokes with the people working the counter, and doesn’t have to think about the order at all—he’s been in here with Casey enough times, after all. Left to his own devices, Casey usually orders a maple latte and a bear claw, but the bear claws are sold out by the time Will reaches the front, Saturday mornings being what they are. Instead, he orders Casey’s latte, as well as a brown sugar cardamom one for himself, and gets them each one of the apple turnovers that are being freshly placed in the case as he watches. As he waits for the order to come up, he tries to drink in the smell of this place, the specific color of the paint on the walls, without allowing the thought of why he’s doing so to make him maudlin.
But as he’s walking to the door, a paper coffee carrier with their drinks in one hand and the turnover bag in the other, old Mrs. Cardini waves to him. “William! You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you?”
Will was, in fact—he hadn’t seen her—but he shakes his head and smiles at her, hurries over. “Sorry, sorry, I was just?—”
“Oh, I canseewhat you were ‘just,’” Mrs. Cardini says, her expression going dangerously knowing. “Your old man used to come in here, you know, back in the day. You look more like him now than you did when you were coming up—it’s like that, for some folks. I used to try to tell him.” She shakes her head, and then, her eyes sharpening, adds, “Anyway! He’d come in looking just like you, all cheerful, whistling himself a little tune,buying coffee and treats for two. Honestly, it’s a little spooky—I think sometimes he was even wearing that shirt.”
