Will stands there for a moment after the truck turns onto the road, looking at nothing in particular. Then he comes back inside, moving through the kitchen differently somehow. He’s calmer, more locked in. I feel the shift from across the room, even if I can’t fully explain it yet.
He looks at me, and I look at him, and neither of us says a word about whatever just happened in the driveway.
“I’ll do the rest of the dishes,” he says.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He takes the sponge from my hand, and neither of us says another word.
***
By mid-morning, I have driven over to the clubhouse, because Marley texted to say Sage was dropping by, did I want to come, and yes, honestly, yes I did. I need somewhere loud, familiar, and populated with people who will make me laugh, because thesilence of Dad’s house with Will in it is getting to me in ways I can’t explain.
The clubhouse carries a different energy on Sundays, slower, easier, the kind that settles into a place where people genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Marley is at the counter when I walk in, halfway through another coffee, and Sage is perched on a barstool, legs crossed, already talking to Ghost at a volume that suggests she’s been going since she woke up.
Possibly forever knowing Sage. She and Penny are a lot alike in that way.
Ghost is in the corner near the laptop he keeps in the main room. He’s completely locked into whatever he’s doing, all sharp focus and careful concentration, which is Ghost’s default state. He has the toothpick between his teeth, the one that appears when he is concentrating, and his gaze hasn’t moved from the center screen in what I suspect has been several minutes.
The clicking of keys is steady enough to pass for background noise until Sage’s voice slices clean through it. “Okay, but why can’t I just restore it to factory settings and start fresh?”
Ghost doesn’t answer immediately. He keeps typing, the faint glow of the laptop lighting the lower half of his face while the rest of him disappears into the corner like he put himself there on purpose. A toothpick shifts from one side of his mouth to the other. He hits enter, then another key, then he exhales through his nose. “Because you’ll lose everything on the hard drive that wasn’t backed up,” he says finally, without looking up. “And based on what you’ve described, nothing is backed up.”
“I back things up.”
“To where?”
“To... the cloud.”
“Which cloud?”
Sage opens her mouth and then closes it. “The cloud, Ghost.The…cloud. The one everyone uses.”
Ghost finally, slowly, turns his head to look at her over his shoulder, with an expression that is not quite exasperation or amusement but lives somewhere in the territory between them. “There are multiple cloud services. They do not share data. You need to knowwhichone you’re subscribed to.”
“Fine, I’ll just send you my login information.”
“You will absolutelynotsend me your login information.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust yourself?” she quips, with a mocking smile on her face.
“I trust myself just fine. I don’t trustyouto change your passwords afterward, which means every device you own becomes a liability.”
Sage turns to Marley with an expression of complete bewildered offense. “He’s being mean.”
Marley, who has been watching this exchange with the serene, unhurried attention of someone watching wildlife through a spotting scope, lifts her mug and takes a very slow sip. “He’s explaining network security to you at a level that assumes good faith on your part,” she says. “That seems like the opposite of mean.”
“He’s being technical at me, you know I don’t do technical,” Sage says, as though this is interchangeable with being mean.
Ghost turns back to his screen. He is almost smiling. It’s a very small, very contained almost-smile, the kind that has never quite made it all the way to his face, tucked away somewhere just below the surface. The toothpick shifts from one side of his mouth to the other. “Bring the laptop in on Tuesday,” he says. “I’ll look at it.”
Sage immediately brightens like someone turned a dial. “See, this is what I needed. Why couldn’t we have started here?”
“Because you spent forty-five minutes asking questions you already knew the answers to.”
“I was making conversation, Ghost. You know you like talking to me!”
“I know, and for some fucked up reason… I do,” he says, and this time the almost-smile is fractionally closer to an actual one.
