“What are you looking for?” I ask as Marcus shakes his head.
“Every copy ofLittle Womenin the state, it seems like,” Stan jokes. “Ah well. Not so lucky today, I guess.”
“I’ll take it anyway,” Marcus says, pulling out his phone to pay for the book.
“You don’t have to do that,” Stan says, waving his hand. “I’ll just return it. Say my customer wasn’t happy. No harm, no foul.”
But Marcus won’t hear of it, and somehow he gets Stan to charge him for the book, and we walk out with it.
“You don’t like it?” I ask once we enter the truck, and Marcus puts the book in his glove box. I take it out before he closes the compartment.
“It’s incredible,” I say, running my fingers over the binding. “I would have loved this as a kid.”
Marcus nods. “Yeah, she would too, but she’s looking for a specific one. It’s leather-bound and has gilded pages, and it’s been written in by my mom.”
I’m confused. “She?”
“My sister. Joey.”
I wait for him to explain. “My mom used to have a copy of the book as a kid—she mentioned it in one of her letters, and now Joey wants…”
“That exact copy,” I finish.
“Something like that. I’m running out of places I can even check for used copies.”
I bite my lip, not quite sure if I should say what I want to or not. But I can’t help myself. “I thought you weren’t in touch with your mom? I thought…I mean, Jason said…”
As soon as I reveal that I’ve ever asked Jason about Marcus, I want to kick myself.
“It must have come up,” I finish pathetically.
“We’re not in touch with my mom, but, um…Joey is.”
All the joking around I’ve come to expect from Marcus, the various unreadable expressions, it’s all gone, and instead, there’s a very clear look on his face that says closed for discussion.
“That’s great,” I say, because I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a parent who leaves you intentionally but still finds time to write. Even when my dad moved, I still saw him often, heard from him all the time. Him being gone now is not a choice.
We drive in silence and then Marcus is pulling up next to my car in the school parking lot.
“You said I said something,” he says, when he stops the truck.
“What?”
“In the dream, on the boat,” Marcus says. “You said you knew what I said. What did I say?”
Ugh, it’s the last thing I want to talk about right now.
“It’s fine, Marcus. We really don’t have to get into it. I’ve moved past it.”
“See, there you are again with one of thosecomments.”
I’m surprised by the passion in his voice. “What comments?”
“ ‘How could I forget’ and ‘I’ve moved past it’ and ‘You know what you said,’ ” Marcus says.
“Yes, well, all those things are true.”
“What the hell did I say?” he asks.
