She gives me a look. “Is this a real problem or a you-wanted-company problem?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“Jack.”
“Both,” I confirm. “It’s definitely both.”
She makes the sound that isn’t quite a laugh and falls into step beside me anyway, which is the part that matters. We walk the ring toss perimeter in the early morning quiet.
“Jack,” she starts.
“Mm.”
“The bond,” she says. “You said you’d find the solution to getrid of it.”
And there it is.
I’ve been waiting for this since Wednesday, running quiet calculations about the right moment and the right words, and the right moment is apparently Friday morning at the ring toss with the carnival ground near-empty and the river audible through the tree line.
“I know,” I say.
“You said you’d have something.”
“I know that too.” I stop walking. She stops with me, and we’re at the far end of the game alley, the river path visible through the gap in the stall row. “I’ve been making calls. People who know more about partial bonds than I do.”
“And?”
“And it’s complicated. More complicated than I thought it would be.”
She looks at me with a frown on her beautiful lips. “How complicated?”
I take a deep breathe. “The standard advice for an unwanted partial bond is distance and time. Sustained separation. The bond-pull fades if the parties aren’t in range of each other for long enough. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think that time frame is about fifty years.”
“Fiftyyears?”
I nod. “Which would mean you leaving. Which is—” I stop. “Which is an option. It’s a real option and I want you to know that. If that’s what you want, I will help you find somewhere to go and I willnot—”
“Jack,” she interrupts.
“I’m not finished.”
“Jack.” Her voice is angry now. “I can’t put my life on hold for fifty years. Surely there is something else we can do?”
“I’ll keep looking,” I promise. And I will. Honestly, the thought of having this partial bond and not being able to see her for five decades doesn’t fill me with joy either.
She sighs but doesn’t say anything. I hate seeing her so dissuaded by my lack of good news. I want to turn her frown upside down.
“Come with me,” I say, grabbing her hand.
“Come with you where?”
I’m already moving. She follows, which she does more readily than she did three days ago, though I think she’d argue the point. I lead her to the food row while the setup crew is still at the far end of the ground. I stop at the test station that one of the vendors—Danny, who runs the fried potato operation with the seriousness of someone performing important cultural preservation—left unlocked when he ran to get more oil from the supply tent.
“We’re not,” Lola says.
“We absolutely are.” I’m already behind the counter. “He’s got a batch of batter ready.”
“That’s stealing.”
