"If either of you would stop long enough to listen."
"I want to scream," I admit, and my voice is cracking and I let it. I'm so tired of holding myself together. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave, and he's being so goddamn helpful that it makes me want to scream."
"He's careful because he loves you." Will's eyes are steady on mine. "That's the only reason a man like my son would sit at this table and talk about crime maps and shuttle schedules while his heart is breaking."
The tears spill over. I don't bother wiping them.
"He thinks letting you go is the bravest thing he can do." Will shakes his head slowly. "He's wrong, but he thinks it. And he got that particular brand of wrong from me. I taught him that love means sacrifice. That you hold on by letting go."
I press my face into his shoulder. His arm comes around me without hesitation, one hand rubbing slow circles on my back the way I imagine he did when Callahan was small and scared and didn't know how to say it.
"I'm going to miss you," I say into his collar, the words muffled and wet. "So much, Will. So much I can't think about it without falling apart."
"Then don't think about it." He pats my back, gentle and rhythmic. "Think about the basil. That's a fine plant, the basil."
I smile through the tears, a broken sound that's half sob and half something lighter.
"You're such a good dad, Will."
"I'm always here, okay? Always." He squeezes my shoulder. "That doesn't change because you're in a different city. You call me. Anytime. I mean it."
I kiss his cheek, then I gather my laptop and my spreadsheets and my crime maps and I walk toward the door. I pause at the window. Callahan is on the porch, his back to the house, his face turned up to the night sky, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
I should go. I should get in my car and drive home and give him space. Instead, I open the door.
He doesn't turn when I step onto the porch. The April night is soft around us, and the sky is full of stars.
I stop behind him and put my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and I feel him breathe under my palm. The warmth of him through his shirt. The way his whole body is held tight, braced against something I can't see.
He doesn't turn around. I don't ask him to.
"Hyde Park," I say quietly. "I'll go with Hyde Park."
He nods. A single, small movement.
I leave and I don't look back because looking back will break me, and I need to make it home before I fall apart.
The streets of Harbor Hill pass by in a blur of familiar shapes, the town I love, the town that saved me, the town I'm leaving in eight weeks. Seven weeks and six days, my brain corrects. Because apparently I'm still counting.
I could torment us both with the time I have left. But I'd rather give my Harbor Hill and my Callahan everything, and take everything from them at the same time.
36
LILY
Ruth's diner in the late afternoon is the calmest it ever gets. The lunch rush has cleared out and the dinner crowd hasn't arrived yet, leaving just a handful of regulars scattered across booths and the low hum of the radio playing something with a fiddle.
Callahan and I have claimed our usual spot in the corner, the one with the view of Main Street and the afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that makes everything look golden.
He has his arm around my shoulders, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my neck, the curve behind my ear. I'm tucked into his side like I belong there, which I do, which I have for months now, which I will for four more weeks before everything changes.
We don't talk about that. We've agreed, silently, mutually, to stop talking about it for a while. I've done my planning with Rome. I've made the arrangements for Chicago, for theapartment I'll be subletting, for the life that's waiting for me in a city that doesn't have him in it.
It's only two weeks until Poppy's wedding. Two weeks after that, I leave.
But right now, in this booth, with his fingers on my skin and his body warm against mine, none of that exists. Right now there's just us and the afternoon light and Ruth pretending not to watch us from behind the counter.
He's wearing a white t-shirt that's doing criminal things to his shoulders and black sweats that sit low on his hips in a way that should be illegal in this fine family establishment.
