Page 66 of Plain Sight

“Need you?”

“Yeah.”

I kiss the tip of his nose. “Too late.”

He helps me towel off, then dries my hair, then searches through my bag until he finds a nightshirt. When I’m dressed and ready, Jameson helps me into bed, tugs the covers over me, and sits on the edge of the mattress, stroking my hair, his eyes intent.

“What about now?” A yawn interrupts me mid-now. “Time for bed?”

“I’m not tired.” The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s obviously a lie. He has smudges under his red eyes, but tonight isn’t the night for fighting him on it.

I fall asleep with his hand in my hair.

I’m braced for things to get worse, but falling into the rhythm of someone else’s family is surprisingly easy. I expect it to be more awkward and tense, but instead it’s like being on vacation at a resort saturated with a steady, calm feeling that I’m pretty sure people would pay a lot to experience.

It doesn’t make me less worried about Jameson, who’s already awake—still awake?—when I wake up the first morning. My heart aches, but the calm makes me think we’ll be able to handle what’s coming.

What has to be coming, from the anxious expressions his brothers wear whenever they think Jameson can’t see. They have to be wondering the same thing I am: what happens when Jameson falls asleep?

Jameson is awake the second morning, too. His eyes stay red. The smudges underneath them stay dark as new bruises. He’s subdued and oddly quiet, floating from room to room and having low-stakes conversations with his siblings and watching Daisy and Artemis toddle hand-in-hand through the house.

Nothing happens with Jameson. He’s just like he was the day before.

On the third day, when Jameson and Remy eat a plate of cinnamon sugar toast and watch an episode of Downton Abbey, I curl up in an overstuffed chair next to their couch and catch myself thinking this wasn’t so bad.

“Mr. Carson’s going to have a fit,” says Jameson, the uneaten corner of his toast halfway to his mouth.

“No, he’s settling down. He’s had a bunch of character growth. He’ll probably be super sage,” Remy counters.

Onscreen, Mr. Carson turns bright red. Inside fifteen seconds, he has raised his voice.

Remy laughs. “You win.”

“I know Carson better than you.”

Jameson finishes his piece of toast and winks at me. His eyes, usually so bright, are sad. Shadowed.

That’s when it occurs to me that I might have been wrong about Vesuvius.

Not wrong about the historical accounts. Wrong about the warning signs. I’ve been looking for earthquakes and clouds of ash. I’ve been looking for broken dishes and tears when the odd thing out—the quiet—has been in front of me the whole time.

It’s not like Jameson. It’s not like Jameson at all. Mason and Gabriel knew that all along. They come to stand in the family room archway, talking to each other in low voices.

Waiting.

I’m not holding Jameson’s hand when he moves to the next phase of what’s happening. I’m just standing next to him in the kitchen, absentmindedly marveling at how nice it feels to be centered in a patch of sun but perfectly surrounded by air conditioning. Zeus’s wife, Brigit, sits on the counter, eating frozen grapes. Zeus rummages in the fridge. Glass clinks together. Cook faces the two of us, a pen in one strong hand and a pad of paper in the other.

“Help me help you.” He looks Jameson up and down. “Strictly vegetarian?”

“Yeah.” Jameson runs a hand through his hair. It must feel wrong, because he puts the elastic out and redoes his bun. He lets the elastic snap back into place. “You don’t need to do anything special, though. I’ll just eat whatever’s around.”

Cook narrows his eyes, looking profoundly offended. “Exactly. You’ll eat whatever’s around. You think I’m going to fob off uncooked tofu? Hand you a bag of bagels? You think I’d hand my guys a bag of bagels and tell them to fuck off? Don’t insult me.”

He starts running down a list of entrees and appetizers, crossing off the ones Jameson doesn’t show any interest in and underlining the ones he does.

“No blueberries,” Cook says.

Jameson shrugs. “Okay.”