Page 32 of The Last Thing You Said

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“How was work? I tried to talk Mom into having dinner at the Full Loon tonight, but she was too into her painting, you know? So I had a peanut butter sandwich instead.” He laughs. “Doesn’t compare.”

“Were you painting today, too?” I point at his stained fingers.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he stammers. “I’m not as good as Mom, but yeah. I could show you sometime.”

I nod, but don’t say anything. I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of the chair.

“I like it up here,” Simon says after a minute, “but I could never live in a place like this. It’s too quiet.”

“Too quiet?” I open my eyes and look at him. “How can it be too quiet?”

“In St. Paul, there’s this constant stream of noise. The air is solid with it. Sirens. Music. Talking, shouting. It never stops, not even in the middle of the night.” There’s fondness in his voice.

“And you like that?”

“Yeah, it’s like I know I can go to sleep because somebody else is always going to be awake, making sure that things go on as normal. I don’t have to keep watch all the time.”

“What are you keeping watch for?”

He shrugs. “You know it’s just me and my mom, right? My parents have been divorced for a long time. Things weren’t always great between them, you know? So I watch out for my mom, I guess.”

“Where does your dad live?”

“South St. Paul, not too far from us.”

“Shh. Don’t talk for a minute,” I say. “It’s actually not that quiet.”

I smile as I hear the cry of a loon overhead, the rustle of the leaves in the breeze, the chirp of an angry chipmunk, the rumble of a motor out on the lake.

“I stand corrected,” he says. “How can you sleep with all this noise?”

“It’s soothing,” I tell him. “No matter what, life on the lake goes on.”

“Lucy?”

“Yeah?”

“If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?”

I hesitate before I nod.

“Was, uh, was Ben your boyfriend?”

I sigh. I can’t help it. This must be the night for uncomfortable conversations. “No. I already told you that.”

“Do you want him to be?”

I don’t know how to answer this. He asked me to be honest, and I want to be truthful without telling him the actual truth. “I wanted him to be, yes.”

“Do you still?”

“Simon . . .” What I want or don’t want doesn’t really matter.

“No, I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”

A part of me thinks this whole thing might be easier if I do answer, though, even if I don’t tell him everything. “A lot of things changed between me and Ben after Trixie died. Sometimes it still hurts.”