Page 21 of Good Directions

Mama?!

That’s when it hits me. Miss Belle is Belle Hayes.

I think back to Saturday in the diner, when Ken introduced us, and for the life of me, I don’t remember him using her last name. But he must have. Except, now I can’t remember.

Plus, the house and property. This isn’t just any house—it’s a manor. And it sits on an estate. One with a great big sign on the stone wall when you turn off the main road that says Hayes. I guess I just assumed that referred to the big mansion there are signs for if you stay straight on that road, but since we veered right, I didn’t make the connection. Clearly, I was not thinking this through.

And if she’s Belle Hayes, that makes Anton one of her seven kids.

He did say that, didn’t he? That Mama would hook me up with some of her sweet tea. That wasn’t just an expression. He actually meant his honest-to-God Mama.

Well, fuck me.

“What are you even doing here?” I ask, pretending that my living with his mother isn’t new information to me. “It’s clearly not your room now.”

“No, I live elsewhere now, but I came here to find something for Hayes games.”

He moves into the room, navigating around me with ease. The room is decorated with blues and whites, very serene and neutral, making it hard to picture Anton ever living in here. It might have been his room as a teenager, but Miss Belle has clearly given it a glow-up since, leaving me to wonder what teenage Anton decorated these walls with.

“Hayes games?” I question, unable to help myself.

“Yeah, it’s something my brothers and I do every Fourth of July.”

“Just your brothers? Your sister doesn’t join?”

“Ha!” he guffaws. “No, she does not. And once you meet Willa, you will understand exactly why.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Anton stops at the edge of the area rug, right in front of the closet. Narrowing his gaze, he drags his eyes up and down my body, as if he’s sizing up whether or not he can trust me.

“Hayes games is series of competitions that the six of us boys do every year after we win tug-o-war. Tradition started back when I was in high school, and has been going ever since. Consists of things like axe throwing, Tannerite shooting, toilet-seat horseshoes. We tried log rolling one year, but Milo broke his ankle so that one’s been banned.”

Toilet-seat horseshoes?

“How childish.”

Anton lifts a shoulder, the same move as earlier today in the lab. A simple, nonchalant move. How one person can be so laid-back I have no clue.

“It’s a guy thing.”

Winking, he spins and drops to the ground, pulling up a corner of the rug. I watch intently as he taps at the floorboards, the sound of one loosening filling the air. He lifts it up, rooting down into the floor.

“Aren’t you a little old to be hiding your dirty magazines at your mama’s?”

Anton throws a look over his shoulder, his ice-blue eyes catching mine. “I’m a grown man; I don’t have to hide anything. Especially not at my mama’s house.”

Well then. It just got a little warmer in here.

“Just get what you need and get gone.”

I huff, sitting back down on the bed. I’m annoyed that he’s still here. More annoyed that he seems to be taking his sweet time getting whatever it is that he needs. And even more annoyed that there is a part of me that is enjoying the view.

My phone buzzes and I don’t even have to look to know that it’s Eliza. I should get back to her. Busy myself with responding. But Anton holds up an old, tattered notebook, and suddenly, that has all my attention. Like he’s Indiana Jones holding the Holy Grail.

“Found it.”

“So you can leave now?”