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The answer hits with the force of a fist. My mom only fake smiles when my dad is around.

The problem with knowing something is that you can’t stop knowing it.

For the rest of the weekend, I watch my parents together, and apart. I hear my mother’s laughter as she makes dinner, telling Hope and Faith stories from her childhood about her and her sister...the way it is light and free and even a little giddy. And I hear how the sound fades when my father walks in, how she smiles but talks less, waiting on him to speak, her spine stiffer than it was before he walked in the door.

He makes her nervous. But why? If anything, most people would say my father is the kinder and more forgiving of the two of them. He was the one who didn’t want to press charges against Ford, after all. He was the one who was willing to leave our community and come heal a troubled school.

Something changed, though, when Mary Joyce went bad. My mom and her sister were best friends. They spoke constantly—our families had dinner together more often than we did apart. And then a light flickered off in Mary Joyce’s eyes, and my mom and my aunt’s girlish laughter turned into worried whispers, things about boys and drugs and recklessness. My father became tense and ran the house with a much tighter grasp than he had before, as if it was the only way to keep me and my sisters from taking the same path.

After Mary Joyce’s boyfriend helped her escape in the middle of the night, it was my father who wanted to save her, who insisted on finding her and bringing her back. I always thought that spoke well of him, but I’m lying in bed when I remember something, suddenly, and I’m surprised I’d forgotten it at all: my mother begging him to stop looking for Mary Joyce. It was late, and her voice grew louder and louder until I could hear every word. Just leave her alone, my mother wept. Please just let her go.

As if the church was a prison, one my cousin should never have been held in.

My father’s voice was firm but kind. You’re hysterical, he said. I think you need some rest. Or to go away for a while.

And my mother’s tears stopped, just like that.

22

At lunch on Valentine’s Day, a freshman walks in and hands me a bag. “This was delivered for you,” she says, seemingly as befuddled as I am.

It’s a rice bowl from Chipotle.

“That is the weirdest way to woo someone I’ve ever heard of,” says Zoe.

“Is this some bizarre courting ritual from the town you used to live in?” asks Kappy.

I laugh. “Not as far as I’m aware.”

“Let us know if it works,” says Theodore.

I look up and meet Ford’s gaze.

It definitely worked.

In journalism, he slides me his notebook.

I have an idea.

I draw a question mark under his statement and slide it back to him.

He scrawls a few more words and slides it back my way: Cancel your tutoring session today, leave your phone in your locker, and meet me at the park over on Eighth Street.

I raise a brow, seeking more explanation.

He raises a brow back, as if to say, Do you trust me or not?

And I guess I must trust him, because I pull the notebook close and simply write OK.

Ten minutes after school ends, I’m at the park, half expecting him not to show up. I’m not sure why I have such a terror of being tricked. Maybe it’s because I have been tricked in Penhallow, several times, but I think it’s more than that, with him.

It’s that I’ve already handed him a piece of my heart, and I don’t know how I’ll survive if he tosses it in the gutter someday as if it never meant a thing.

A motorcycle rolls up. Ford pulls the helmet off his head with a flourish.

“You have a motorcycle?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It’s Ty’s. He had to pick up his grandma, so we traded. You ever been on one before?”