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Sean stares at me across the table in a panic.
He keeps stirring his drink, silent, sweating.
I don’t know what comes over me. I have no idea what dark magic I’m handling here by playing along. “Y-Yes, of course, I’m his Uncle John. Hi there, Pearl, ma’am. Thank you very much for your words about my nephew. He … He is very sweet, indeed.”
“John?” Her eyebrows lift up high over her sunglasses. “Or wasn’t it Don? Did I mishear you?”
“Don.” I laugh it off. “Too much time in the sun.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” She perks back up, though I can’t help but notice she’s clutching her purse to her chest now. “Yes, very sweet, your nephew. I got the fast impression he has a heart of gold, this one.” She turns her full attention back to Sean. “My husband and I—you remember him, the snore monster?—we’ve been staying here the whole week. I’m surprised I’m only just now running into you! We have a—oh, what’s the place called, I keep forgetting—a room at the Ellis … the Elvis … Elysian, that’s it. The Elysian. It’s right across the street from the beach. I’m turning into a crispy strip of bacon every day by the resort pool.”
Sean smiles. “That sounds really nice, ma’am.”
“Call me Pearl, please. ‘Ma’am’. I’m no ‘ma’am’, ha! When did you get so formal suddenly?” She lets out a soft, mirthful laugh, then lifts her sunglasses off her face and buries them in her cottony hair. “If you need a tan, you just come find me by the pool. I’m even there in the evenings after dinner. I have so many books to read.”
“Thanks.”
Pearl smiles. Then her eyes shift to me with reluctance. “I’d better get back to shopping for all my granddaughters. Need to check with my son about a … about a thing or two. His daughters are the fussiest, bless their hearts—and his. I never know what to get the girls that won’t end up getting tossed to the regift pile.” She giggles and shakes her head, then puts a hand on Sean’s shoulder. He looks up at her, as if startled by the touch. “Enjoy your afternoon, sonny. You know where to find me.”
When the old woman leaves, Sean is left staring at his glass of watered-down Coke with a vacant, cheerless look on his face. He says nothing.
I speak softly. “Who was that?”
It takes him a minute to respond. “No one.”
“You met her on a bus?”
“Bus from San Antonio.”
I feel like I have to be careful here for some reason. “Cool. She seems like a nice lady.”
“She knew who I was the second she met me. That I was in trouble. On the run. On my own. I could see the pity in her eyes. She gave me a sandwich and bottle of water, and she offered me a place to stay.” He stares down at the table. “I almost said yes.”
The look on his face breaks my heart. “And you ended up here instead.”
“I made up some story about an Uncle Don and his two dogs living in a nice house by the beach. Did you see the way she looked at me? At us? At you?” Sean fidgets with his straw. “This was always a pipedream, wasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Being foolish enough to believe this could actually work. A respectable career. Dreamwood Isle. You and me. It’s all just a stupid fantasy from a stupid kid.”
“No, it’s not. Sean, look at me.”
“A stupid, stupid kid.”
I reach over the table and take his hands once again, wet from the condensation off his glass. He meets my eyes. “Listen to me. You’re not stupid. This is not a pipedream. None of this situation is your fault. You don’t deserve to carry the burden of your bad parents or what they’ve done to you. You deserve happiness. You deserve comfort. Sean, you deserve paradise.”
“Maybe you were the sweet one all along, to entertain this fantasy,” he says. “The moment you met me, you were trying to get rid of me. If there was a vacant room at one of those places, we wouldn’t be in this position today. Maybe you should have trusted your gut and gotten rid of me.”
“Stop it, Sean. This isn’t—”
“Even that first weekend, you were trying to get rid of me again.” He looks up from his hands and stares at me. “You remember the night we went to the street fair? You wanted me to meet more guys my age. ‘They’re all over the island’ you kept telling me. You left me with Toby and Vann and ran to the bar with some made-up excuse, some made-up emergency. Remember?”
I thought he believed it. I guess I was more transparent than I realized. “I wasn’t trying to get rid of you, Sean.”
