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“Yeah, it takes two, unless one of them is lying and using the other.” I step toward Will, fueled by the righteousness of my next words. “You were so worried about Maeve taking advantage of a vulnerable young widow—well, congratulations. You got to me before she did.”
I pick my way across the field, past trees that are nothing but shadowy silhouettes, until I reach my car. I listen for Will.
He hasn’t followed me.
He’s not going to follow me. Because he told me himself—he’s the guy who runs.
I was so wrong about him.
34
WILL
For the next week, I try to contact Hope a few thousand times. Her phone goes straight to voice mail. My text messages go unanswered. She’s shutting me out. With good reason.
I can’t get the expression on her face out of my mind. Stripped down to the most vulnerable layer. Pale and wild and brimming with the effort of holding herself together.
I did that to her.
I should have told her my concerns about Maeve the moment things between us changed. But—when was that exactly? When I kissed her in that bar? When I held her hand and told her she could trust me?
The moment I met her.
She won’t forgive me. I felt her walls soar up around her, locking me out. By now, they’ve probably only been reinforced.
I don’t blame her. I should have told her the truth.
Even the flower Maeve gave me is withering, failing because of my tendency to be too little, too late. It was thriving for a short while. I’m not sure what changed.
I pour water into the planter and then drop onto the couch in my mom’s apartment, where I’ve stayed these last few days.
This was my surprise: that I was staying.
For Hope, but also because Kingsette has started to feel like home.
My phone beeps, signaling a voice mail. I didn’t hear it ring, and as I reach for it, I have to tamp down the hope that it’s Hope who called. Of course she didn’t.
It’s Darren’s rehab facility, where he was transferred once he was stable.
I listen to the message, the financial coordinator returning my call confirming the bill’s been prepaid for three months by a woman named Maeve. Which is strange to start with, and made stranger because the amount that’s been paid is the exact amount that went missing from my mother’s closed retirement account. It’s too convenient to be merely a coincidence.
The financial coordinator ends the call by asking me to pass along a thank-you to the woman who’s been leaving donuts and other treats at the nurses’ station at each visit.
A click in the lock distracts me from the rest of the voice mail.
I bolt upright as my mother strides into her apartment, looking tan and rested and pulling in her suitcase. A man with salt-and-pepper hair trails in behind her, chuckling.
My jaw drops at the sight of her, this woman who I’ve been searching for, who just strolled in as if returning from a planned vacation.
They both freeze when they notice me.
My mother recovers from her surprise faster than I do. “Good morning, Will.”
“Good morning?” I blink at the absurdity of the greeting. “That’s it? Months of nothing and all you have to say is ‘good morning’? Where the hell have you been?”
The man she entered with takes a protective step forward, and I round on him. “And who the hell are you?”
“Will, it’s nice to see you too,” she says and looks me up and down, assessing my bare chest and faded basketball shorts. She surveys the apartment next. My clothes are scattered throughout the living room. A pizza box with two congealed slices hangs open on the counter. Dishes sit unwashed in the sink.
