by Piper Lennox
“Wow.” I try to focus on the boards under our shoes, but the urge to look at him is too great: I want to see his face. “So your mom, she...got with him even though he was married? She knew who he was, right?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Silas pushes a stream of air through his lips. “Yeah. She knew he had a wife. We don’t talk about that part. I’m guessing she feels guilty about it, though. It’s not like she’s made a career out of home-wrecking or anything.”
“I wasn’t judging her. Just wondering.”
“It’s fine. Even I can admit she was just plain wrong to do that. I’m saying she’s not the type to go around dating married guys, that’s all. She actually hasn’t dated at all, as long as I can remember.”
I hesitate. “Do you know how...it happened? How they got together and all that?”
“All she ever tells me is that they met when she was working at a charity concert in the city. She was doing stage direction and met with him to talk about the headliner he’d be introducing, and I guess they hit it off or something.”
“Were they in a relationship?”
He nods. “Apparently he told her he was about to be separated, but he kept dragging it out, making excuses. Then he spent the next few years phasing us out, until he decided to abandon us altogether.”
Silas’s brow knits together as he says this part. As though he still doesn’t believe this chain of events, no matter how many years pass.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“You caught me off-guard, that’s all. And like I said, I use McIntyre sometimes, so it was automatic. It’s just easier.”
“I meant after that. When you realized I…have an issue with them.”
“You just answered your own question,” he laughs. “What was I going to do, launch into some pathetic life story about my dad leaving his mistress and lovechild, within seconds of us meeting?”
Reluctantly, I nod. “All right, point taken.”
“And there’s more to it than that,” he goes on, kicking a paper cup tumbling from the road. “People hear my name and think they know me, just like that. So it’s either hide who I am, or tell the entire story to every stranger I meet. Half feel sorry for me. The other half don’t even believe me.” He rakes his hand through his hair. “Hiding is easiest.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry without knowing the details, first. It just shocked me. I heard ‘Fairfield’ and—”
“And thought you knew me?”
Our arms touch. I let myself lean a little closer.
“I thought...I don’t know, maybe you were playing a prank on me or something. Scouting employees for your family, reporting back.”
“I’ve heard you maids are trouble. Planning a takedown from the inside.”
“It was the first thought that came to mind,” I protest, laughing. “I was just instinctively mad. Because...why else would a Fairfield go out with the help?”
“You’re not ‘the help,’” he says, suddenly serious as can be. He stops, the overgrown grass along the path crushed under our feet as we turn and face each other. “And I’m not one of those Fairfields.”
My eyes search his. They’re the color of black coffee when it catches sunlight through the pot, or the way soil looks right after it’s turned: a clean, brilliant brown.
And just like that, I believe him.
Camille lets me walk her back to her car, in the parking deck across from the Acre. When she asks where I parked, I realize my car’s still at the motel.
“It’s fine, though,” I insist. “I walk everywhere in Hillford, I’m used to it.”
Wordlessly, she unlocks the doors. I get in.
The car is ancient. Its seatbelts are automatic, but the motors don’t work; we pull the shoulder bands into place with two loud, rattling whirs of the gears. My seat has a popped seam with butter-yellow upholstery foam poking out. Camille blushes when I make fun of the tape deck and ask if she knows what year we’re in.
“I know, I know. It’s old as hell. But my dad got it for free, so I can’t complain that much.”
I root through the shoebox of cassettes at my feet. Most are homemade mixes: 90s pop, alt rock, and even some classical. Camille explains, as I pop Bach into the player, that she used to listen to classical music when she had to do homework in her car between shifts.
“High school or college?”
“Both.” In the flash of the streetlights, I see her mouth twist. “I dropped out of college my second year, though. My parents needed help with bills and stuff.”
I pretend to adjust my air vents. “Are things better now? With your mom in remission and all that?”
“Definitely better emotionally. This is the longest remission she’s ever had, so it feels like it’s finally over. Or heading that way, at least. During her treatments she was so weak and depressed. Actually, even in remission she was depressed. It’s only been the last year or so where I’ve thought, ‘Okay, she’s herself again.’”
“You could go back to school, since she’s better now.”
Camille shakes her head. “I have to pay off the student loans I’ve already gotten, so that I can take out more. My parents would qualify, but…I can’t ask them to do that. They already have so many medical bills left. Plus, they need my help. Without all three of us bringing in money, they couldn’t get by.”
“They actually talk to you about this stuff? Damn. My mom refused to discuss anything budget-related. She said it was ‘rude’ whenever I did ask.”
“My dad is the exact same way,” she says, half-smiling with one raised eyebrow. “I know things are tight, though. We brought in a tenant years ago to rent out the basement. Dad swore it was only for a few months—but Jeff’s still there, same as always. So I know they need my help. Which is why I don’t have time for basically anything but work.”
Her voice changes, almost imperceptibly, when she adds this last part. I wonder if I’m one of the things she doesn’t have time for.
“When’s your next day off?”
Camille glances at me when we come to a stoplight. “Why?”
I almost laugh. Why else? But I can already tell, if I say I want to take her on another date—a real one—she’ll shoot me down.
“Just wondering.”
While she gives me the side eye, she pulls her phone out of her coat pocket and checks it, then drops it into the cupholder. “I have tomorrow off from the hotel, but I’m probably going to do my second job. All day.” She pauses. “I walk dogs for my neighbors whenever I get time off. Sometimes I groom them, too.”
“That sounds fun.”
“It is, actually. And twenty bucks a dog, each week—it adds up. Plus my dog gets to play with his friends, and I get to spend all day with him.” She shrinks in her seat a little, embarrassed, I guess, by getting so excited about her dog. I find it absolutely adorable.
“Need a hand? I’m good with dogs. And I don’t have anything to do tomorrow.”
She smiles to herself. “Imagine that.”
“And maybe you could help me out. Everyoung’s rebranding some old flavors and releasing new ones. We could use your product-naming talents.”
We pull onto the street where my motel is. I almost don’t point it out to her, just so she’ll keep driving and I won’t have to tell her goodnight. I’m not ready to lie awake in my rented bed and relive the night. I want more of it.
“I don’t know.”
I watch her ease up the parking brake, every click popping between us. “Is this because you don’t want to date a Fairfield?”
“No,” she says, laughing under her breath. “I know you’re not like that.”
It feels weird to hear her say this. It is a compliment, ultimately: she doesn’t mind me being a Fairfield, because she knows I’m not arrogant and spoiled. My stupid little lie has been forgiven.
The weird part is that I’m still insulted, somehow, deep down. Like I should be defending them. She doesn’t reall
y know the Fairfields enough to decide what they’re like.
Then again, neither do I.
“Then what is it?” I ask, undoing my seatbelt and turning to her. I rest my arm on the console and reach for her hand. She stares at our fingers when I wind them together.
“Silas,” she says, her smile shaky, “I don’t have time for dating.”
“Then we won’t go on dates. I’ll help you with your side job, you help me with the ice cream thing, and we’ll get to know each other that way.”
“It’s not just the dating part, though. Being with someone...that’s what dating leads to, right? You get into relationships. And those take time, or they don’t work. And since I don’t have the time, I know it wouldn’t work.”
“I’m very low-maintenance. A text now and then, some Netflix-and-chill—”
She laughs, shaking her hand out of mine. I push up on the console and kiss her before she’s done.
When I pull back, she rakes her teeth across her lip.
“It’s too early to worry about how we’d make it work,” I whisper. I hook a lock of hair behind her ear, the perfect excuse to rest my hand against her neck. The perfect excuse to feel her heartbeat, racing as fast as mine. “Let’s just see if it can, first.”
7
Silas kisses me again before he gets out of the car. I sit there, breathless all over again, and watch him wink in the flash from my headlights when I back out of the space and wave.
My drive home from work is usually an exhausted crawl, body on autopilot while my brain tallies all the stuff left to do before I can fall into bed.
Tonight, I’m aware of everything around me. The moonlight on every patch of dying grass in every yard. The stars scattered like seeds in the sky over the road ahead. This tingle on my mouth I can’t shake, and the smile that creeps up whenever I think of kissing him again.
“There she is!” Mom grins when I slink in through the front door, shoes in hand. She and Dad have a movie paused, mugs of mulled wine on the table, and the space heater whirring from the corner. Guess a silent entrance was not necessary.
“Hey.” I lean into her hug and force a smile at her questions of did I have fun, who was I with, why am I home already—I could have stayed out even later, I know that, right? I bluff my way through. I’m not ready to share my night with Silas, like the fear of sharing a new idea with someone. You don’t want to lose the excitement. Sharing invites doubt, and I’ve already got enough of that.
Arrow gets up from his spot on the couch and stretches in front of me. Dad always calls it his “Bowing to the Queen” pose. I scratch him behind his ears and ask them if he ate dinner.
“Half a cup,” Mom offers, in a voice like this is good news. Better than nothing, I suppose, but not enough.
“Maybe I should switch back to that chicken one.” He sniffs my palm; I let him lick whatever’s there until it’s apparently gone. “He seemed to like it.”
“Maybe,” Dad chimes, “you should quit switching that dog’s food every week. He might actually eat it if he gets a chance to acclimate.”
Mom and I roll our eyes. Dad is firmly in the camp that animals fare best when left alone, more or less. Convincing him to let Arrow sleep inside instead of a doghouse was the battle of a lifetime.
“There’s extra wine on the stove,” Mom tells me, and takes her place back on the sofa. “Grab yourself some before you head to bed.”
“I’m okay. I was going to finish some laundry and load the dishwasher first.”
“Already done.” She takes my coat and steers me into the kitchen. “Wine. Relax. Bed. You need to slow down.”
I don’t bother protesting. Ironically, Dad is the parent who lets me get away with burning the candle at both ends, strict as he is. Probably because, whenever Mom was sick, that was the only life he and I knew: nonstop motion. Yet my mother, who went stir-crazy “slowing down” all those years, can’t stop reminding me to stop and smell the mulled wine.
I get a mug down from the hooks and fill it, ignoring her stare from the doorway.
“I’m glad you had fun tonight,” she says. You’d think I just told her I won Miss America, she’s beaming so much. “Your dad and I worry about you always working.”
My eyes slide to the kitchen table, usually Overdue Bill Headquarters. Tonight, Mom must have swept them into a folder out of view. At least, out of mine.
“Cami, really.” She shakes her leg. “This new prosthetic has been great. You should have seen me at work today, I was running laps around those interns. We’ll catch up.”
“I know.” We’ve had this conversation, in one form or another, several times the last few years. It’s easier to pretend I believe her.
I wish her and Dad goodnight, pat my leg for Arrow to follow, and slip off to my room with my mug. Brynn texts me with details on her grand night with a boy she met in community service. Leave it to her to find love—or something like it—picking up trash on the side of the highway.
“He’s huge.” This is her first text, and the standard pattern when she reveals her sexual escapades to me: size, technique, criticism, overall verdict.
“Very traditional,” she sends next. “Roses and candles. Wouldn’t kick his cat out of the room, tho. It stared at me the entire time.”
I laugh, slip my feet out of my shoes, and fall back into bed. Arrow rests his front paws at the foot. He takes a couple false starts, then manages to catch his back legs on the quilt for traction. I help him the rest of the way and scold him for not using the doggy stairs Dad built him. “Stubborn boy,” I mumble into his fur. He sneezes in response.
On cue, Brynn sends her verdict: “Overall, B minus.”
Now that she’s done, I know it’s my part in the pattern: “Passing grade. So you’re going to see him again?”
She sends a thumbs-up. “But if that cat’s still in the bedroom, I’m gone.”
I laugh again, but stop short when she sends her next text: “When do you get off work tmw? Let’s go shopping.”
“Can’t.”
She calls me immediately. “Don’t tell me you’re walking dogs again.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
Her sigh unravels through the airwaves. “Cam. I haven’t seen you in over a week. Not that I count borrowing a strapless bra and saying ‘hi’ to you through the bathroom door while you get ready for work as ‘seeing each other.’” She hums a tune to herself, then adds, “Why don’t I come over and walk with you? We can catch up, stop at Morey’s for coffee. I’ll even hold a leash or two for you.”
Brynn is usually the first person I tell everything, but I’m still not ready to put my secret night with Silas out into the world. I like the idea of only us knowing, right now.
“I might be giving them baths,” I tell her. Even though she stays quiet, I know she’s making her disgusted face. Wet dog is not a scent Brynn tolerates well. “We can hang out Friday night. I get done at the Acre at six—we’ll get dinner and do some early Christmas shopping. Okay?”
“Okay,” she drawls, not believing me. I don’t blame her. The last few years, I’ve bailed on more than a few hangouts to take extra shifts.
“I promise,” I add.
We catch up a little, then say goodnight. I put my phone on the nightstand and sip my wine, letting the spices dart around my tongue while the alcohol warms my chest. Arrow tunnels into the blanket. I turn on the TV and find a design show. Something I can pretend to watch, but not have to think about.
Instead, I think about the bridge. All the swirling water underneath and steady stars above.
But stars actually aren’t steady at all. They’re constantly churning, just like the river. It’s the only thing constant about them: the fact they never stop. If they do, they’re done for.
It’s how I’ve felt for years now. Keep moving. Keep your chin up for bad news, head down when it’s time to work. Don’t look back, don’t look forward. You can’t change what’s already happened, and you can’t
control what might happen next—but you do control your now. And for my family, “now” has been a constant state of emergency for so long, I’m not sure how to turn it off.
Like this, I tell myself, and actually smile at the easy scene in front of me: Arrow against my legs under the quilt, spiced wine on my tongue. A buzzing chatter from the television in front of me, Mom and Dad’s conversation humming from the living room. This is how you turn it off.
The weird part is, I hear it in Silas’s voice.
I wake up at 8:50 and barely make it to the lawyer’s office on time, out of breath and combing my bedhead with my fingers when he waves me inside. “Rough night?” he asks, handing me a can of iced coffee. I thank him and nod.
It wasn’t the worst night I’ve had; I slept fine, once I managed to shut off my brain. In the darkness of the motel room, all I could think about was Tim’s face when he stepped into the hall and stared at me. I don’t know which was worse: the fact he still recognized me a little, or the fact he didn’t recognize me more.
The bed groaned as I rolled onto my back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. I pushed everything else away, forcing myself to think about Camille instead.
Her surprise kiss on the bridge tripped my heart up like nothing ever had; catching her off-guard in the car was the best revenge possible. I could still hear the hitch of her breath, when surprise meshed with need. I could still recall the exact moment she sank into it and kissed me back.
I replayed it in my head, over and over. It might have been the first time in my life I fell asleep smiling.
Now, while Graham takes the seat behind the desk, I sip my coffee and set the thoughts aside. It’s not pleasant, being here. But I am on a mission.
Graham drums his fingers on the desktop and takes a breath. “Well,” he says tightly, “he’s agreed to meet with us.”
“Really?” I set the can down, suddenly afraid I’ll drop it. “When did he— Is it a lawyers meeting, or us? Him and me, I mean.”
