Sign Here(23)

I opened my mouth, but she went on.

“You’re thinking of it as a morality issue, but morality isn’t our framework anymore. It’s like when you learn a card game—let’s say Go Fish. That’s all you play until someone says, Hey, you know what else you can do with those? And they teach you a brand-new game. A faster, more fun game. Same tools, different rules. We’ve outgrown morality, Pey. I mean, technically, we failed it. But either way, we are onto the next game.”

She was right. My skin burned with it, how right she was. I felt like the neighborhood kid who still used training wheels. I felt like a goddamn joke. I met her eyes for one second, and she saw it.

“Wait—” she said, cocking her head. “You didn’t think you were . . . what? ‘Doing the right thing’?”

KQ returned and rapped the table with her knuckles, knocking the patronizing look off Cal’s face.

“What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Then let’s blow this Popsicle stand!”

She flicked her wrist, freezing the scene around us, and lifted the man’s wallet off the other table. She took out a twenty and slapped it down on the table. Then she swirled her finger through the dregs of the marinara sauce, popped it into her mouth, and waved her free hand to restart it all.

When I stood up to follow, Cal grabbed my arm.

“You’re not human anymore,” she said, her face so close I could smell her Chapstick. “These aren’t your people. We are. The sooner you figure that out the better.”

Then KQ tapped a button on her tablet and the world went blank.





LILY





THE KIDS TOOK OFF as soon as Silas pulled to a stop in the gravel driveway. Mickey and Ruth sprinted to the dock, shrieking with laughter. Lily watched Sean hesitate, watching them, before shouldering his backpack and knocking his way through the screen door, which slammed with the specific sound a screen door makes. The slowness of summer hit Lily like a lead blanket.

It was going to be a long six weeks.

The house smelled the way it always smelled, as if the air from the past summer had caught between its walls, a perfect artifact. It smelled like mothballs and sunscreen and the faintest hint of rot from the spare room with the leak in the roof. Like evening sunshine, and gin and tonics, and woodsmoke. It smelled exactly the same as it did when they were sixteen and Silas brought her there for the very first time.

Lily swallowed and pushed the memory from her mind.

“So, what do you think of her?” Silas asked, dropping bags of groceries on the kitchen counter and crouching behind the fridge to plug it in.

“Of whom?” Lily asked, sorting fruit.

“Ruth.”

Silas stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. The old refrigerator coughed and sputtered into its usual hum.

Lily opened the cabinets, blew dust from the liners.

“I’m sure she’s just fine.”

“You know, Lil,” Silas said, putting his hands around her waist, “she reminds me of someone.”

Lily took the affection without giving any back.

“Who’s that?”

“Headstrong, smart, energetic. Unafraid of new people, new places. Sassy.”

He pulled her back against him, kissing her earlobe. Just a brush of his lips, more of an exhale against her skin than anything else. “I seem to remember bringing another girl like that here not too long ago.”

Lily pushed out a laugh. “If you’re talking about me, your timing is way off. And if you’re talking about someone else, you should remember your audience.”

Silas stepped back.

“Of course I was talking about you.”

“Well then, you should check a calendar, because it’s been a bit longer than not too long ago.” Lily closed the fridge. “I’m going to make up the kids’ rooms.” She gave her husband a quick kiss and headed for the stairs.

The New Hampshire house looked large from the outside, but it was tight and narrow inside. The bedrooms were all connected to the main hallway, some with their own bathrooms, some with steps or doors that opened into other bedrooms, other, smaller staircases. It was a labyrinth of hand-stitched quilts and cool-toned walls, windows with frayed rope and painted sills that got sticky in humidity. The wood planks of the floor were three times the width of their linoleum counterparts at home, laid down back when nature was plump and ripe for the picking. The ceilings upstairs were low enough that Silas could touch them with his head if he stood on his toes. Lily had always found the old-world feel charming, but now it was suffocating. She opened the windows in Mickey’s room and pushed apart the curtains, letting in the summer air, slow and lazy. She would need to put a fan in there if Mickey and Ruth were going to get any sleep. She made the bed, a double that would hopefully be big enough for the two girls. There were enough rooms in the house that Mickey and Ruth didn’t have to share, but when Lily mentioned that, Mickey said that they obviously would anyway with such vehemence Lily didn’t argue. The truth was, Lily didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what Mickey was like for that long around a friend. Mickey had always been a quiet kid, drawn inward. Silas and Lily never went hangdog to a parent-teacher conference on her behalf, the way they had many times for Sean. But Mickey had also never listened to someone the way she listened to Ruth. Like a believer.