Sign Here(70)

Trey pulled out a chair with a scrape and sat.

“I am so disappointed that I have come here myself to observe Mr. Trip and assess his work. He’s supposed to be teaching our dear Ms. Ganon here, the newest member of our work family, but I’m worried she won’t possibly learn a lick from a nincompoop like him.”

“I haven’t been—” Jason started, looking my way, puzzled.

“Please, no need to protect him. I’m here now, and we will find your target. But I would take one of those beers,” Trey went on. “Unless, do you have J?ger?”

Jason shook his head, but he passed Trey a bottle.

“As I was saying,” I redirected, “my colleagues and I just wanted to ask you a few more questions so we can get to the bottom of this.” I looked at Cal, and she nodded.

“Yes, exactly. As Mr. Hardbody explained, I am in training. So I would love it if you would humor me and just tell us a little bit more about the man who has what you want to find. You know, to help with the learning process.”

Jason looked at Cal with a moment of sharp intensity, and then relaxed, just a bit.

“What do you need to know?”

Trey leaned back in his chair, and I could feel the vibration pulsing out of him, reaching like curious fingers into Jason’s skull.

We were in.

“It actually helps us the most if you don’t tell us anything about how you know him, or from when,” Cal added. “Just tell us, in general, what he was like. What did he look like the last time you saw him?”

I looked at her with my eyebrows raised. There was no rule about staying vague, far from it. She was up to something. But Trey spoke up before I could contradict her.

“That’s fabulous instruction, Ms. Ganon. I’ll be writing about that in your evaluation,” he said. “In fact, Mr. Trip, Ms. Ganon and I will handle this. You can wait outside.” I glared at Trey, but he looked away from me, gesturing Jason into his worn La-Z-Boy. I turned to Cal, but she just shrugged, wide-eyed and useless.

After a minute, I left, the screen door slamming shut behind me.



* * *



—

DON’T GET ME WRONG; I was livid. Getting kicked out of my own operation? By Trey, no less? Trey, who didn’t waste a second throwing me under the bus and proclaiming himself king of it? But when I got outside, something bigger took over.

I want to describe the feeling of the sun on the concrete steps of that wheezing-cough-of-a-house on that first warm day of summer. I want to describe the sunlight of the late afternoon, the way the grass felt warm and lazy on my ankles like the tails of bored cats. The way the heat of summertime takes on its own weight. Sunlight literally feeds you; did you know that? The same way food feeds your overall internal functioning, cells in your skin stand before sunlight with their mouths open wide.

When you think of Hell as being underground, you’re being infantile. Ground implies nature, soil, photosynthesis, nutrients. The life-and-death cycle of things. Nothing where I live is sun fed. You can’t dig deep enough to reach us. How can I explain what light looks like to people who assume they’ll never know life without it? How can I tell you in words you’ll understand how beautiful it is, both now and after it’s gone?

I got so drunk on all that beauty, I barely noticed when Trey stepped out of the house.

“If she doesn’t suck my dick after that, you better,” he said a second before Cal came out after him. He threw his beer bottle at the pavement and snapped his fingers, shattered glass rising like a tide at our backs as we descended home.





LILY





“I DON’T KNOW WHAT to say,” Lily said after Silas followed her in from the lawn, the single poppy, still red enough to look like blood, greeting both of them from the dining room table.

She’d known that this moment, or a moment like it, was inevitable. On some level, that knowledge might’ve even been part of the impetus for the affair. But just like everyone else who feels their back hit an inevitable wall, she didn’t think it would happen so soon. Later, sure. But not now.

“I know you’re fucking this guy; I read his texts when I found your phone. He’s not subtle. And I’m guessing it’s Gavin Kelly, given your recent display of interest in . . . what? What even is this? You never gave a shit about Sarah,” he said, gesturing at the flower with enough force that the petals moved.

Lily put her hand over her phone instinctively.

“I deleted them. But you can always ask him; I’m sure he’s getting antsy for your response.”

She remembered Gavin’s text.

. . . anything?

She had two choices. She could see them laid out in front of her like paths on a game board, one curving left, one curving right.

Option A: She could lie. She could downplay, deflect, and deny until there was nowhere left to go. She could cry—she knew she could—and beg. She could point out Silas’s moments of failure until forgiveness felt mutually beneficial.

Or there was option B: She could tell the truth. Come clean about the affair, about the Forgetting Years that led to it and what had created the Forgetting Years in the first place. She could finally ask him the question she had always wanted to ask, and maybe catch him off guard enough to get an honest answer.

In other words, she could hold tight to the life she knew, or she could blow it all up and pray that what waited on the other side was at least as good.