‘No.’ I backed away from him, swallowing thick tears. ‘Goddammit, NO.’ Retreating to my room, I slammed the door and didn’t come out until after Dad went to bed.
Barefoot, I padded into Grandpa’s room – lit with the moonlight streaming through the half-open curtains. My fingers trailed over the items resting on his night table: reading glasses folded on top of a leather-bound Bible and a copy of Leaves of Grass, a half-full glass of water, a Timex watch with a scratched face, laid flat. On his dresser was a stack of folded shirts and a faded photo of my grandmother, holding a baby – my dad. The frame was old, tarnished and bent on one corner.
In the kitchen, I took a lidded container of cold macaroni and cheese from the fridge and ate it without heating it first.
The funeral was short and sparsely attended – Dad, me, a group of old-timers and a few other fishermen Grandpa knew, who’d been friends and neighbours. Dad wore the one suit he’d kept – still sharp and perfectly tailored, though it hung a little looser on him than it had the last time he’d worn it, at Mom’s funeral. He’d lost weight. He was more muscular, but also gaunter. I didn’t have a suit and didn’t have time to get one, so I wore a black henley and black jeans for the service.
He was buried next to the wife who died thirty years before him. Ramona Delilah Maxfield – Beloved Wife and Mother, her headstone read. I wondered what Dad had ordered carved into my grandfather’s marker, but I didn’t ask.
The next day, Dad gave me two things from my grandfather: a heavy brass pendant with a Celtic symbol that supposedly represented the Maxfield name prior to the twelfth century, and the key to the old Ford truck.
I transferred the symbol, enlarged, to a sketch. I would have Arianna ink it on my side, at the edge of my rib cage. I slid the Ford key on to the ring holding my house key and a compass.
I had the truck I’d wanted, a thousand-year-old symbol of my heritage, a secret recipe for brownies, a pocketknife and memories of my grandfather I’d have never had without the loss of my mother.
I couldn’t make sense of these things or their value to me, when every one of them was linked to the loss of something I didn’t want to lose.
LUCAS
I arrived as Heller was collecting the quizzes. As I slid into my seat, he asked to see me after class.
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered, working to keep my gaze from sliding to Jacqueline, who was eavesdropping none too subtly, head angled, chin at her shoulder. My breath went shallow, knowing he could say one sentence – hell, one word – Landon – that would tell her who I was.
I wanted her to know.
And I didn’t.
She didn’t look my way again until the end of class, when I’d moved down front. As Heller answered a student’s question, I took the opportunity to find Jacqueline in the mass of exiting students, but she was still in her seat. Looking at me.
Her eyes were dark, due to the distance between us and shadows cast by overhead lights. I couldn’t make out the perfect blue I knew they were. I couldn’t smell her sweet scent. She wasn’t laughing or even smiling. She was just a pretty girl.
But I couldn’t see anyone else.
‘Ready?’ Heller asked, stuffing lecture notes into his portfolio.
I wrenched my attention from Jacqueline. ‘Yeah. Sure. Ready.’
He arched a brow at me, and I followed him from the room. ‘Sure you aren’t working too hard, son? You seem a little preoccupied lately.’
He didn’t know the half of it.
This was not my day.
First, Gwen arrived in the first bad mood I’d ever witnessed her have. She was like a completely different person. She was like Eve.
Who was also working the afternoon shift.
I had no idea when Jacqueline would show up, if she would show at all, but I knew – as Landon – that late Friday afternoons were when she scheduled her high-school music lessons. She’d either be here any minute or not at all. When Heller showed up, ordered a venti latte, and parked it in a chair in the corner, I selfishly prayed he would slam his drink and go home.
He pulled out the Wall Street Journal and started at page one.
Not five minutes later, I heard Eve’s familiar, barely civil greeting: ‘Can I help you?’ with a double shot of attitude. I glanced up to see Jacqueline, chewing her lip as though she was reconsidering her decision to stop by.
‘I’ve got it, Eve,’ I said, stepping up to the counter.
As I got her coffee and refused to let her pay, my coworkers continued to scowl at her, though I couldn’t imagine a single reason why. Choosing one of the bistro tables on the opposite side of the café from Heller, she pulled out her laptop.
‘What the hell?’ I finally asked Gwen, stepping into her viewing path. ‘Why are you staring at her like you’re trying to reduce her to ashes?’
She crossed her arms and stared up at me. ‘Please tell me you don’t actually like that girl, Lucas.’
I flicked a glance at Heller, who’d not moved except to turn the page of his paper. ‘What do you mean? Where’d you get that?’
She pinned her lips together, grimacing. ‘You’re more transparent than you think. And also, we think she’s playing you.’
‘What?’ Thank God no customers were at the register and Jacqueline was too far away to hear this cracked conversation.
‘It’s true,’ Eve hissed, appearing next to Gwen. ‘Her friends came in here again the other day – you know the two I mean? The sorority chicks?’ Her words said sorority chicks. Her tone said disease-infested hookers. Good God. I was giving her five seconds to get to an argument I could squash.