Page 56 of You Say It First

“When Matt and I got in that fight, he said...” He broke off then, losing his nerve, reminding himself once and for all that there was no point in actually knowing. Still, though: “Dad hadn’t tried it before, had he? Like, before he actually did it?”

For a long time, Colby’s mom didn’t say anything, wrapping the strap of her purse around her fingers until the rough skin of her knuckles turned bone white, then unwinding it and repeating the process. “Matt said that?” she asked quietly.

“Uh, yeah,” Colby said, his voice cracking a little bit like he was going through puberty all over again. “I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but...” He cleared his throat. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, right?”

Another pause, even longer this time. Finally, she set the purse back down on the bed. “Colby,” she said.

Colby sat down on the edge of the mattress, all the air going out of him at once. “Oh.”

“I didn’t want you to find out,” she said, shrugging almost girlishly. “I wanted to protect you—gosh, your dad wanted to protect you. But now that you know, I don’t want you to think that if somehow...” She shook her head. “There was no saving him, Colby.”

“How can you say that?” Colby demanded, standing up so fast he almost tripped on the too-long hem of his dead dad’s suit pants. “You have no idea. I could have talked to him. I could have—”

“Colby...” His mom reached out like she was planning on touching him, then thought better of it. Both of them stared silently at the carpet for a moment before she spoke again. “He was the best man I ever knew, your father. But somewhere in there, when I wasn’t paying attention, he stopped being able to see the possibilities in life. Do you know what I mean? He couldn’t see anything but what was in front of his face at that particular moment. And then at the very end, he couldn’t even see that.”

Colby thought he knew what Meg would say right now, about depression being a medical illness the same as diabetes or cancer. But he also thought he understood the point his mom was trying to make. There was a part of him that wanted to keep talking, to tell her about the nightmares—to tell her about Meg, maybe—but in the end he shrugged off the suit coat and draped it carefully over the footboard of the bed. “Thank you for doing this,” he said. “I mean, thank you for doing everything, but—yeah. Thank you for doing this.”

His mom lifted her head and looked at him then, smiling a little. “My pleasure, honey. Leave it on the bed here, and I’ll do the sewing when I’m home on Thursday.” She stood up, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks,” he repeated, reaching out and brushing her arm with the tips of his fingers. “I’m kind of happy for me, too.”

The week passed, the air getting warmer; sweat soaked through his T-shirt twenty minutes into his shifts at work. He took Tris to get her heartworm test. He mowed the backyard for his mom. Friday morning, he hung his freshly hemmed suit on the hook in the back of the car and threw his duffel bag on the floor beside it, then climbed into the driver’s seat and dialed Doug’s number.

It rang three times before it went to voice mail. Colby took a deep breath before he spoke. “Hey, Doug,” he said. “It’s Colby Moran. I just wanted to follow up with you on that job offer. I’m out of town this weekend”—he liked how that sounded: out of town, like he was an actual adult—“but I’ll be back on Sunday, and I’m available to start any time next week. Just let me know. Thanks. Uh. Take care.”

He hit the button to end the call, feeling his shoulders drop and his chest fill up with something like anticipation. He rolled down his windows and headed for Meg.

When he pulled up eight hours later, she was sitting on the steps in front of her house, dressed in denim shorts and sunglasses and a pair of hippie sandals. She launched herself up off the brick and booked it across the grass, dark hair streaming behind her like a flag. “Hi,” she said when she reached him, her voice breathless. She flung her arms tightly around his neck.

“Oof,” Colby said, his own hands hovering awkwardly in midair for a minute before they got the message to hug her back. Nobody had ever greeted him that way in his entire life, and it was kind of overwhelming for a second—the smell of her neck, the softness of her body underneath her T-shirt. He really did not want to be popping a boner in the middle of her front yard first thing. “Uh,” he said, his head clanging a little as he set her down. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Meg said again, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair, her cheeks going a little bit pink. He’d embarrassed her, he could tell, but he didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t that he didn’t want her to touch him. That actually he wanted her to touch him all the time.

She tucked her hands into the back pockets of her shorts, tilting her head toward the front door. “Come on in.”

Colby slung his duffel over his shoulder and followed her up the mossy front walk. The house was big, which he’d expected; an old brick colonial situation with a red door and shutters decorated with cutouts in the shape of old-fashioned candles. Inside, a grand staircase filled the front hallway, antique Persian rugs on the floors and a baby grand piano visible through a set of French doors that led to a formal living room. It looked like a set for a movie about rich, neurotic liberal people.

It was also—there was no other way to put this—a fucking pigsty. The whole place smelled like it needed an airing. Every flat surface was covered with a layer of dust. The giant dining room table was heaped with what looked like a year’s worth of junk mail, and the plaster on the ceiling was flaking in pieces the size of Colby’s fist, speckling the fancy rugs like so much snow. He thought, randomly, of the conversation they’d had back in Alma about abandoned places, then told himself to stop being so dramatic: obviously Meg didn’t live in a deserted amusement park or a decommissioned mental hospital. Still, something about this house kind of gave Colby the same vibe—of something that used to be, maybe, but wasn’t anymore.

He glanced around half-furtively, clearing his throat. His mom wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from immediately asking where the nearest mop was, from wiping the grimy windows and hauling out the trash. The whole tableau left Colby off center and a little bit ashamed, like he was seeing something he shouldn’t, but Meg seemed totally oblivious to the mess—or, if she wasn’t, she was doing a bang-up job of pretending it wasn’t there. “Mom!” she called. Then, more quietly, “I told her you were a friend of a friend of Emily’s and we met at a party over spring break.”

Colby raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“What?” She frowned.

“I mean, nothing. I’m just saying, for a person who gave me such a hard time about whether my mom knew you were coming or not—”

“My mom knows you’re here, obviously,” Meg interrupted. “I just wasn’t about to start a fight with her over the details.”

“It would cause a fight if she knew you met me through your job?”

“It would cause a fight if she knew I drove eight hours to go visit you without telling her.”

Colby considered that for a moment. “Fair enough.”

“Thank you,” Meg said primly, and Colby nodded. Still, he couldn’t get over the sense that sometimes she required more from him than she was willing to give herself.

He followed her into the kitchen, which he knew his dad would have loved—original oak cabinets and wide-plank wooden floors, a pair of six-paned windows over the sink looking out onto an overgrown backyard. Sitting at the table peering at her phone was a woman with aggressively highlighted blond hair; she had that slightly stringy look that middle-aged ladies got when they drank more than they ate, but her blue eyes were sharp and canny. “This is my mom,” Meg announced. “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Colby.”

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