Page 17 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

I laughed. “Yeah, maybe I can believe it.”

“The Penny’s an institution. Wouldn’t be Six Rivers without it.”

There was something nostalgic about the place that made it feel as if time had stood still. Like maybe all these years hadn’t passed and when I stepped outside, it would be 2004 again.

I turned my glass on the counter, watching the light reflect off the ridges. “Ran into Sadie this morning at the diner.”

“Yeah, she owns it now. Took over the place years ago, which no one complained about. Food’s better, that’s for sure.”

Another song started and Olivia’s shoulder touched mine as she rocked back and forth on her stool. The tension I’d felt when I walked through the door was slowly bleeding out of me, the vodka already warming me up.

“I saw Rhett Walker, too,” I said in a low voice, eyeing the ring of condensation on the bar top before me. “Just now. On the way over.”

Olivia stopped swaying, falling quiet for several seconds. Her fingers were tapping the side of her glass now. “Thought you might.”

“Didn’t know if he’d still be around.”

What I really meant was that I’dhopedhe wouldn’t still be around.

“Did he say anything?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“He mostly keeps to himself these days. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

I tried to believe it. The thought of sleeping in the cabin knowing that Rhett Walker was next door was more than unsettling.

“He and Johnny still managed to get into it,” she said. “That’s for sure.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Just…about everything. The dog, a fallen tree on the property line, Johnny burning stuff out back. Always something. The guy is impossible.”

I took another long drink. “Yeah, well, he’s been through a lot.”

“We all have, right?”

I didn’t answer.

“I miss him,” she said, more softly. “I got so used to having him around at the school that it’s been strange. He seemed to really like it—being around the kids.”

“Really?”

“Really. I asked him to come in and talk to my classes when he first started working with CAS. You know, like a visiting artist kind of thing, and they weresointo it. I mean, like I said, the kids just lovedJohnny. They each did a project based on a photo from his Instagram feed, and you would have thought he was a rock star walking in here. They were so inspired. He actually mentored one of them last year—Autumn Fischer. She even wound up getting accepted to Byron, like you.” She waved a hand in the air. “I’m sure you know all about that.”

“Yeah,” I lied, my smile growing heavy. That tight feeling had returned to my chest. “He talked about it all the time.”

I couldn’t remember the last time Johnny and I really talked. And when we did, it was almost always just a string of halfhearted updates about what I was painting or what shows were coming up. I’d never mentioned anything about my periodic dates with Quinn or anything else that fell outside the bounds of my work because sometimes, it was more like an interrogation than a catch-up. It always felt like I was reporting to Johnny. Like I needed to feel like he was proud of what I was doing. In some twisted way, it justified me staying in San Francisco.

The conversations were never long. When I asked Johnny about anything in his life, it was met with one-word answers and reasons he needed to go. For a long time, I thought it was because he was trying to protect me. Using himself as a shield between me and Six Rivers. But when he died, that nagging feeling that something had been going on with him made me wonder if his tendency to dodge my questions wasn’t about me at all.

“I was really proud of him, you know?” she said. “It just seemed like things were finally lining up for Johnny. Like he’d found his thing. His purpose.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I had thought the same thing many times.

“Did he ever bring anyone else from the CAS project in to talk to the kids?”

She thought about it before she answered. “No, why?”

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