Page 27 of Ebbing Tides
“We’re not strangers, Max,” Melanie said gently as she scanned the stations. “I know we only spent a few hours togetherthat night, and I know it’s been decades since then, but I felt like I knew you. Didn’t you feel that way too?”
I released a breath, feeling some of the tension ease from my shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, gruff. “I did.”
“So, then go with that. We’re old friends, catching up. That’s all.”
She settled on a classic rock station. George Harrison’s “What Is Life” played through the speakers, halfway through the song, and I glanced across the cab to find Melanie looking out the window casually, tapping her fingers against the ledge and bopping her head to the music. Her hair was pulled back, as it’d been last night, but this time, it was in a braided twist that looked more complicated than it probably was.
My eyes drifted over the smooth length of her neck to the collar of her sweater. A gold chain sparkled there, lying over her collarbone. A pendant hung from the chain, something I couldn’t quite make out. It was probably a gift from her husband, I assumed, and a shameful tinge of jealousy heated my blood before I could stop it from happening.
Melanie looked over and followed my gaze. Her fingers touched the pendant.
“My mom gave it to me,” she said without prompting.
“Ah,” I said, looking back to the road and driving toward nothing in particular. “I couldn’t make out what it was.”
“It’s just a silly little thing,” she said, rolling the charm between her fingers.
There was reluctance in her voice, and I backpedaled.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it,” I said, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I was just asking. No big deal.”
George Harrison stopped singing, and the DJ’s voice filled the cab. Melanie bit at her bottom lip, looking out the window and twisting the pendant between her fingers, until an iconic guitar melody streamed from the speakers and we both turned to stare at the screen, as if it had some nerve playing this song at this moment. My heart stopped as Eric Clapton started to croon, romantic and sweet, and time slingshot me back to a bar in Connecticut, when I had wanted nothing more than to ask a pretty girl to dance with me, to kiss her on a dingy floor as we swayed to the music. Fuck, what I would give to truly be back there. When the words flowed easily and my heart was open and the only pain I’d truly known was learning that Laura had met someone else.
Laura.
I lifted one hand to rub a spot on my forehead, as if to soothe a part of me that longed to linger in the past, locked in a musty old cellar with ghosts and the things that should’ve been.
“We’re old friends,” I said, almost as if I was thinking aloud.
“Yeah,” Melanie agreed quietly.
I let go of a deflating breath and gave my head a quick nod before saying, “Then tell me stuff. Tell me everything that has happened since that night.”
I turned down Washington Street as a slideshow of memories flickered through my mind. All the things I could tell her about if she cared to listen … and I hoped she would.
“That’s a lot of stuff to tell,” she said.
“Yeah, I bet it is,” I said, nodding. “But if you’re willing to tell me, I’m willing to listen.”
I turned the truck into a parking lot off Washington. I wasn’t sure where we were going just yet, but for a day in February, it wasn’t all that cold, and I thought maybe a walk wouldn’t be such a bad idea. To wander around, get some air, see where the day took us.
Honestly, all I wanted was just to be with her. Anything else felt like an unexpected gift.
***
Melanie walked through the city like she’d never been here before, face upturned and lips smiling. Like a tourist in awe of the architecture and history.
We walked for a few minutes in the unseasonably warm weather before I finally chuckled and said, “I thought you had been here before.”
She turned away from admiring another old storefront to smile over her shoulder. “Not like this,” she said.
I huffed an acknowledging sound and looked at my feet.
Laura and I had brought the girls into Salem a few times, though not as often as tourists would think. I remembered Sid had once said he'd never been to the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, despite having lived in New York until his mom came to Massachusetts to visit his uncle—her lover—and never left.
At first, I'd thought that was wild, having two of the country's most iconic structures in your backyard and nevervisiting them. People all over the world traveled to see them. But could I say I'd ever been to Plymouth Rock? And in all my years of working in one of our nation's most famous cities, I could count on one finger how many times I'd visited the Salem Witch Museum.
Maybe we should've taken the girls. Maybe we should've appreciated it more, being so close to so much history.
