Page 61 of The Cadence
“Why were you looking at our directory, though?” I wondered. It seemed like an odd use of time in the life of someone who was so busy.
Will studied me silently for a long moment. “I was looking for you,” he finally responded. “I had asked your grandmother but she wouldn’t share information with me.”
“What?”
“I was in contact with her a few times over the years. I just wanted to make sure that you were all right, that you were keeping up with school and that you didn’t need anything,” he explained. “She wasn’t interested in me being a part of your life.”
“She never told me that!”
“She wasn’t interested in me being a part of your life,” he repeated. “She made it very clear. She knew about my family and she didn’t trust my intentions with you. I thought it was a good thing. I was glad she was looking out for you like that.”
“But then, when I was an adult…” I thought about Cully’s relationship with his parents and how they treated him like a child. “She struggled to let me grow up. It’s like the rocking chair,” I said.
“The one on her porch that you squeezed yourself into?”
“She bought it when she agreed to let me live with her, and it was tiny,” I said. “It was meant for a much smaller girl, like I had been when my mother took off with me. It was hard for Grandma to acknowledge that I wasn’t the same little girl anymore and she was scared, too. Her son had turned so awful as he got older and I think she wanted to keep me as a kid for as long as possible so that I wouldn’t go bad.” I paused. “But I wish she had told me. I wish you had talked to me directly.”
“I didn’t think that I should.” He spoke the words very quietly, but I heard them and I understood. After how we had parted, I could see why he thought it was for the best.
I looked at the lake, at all that water.If my understanding of science was correct, then eventually, each little molecule in there would probably wash back onto the shore at this same place.Even if it took a hundred years, they would return, and I figured that our human history was the same.Sometimes it was distant and felt far removed from today, but ultimately, it would come around again.
And that was enough deep thinking, because here I was at the beach for the first time and I was with a shirtless Will Bodine. “I’m going to try the lake,” I said, and stood. Carefully, I took off my clothes and I didn’t look back as I walked toward the shore.
“Don’t go out deep,” he called to me, but he didn’t have to worry. The shock of the cold water took the breath right out of me.
“Holy Moses!” I gasped. The waves only hit around my knees but I broke out in goose bumps all over my body and my skin turned several shades paler. I saw Will laughing again as I turned and ran back, kicking up sand behind me.
“It’s like ice!” I told him, and he said it wasn’t so bad. But he did help out with the towel, which I wrapped around my entire body since I’d been chilled to the bone. “Do you really swim in that?”
“I really do and it’s fun. You can learn, too, and then we can go together.”
“Maybe in a pool, where the water is heated to a better level.” I shivered. “But I do like being here. Everything feels fresh and the sand is much cleaner than what you would find at a playground. You know, with cats…”
He looked repulsed.
“Anyway, I like this a lot and I would come again. Next summer, for example,” I said.
“You could do a lot between now and then,” Will told me. “You could keep developing your furniture business, for one thing. I could help you set it up. You could think about beauty school and if you want to restart that. You could take classes at the college here, or consider a trade.”
“I never thought I’d get so many chances,” I said. “I never looked too far ahead.” I reached and poked his chest, which was much the same as poking a large boulder. “I didn’t make lists of goals in my phone, like the smart guys did.”
“I didn’t do that to feel smart,” he told me. “I felt like, you know.”
I waited.
“Everything was out of my control,” he said next.
“So you felt helpless, and maybe scared?” I suggested.
“No,” he responded, shaking his head. “I felt like I should take steps to rectify the situation.”
I refrained from saying that “steps to rectify the situation” wasn’t how someone felt, because it wasn’t an emotion. “You said that you were going to talk to a doctor, right?” I reminded him, and now he nodded.
“I had some realizations while I was away.”
“Like, things about your ex-girlfriend?”
But he seemed puzzled. “Nicia? What do you mean?”
