Page 47 of The Someday Daughter
“I do have a plan,” I say sharply.
“Okay,” Silas says. It’s more of a sigh than a word. “Look, can we try something?”
“You always ask that when you’re about to make me try something anyways.”
His eyes rake across mine. He says, “Can you tell me what you’re actually thinking right now?”
What?I blink at him, try to bring his face into sharper focus. It’s so dark out here it’s like we’re looking at each other through water.
“I’m thinking I made the plans I made for a reason,” I say. “And I just met you. And you don’t know me at all.”
Silas is quiet then. I can’t meet his eyes, but I do see him hold his hands up in the dark, like I’m some animal gone feral in front of him. Like he’s showing me his surrender.
“I’m tired,” I say, and when I leave the tree house, he doesn’t follow.
But I’m not tired—not descending the rope ladder, not crossing the wet grass in my stupid bare feet, not slipping into the house too quietly for anyone to notice.
I’m not tired. I’m lonely.
32
I’ve already been awake for an hour when Magnolia calls me, a hazy distance to her voice like she has me on Bluetooth.
“We’re twenty minutes out,” she says, which makes so little sense I don’t respond for a few long seconds. “Camilla would love for you to join us at this bookstore—if I text you the address can you meet us, or do we need to pick you up?”
I’m under a thin quilt in GG’s office, a tiny back room with a Murphy bed that folds down from the wall. Mick and Silas are in a guest room on the other side of the house, and when I used the bathroom half an hour ago, Cleo was still asleep on the living room couch with her mouth open. My eyes track over the wall opposite the bed: a corkboard cluttered with pictures of grandchildren.
“You’re coming to Switchback Ridge?” I say. “Why?”
“I want to see it.” That’s Camilla, her voice even fainter. She’s probably sitting in the back seat like a debutante. “Silas made it sound idyllic.”
Something churns in my stomach, guilty and sour, at the sound of his name.
“The bookstore’s in a houseboat on the lake,” she continues.“The Bard on the Barge. Mags called yesterday and they’re going to put together a little group for ten o’clock.”
I look down at my lap, where my computer’s open to the notes Ethan emailed me just after midnight. His email is short, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s mad. Ethan’s always succinct.
7.12 lecture notes, he’s written.Let me know if/when you want to discuss. E
It’s theifI keep tripping on, the implication of doubt. That he isn’t sure, anymore, where we stand with each other. And the fact that I’m not sure, either. Ethan, the bedrock of my life for the last two years, feels like a murkyif/when. Inevitable, but in what way?
“What do I need to do for the group?” I ask, resigning myself to it. Maybe this is a gift, a reason to slip out of GG’s house before anyone else is awake. Avoid whatever it was that happened in the tree house last night.
“Nothing, this time,” my mother says. “Just come as you are.”
Sadie’s awake when I finish getting dressed, and when I tell her where I’m going she asks to come, too. I stare at her across the kitchen, waiting for a flicker of the tension from yesterday, and it never comes. I’m certainly not going to bring it up if it’s blown over, so we just call a rideshare and walk the long, tree-tunneled driveway from GG’s cabin to meet it at the road.
“Sleep okay?” she asks, and she’s probably just being polite but something about it feels pointed. I wonder if Silas told her what happened, if somehow she knows that I absolutely did not sleep okay because I was thinking about the unhinged way he makes me feel, like I’m coming apart at the joints. I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, sleeping in fits and starts, imagining Ethan across the country—the person who’s always made me make sense. The opposite of how I feel around Silas, like the world is so much bigger than I thought and I’m not sure which part’s mine to own.
I tell Sadie, “Sure.”
“Did you hear the owls this morning?” She’s wearing jeans and a windbreaker, hands in the pockets. It’s cool, still, the morning air clean and new. “Two of them, calling to each other in the woods.”
“No,” I say. “I sleep with earplugs.”
She smiles down at her feet, like she and her sneakers are sharing a private joke. “Efficient,” she says.
“It is.” I glance at her, an apology rising in me.I’m sorry I freaked out at you. I’m sorry I’m so messed up about her.But I can’t make myself draw out the words. When the trees open up to the road, there’s a red car waiting for us, and Sadie motions me in ahead of her. We drive to the lake in silence.
