Page 36 of Stolen Goods
“I can come back…” The waitress trailed off.
“No, I’ll have the, um, grilled cheese, please, with a tomato soup. Oh, and a lemonade.” Addy pointed at the picture of grilled cheese on the menu just to be able to look at something, and then turned toward Thad.
“Bacon cheeseburger with fries and an iced tea, please,” he grumbled and lifted the menu, not bothering to look up.
“Coming right up,” the waitress replied in that same jovial tone, far more gracious than Addy and Thad deserved.
After she left, the silence returned, but this time Addy didn’t have a menu to hide behind. Neither did Thad. He drummed his fingers on the counter. Addy watched, trying to pick out a pattern in the haphazard movements, until finally, she broke.
“Thad—”
“No names,” he cut in, tossing her a wry look from beneath his cap.
“Right.” Addy nodded, hazarding a moment to glance around. But they were seated in the farthest corner of the classic American diner, at a booth by themselves with no one nearby. “Well then…you. Can I ask—”
“No.” He stopped drumming and grabbed a pencil and napkin from the condiment holder on the side of the table.
“But you didn’t even—”
“No,” he cut in again, absently drawing as he spoke. “Because I can tell by your tone I won’t like it. People get soft, hesitant, and their voice drops a little when they’re about to ask something personal. And we shouldn’t do personal.”
“But.” Addy paused, jaw bobbing for a moment while she searched for the right words. “But it might help me, to get to know you a bit. It might make me feel more comfortable.”
He stopped drawing and sighed. Then he pushed through the momentary hesitation and continued to etch graphite marks into the napkin, not meeting her eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry about that. But when this is over, the Feds will probably come question you, and the less you know, the better. For both of us. For one, I don’t want to incriminate myself. And two, I don’t want to incriminate you. If they think we were friendly, they might think you were aiding and abetting a fugitive, instead of being kidnapped by one.”
He looked up, smoky eyes piercing, and then back down to his pencil and his napkin and something that clearly made him far more comfortable than this situation.
Addy gulped.
His excuse was solid. Everything he was saying made perfect sense. Yet she couldn’t help but feel he was lying, or at least hiding the real reason he didn’t want to talk. It ran deeper. She knew it did.
“Well, what about your art? Is that a safe topic?” she finally asked, watching the outline of an upside-down face gradually come to life as he worked. “Have you always drawn?”
“Yeah,” he murmured, peeking up for the briefest moment, glancing at something over her shoulder. “Art is probably the only thing in my life that’s ever made sense. Food’s here.”
He shoved the napkin to the side to make room and crumpled it in the process. Addy pulled it toward her as two plates with heaping portions were placed on the table. Thad immediately grabbed some fries, stuffing his face as though he hadn’t eaten a hot meal in days. Then again, maybe he hadn’t. Addy turned the napkin around, stomach dropping in a way that was both comfortable yet not when she recognized the face roughly sketched upon it. Her own. Hair short. Lips full. Eyes wide and somehow bright despite the use of only black-and-white tones. The girl in the drawing was peaceful and beautiful, two words she wasn’t sure she’d ever used to describe herself before.
Addy looked up.
Thad swallowed the bits of burger in his mouth, gaze dropping to the napkin and picking back up, inscrutable. “What about you? We can talk about you. Tell me about yourself.”
Oh, we can talk about me, can we?Addy thought.That’s not a double standard or anything.Yet she found herself shrugging and responding just the same, to fill the silence, to fight the warm feeling gathering beneath her skin. “Not much to know. I’m from a small town, lived there all my life. I bake cakes. I have two amazing parents, and a younger sister who’s kind of a brat, but I love her anyway. And that’s about it.”
Was that it?
Was that her entire life, so easily summed up in a few dozen words?
For some reason, the thought made her uneasy.
“A brat? Why?”
“I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean— She’s not—” Addy sighed. “We used to be really close when we were little, and then, I don’t know. Something happened. We drifted apart.”
Addy paused, thinking back to those long-ago days when she braided Gracie’s hair on the way to school and they performed skits for their parents at night. At one point, they’d been the best of friends. They’d done everything together, from jumping in the leaves when the weather got cold to building sandcastles at the beach all summer long. When had it changed? Addy was older. She got interested in boys and her friends, and had less time for her sister. Gracie started watching the news while Addy was stuck on the Food Network. Their interests diverged and they didn’t take the time to build a bridge across the rift. The fights were small at first, but after the tenth, twentieth, hundredth time having the same argument, they seemed insurmountable. Gracie went off to college, and maybe Addy was resentful. She stayed home, and maybe Gracie felt left out. There was so much, too much to explain.
Addy sighed. “It’s…complicated, I guess.”
But was it? Suddenly, it all seemed so foolish. There were billions of people in the world, but there was only one Gracie. Only one person Addy could callsister. Shouldn’t it be as simple as that?
