When We Let Go, Delancey Stewart [early reader books .txt] 📗

“So, what is the topic today?” I asked, as the memory of the last conversations I’d had over the past days swirled through my head—the police, my agent, the lawyer who’d called me back.

“Connor, if this is a bad time …” she looked apologetic, and the way she met my eyes practically confirmed that she knew all about the investigation.

“No,” I said, wishing I were better at this. “Actually …” How honest could I be? “It’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t accusing me of anything.” I motioned to the leather couch in front of the fireplace and we both sat.

She smiled and seemed to relax a little bit, her shoulders dropping slightly. “Where are you from? Originally, I mean.”

I laughed. “Not from here.”

“So where?” She seemed genuinely curious, and while I was used to being analyzed and picked apart and didn’t generally enjoy it, I wanted Maddie to know me. I wanted to know her.

“My family is from Chicago. But we spent our summers in California when I was a kid. And I liked it here.”

“Summers here? In Kings Grove?”

“All over. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Eureka, San Diego. And yeah, here too. I actually have a house in Trinidad, up the coast north of here. But I like it better up here. Or I did until recently.” I smiled, but had a feeling it was a grim look. “Kind of stuck here for now.” I sipped the drink I’d been nursing before Maddie arrived, but then felt rude. “Can I get you a glass of wine maybe?”

Maddie looked around, as if she’d just realized where she was, and my heart sank a little as I realized she was about to leave. She moved to stand again. “Listen, I’m totally intruding. I should have called …”

“Please stay.” The words slipped out before I’d had time to think about saying them. Now it was too late to pull them back, and I found I couldn’t meet her eye. It’d been a long time since I’d had anything close to a friend, and despite my growing attraction to Maddie, she was the first person I’d had a real conversation with in a long time. I forced myself to look up, to meet her eyes. “Unless you’re going to ask me questions about my tendencies as a stalker or sexual predator, I could use the company.”

Maddie’s eyes found my face and stayed there for a beat, and then she seemed to decide something. She settled back into the couch. “Sure. Wine would be lovely.”

“I’ve got a Bordeaux I was saving …”

“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I love a nice Bordeaux, but I’m just as happy with swill.”

“I’m sure you deserve better than swill,” I said. “I have an Oregon pinot noir, will that do?”

“That sounds great.”

I pulled the bottle from a rack below the bar table and opened it, pouring a glass and then setting it on the low table between us.

“Thank you,” Maddie said, and she took a sip of the wine and put the glass back on the table. I watched her, wishing this was easier, wishing we could zoom past the awkwardness between us and get to—what? What did I think was next? I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out. My eyes fell on the messenger bag next to her on the couch.

“What’s in the bag?”

She responded by pulling out her camera and handing it to me to inspect. “Aha, of course. What kind of pictures do you take? Is this how you make a living?”

“People mostly. I used to think it was my calling. Not exactly a living now. I’m a waitress.” She cradled the camera in her hands as I handed it back, and the way she held it charmed me, reminded me of how I felt with my fingers on a keyboard.

Maddie flicked a switch on the camera, removed the lens cap and fiddled with a few things, then she lifted it and raised her eyebrows in question. “May I?” She framed the shot before I could answer.

“I guess that would be okay,” I said, “though I’m sure you could find better subjects out there.” I tried to smile, tried not to think about how many times my picture had been taken like this, then paired with a headline that made me look like a monster. This was innocent though, this was Maddie. The firelight glowed behind me, and it was hard to feel anything but comfortable in my private refuge, with a beautiful woman here as my guest. I relaxed and smiled.

“So what do you think now?” I asked, picking up the thread of our conversation.

“About?” She put down the camera.

“You said you thought photography was your calling.”

“Right. I gave it all up to build a stupid house in a forest and live in a trailer with no modern conveniences of any kind.” Her eyes danced as she delivered this line, and I resisted the urge to reach out and take her hand, touch her in some way.

I felt the irony of her words too, though, and it wasn’t unfamiliar. “Sometimes life twists and we lose our path,” I said. “Sometimes it gets hard to remember where you were heading. Sometimes other people steer for you and you get lost.”

She nodded and reached for her glass. “So you’re stuck here too?”

“What?” I shook my head, unsure what she meant.

“You said you’re stuck here now. In Kings Grove.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I am. I’ve been advised not to leave the county.”

“By the police?”

I nodded. This was one thing I did not want to discuss. With Maddie here, it was almost like I could play as if my life was normal, sane. But when she brought up the most recent horror, I didn’t feel normal at all. “How did you end up living in a trailer next to a half-built house?” I asked her, switching our focus to her.

“What do you mean, ‘end up’? My life was carefully constructed to allow me the privilege of living in a rickety trailer next to a half-finished dump. I planned it that way.” She grinned and raised her glass in a toast.

I laughed. “Of course you did.” I loved her smile. I wanted to see it again.

“I’m stuck, I guess. Just like you.”

“Something to do with the Scotsman?” I ventured.

“Something,” she agreed. “Divorce,” she added. “Trailer life was never part of my plan. But neither was divorce. Or any of what’s gone on in the last year or so.”

“Feeling like you’re not the one driving?” I asked.

“Right.”

“So we’re prisoners,” I said. “At least we’ve got each other.” I said it lightly, and we clinked our glasses together. But there was something in the words that felt like truth, which made me think maybe we really could be friends. I wondered if we could be more.

Suddenly she stood. “I’m sorry,” she said, shoving the camera into her bag and moving toward the door. “I should go.”

Disappointment flooded my chest. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I am, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.” She seemed to be scrambling, as if something had frightened her suddenly.

“Maddie, did you come by to ask something specific?”

She turned, standing in the half-open door and pressed her lips together hard, as if she was thinking. Finally she said, “The property. Did you still want to buy it?”

Confusion flared in me. “I thought you weren’t going to sell?”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

I couldn’t do that, no matter how much the land meant to me or to my past, because I’d realized it meant more to hers. And I had a suspicion about who she was—if I was right, there was no way I could take it from her. “I can’t now. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you should sell it at all.”

“It’s just that …” She looked unaccountably upset. “I just think that maybe I do need to find a buyer. And you seemed so interested.” Her light brown eyes looked greenish in the low light of my entryway, like some complex stone with remnants of precious gems buried within.

“Not now. I can’t now.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” The words tumbled out of her, and she turned and disappeared down the stairs, headed out to the driveway.

“Bye, Maddie,” I called after her.

Had I done something wrong? Had I ruined things before they’d even begun? I didn’t know—living with shadows and ghosts, with the real and imagined characters in my head, had made me unsure how to operate in the real world. Maybe it was best if she stayed away. Since my sister had gone, taking what felt like my last shreds of humanity, I wasn’t worthy of her—of anyone.