Chapter Nine

Heddy's magic must have worked. She summed him and the Universe said, "Sure! I'd love a little entertainment for the holiday weekend. I don't plan on dropping a million dollars in your lap, so I'll bring around some painful past instead."

This is why I didn't come back here.

So many things made me afraid of this house. I have ten weeks' worth of memories of Adam greeting me at dawn on the porch, making up stupid songs about back handsprings and booty shorts, and our simultaneous lies about why we couldn't join Dave and Francesca for a boat day.

Too sunburned.

Slept on my neck weird.

New cheesecake recipe to try out.

Now I'm stuck in this house because it's not safe outside of it. He's out there.

Francesca comes up to stand me. I'm on the couch with Alice, the poor child clutching a food storage container, snuggled into my side, watching a high-pitched cartoon dog sing about poop.

I point to the television and ask Francesca, "Is this how you teach your children about bodily functions? Just let the animators do it?"

"I think it's AI," she says. "And yes."

She comes around in front of us and rubs Alice's hair from her forehead. "Ally, be a good girl and use the bucket if you need to be sick again. Auntie Vee's going to stay with you."

Alice stares blankly at her mother. She's three years old, not a dog. She knows what to do.

"Thanks for hanging back," Francesca says to me.

"No problem," I say, as though skipping dinner at Adam's house is a huge hardship for which I'm willing to make a sacrifice. I've never been so relieved to see a child blow chunks in my life. I might have even shaken Alice on the shoulders and asked her what caused this ailment so I could catch it and hide away in my room all week.

Francesca grabs her coat. "I'm sure she'll be fine. I think she just ate her pizza too fast. God knows how many of those cookies she ate."

"I made three dozen. I think there are ten left."

"Sounds about right."

Grayson runs into the room. "Mom, can I climb the treehouse tomorrow ?"

"No," she says, exasperated. "I've told you at least five times already. It didn't suddenly become less dangerous now that it's dark out."

He groans and rolls his head around, annoyed for a second, before brightening back up and asking, "Do you think Adam will teach me how to play the guitar?"

She smooths a wrinkle in the front of his t-shirt. "Maybe. You can ask him."

"Or I can teach you," David says.

Francesca snorts. "Yeah, okay ."

They both pause. David lifts his brow. I pretend not to watch through the reflection in the window.

"I'm sure you could, honey," she fixes, stress stinging her eyes. Her head bobs. "Yeah, yeah, you're really good at the guitar."

"About as good as you are at lying."

Francesca grimaces, and David runs back to the hall closet for his coat. Grayson stands jittery with his hand on the doorknob, itching to get outside.

"I wonder what his sister and her husband are like," Francesca calls out.

David calls back, "Adam's such a cool guy, I'll bet they're great."

I twist around the couch and add, "What will you talk about now? Do you even have anything in common with him anymore?"

Are you asking them or yourself?

It's laughable, the idea of any of us having a conversation with a Grammy Award-winning musician who is having quite the moment on social media right now.

I hope he's an obnoxious, self-righteous prick who skips dinner in place of a FaceTime call with his manager. I hope he can talk about nothing but the new Fast and Furious movie he's being hounded to star in, insisting that he has a new ‘family' now.

If he's horrible, then I'll be able to leave the warm, kind, funny, sensitive Adam in the past in favor of a douchebag one.

He won't be, though, I know it.

Because he's Adam.

David comes back into the room and counters my question: "You tell us what we're going to talk about Vee, you're the one well-versed in celebrity gossip."

"He's not a celebrity ," I defy.

Francesca argues, "He dated a model, the one in that movie where her boyfriend's wife ran away. If you put your hands where Leonardo DiCaprio has put his hands, that makes you a celebrity in my book."

"Then make sure you get the autograph of that prop door Leo couldn't fit on," I grumble.

"Have a good night, Vienna," David offers.

Alice falls asleep within the hour. I carry her up to the bedroom with the bunkbeds and lay her down. Eyes closed, her arms instinctively grapple for something squishy to hold, so I stick a rainbow-shaped pillow in her arms before walking across the hallway to Heddy's room, the one ready for Caroline.

Heddy always slept in this tiny room, on this full-sized bed, while the main bedroom stayed empty.

"That's Mama and Daddy's room," she would say.

I remembered them from when I was very young.

Bill was an imposing, towering man who only ever smiled and laughed, and Bitty was tall, skinny, and bird-like, always flittering around with things to do. There was a falling out with Heddy's brother sometime in the eighties, so Bill and Bitty invited us into their family home with a wide-reaching embrace.

My mother started coming to the house after she met Heddy in college, and her room is now my room. The summer before she died, my mother moved into the empty main bedroom, alone all summer, so Fran and I could have our own rooms, and every time my dad came for a single night, he slept on a bunk bed.

I'm convinced he showed up that one night a year just to make sure we didn't change the locks, board the windows, and refuse to come home.

Heddy's room overlooks the neighbor's yard. I've never seen the trees so bare, the late evening sky so dark. Beyond the black tree trunks, a fire roars in the neighbor's yard, and my family huddles around it with two other figures while Adam sits on a cooler with a guitar balanced on his knees. Although it's too far to see their faces, I know he's smiling. He always smiled when he played music for someone.

The first night he played guitar for me happened in front of that fire pit in brand-new cozy chairs. He didn't light a fire; I had brought an extra-strong lantern.

Adam had asked me, "So…this is not a date."

"No, not a date," I answered, hugging my knees, and covering my hands with the thin fabric of my sweatshirt.

"How come?"

"We're just sitting in the backyard," I laughed.

He nodded, touching the guitar strings. "Anything's a date if you want it to be."

That shut up my laughter. I watched him through the light, focusing on his instrument, and repeated with a thick voice, "Not a date."

He started to play right then. His fingertips plucked and pulled on the guitar strings, the sound twisting into the quiet night sky and wrapping us into this moment that felt intimate. The trees loomed overhead, and the rest of the world felt so far away.

I let out a sound.

He glanced up at me.

My hand fell atop my mouth, trying to hide a giggle.

He stopped. "Why are you laughing?" he asked with a husky, amused voice.

"I'm sorry." I pressed my palms to my cheeks. "It's just kind of…awkward."

"You think my guitar playing is awkward?"

Careful not to make him think I was making fun of him, I asked, "Aren't you, like, embarrassed to play in front of me?"

"No." He blinked.

I swallowed. "Don't you care if people think you're good or wonder if they're judging you?"

"No," he said again. Adam scratched his hairline, a lump of folded hair rustling. "I play because I like it. It's what I want to do. If I cared if people thought I was good at it, I'd keep it to myself and I'd never make it as a musician."

I felt embarrassed to say it, but I did anyway: "It feels like you're going to start serenading me."

"I am." His eyelids dropped, heavy.

My knees fell against the sides of the chair, cross-legged, my hands palm up in my lap. I remember tucking my shoulders in, feeling his gaze on my body and wanting it, but instinctively turtling for self-preservation. I covered a smile and muttered, "Now that's awkward."

Adam broke into a grin. He dipped his chin toward me and said alluringly, "I can think of awkward things I'd like to do with you. This isn't one of them."

He sat upright, still smirking, and began playing again. I listened this time without speaking, trying to remember to breathe.

Without stopping the graceful movement of his hands, Adam asked, "Remind me, again, why you being here right now has to be a secret."

"Because it would bother my sister."

"And you have to do what she says?"

"It's complicated."

He took a second before saying, "She's not having a sister's only summer, you know. You two barely spend any time together." He altered his tone adding, "I know I don't know you very well, I shouldn't say that, it's just…something I've noticed."

Everyone notices it, the way I give in to Francesca. They wouldn't understand because only makes sense to me.

"It's just our dynamic," I explained. "She doesn't realize she's being demanding. She means well. And this is her last summer before she has to go be a real adult. I don't want to make it difficult for her."

"Huh." He swayed his head from side to side. "But that's only if we started dating . You don't even talk to me when we're around her. You don't hang out with us. She wouldn't assume anything was going on with us. For all she knows, this –" he gestured between us "– could be completely platonic."

My throat went dry. "Isn't it?" I asked quietly.

He paused all movement. " No ."

That statement spurred butterflies. The idea of something happening between him and I, in that forest, among the chipmunks and probable snakes, felt thrilling.

It would mean that every time I felt his eyes on me when he reached down to pet Amber or when he was playing Cornhole with Adam, that something was going on with us. I purposefully sunbathed on a lawn chair with my sunglasses on so I could count the number of times he looked at me. And the number of times he pretended it was because of my dog.

I explained, "If we started hanging out and decided we didn't like each other, it would make things weird for everybody." I scratched a bug bite on my ankle. "Dave likes hanging out with you. He's got too many females in his life."

Adam chewed on the side of his mouth. "You don't want to make things weird for them, so you won't go out with me? And we can only do… whatever this is …in secret?"

I nod.

"I can respect that," he muttered, zeroing in on his hand movements. "If I start singing to you, are you going to get all squirmy again?"

"Very much," I admit, pulling my legs back up to my body. "I will shed my skin right here."

"Good." He smiled, his eyes crinkling thin this time. Even as he closed his lips, trying to right himself, I recognized the way he couldn't relax his cheek muscles any more than I could.

Adam muttered to himself, "Now I have a goal to aim for."