Page 3 of A Sea of Unspoken Things
He started toward the porch, and I forced myself to reach for the door. As soon as it swung open, Smoke scrambled up the steps, his whimper stuttering into a cry when he saw me. He nearly knocked me over, meeting my height when he jumped up, and I couldn’t help the smile that broke on my lips or the rush of emotion that followed it. He pushed his nose into my shirt as my hands stroked down the length of his face and scratched behind his ears. When he slipped from my grasp, he leaned into me so heavily that I had to counterbalance his weight with my own.
Behind him, Micah was staring at me. There was no hiding that stiff, rigid shape that straightened the line of him, and the same tension that drew his shoulders up was now snaking around me, too.
“Hey, James.”
My name spoken in his deep voice made the less familiar parts of him snap into focus. Just like that, we were sixteen years old again, staring at each other like we were waiting to see who would be first to cross the line between us.
“Thought I’d beat you here,” he said, catching the edge of the screen door and holding it open.
When he just stood there, I realized he was waiting to be invited in, and that was unfamiliar, too. After our dad moved to Oregon, Micah had spent so much time here that he practically lived in this house with us.
I swallowed. “Do you want to come in?”
He hesitated for just a moment before he finally crossed the threshold, and the door closed behind him. As soon as it did, the room felt even smaller, like everything left unresolved when I went to San Francisco was taking up what little space there was.
“Was the drive okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” My voice came out a bit misshapen.
His hands slid into his pockets, and he watched as Smoke’s nose went to the ground. Anxiously, the dog explored each room of the small cabin, as if checking to see if Johnny was here. I’d had the same urge when I walked through the door.
“I dropped off a few things earlier.” Micah’s eyes moved to the kitchen. “There’s milk and eggs in the fridge. Bread. The market will be closed already, but you can go by tomorrow and get anything else you need.”
He was talking fast, and I didn’t know if that was the nerves or if he was just trying to get this over with as quickly as possible. When I didn’t respond, he searched for something else to say.
“I left a bag of dog food, too, if you’re sure you’re okay with Smoke being here. I don’t mind looking after him,” he said.
“It’s fine.”
Despite my best efforts, I still didn’t sound like myself, and Micah seemed to notice. His eyes ran over me a little more slowly, as if he was tracing the bloom of red that I could feel creeping up my throat, into my cheeks.
He glanced toward the window. “There’s still not much in town, but the diner is open. Sadie Cross owns it now, actually.”
Sadie. The mention of the name made me blink. She’d been Johnny’son-again, off-again girlfriend for years, the epitome of the kind of girl who ended up like our mother. And if she was still here in Six Rivers, running the diner, I guessed she had.
“It’s really the only place to eat or get coffee around here, but there’s Wi-Fi there now. Pretty decent cell service, too,” he added.
“I’m not here that long, Micah.” I said it for myself as much as for him because it felt like a necessary reassurance for both of us.
“I know.” He met my eyes again, making that bloom of red feel like a tangle of flames. Then he stepped around me, disappearing into the hall.
I closed my eyes, letting out an uneven breath before I followed, and the click of a lamp being turned on sounded just before I rounded the corner. Yellow light washed over the wood paneling of a shadowed alcove just outside the closed bedroom door, where there had once been a twin bed pushed against the wall. Now, it had been replaced by an old wooden desk, and I felt some sense of relief that not everything in this place had remained unchanged.
Dozens of papers, handwritten notes, photographs, and envelopes were pinned to a corkboard that was hung on the wall, and a laptop was sitting closed in the middle of the mess. When I spotted Johnny’s camera bag beside the chair on the floor, I had to look away.
“This is everything.” Micah gestured to the desk. “Not the most organized, but you should be able to find what you need.”
I crossed my arms, eyes running over the remnants of Johnny’s work. It was haphazardly sorted, arranged in teetering piles, and when I caught a glimpse of his handwriting on a notepad, I couldn’t let my gaze linger too long.
“I would have been happy to pack all this up for you, James. You didn’t need to come all the way up here,” Micah said.
He’d said the same thing a couple of weeks ago when I called to let him know I was coming. He’d insisted, really, even offering to drive everything down to San Francisco himself. It didn’t make sense for me to be here. Compiling and submitting Johnny’s work for the conservation project had been my excuse for coming back, but the lookMicah gave me now was a suspicious one. Like he knew it didn’t quite add up. And it didn’t.
Eventually, we’d have to have that conversation. I just hadn’t figured out how to do that yet. I didn’t know how to tell Micah why I’d come, because I could hardly make sense of it myself. I’d just been certain that I’dhadto. Between the feeling of that bullet in my chest and the guilt that I carried for leaving Johnny behind, I couldn’t let go of the feeling that there was somethingmoreto all of this. Like the forest had finally balanced the scales. Like she’d waited all this time to punish us for what we’d done.
Finally, I let my eyes meet Micah’s, and I could see there was some part of him that was thinking the same thing. That we’d gotten what we deserved, just twenty years late.
He cleared his throat, dropping his gaze. “I told Olivia you’d be coming by.”