Page 31 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

“Thanks.” I lifted one from the holder, curling my cold hands around the warm paper cup, and took a sip.

We sat there for a few seconds, the truck idling with Micah’s hand paused on the gear shift. “Thought it was worth asking one more time if you’re sure you want to do this.”

I could see in the way he was looking at me that he didn’t think it was a good idea. For him or for me, I didn’t know.

I thought about it, keenly aware that I’d asked myself the same question several times throughout the night. But I felt like I’d already made the choice back in San Francisco. The moment I decided to come home. Since I’d arrived in Six Rivers, the connection I had to Johnny had grown like a wild vine, snaking around my existence. I wasn’t onlysensinghim anymore. I was hearing him. Maybe even seeing him, and there was a part of me that didn’t want to find out where all of this led. But there was also a more desperate part of me that had to know.

“I’m sure,” I answered.

A steady breath filled Micah’s chest and he pushed it out. “Okay.”

He reversed, taking us out onto the road, and I reached for the seatbelt, watching the cabin disappear in the rearview mirror. We were headed away from Six Rivers, back toward the main interstate.

“I hope you didn’t have to shift too much around to do this,” I said.

“It wasn’t a big deal.” He shrugged, but his eyes avoided mine, making me think it was. “Sadie said you were working there all day yesterday.”

“Yeah. I was.”

The image of Johnny in the booth flickered back to life in my mind. That flutter was still in my chest, the anxious anticipation of waiting for him to turn around and look at me. It had been like a splice of film playing on repeat all night as I lay awake in the dark.

Micah turned off the main road, and Smoke’s face came up to rest on the back of the seat between us, eyes fixed on the view out the windshield.

“Micah…I don’t know how to ask this….”

He turned to look at me, waiting.

“Ben—Sadie’s son.” I paused. “He’s not Johnny’s, is he?”

Now Micah was the one who’d fallen quiet. I studied the immediate change in his demeanor, his hands gripping the steering wheel tighter. His eyes focused on the road.

When he finally spoke, it was through a sigh. “Sadie says he isn’t.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“Then my answer is I don’t know. She’s always said it was a random hookup with a logger who was passing through. It happened after I left, and when I got back, she was pregnant.”

“Johnny never said anything?”

Micah shook his head. “He wondered, sure. But Sadie said the kid wasn’t Johnny’s. She was adamant about it. He asked for a paternity test years ago and she refused.”

I let my weight sink back into the seat, watching the light flit through the trees. “What if he is?” I asked, softly. “What if heisJohnny’s?”

Micah didn’t answer, and I wondered if his mind was turning with the same thing mine was. If Ben was Johnny’s son, that meant I had a nephew. I had family. It also meant that my brother had left something physical—something flesh and bone behind in this world.

“Sadie could be telling the truth,” Micah offered. “I don’t know what reason she has to lie.”

But I did. Johnny had strung Sadie along for years when we were teenagers, and I knew enough to guess that he’d done the same after I left, at least for a time. Sadie wasn’t the kind of girl to get pregnant for the purposes of pinning a guy down. But she was the type to create her own reality. And if she’d decided that Johnny would never want her, I could imagine her cutting her losses and lying about Ben.

“Wait.” My train of thought caught up with me, rewinding back to what Micah had said. “What did you meanafteryou left?” The truck jerked to the side as the tar gave way to gravel, and I reached up, holding on to the handle over my head. “Left where? Six Rivers?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell me that you left.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said.

I finally turned to look at him. “I’m asking now, Micah.”