Page 33 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

“A thing,” he repeated.

“A show,” I clarified. “There’s a show coming up featuring some of my work.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

I ran a hand through my hair, casting my gaze out the window. “I don’t know. I guess it just feels kind of stupid.”

“Stupid how?”

I shrugged. “Just, everything is different there, you know? What people do, how they act, what they think is important.”

“It’s not stupid, James,” he said, sounding serious. He waited for me to look at him, and when I did, he said it again. “It’s not.”

I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. Trying to save me from my own embarrassment was a kindness I wasn’t sure he owed me.

“You like it? The shows and all of that?”

“Yeah, I mean, it was my dream, right?”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

For a moment, it felt as if everything that happened before San Francisco blinked out like a dying star. There was a comfort in the familiarity of just existing in the same place at the same time. If I was being honest, that’s one of the reasons I’d texted him. But then my smile fell a little. Eventually, that fading light would reignite. Too much had happened for it all to just…disappear. And I’d learned the hard way that wishing things were different only drove deeper how unfair it was that they weren’t.

“So, what exactly are we looking for out in the gorge?”

I let my head fall back to the headrest, shooting him a look. I’d wondered if he was going to let me off the hook, but he wasn’t. “I just…need to see it. I need to try and understand what he was doing out there.”

Micah gave me a perplexed look. “He was working.”

“I don’t know,” I said, softly. “I’ve been through all the negatives, and the last photos I have from the gorge were taken on November tenth.”

“Yeah?” It sounded like a question.

“But there aren’t any from the day he died. Why?”

Micah shrugged. “Maybe he was just doing more observation. He wasn’t always shooting.”

“But there aren’t any entries in his field journal for that day at Trentham Gorge, either. And wouldn’t he have at leasttakenhis camera?”

The set of his mouth straightened. He was thinking through it.

“He didn’t mention anything about what he was doing out there to you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Nothing seemed…different?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You said it seemed like he was dreading the project being over. Was he stressed about the CAS deadline?” I tried again.

“I would think so.”

The rapid-fire, vague answers made me study him more closely. “You would think so?” I repeated the words so that he could hear how incomplete they sounded.

He was annoyed now. “It’s not like we sat around talking about this stuff all the time. We were both busy, and especially in the fall I was booked so much I was almost never home. You had to really know what questions to ask if you wanted answers from Johnny. You know that.”

I did know. Sometimes it felt like having a conversation with a Rubik’s cube.