Page 50 of Plus One

The van door slid closed, sealing them in, and Maurice settled in behind the wheel. The van went quiet. All conversations suddenly silenced.

Maurice glanced around the van and then adjusted the mirrors. “Did I interrupt something?”

The old people erupted in laughter.

Maurice gave Monique a puzzled look.

She shook her head. “Let’s go,” she said, and he navigated the van into the steady flow of traffic.

The van wound through the dark, winding roads. The landscape blurred outside her window. Monique’s mind drifted. Counting costs was an unavoidable task, but God did she want to procrastinate.

Maurice’s phone buzzed at every mile marker as if on cue.

“You need to get that?” she asked quietly, while the elders chatted.

Deb cleared her throat and Maurice stiffened as he looked in the rearview mirror.

“Work stuff?” Monique asked, not necessarily to Maurice.

“Probably.”

“You must be an important man back in Jersey.” Her words burned with contempt she didn’t know she held. Last night he’d promised surface, but he’d also promised later.

Latercame quickly andsurfaceproved to be tissue-paper thin.

The road continued to curve along the coast. The ocean went from blue to black the longer they traveled.

“Excuse me, driver,” Don called. “Pull over up there. I want to get a picture of that sunset.”

“Aiight.” Maurice maneuvered the van onto a small cutout along the side of the road as the sky painted itself in pinks and oranges and purples.

Everyone piled out of the van. Monique stepped forward with her camera, but Aunt Don waved her off and hustled the group toward the low stone wall marking the edge of a cliff.

“They’re not subtle,” Monique said, leaning against the van, Maurice standing nearby but not too close.

“Not at all.” His voice was tight, quiet. Seeking.

She was grateful for the distance. These accidental reveals—the messages, the shitty attempts at deflection, the photograph—were beginning to feel like omissions and starting to feel bigger and more ominous than they probably should. It shouldn’t have mattered, that picture of Maurice with Deb and a class of her reentry program graduates. Monique knew how passionate her aunt was about the program. Growing Returning Home was turning out to be Deborah Fairbanks’ life’s work. So, why were both of their mouths closed about it?

Monique had developed the practice of half-listening once the kids started picking their favorite family members. So when Deb started calling Justin instead of her, she’d been grateful for the care and excused herself from most future conversations. There’d been snatches of things here and there about Chicago cabinetmakers and reentry programs. But until somebody told her directly, Monique let it pass.

Willful ignorance might not have been the best strategy.

“What was so hard about telling me you work for Fairbanks and Returning Home?” she asked quietly, knowing he heard her over the crash of waves against the rocks just a few feet away.

The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he cut the distance between them. Still, he said nothing.

“I’ll talk to Deb too, eventually. But Maurice, you gotta understand that this just doesn’t feel good.”

“It’s complicated.”

“What isn’t?” She blew out a breath. Patience and interest, Monique was learning on this trip, went hand in hand. Her limit was nearly reached. “You’re so close to them,” she said, waving her hand in her family’s direction. Family that Maurice apparently knew better than she did. “Did they tell you about me? About my cancer? You didn’t flinch when I told you.”

Maurice shook his head. “Everything I know about you, you’ve shown me yourself. Like how you talk, how you move… the way your eyes change in the light… how your skin catches the sun and just sparkles like billions of stars.”

She looked up at him, and his face was full of equal parts earnestness and fear, and she couldn’t find any words.

The winds whipped around them, making Aunt Don shriek with laughter as her skirt billowed. Deb wrapped her in her arms from behind, resting her chin on Don’s head.