Page 50 of Fate, Interrupted

“I understand the distinction, and I’m telling you it doesn’t matter.” She says it without heat, as though she is simply reporting the facts. “You drove across the city to where he lives and works with his family. Were you invited? Of course you weren’t.” She pauses. “What did you say?”

I watch a dog walker turn the corner and disappear.

“I told him the truth,” I say.

“Norah.”

“It needed to be said.”

“I’m not arguing with that. What did you say?”

Jewell’s voice is so calm, so soft, the way a practiced parent does, trying to get their kid to admit to shoplifting.

I look at my hands on the wheel. They’ve stopped trembling, mostly. “I told him he matters to me. On the loading dock. I told him he matters to me.”

The silence that follows is different from the others. Longer. More loaded, like Jewell is turning the information over before she responds to it.

“Okay,” she says finally.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m computing. Give me a second.” Another beat. “And then what?”

“He kissed me.”

“On the loading dock?”

“Yes.”

“In front of his crew?”

“They found somewhere else to be.”

“Smart crew,” she says. Then: “There’s a but coming. I can hear it.”

I think about Greer in the doorway. Your father’s looking for you. The way the air on the dock changed when he appeared; the way Silas became guarded but stood his ground at the same time.

“Someone saw us,” I say. “His uncle. He sounds like his father’s henchman. And when I left…” I stop. “There was a man in a second-floor window. Looking down at the lot. Watching me.”

Jewell doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“His father,” she says.

“I don’t know that for certain.”

“But you think so.”

“Yes.”

“Your hands are shaking, aren’t they? And you’re pulled over on a side street, right?” Jewell doesn’t wait for an answer. “But you’re not pulled over because you’re afraid. You’re pulled over because of what you said on the dock.”

She might as well have said ’gotcha’ with the enthusiasm and pride I hear in her voice.

I open my mouth to deflect, and then close it tightly, because Jewell has no patience for deflection and also because she’s right.

“It came out of me before I’d finished deciding to say it,” I say. “But I didn’t take it back. And he kissed me. And now I’m sitting here and I don’t know what to do with any of it.”

“You don’t have to do anything with it today,” Jewell says.