Page 72 of Joey

“When, Brooke?” I ask.

“I don’t really want to say anything else. Just… tell you that it happened.”

I exhale. In shock, I think. “You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and then—”

“I can,” she insists. “And I did. And I’m not going to explain it. You wanted a secret? That’s a good one to keep for me. I’ll never tell anyone we’re lying about your parental fitness—”

“Hey,” I say.

“—and you never tell anyone what I just told you.”

I glance at the billowing curtains.

“Not even them,” she says, reading my mind. “Just you. This is just for you.”

“OK, hold on,” I say. “One more question, and then I swear, I’ll let it go.” She’s already shaking her head no. “Just tell me this, Brooke. Did you… escape? Is that how you got here?”

She pauses. Purses her lips a little as she stares into my eyes. “No. I didn’t escape.”

“You didn’t escape? They let you go?”

Another pause. Some really deep thinking. Decisions are being made inside her brain as she weighs whether or not to answer this. “He didn’t let me go.”

“He?” I say. “Not they. Just one guy. He didn’t let you go? But you didn’t escape?”

She nods.

“Oh,” I say. Because there’s only one way for that to make sense. She stayed with him. She chose him.

He was her friend. He’s the one she’s missing.

He is the one who owns her loyalty.

And suddenly her irrational feelings last night make a little more sense.

“Yeah,” she agrees. Even though I didn’t say anything out loud.

It’s gonna take me a while to put all these pieces together, but… “Holy shit,” I say. “Well… thank you. Thank you for trusting me.”

“You’re trusting me with your daughter,” she replies. “This makes us more even.”

“Yeah,” I agree. But… I’m not exactly sure what I’m agreeing to just yet.

Everything about Brooke has been a surprise so far. I think back to yesterday morning when she walked into that Bright Berry Beach office. How I thought she was so… pink. And by pink I mean… sweet, and possibly innocent, and probably naïve.

And then she adjusted my view of her with a lie about Fisbees, and dogs, and kids, and feeding koi fish, and I fell into it.

I fell into her, I think. Her lies. But they don’t feel like lies. Maybe that’s why she’s so good at it? They feel more like dreams. And once you accept the lie is a dream you start to accept that the lie is really more like… a possibility.

Something to aim for.

And now she throws this little nugget of truth at me out of nowhere and I’m adjusting yet again. I try and see her in today’s light and yesterday’s at the same time. Like she’s two sheets of tracing paper and when you put one on top of the other, that’s the only way to see what’s really there.

She was never pink, was she? Never.

She was always this dark, secret-filled girl. But I get the feeling she wishes she was pink.

I want to help her get there. To that pinkness. I want to help her find it. Maybe we’ll be friends, maybe we won’t. But I’m gonna help her find the pink.