“What grade were you in when you left?” Kala asked.
“Ninth,” Matt said. “The school goes from seventh to twelfth grade. Not enough kids around here for a separate middle school.”
“So your brother and sister went here with you?”
“Just Danny. Mags was in elementary school when we left. Mom was pregnant with Tommy.”
“Why did you leave town? The documentary made it sound like townsfolk with pitchforks.”
“It wasn’t so dramatic. Just a lot of whispers and stares wherever we went. I actually got in a fight right over there about it.” He nodded at the basketball court. He hadn’t been defending Danny’s honor. A kid had said that maybe someone would take Maggie down by the creek. It had scared him, how he’d lost control and whaled on the boy. And if he could lose it like that, he’d realized, so could his older brother. “And that was it. We packed up and moved.”
“That was pretty selfless of your parents. I mean, your dad leaving his job, your mom giving up her hometown.”
Matt had never really thought of it that way. But she was right. He liked that she didn’t hesitate to talk about his family. He was learning that it was a topic people were finding uncomfortable. Matt liked talking about them. He didn’t want them to vanish as if they’d never existed.
Kala picked up the half-eaten runza and put it and her wrappers in the bag. She cleaned up Matt’s mess, too.
A heavy silence fell between them.
At last Kala said, “Ganesh said that girl at the bar, the one who broke up the fight—that you, like, met her at four in the morning?”
Matt told her about Jessica. How he’d met her at the Knoll the night Charlotte was murdered. He almost told her about seeing Danny in his letterman jacket, pushing the wheelbarrow. But tonight wasn’t about Danny.
“She was your first love?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Okay, your first something else…” She cocked a brow.
Matt rolled his eyes. “I was fourteen.”
She watched him, waiting for him to tell her more.
“It was just a kiss.” One electrifying kiss.
“You’ve got unfinished business with her.”
Matt shook his head again. “I was a kid.”
“Unfinished business,” she repeated with a clipped nod. “You’d better finish it.”
Maybe Kala was right, maybe she wasn’t. Either way, it would have to wait.
“Thank you,” Matt said.
“For what?”
“For coming to Nebraska … For”—he paused—“for everything.”
She looked at him for a long time. For a split second he thought she was going to lean in, give him another kiss he wouldn’t forget.
“Un. Finished. Business,” Kala said, emphasizing each word with a poke of her index finger to his chest. She took his hand. “Let’s get you back. You have a long day tomorrow.”
It would undoubtedly be the longest day of his life.
CHAPTER 50
EVAN PINE
BEFORE
They spent their first full day in Tulum at the beach, dozing in rented cabanas, ordering cocktails and virgin daiquiris and watching Tommy splash in the blue ocean. Sun-drained and tired, they decided to pick up some groceries, eat in for dinner.
Evan sat at the kitchen counter, watching his family prepare the meal—Tommy’s favorite, spaghetti. Not exactly in line with local cuisine, but it brought Evan back to when they would spend Sunday nights cooking together, telling stories and laughing at the table.
Tommy was cutting onions with a butter knife, Liv guiding his hand in between sips of wine. Maggie was in charge of the sauce, and she stirred a big pot with a wooden spoon.
“No, really, sit down, relax, the womenfolk have got this,” Maggie said to Evan.
Evan sipped his beer, taking in the scene. He looked at his son. Tommy’s face was tomato red, this after Liv applying sunscreen seemingly every two minutes. He was trying to pierce the onion with the dull blade, but it kept rolling off the cutting board.
“The water’s boiling, sweetie,” Evan said to Maggie, noticing the pot nearly bubbling over. He jumped off the stool and ran around to the stove to turn down the burner.
“You been sneaking my beer?” he said, noticing that Magpie seemed a little spaced-out, lost in thought.
“Gotta prepare for college,” Maggie said.
Evan grabbed his heart, feigned a pain in his chest. “Don’t say that, not my little girl.” He hugged Maggie in an exaggerated embrace that she ordinarily would’ve fought off, but tonight she just stood, arms at her sides, until he released his hold.