“It’s not mine,” he says in a sharp whisper. “You have to leave.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you sooner.”
“It’s not mine.”
“It is.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull. I have a girlfriend.” The way he tips his head when he says girlfriend makes me think that she’s upstairs. Maybe that’s why he’s being so quiet. Why he won’t let me in. I step closer to the house, so if she’s looking out the window she can’t see me. I don’t want to make things any harder on him than they already are. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want him to know. I just want him to help.
“I’m graduating,” he says. “I have a job lined up. I won’t let you ruin it. We used a condom. I always used a condom with you. It’s not mine.” His chest is getting red and splotchy from the cold.
“There wasn’t anyone else,” I say. “There wasn’t anyone it could have been.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You drive around and sleep in other people’s houses and fuck anyone who looks at you the right way. You think I don’t know that?”
“You’re the only one it could be.” I don’t know why I thought Justin would somehow be thrilled that I’m telling him the truth. Like I expected a fucking parade for being honest.
“No,” he says, “I’m the one with a future to kill. With something you can steal.”
“Justin—”
“Don’t think I never noticed how you always took something. Money missing. Other stuff. I don’t owe you more.”
“That wasn’t what it was. I always—I always liked you.”
“You’re basically a prostitute,” he says, opening the door to the house, “and you need to leave.”
“It’s a boy,” I tell him. “Your baby.”
He shuts the door behind him and turns the porch light off.
* * *
I sit in my car across the street digging my fingernails into my palm. I can’t bring myself to drive away, just in case Justin will suddenly come running out and invite me in and put his hands on my belly and he’ll feel Max kick and everything will change for him. Everything will change for us. I would give up the road. I would give up my guitar. I would give up everything in a second if I could have a good home for me and Max. A real place with a floor that isn’t on wheels, where there aren’t any lies left to catch up with me. I fall asleep waiting and by the time I wake up, the cars in the driveway are gone and no one answers when I knock on the door.
— Chapter 67 —
Driving will fix things. Changing direction. Gaining distance, getting to the kind of numb where miles fill in for feelings. I like the way the road sounds. I like the rhythms that come from the tires and the windshield wipers, rain and the rush of wind, and how the sounds change when I raise or lower the window. My dad used to say that good folk music is etched with the rhythm of the road. I always listen for it in songs and I find it in the best ones. So when I’m driving, I pay attention to all the noise; I take in the smells and everything I see and everything I am and I start my song. It begins like a story in my head and then somewhere in the middle it isn’t about me anymore—my love songs aren’t about Adam or Robert, that song about leaving home isn’t about Ithaca or Little River, Missing You is about a made-up girl missing a made-up friend. It’s not about Carly.
I can make a better song when it’s less about the truth of what happened and more about making everything fit together in the most perfect way. Then when I sing my songs in front of an audience, it’s safer. I’m not giving everything I have, laid out for them like a flawless map of my insides. I’m singing songs about a parallel me, in some other voice, in code they don’t even know. And when I’m driving and the words are all coming together, I feel the most like myself and like someone else entirely at the very same time.
I drive to Ithaca. It’s my magnet. Every time I’m near, it pulls. It’s the place I’d stay if I could ever stay someplace. It’s the place I wish I’d never left. I’m tired of fighting it. I just need to go.
Carly is gone, I’m sure. Rosemary probably is too. So I walk through The Commons. It’s one of those weird days when it’s way warmer than it should be. It’s even sunny. Like the weather is trying to fool us into thinking it isn’t November and winter won’t be long and cold and cloudy.