by Amelia Wilde
She has this way of tilting her head an inch to one side then the other, and I can tell by the way she’s doing it now that she’s deep in her writing.
I could watch her like this all day.
But that would be fucking creepy.
So I open up my email.
There’s another little piece of a project from work, and just by the instructions, I know it won’t take me more than an hour. A bunch of emails from businesses reminding me to seize the weekend. A reminder about tomorrow’s meet-up for trivia.
And a response.
From that genealogy site.
I’d almost forgotten I’d sent a message to the owner of the page, but I’ll be damned. I did, and they wrote back.
The name on the email is Cindy Siverling. She was one of the daughters listed on the page. My dad’s sister. An aunt I never knew about. We were on our own after my mother left. His parents both died before I hit high school.
My pulse races.
This is a new lead that could take me all the way back to Michigan.
It hits me full force when I hover the mouse of the email—the urge to move.
In this moment, I want nothing more than to throw all my shit in a bag, jump in the rental car, and leave it behind at the nearest airport. I’d rather sit on a plane with three layovers if it means being in flight at all.
But things are more delicate now.
I can’t just leave her out there in the sun. It was a risk for her, admitting that she needs me here, and I can’t betray it.
Open the email; that’s the first thing. I can’t make any decisions about anything until I’ve opened the damn thing and read it.
Click.
Wait for it to load.
I keep my expectations absolutely neutral. That’s something I learned in the army. No high hopes. No dread, either.
Dear Bennett,
I’m sorry to be the one to give you this news, but my father, Robert, died last month. It was very peaceful and he was surrounded by family. So you won’t be able to ask him any questions.
I’m also sorry to be the one to tell you that my amateur genealogy attempts weren’t...entirely correct.
“Am I interrupting?”
I have nothing to hide—nothing at all—and yet my first instinct is to reach up and close the laptop. Quickly. Eva stands in the doorway to the bedroom, face pink from the sun. Her smile isn’t nearly big enough to conceal the way her eyebrows pull together, creating a worried line across her forehead.
“You’re interrupting the very scintillating checking of emails. Frankly, I’m glad you came.” I push the laptop onto the bed and throw my legs over the side. “I’m assuming you’re here to deal,” I say faux-seriously. “What do you already have to bargain with for breakfast?”
“Is it another...personal project?”
It comes back to me in bits and pieces, what I told her last night.
And still, those bits and pieces don’t add up to this kind of concern.
It doesn’t matter. She’s asked me directly, and I’ve promised to tell the truth.
“Yes. Something else I’m working on.”
Eva nods, and I can tell she’s weighing her words carefully.
“Ask it, Eva. Whatever it is, you can ask it.”
Her eyes are huge and luminous and wary. “Is it about me? Your project. Does it have to do with me?” She swallows so hard I can hear it. “Because if it has to do with me, you shouldn’t do that. You should just stop. It’s not a good idea to go down that path, and what you find—”
“Eva.”
“—you’re not going to like it, okay? And… fuck. This is probably one of the best weeks of my life, being here with you. I can’t remember the last time I dropped everything and skipped town. Even if I’d had the balls to skip town, which I have not, it would have felt like I was running away from something. But with you, it feels like I’m running toward something, so if you’re—”
It’s two steps to get to her, and the instant I fold her in my arms, she goes quiet, her body relaxing. There’s not a tense muscle in her when she presses her cheek into my chest.
For a minute.
Then her shoulders go back up.
“Are you hugging me so I’ll shut up?”
“I’m hugging you, because I want to be close to you.” It’s true. But there are other truths too. “And I’m hugging you, because I might be able to kiss your mouth into silence, but not your brain. As long as you’re thinking it, I want to hear about it.”
“In, like, a personal project kind of way?”
I take a half step back and look into her eyes. “Why are you so hung up on that?”
“I don’t know.” Eva shrugs, but the worry is still painted onto her face. “Isn’t it weird? I mean, isn’t it a weird thing to do? To spend eighteen months on a single research project?” She doesn’t add when your father is dying. She doesn’t have to. “Is this… is this all you really want to be doing?”
“I didn’t bring you here so I could spend all my time working on a secret project, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Then what?” I take her hands in mine. They’re small, her bones fine, but her grip is solid. “And what do you mean, I won’t like what I find? I want to know everything about you, yes. I’ll admit that. But isn’t that par for the course when you’re falling for someone?”
Eva shakes her head briskly. “When you’re falling for someone—”
Her mouth falls open.
“Did you—” She blinks like she’s coming awake, like she’s surfacing from deep water. “Did you say that out loud, or did I hallucinate it?”
It makes me laugh. God help me, it makes me laugh. “Is it so hard to believe?”
“We’ve known each other for seven days.”
“It only took one night to know I never wanted you to leave my bed.”
Eva giggles, a little burst of laughter that’s totally uncharacteristic of her. “But that’s impossible. That’s…. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“Don’t I?”
I let the question hang in the air between us for several heartbeats. Eva doesn’t answer.
“I think I’ve got a pretty good grip on what I’m getting into. For one thing, you can’t jump to save your life even if a semi truck is coming at you.”
“That’s not fair. I have…. It was a truck, and I—”
“For another, you’re about as good at sharing your feeling as you are at jumping out of the way of speeding trucks.”
Eva grimaces at me. “It’s not something people should get into, because….”
“Because why? Jesus. Do they use your feelings to determine the nuclear launch codes? Are they some state secret? Is that why you’re worried I might have taken you on as a side gig for my own sick pleasure?”
“It’s not that sick of a pleasure.” It’s almost too soft to hear.
“It’s not sick at all. It’s fucking delicious. Being with you is almost too sweet to bear.”
She cocks her head to the side. “I don’t believe you. I can be...a difficult person. Not sweet at all.”
“I’ve never met a writer who was easy to deal with when they were under deadline pressure. Most of you are like bottled lightning when you’re under pressure.”
“Yeah, well, what if I’m always under deadline pressure? Or what if this—” Eva motions between the two of us. “—thing we have only lasts as long as I have a problem I need help solving? Ugh. That makes me sound like a damsel in distress, and I am not in distress. I’m only—”
“You seem a little distressed right now.”
“That’s because you’re in here chipping away at some secret file about yours truly.”
“It’s not about you. All right? It’s about me. Does that make you feel better?”
She raises one eyebrow.
“Bennett. Are you obsessed with yourself?”
“Je
sus Christ, no. Though now that you put it that way....”
“You are your own personal research project?” She looks mildly horrified.
“Oh my God, it’s not that. There are things in my life that I want to know more about, and I can’t go directly to the source, because the source is dead.”
“What things?”
“How much have you written already this morning? I’ll tell you for—”
“You’ll tell me for nothing, Bennett Powell, and you’ll like it.”
I take a step back, completely unable to stop the wide grin from spreading across my face.
There is more to Eva Lipton than I could ever know. In seven days, she’s been transformed from a pale, shaking shell of a woman to the fierce queen standing in front of me. These little moments of bravery give me a sudden rush of blood to below my waist.
Her scowl fades the more I smile until she’s less fierce queen and more tentative queen, but still. Still.
“I demand to know.” She puts both hands on her hips. Eva’s really reaching for it this time, digging her heels in, and I get another rush that’s not so different from vertigo.
“Okay. I’m…. That was amazing. That’s one of my all-time favorite things you’ve ever said; let me just start with that.”
She snaps her fingers between us. “No. I’m not letting this get sidetracked. The project.”
“The project is about my father.”
“That’s it? Like, his family history? Are you putting together a family tree for your eventual...offspring?”
A delicate blush colors Eva’s cheeks at the word. I resist the powerful urge to ask her about her eventual offspring and shove away the mental image of a pregnant Eva, writing outside in the sun with a laptop propped on her belly.
“Like why he wanted me to join the army so badly, even though he left after his first contract was up. Spent the rest of his life working as a floor manager at a local company that produced windows. I want to know what made him that way.”
“You never asked?”
Eva waits.
“You never asked.”
“I never asked.”
“So you’re asking now.”
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head. “But Bennett...who’s left to ask?”
21
Eva
Oh, thank God. Thank God, thank God.
The relief is so powerful I could sink to my knees with it. I’ve never done drugs, so I wouldn’t know anything about mainlining...well, anything, but I assume it would be at least as good as this. It’s like all my blood has been taken out and replaced with sweet wine.
Bennett’s eyes light up when I ask the question, but he quickly tamps it down. “I don’t need to bother you with this. If you’re in the middle of a good scene, I’m not going to derail you with—”
“My scene is...fine.” I’m so glad that he’s not digging into my stupidly tragic past that I can hardly remember where I am in the book. I’ve been typing the same sentence for about ten minutes, trying to convince myself that Bennett would never… he would never… he didn’t bring me here to do that. He would never.
I’m halfway through the story. Things are getting real. That’s all I know.
In this moment, my relief is translated to an intense interest in also knowing exactly what Ben’s been working on, if not, you know, me. I clear my throat and try not to dwell on the fact that falling for me might mean the way I feel about him is also okay. Allowable. Acceptable. Even though I know with all my heart that it is not. It will only lead to heartbreak. “Are there other family members you can...interview, I guess?”
He’s falling for me wars with he’s not researching you in my mind in an endless loop.
“Okay, so...” Ben rushes back to the bed and picks up his laptop. He opens the screen, and right there on the desktop is his email. He clicks over to another tab in his browser. “I’d already gone through all of his available medical records and everything in the house, since I had to pack it up for renters. And there is nothing there about why he might have been so attached to the army. But while we were here, I found this.”
Ben brandishes the laptop at me, but we’re faced with the inevitable hardship of trying to read off a screen that someone else is holding, so I take the computer out of his hands and sit down on the bed. My heart beats too fast for me to focus, so I will it to slow down. Be cool. Pretend you’re doing your own research for a book.
But this is just one of the genealogy websites with a strip of ads on one side and a 1990s text-based jumble of words in the center.
“I...don’t know what I’m looking at. Is this a random family tree?”
“It’s my dad’s family tree. His original family.”
“Original?”
“He was adopted.” Ben’s eyes are bright and focused on the screen as if he might find another clue even while we’re sitting here. “I found out this week. He was adopted.”
“You found that out from this page?”
“No. I found that out from the private investigator I hired.”
“Ben, what the fuck?” I close the lid of the laptop. “You hired a private investigator to find out why your dad wanted you to join the army? There’s no way she can find an answer to some whim that was in his head.”
“That’s not why I hired her. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
He moves my hand gently off the lid of the laptop and opens the screen again. Ben deftly swipes at the mouse pad and clicks a few more times, opening a folder on the desktop. Inside the folder is an image file. He opens that too.
My heart hammers in my chest as the file opens to a white screen then slowly loads. I’m gripped with a sudden fear that I might be about to witness some weird crime scene photo, and I’m...not in the mood for an actual crime scene to be in front of my eyes at this moment.
“Sorry. This computer is a piece of shit sometimes.”
“Yeah, mine too.”
“It is not. You have last year’s MacBook Pro model. That’s a good machine.”
“Shh.”
“Did you just shush me?” Ben nudges me with his elbow as the picture comes fully into view.
It’s an older photo that looks like it was printed out and scanned in, the color slightly faded. And the photo is of a little boy in a red sweater and brown corduroy pants. He can’t be more than three or four, five at the most. It takes no time at all to recognize Ben’s eyes.
“Is this you?”
“That’s my dad.”
We both look at the screen. Something must be crucial about this image, judging from the charged energy in the air, but I don’t know what it is. And maybe Ben’s still searching for clues in it.
The scene looks pretty set for Christmas Day. The little boy in the photo stands next to a toboggan the exact color of his sweater, beaming. He still has his baby teeth, and he honestly looks so happy he could pass out. Behind him, the lights hung on a Christmas tree have been sharpened to little points of dull color by the flash. In the corner behind him there’s a slash of torn wrapping paper.
He looks so happy.
But I’m missing something—I have to be.
“You hired a private investigator because of this photo?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t get it. Your parents must have lots of pictures, even though this was back in the day.”
“This is the only photo they had of him.”
I turn to look at Ben, who is still looking at the photo on the screen. “Were they anti-camera people?”
“No. What I mean is, this is the only photo they have of him before the age of fourteen.”
“That’s specific.”
“That’s when he was adopted.”
I look back at the picture. The pieces are slow to fit into place. I’m too bogged down with story details and weird fears about Bennett Powell becoming a private investigator I never want to cross paths with. “So this was taken by his birt
h family?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but how can you know that?”
Now he’s watching me. “When my father’s parents died—and believe me when I say he never mentioned having a family other than his parents—we moved everything out of the house. We sold most of the furniture or donated it. He didn’t keep any clothes. All he kept were some of the dishes and all the documents they kept in their filing cabinet, plus boxes of photos and other paperwork. On the weekends, he would go through and sort out which things could be thrown away and which needed to be kept.”
“So he could have thrown away some of them by accident.”
Ben shakes his head. “He was careful. He went through them paper by paper. He didn’t make any mistakes with this.”
“But how did you make the leap from this photo to private investigator?”
“Because I had to do the same thing when my father died, only I didn’t leave the project for the weekends. I took my work with me and went through everything during the evenings.”
“You literally went through every piece of paper in your dad’s house?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” For the first time I can remember, Ben looks haunted. “There were...life insurance matters to be sorted out. Accounts to cancel and transfer. I still don’t know what to do with the money he left me. He must have saved it for years.
“But that’s not what I was there for—money. I was trying to understand why he was fine with being so alone. And instead, I found this.” Ben leans back onto his elbows on the bed. “It stuck out to me. I had gone over pictures that day, and that night. I couldn’t sleep. Something was weird about them, you know?”
Goose bumps rise up and down my arms. “This sounds like something I’d write into a book.”
“I know. I almost expected to see something creepy as fuck when I got up and went through them again.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“In the middle of the night.”
“You’re brave.”
“Army Strong,” he jokes. “Anyway, it was somewhere around dawn when I finally figured out what I was seeing. Something wasn’t right. Why would his parents only have pictures of him from age fourteen on? No teenager wants a camera anywhere near them, so it would be strange as hell to start taking pictures then.”