Chapter Seven
~ Levi ~
We took Bo’s truck into town, mostly because he insisted his old Silverado was “a better vibe for construction site catering,” but also because the inside of the cab smelled like pine air freshener and fried chicken, which was better than the horse sweat and diesel of the farm trucks.
The new house wasn’t even livable yet—just a skeleton, really, but I already thought of it as “ours” in my head.
Not “mine,” not even “Quiad’s project”—ours.
The walls were up, the roof was on, and today the crew was hanging insulation while Quiad and Knox worked on the custom cabinets for the kitchen I’d sketched out in the margins of my English notebook.
I still got a little high every time I remembered that Quiad had actually used my drawing. He’d looked at it, eyebrows up, then said, “Nice lines.” Just like that, deadpan and simple, but I’d blushed so hard it took hours for the heat to wear off.
Bo caught me smiling at the window reflection and nudged my shoulder. “You’re grinning like a psycho, Hardesty. What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I lied, but he grinned wider, like he knew.
The drive into McKenzie River took us down the twisty main road, past the river and then into the grid of old houses and low brick buildings that made up downtown.
The trees had finally filled in, so the whole valley smelled like pollen and moss, with little explosions of dandelion fluff drifting across the windshield.
Bo gunned the engine and coasted us into a diagonal spot in front of River’s Edge Diner, right between the town’s single police cruiser and the mail Jeep. “I’ll do the talking,” he said, rolling up his window with a flourish. “You just try not to drool on the pastry case this time.”
Inside, the diner was all chrome counters and old linoleum, a line of brown vinyl stools propping up a who’s who of locals: one end was the postman and a woman from the insurance office, the other a trio of construction guys who’d clearly never stopped for breakfast before this.
The kitchen clattered and hissed with the sound of a dozen orders in progress.
The air was thick with bacon grease, pancake syrup, and gossip.
Bo beelined for the counter, slapping the bell at the takeout register with unnecessary force. “Morning, Barb!” he called to the owner, who shot him a look, but immediately started packing up a dozen Styrofoam boxes from behind the glass.
I followed, hands stuffed deep in my hoodie pockets. I was nervous for no reason, probably just the leftover adrenaline from the jobsite and not anything else. But standing there, listening to Bo order an impossible number of “Egg McRivers” and “lumberjack specials,” I let myself drift.
It was easy, the way I slotted into place here.
Bo did the talking, the small-town banter, while I hung at his shoulder and took in the details.
A pie safe filled with half-melted lemon meringue.
An old-school jukebox with only three working selections—one of which was, inexplicably, early 2000s emo.
The grill cook, a bearded guy with a dragon tattoo on his neck, flipping hashbrowns with a kind of lethal confidence.
A year ago, I’d have felt like a stray dog in this scene—desperate not to draw attention, praying nobody asked about my parents or what I planned to do after graduation. Now, I just watched. Like I belonged here.
Bo leaned in and nudged me with his elbow. “Dude, you want pie? Or just a bucket of those little butter packets again?”
I laughed. “Pie’s fine. Lemon, if they’ve got it.”
He turned to Barb, who rolled her eyes but boxed up two slices, “for the little guy,” as she put it.
While Bo paid and made a scene about the tip jar— “No, really, Barb, take my money before corporate finds out I’m overpaying you!
”—I drifted toward the window, looking out at the street.
A couple of kids zipped past on battered bikes, the librarian swept the steps across the way, and a pair of moms in workout gear compared strollers with the solemnity of diplomats negotiating a peace treaty.
I watched them, zoning out, until Bo came up beside me with both arms loaded down in plastic bags.
“Ready to roll?” he said. “Gotta get this stuff to the crew before they mutiny.”
I was about to say yes, but a flash of color caught my eye—a woman crossing the street toward the gas station.
She wore a denim jacket, yellow sundress, sunglasses, her blonde hair twisted up in a way that reminded me of the plastic doll heads I’d seen in the thrift shop.
She was too far away for me to see her face, but something about the set of her shoulders, the way she walked, made my stomach drop straight through the tile floor.
I stared at her, then looked away, then back again. The space between my shoulder blades prickled, like somebody had jammed an ice pack down my spine.
Bo noticed instantly. “What?” he said, head cocked. “You see a ghost?”
I shook my head, fast, but my throat had sealed up.
“Levi?” he said, quieter this time.
“Uh. Nothing,” I croaked. “Just thought I saw someone I used to know.”
The woman stood at the crosswalk, talking to the guy behind the gas station counter. She gestured with her hands, laughing too loud, her whole posture stretched tight as a slingshot. I recognized it. That was her default: just a little too much, a performance for whoever might be watching.
She turned slightly, and for a second I caught her profile. She’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen her, but her jaw was still sharp and her mouth too wide, her smile like a rip in wet paper.
My brain pinwheeled. No, it couldn’t be. She’d never even heard of McKenzie River. She wouldn’t even know how to find it on a map. But the longer I watched, the more I was sure.
My hands shook. I jammed them deeper in my pockets, pressing the heel of my hand into the inside of my wrist, right where the leather bracelet pressed against my skin and the tattoo hid under the band. I tried to breathe, but the diner air felt suddenly thin.
Bo moved into my space, blocking my view of the window. “You want to head out?” he asked, careful, like he’d already clocked that I was two seconds from losing it.
I nodded. “Yeah. I just—yeah.”
We gathered the bags and hustled out, the bells over the door jangling in the hush. I kept my head down, staring at the seam in the concrete. But as we reached the truck, I couldn’t help it—I looked back over my shoulder.
The woman was still there, standing on the curb now, sunglasses off, eyes scanning the street.
She was looking for someone.
She was looking for me.
I almost puked, right there on the sidewalk. Instead, I ducked into the cab and slammed the door, squeezing my hands so tight the nails dug into my palm.
Bo started the truck, let it idle while he loaded the food on the bench seat. He didn’t say anything, just waited for me to speak first. That was a McKenzie trait—the ability to sit with silence until it broke on its own.
I stared out the windshield, at the way the sun caught in the rearview, at the hand-lettered “Have a Nice Day!” sign in the diner window, at the shape of her face behind me.
After a long, long minute, Bo said, “You sure you’re good, Levi?”
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “Just… let’s go.”
As we pulled away, I watched the woman recede in the side mirror, small and mean and still looking.
My chest felt like it was full of bees. The houses blurred by in a haze of green and white, but I couldn’t see any of it.
All I could think about was how her eyes looked exactly like mine, the same blue I woke up to every morning, only colder.
She hadn’t wanted me in fifteen years. So why was she here now?
We drove back to the construction site in silence. Bo let it ride, didn’t press, just turned up the radio and drummed his fingers on the wheel.
But all the way home, I kept feeling the weight of her stare. Like maybe this whole house thing, this life thing, was a sandcastle and she was the ocean, waiting to drag me back under.
I pressed my wrist to my mouth, biting down on the inside of my arm until I tasted metal, and told myself: This is real. This is mine. You don’t let go of something like this.
Not for anything. Not for anyone.
Not even her.
Bo was a world-class avoider of awkwardness, but he also had this uncanny way of waiting you out—like if he just stayed quiet long enough, you’d confess every dark secret on your own.
He kept one hand draped over the steering wheel, the other picking through the paper sack for something he could eat one-handed.
We hadn’t spoken since the diner, and I could feel the words stacking up behind my teeth, waiting for an excuse to spill out.
The world blurred by in streaks of river water and roadside poppies. I stole a look at my reflection in the side mirror, just to check if I looked as wrecked as I felt. My skin was washed out, almost green, the blue of my eyes dialed up to max in the mid-morning sun.
I flexed my left hand, waiting for the tremor to go away, but it just kept shaking harder, like my body was short-circuiting.
I shoved both hands into the belly of my hoodie, squeezing them into fists so tight it hurt.
The bracelet dug into my wrist, just above the tattoo, a perfect slice of pain that reminded me: you’re not alone, you’re not a stray anymore.
Bo caught the movement. He glanced sideways, one eyebrow raised. “You want a sandwich?” he asked, voice neutral, like he wasn’t sure if I’d answer or combust on the spot.
“I’m good,” I managed. “Just not hungry.”
He let it go, eyes back to the road.
I looked up at the rearview again. She was gone. Or maybe she’d never been there at all. I tried to remember if I’d really seen her, or just built her out of paranoia and the static of old memories. The more I tried to convince myself it was a hallucination, the less I believed it.