The Takedown

Chapter 13

13

You sure he’s clean?” Sal asks, gruff voice in the wind.

Vinny harrumphs. “He’s never been wrong before, never led us astray—we pay him enough, that’s for sure. I know, I know, it’s hard to trust a guy in a suit,” he says, wearing a suit himself. “A lot’s riding on this. Everything. The whole kit and kaboodle. Damn it, I’m starting to sound like my grandpa. Kit and kaboodle. But my FBI guy’s running interference. They don’t know a thing. It’ll work, the same time those wedding bells are ringing. And if it doesn’t... we’re fucked, my man. Absolutely shit out of luck. All those heists? All that money? It’s all been for fucking nothing .”

Internally, I startle as a door behind me and Nick swings open, a few party guests spilling drunkenly onto the deck, and Vinny and Sal go quiet. Nick tenses his hand around the small of my back, giving me a discreet warning sign: We should go. Now. Cold bites at the back of my neck, and my mind spins. Gail was absolutely right—her department is like Swiss cheese. Someone’s been feeding the Joneses information, has been helping them maneuver their way around the law.

But it’s more than that.

It seems like the Joneses are using the heists to buy something in particular . Maybe the previous heists were always to finance something bigger, more dangerous, worse? It’s like Nick can read my mind. It’s like we’re reading each other’s. Back inside the party, we share a knowing glance, pupils slightly wider than normal. How bad is this about to get?

In the end, no one is thrown overboard. No one seems to suspect that the server with the Pretty Woman wig is an undercover federal official. No one even gets seasick, if you don’t count Andre, who—instead of punching the champagne tower—decided to drink half the champagne tower and spent a large portion of the night in the small galley kitchen, pressing the side of his face to the cool tile. Very kindly, Diana smoothed a hand down his back and sung him off-key Christmas carols until we reached shore.

Don’t count it as a success, though.

Success is not Vinny’s phone number on a cocktail napkin; he handed it to me by the crab puff station. I’m supposed to “look him up” the next time I’m in Boston. Which, at this point, might be to visit Calla in her new multimillion-dollar town house overlooking the Charles River. I’m realizing, as we clamber onto the dock at just after one in the morning, that I’m missing something; it’s like the clues are all right there and I can’t quite put them together in a way that makes sense.

I inform Gail about Vinny and Sal’s conversation as soon as I’m off the boat. I couldn’t talk to her in person because I couldn’t find her—was she in the kitchen? The bathroom? The text pings back, unsent. No service near the water. It finally sends on the short trudge to the hotel, Nick and I keeping up appearances; he threads his hand through mine, glove to glove.

He squeezes, letting me know we’ll work through this.

What are we missing?

“You guys have a good night,” Nick tells Calla and Johnny in the lobby of the Ocean Harbor Inn as they disappear upstairs with their suitcases, all happy and giddy and in love. Nick watches them, stress and indignation washing off his tall, dark frame—and my god, I can’t stand any of this. All I want is to grab my key, crash into bed, and spend the next six hours working through the possibilities with Gail.

Gail, who isn’t responding to my message.

I try again. A second time. A third. No response.

“Reservation for Swift... Sydney,” I say, first in line before Nick, watching the concierge tap her clackity keys. She’s a tall woman in her mid-forties with square red glasses, and when her gaze flicks up at me again, I know that the unthinkable has happened.

“Swift with an S?” she asks. “S-W-I-F-T, like the bird?”

I nod. “Yeah, Swift. Sydney Swift.”

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Swift, but we don’t have you on file for this evening.”

“What’s going on?” Nick asks, inserting himself into the conversation. He’s hovering at a respectful distance, but I can still feel the heat of him. If I backed up, I’d fit right under his chin.

“Nothing,” I say, focusing only on the concierge. “Sorry, could you maybe check again?”

She checks again. Still nothing. “It’s possible that there’s been a glitch in our system. That’s happened before, but we had our IT guy come in last week. Normally I’d put you in another room, but this close to Christmas, we’re all booked up—and there’s a wedding party that’s just taken half the rooms... You know what? I’m so sorry. Let me get this gentleman behind you checked in, and then we’ll figure something out, if you wouldn’t mind taking a seat?”

“No, that’s... that’s fine,” I mumble, not really caring about the room, just the assignment. Just what Vinny said. Nick steps forward, trying to catch my eye, and— Nope. That is not happening. I know what those eyes are saying, and it is not happening . If the hotel can’t find space for me, I’ll stay right here in the lobby with the hard-looking couches and the free morning mini-muffins. This isn’t going to turn into one of those rom-com bed-sharing situations.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Nick says, immediately after he collects his keycard. “I just talked to her. There’s nothing available.”

“I’d rather sleep out in the Prius,” I say, because we both know what he’s suggesting. Him, me, one room, together. And I... don’t think I can do that.

“It’s negative twelve degrees outside,” Nick grunts, almost towering over me in his meticulously tailored dinner jacket. “You’ll freeze.”

My lips press together. “Then I’ll move to the lobby.”

“The lobby closes in six minutes. They’ll kick you out.”

“Then we’re back to the Prius,” I say.

Nick pinches the bridge of his nose, then lets out a strained, half-hearted laugh. “Sydney, just get in the goddamn elevator. You know you can’t do anything in the lobby, right?” He gives me a pointed gaze, annoyingly; he understands I’ll be up for the rest of the night, waiting for Gail to respond to my feverish, panicked messages.

The lights in the lobby flicker off. Wind rattles the revolving door to the parking lot, snow whipping past.

Begrudgingly, I trail my suitcase behind Nick.

It’s a silent ride up to the third floor, completely absent of Christmas music. Although if I listen very carefully, I suspect I might hear the grind of Nick’s teeth. He’s anxious. Anxious about what we just heard? Or about spending the night with me?

I clomp down the hall in my heels, and he fingers the keycard, hovering it over the handle, and a tinny beep lets us through the door. Inside, once again, is swanky for Maine. Sparkling white towels and a marbled vanity; a colonial dresser with golden buckles; a writing desk with chunky, handmade stationery. According to the website, every room at the Ocean Harbor Inn is uniquely styled. Ours, fittingly for the tense vibe, is called the War Room. There’s a painting of a rather serious horse by the curtain-closed windows and miniature stacks of books about the Revolutionary War on each nightstand.

And a bed.

Obviously, there’s a bed. Only one, queen-size, glaring at us from the middle of the room. Tucked at the base is a stiff, striped couch that might accommodate the length of a particularly short six-year-old.

I drop my suitcase on the floor. “It’s your room. You get the bed.”

“And make you sleep on the couch?” Nick says. “No way. You get the bed.”

“Before this turns into a bad script, how about neither of us gets the bed? You squeeze into that weird love seat couch and I’ll take the floor.”

Nick eyes the carpet dust suspiciously. “You won’t be allergic to that?”

I let out a short laugh, half impressed, half losing it after the night we’ve had. “How do you know I have allergies?”

Nick brushes past me. “Probably the same way you know my blood type.”

In the bathroom, he tells me that he’s contacted his handler at CSIS as well, informing him about the FBI leak, and that we should sift through our files again tonight—remind ourselves which FBI agents are or were attached to the Jones case. We settle into thoughtful silence, although I know it’s going to eat at him. Nick breaks it almost immediately, as I’m brushing my teeth. He clears his throat. Twice.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t do that,” I say around my toothbrush, not caring if I dribble a little. This isn’t like the first night. I’m not trying to seduce him anymore. We might’ve kissed twice—no, three times—but we’re colleagues. We’re here, in this hotel room, because we’re stuck together. “Don’t clear your throat like you have something to say and then pretend it was nothing. We’re past that.”

“Fine,” Nick says. “You brush too aggressively. You’re going to recede your gumline.”

I spit. “Is this you bodyguarding me?” I stare at him, agitated. “You look like Santa Claus.”

Nick’s put half a cup of bright white shaving cream on his face, and he’s currently dragging his razor over his jawline. There’s something strangely erotic about watching a man shave, but he will never, ever know that.

“I’m not going to take that as an insult,” he says, maintaining focus.

“Okay,” I joke back, “Old Saint Nick.”

In the main room, I swing open the minibar fridge to reveal an assemblage of fizzy waters and something orange in a glass bottle; I select the orange one and hold the bottle against the pulse in my neck. Good. Cool. It’s freezing outside, but stress heat is still flushing up my cheeks. It’s one twenty-six in the morning. On the twenty-third of December. That’s less than two days to stop the attack.

Clanking the bottle down, I unzip the back of my dress, removing the wires and replaying Vinny’s words in my head. Rewinding them like a tape recorder.

I’m missing something, right?

What does this have to do with the Mid-Coast Maine contact? Or the van Johnny hired? Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe the van is just their getaway vehicle?

In the bathroom, Nick runs the tap. The whole space is starting to smell like his pine-scented aftershave. The scent should be cloying. There’s too much of him here. Changing quickly into my pajamas—a less homely set this time, silk bottoms and a black sweatshirt—I decide to carve out a nook for myself in the corner. Soon, my computer’s out and whirring.

In my emails, I click on the encrypted link that Gail sent several hours earlier: live surveillance from outside the gift shop. A virtual stakeout. On-screen, the whitewashed clapboard building creaks in the mild wind; there’s a flag on the porch, softly waving. It advertises the candles.

Towel in hand, wiping down the sides of his neck, Nick saunters out of the bathroom as I’m hitting send. Right now, a normal question would be: Do you snore? Instead, he says, “You look like you’re... spiraling.”

“A bit.” Over my laptop, I can see Nick pause at the foot of the bed, his face scrunched into a concerned look. “Here I am thinking that the heists were to finance their lifestyle, to make the family richer, but it seems like it’s all a ploy to buy something. Maybe the next attack is going to be their biggest yet because they need the rest of the money fast, but something is just not clicking, like... this gift shop. What the hell is up with this gift shop? And this isn’t Love Actually , okay? This isn’t one of those Christmas stories that ends with everyone hugging at the airport. In fact, it might end with Johnny getting arrested in the airport as he’s trying to flee the country for Guatemala, or some other country where you can disappear into the rainforest, and my sister would not do well in the rainforest. The spiders are enormous—”

“Hey, hey.” He crouches down in front of me, eyebrows crowding in the middle. “I hate this as much as you do. But all we can do is keep going. I’m sure, as we speak, both of our agencies are pulling security footage on Vinny. We haven’t been tracking him nearly as much as we’ve been tracking Johnny. Something will turn up in time. We’ll find out who he’s been meeting, they’ll arrest that guy and get him to talk.” Nick puffs out a breath. “What’s best for the case is for you to take a break, Sydney. Use this time to rest. You’ve been running yourself ragged.”

“I’m sure I’ll survive.”

When I keep my eyes glued to the surveillance live stream, Nick stands up, pours himself a glass of tap water from the bathroom sink, and drinks it like he’s spent the last twelve weeks wandering the desert. Then he starts talking to me again. “I bet you’re tired. You drank three cold brews on the way up here.”

My eyes don’t leave the live stream. “Honestly? I couldn’t fall to sleep right now if I tried. My brain’s working at about a million miles a minute, and I’ve forgotten my gummies.”

Nick raises an eyebrow.

“Melatonin gummies,” I clarify, hardly looking up. “They help me wind down. Give me really weird dreams, though.”

“Ah,” Nick says. “ That is Taylor Swift .” He pauses, running a hand over the back of his neck. The white shirt is clinging to Nick’s collarbone. He’s taken off his dinner jacket, rolled up his sleeves. “Look, while you’re watching whatever you’re watching—”

“Gift shop live stream,” I supply.

“Gift shop live stream,” Nick repeats, a little confused. “Maybe we can use this time to... get to know each other better. For the mission. Isn’t that what partners do on stakeouts? Things are heating up, and I want us to trust each other. Fully.”

Finally, my neck cranes up. The way Nick is gazing at me now, it’s like I could say anything to him and he’d listen.

“I can’t do that,” I say firmly, standing up with my laptop, pacing for a moment before resettling on the bed.

He tries to guess what I’m thinking. “By the time I met Calla,” Nick says clearly, slowly, “Johnny had already decided that she was the one. I didn’t have time to warn her before she potentially got caught up in all this. I thought if I worked my ass off, I could put him behind bars before he had a chance to entrap her permanently. Then you came into the picture, and I figured, ‘Here’s another person who’s about to get sucked in,’ and I felt so fucking guilty —”

“But you thought I might know something.”

“Yeah, well, you did know something, and I—” He cuts himself off, face clouding. “I still don’t want this to hurt you,” he finishes, eyes boring into mine. “Both of us are trying to take Johnny down, and we’re going to need to lean on each other if we’re going to do it together.”

I shift uncomfortably on the mattress. “Okay, this is going to sound like a line... but it’s not you. It’s—I’m not sure I’m capable of trusting you. Or anyone, really... anymore.”

“Because of your job?”

“Because...” My lip twitches. “Because of some pretty complicated family dynamics, and the job on top of that.”

Nick nods at this, hands on his hips. “Well, you just trusted me enough to tell me that, Sydney. So that’s a start.” His eyes survey the room before he seems to decide something, bridging the gap between us and sitting down on the middle of the bed, cross-legged, facing me. “Maybe we should turn this into a game. Getting to know each other.”

I slide my gaze to his. “After Pictionary? You’re sure that’s a good idea?”

He grunt-laughs. “There’s no drawing involved, and no guessing. Definitely no SpongeBob.” The clock on the nightstand reads 1:31 a.m. Nick tilts his head toward it. “How about this? Ten minutes. You can keep track. Ten minutes of total honesty. I ask you a question, you ask me a question. You can skip anything you don’t want to answer, but if you do answer, it can’t be a lie.”

That... terrifies me. My mind tries to poke holes in this with a wisecrack. “Do you have one of those portable lie detector tests in your suitcase?”

“No.” He searches my face for a beat too long. “I just know your tells.”

Pff. “I don’t have any tells.”

Nick leans his shoulders over his knees. “You think you don’t have any tells.”

“You met me three days ago,” I quip, sliding my laptop to the side. “I think you forget that you don’t actually know me.”

“Oh really?” he says.

I swallow. “Really.”

“You love your family,” he says, soft yet matter-of-fact, “but you keep your distance because you’re scared of having meaningful relationships with people, because that means you can lose them. They can leave you. You’re like Sweetie Pie. You look tough, but on the inside, you’re sweet. You like any type of bread and hate that cider your grandma bought. You were a nerd in high school—”

Here, I jump in to interject, almost happy that I’ve discovered something counterfactual. “I wasn’t a nerd.”

“Debate team, marching band,” Nick says, ticking them off on his fingers. “Cute nerd. Accept it. When I asked you if you liked your job? You don’t. You probably like the thrill of it sometimes, and the escape of it sometimes, but I think you’re just like me. I think you hate the moral compromises you have to make, even though you have to make them all the time. You’re afraid of what’ll happen if you quit, but you’re afraid of what’ll happen if you stay. Maybe I’m projecting here, but if that’s true, believe me, I get it.”

Finished, he throws me a knowing look.

It kills me.

Reaching up to the desk, I take a sip of tap water from the glass; it tastes strongly of minerals. “Know what? Fine. Honesty game.”

Nick repositions his legs on the floor, recrossing. “Yeah?”

The two of us have spent so many hours lying to each other, maybe this is a good antidote. And maybe... maybe there’s a small part of me that wants to know him, that wants to let him know the Sydney I was before. “ Only ten minutes, because I’m still watching the live stream. And I’ll probably skip most of the questions.”

“Fair enough,” Nick says, straightening his back. “We’ll start with an easy one. What’s... the best Christmas gift you’ve ever received?”

My lips twist to the side. That isn’t so easy . “Probably this quilt that Calla sewed me one year? It was a project for home economics, and it’s like this terrible brown, with all of these strings hanging from it. But she made it for me, so...” I shrug, flicking my gaze back and forth to the computer screen. “I love it. You?”

Nick considers this. “There was this one year my grandmother tracked down an unopened box of my favorite cereal from when I was a kid. Cocoa Boulders. Like Cocoa Pebbles, but bigger? And three times the sugar.” Nick swigs his water. “I ate the whole box in one sitting and gave myself a kidney stone.”

I snort, amused. “How old were you? Fifteen?”

“Twenty-four,” he says, then slides right into: “What’s your biggest fear?”

Jesus . Can we stick with the cereal talk?

“Is that a skip?” Nick appraises me. “How about your biggest irrational fear?”

I run my tongue along my teeth, unwilling to give in this early. I have a bad, bad answer, though. “That a snake will pop out of the toilet right when I’m going to the bathroom.”

Nick spits out half a mouthful of water, spraying the bed. He chokes on a laugh. Actually chokes. “That is— not what I was expecting you to say. Is that... like... a thing that happens?”

I’m straight-faced. “Everything has happened to someone, Nick.”

Nick shudders. “Okay, you already know my biggest irrational fear. Easter Bunny. It’s unnatural. I also really can’t stand wet paper. On the side of the road and stuff. Paper shouldn’t be wet.”

“What about pulp?” I ask, incredulous. “Paper manufacturing? Paper has to be wet to exist.”

“That is what makes it irrational .”

I smirk, shifting on the bed, mattress squeaking. We are blazing through these questions. I refresh the computer screen, making sure that the live stream is still running. “Your last girlfriend. Was that Bobbie?”

“You’re thorough.”

“Instagram,” I supply. “What happened?”

“Ripped my heart to shreds, to be honest,” Nick says, blowing out a breath. It dusts my face on the other side of the bed. He smells clean, minty, with a hint of citrus. “She was, uh, actually engaged to someone else and didn’t tell me until we’d been dating for five and a half months.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, that was not a fun conversation. I couldn’t be a part of something like that.” When his eyes flick toward mine, he says, “What about you? Last boyfriend.”

His name emerges flatter than I’d intended. “Griffin. We were together for two months.”

“And?”

“And there wasn’t...”

This , my brain inserts. There wasn’t this. The back-and-forth. The banter. The intense eye contact over a hotel bed.

“Chemistry,” I finish.

“You weren’t in love?” Nick asks.

I shake my head. “No.”

“Do you believe in love?” He grimaces. “Pretend I didn’t ask that in a cheesy way.”

The question still hovers between us, heavy. “Yeah,” I say finally, vision dipping to the computer for a second, avoiding his eyes, “but I also believe in the inevitable possibility of love being ripped violently away from you if you’re not careful enough. Like you said.” Nick’s lips part to respond to that, and for some reason, I just can’t take whatever he’s about to add.

“Love,” I continue, surprising myself, “is having someone who knows you so well, you can just be with them in silence. When we were younger, Grandma Ruby took Calla and me on this one-night cruise on Prince Edward Island, and we sat next to this German couple at dinner. There were all these courses, and when we got to the cheese course, Calla and I realized that they hadn’t spoken to each other since the breadsticks. Just ate their cheese, no talking. And I used to think that was really sad, because they were old, and maybe they didn’t have anything to say to each other anymore. Maybe they’d gotten tired of each other. But now I think they could sit and just eat their cheese, and everything was comfortable, and everything was okay, because they knew each other inside and out... What is your actual biggest fear?”

Nick blinks. “Wow, that was like whiplash.”

“Sorry. I figured we only have three minutes left in the game. Thought I’d get my money’s worth.” I tip my water glass in his direction. “Biggest fear, you’re up.”

Deliberation flits across Nick’s features. “I feel like my biggest fear changes the older I get. I don’t have one . I have a constantly evolving series of fears. When I was a kid, it was that my grandmother was going to die. My parents divorced when I was eight years old, and my mom basically jumped ship to another family in Toronto. My dad’s a workaholic, so growing up, it was just me and my grandma.”

“You loved her a lot,” I say, not a question.

“Yeah. She was... She was like your Grandma Ruby. Warm. Supportive. Tough. You never dared to argue with her, because she’d fix you with this... this look .” He laughs, but it’s sad. “I miss that look. First Christmas I’m not seeing it. When I made that toast at the bar? Thanking you for making me feel at home? I meant it. I was grateful to be there with you. I didn’t want to spend the holidays alone.”

Something in my belly drops. Fuck. We really are being honest with each other. “And now? What’s your biggest fear now?”

“This,” he says, blinking at me.

This? What does he mean this ?

“Messing up anything about this mission,” he clarifies. “I... uh...” He clears his throat, scratching at the side of his face, uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “I never answered that question you asked me at the Moose Lodge. About why I agreed to inform on Johnny if he was such a great friend. And firstly, you’re only friends with someone if you actually know who you’re talking to. He hid so many things, by the time I found them out, it was like I’d been catfished. The big switch for me, it was when we were out at this bar, back in Boston, and Johnny got into this disagreement with some kid. He made it out like he wanted to calmly speak to this guy outside. Just talk things over. They were taking forever, so I went to check on them. Stepped into the alleyway just in time to see Johnny punch the kid in the kidneys—and spit on his back. Johnny’s hovering over him going, ‘Do you know who my family is? Do you know who you’ve messed with?’?” Nick rakes his teeth over his bottom lip. “CSIS contacted me pretty soon after that, told me about Johnny’s criminal background. I felt sick to my stomach about everything I heard. If it had just been his family... people aren’t their families. I would’ve stuck by him, stuck through it. But it’s Johnny , too. The amount of lives he’s personally fucked up...”

I’m motionless on the bed, wouldn’t dream of interrupting him. It’s obvious: Nick has been waiting a long time to tell someone his story. “I joined CSIS because of a strong sense of moral duty. I wanted to ‘make a difference’ in the world, and I couldn’t see myself working a nine-to-five, and I thought, hey, it’ll keep me fit, keep my mind engaged. But honestly? I was also trying to follow in my dad’s footsteps. He was CSIS, and we never got along too great, and I thought that maybe I’d—I don’t know—understand him better? Feel what he felt when he was on the job? Didn’t matter, though. Didn’t fix anything. And I keep telling myself that I am doing something good, that I’m making people like my grandma safer, but it’s like you said—am I? Are we? Is this really the best way to do good in the world?” He looks entirely deflated. “I’m just hoping that I haven’t gone through all of this for nothing.”

“You haven’t,” I say automatically.

“You don’t know that,” he says, voice soft.

It’s not my turn anymore, but I can’t help but ask. “What’s the scar on your stomach from?”

He flinches, his thick eyebrows drawing together. Still wearing his dress shirt, Nick peers down at the foot-long scar beneath the fabric, as if to remind himself that it’s there. For a moment, I think he’s going to wind down the clock. Tell me pass . New question. “It was the first time I truly realized what I’d gotten myself into,” he answers, voice gravelly. “I was two months into the job, guarding Johnny. We were meeting one of his ‘business associates’ at his home in Boston. Needless to say, the deal went south. Guy pulled out his knife. I stepped in front of Johnny, pushed him back—and the knife went clear through. That’s why he trusts me so much. Because he thinks I’d die for him.” His eyes shift to my wrist. “Your tattoo? What’s it mean?”

Now he’s giving me whiplash. My mouth goes completely dry. He might be the only person in the world who has ever had that effect on me. My fingers trace the half-moon outline. “Why do you want to know about this so bad?”

“That’s the first time I found out you existed. I met Calla and she was thinking about getting a new tattoo. She pointed to her wrist and said, My sister, Sydney, has a matching one . Then she showed us a picture of you. You were—” Nick chuckles lightly. “You were on this white water raft?”

“Oh god,” I say, covering my mouth with my hand. “That was not a good trip.”

“Didn’t someone get their teeth knocked out?”

I nod humorously. “One of the guys in the back. He didn’t hold on to his T-grip, and there was just... It was terrible.”

“But that’s what I noticed about you ,” Nick says. “Obviously the accident hadn’t happened yet, but everyone else in the raft looked absolutely petrified. You were going full speed over this rapid, and you had this... this... war face on. Like you were a Viking shieldmaiden or something. While everyone else was leaning back, you were leaning in.”

“And you thought,” I try, “?‘That girl is really pretty’?”

“Actually I thought, ‘That girl scares the shit out of me.’?” He smirks. “But yeah, essentially. Then I asked Calla what the tattoo meant and she just kind of clammed up. Wouldn’t really talk about it.”

“That’s because we don’t really talk about it. Not anymore.” I rub the tattoo. “I think we got it for different reasons, or maybe not, I...”

Nick sits up straighter. Just like I did for him, he doesn’t interject. Doesn’t speak. Just listens.

And it’s the listening, it’s the way his eyes are scanning my face, really trying to know me. It’s the fact that we have the same job, that he understands what I do, that this room is nearly silent except for the whir of the computer and the merging of our breath, and when I think about somewhere I want to be, it’s wrapped under Nick’s arm. It’s my head in the crook of his neck, and that terrifies me, and—

“I think that tattoo’s for my and Calla’s dad,” I say, not sure where to even begin. Maybe our dad always plunged the tip of his finger into his coffee to make sure it was cool enough to drink. Maybe he used to stick pencils in his mouth, like walrus tusks, to make me laugh. Once, he made a crown for Calla out of a Honey Nut Cheerios box. He was a good father. He was an unprepared father. One of the last words he said to me was my name.

Be good, Sydney bean.

“Our dad decided that he wasn’t cut out for solo parenting,” I say, something building, scratching, dying to get out. “Or maybe that’s not even it. Because he wasn’t really a parent. Grandma Ruby filled the caregiver role. Maybe it’s more like... my mom died when I was little, and Dad never really went to therapy or anything, and it might’ve just... built up, you know? I’ve never fully figured it out, but he told us he was going hiking. And he did go hiking. He just never came back. At first we thought he was missing, and Grandma Ruby got really worried, but he was just still out there. I think he did the whole Appalachian Trail in one direction, and then turned around and did it again.”

Nick’s still silent, still listening.

“And I couldn’t contact him,” I say, throat burning. “I couldn’t really ask him why, and by the time I could, I was so furious , so... sad that I decided it was easier if we never reconnected. Even though we had a lot of fun together. When I was a kid. He always sort of did his own thing, but he let me tag along. Like camping. I’m not even sure if Calla remembers this, but there was this one night, a few weeks before he left? Calla and I dragged our sleeping bags out by the lake, and we fell asleep under this perfect half-moon. It was the last time I remember feeling truly... like everything was okay.”

I gulp. My throat has almost dried up completely. And I can’t look at Nick, don’t want to see myself reflected in his eyes, see him pity me.

“Sydney...” Nick says.

“It’s fine,” I say reflexively, but Nick’s reached out, his hand clasping my chin, forcing my gaze up. My eyes to his eyes.

“It’s not,” he says, one of his thumbs grazing my cheek. “It’s not .”

And maybe that—that, finally, is what does it. Two stupid, simple words that I’ve needed to hear for half of my life. It’s not. It’s not okay. It wasn’t okay. It’s never been okay. And I’ve just been drifting in this... this not-okay-ness, unable to share it with anyone. Afraid to risk someone seeing me—because what if they did? And what if they left? And what if it happened all over again?

Nick’s hand stays, cupping the side of my face. Nick stays.

“What sucks is my dad probably knew me better than anyone,” I add, plowing through, and my breath’s coming out furiously now. Rugged words. And relief . It’s like stepping out of a dark shed, fresh rain on my skin. These memories, they’ve needed air. They’ve needed someone to hear them; someone who’s leaning in instead of away. “And he let me go, and I think ever since I’ve tried to become this... this unknowable person. That’s what one of my exes called me. ‘Unknowable by definition.’ And I’ve picked this job—this stupid, stupid job—where I can know everything about everyone else, read them, study them, pick apart their motives, see the signs, where I’m allowed to be only a fraction of myself, where I’m hiding things because that’s the point , and I think underneath it all I’m terrified. I’m just terrified that by wanting to be unknowable, I’ll actually become unknowable, to everyone, and I’ll never have that... I’ll never have that again...”

I’m scratching too close, digging too far, into an essential truth about me, and maybe I... maybe I shouldn’t have...

I sniff, looking at the clock. “Time’s up.”

The only other sounds in the hotel room are the hum of the miniature fridge and the heated whoosh of the radiator by the window. Nick breaks the silence, his voice just as ragged as my own. “You want to go for round two?”