3. Bonnie
BONNIE
T he librarian had amber eyes.
That was the thought stuck in my head as I drove home from the library, which was ridiculous.
I had a hundred things to worry about, and the color of a stranger’s eyes shouldn’t have made the list. But there it was, lodged in my brain alongside the grocery list, the electric bill, and the fact that Lawson was probably starved.
He’d made me almost laugh, though.
That was the thing I kept circling back to. Not a real laugh—I wasn’t sure I remembered what those felt like—but close enough that my face had done something it hadn’t in weeks.
A poetry section filing a complaint?
Who says that?
What kind of librarian makes jokes about traumatizing books by cursing?
Apparently, the kind with warm eyes and a voice I could still hear in my head even though I’d left twenty minutes ago.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and pushed thoughts of him away. I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t have time for anything that wasn’t Lawson, work, or school.
Speaking of Lawson.
I picked up my phone at the next stop sign and opened the tracking app. The little blue dot that represented his phone blinked at me from across town.
He wasn’t home anymore.
The dot sat on the east side of town, on a street I recognized now.
I’d looked up the address last time, when the dot first showed Lawson there at eleven o’clock on a school night.
A quick search had connected it to a rental property, and a few more minutes of digging had confirmed what I already suspected.
It was Darren’s place.
“What are you even doing there, Lawson?” I muttered, tossing my phone onto the passenger seat.
I could go home. I could tell myself he’d come back on his own, and that making a scene would only push him further away. That was the smart play, probably. The one all the parenting blogs I’d read at the library would have recommended.
I ignored all that advice and turned my car around, driving to the east side of town instead.
When I pulled up to the house a few minutes later, my stomach tightened.
It was a crappy-looking place with a patchy lawn and a chain-link fence that leaned at an angle in places like it had given up on standing straight a long time ago.
A black sedan sat in the driveway. The porch light was on, and beneath it, two figures stood near the front steps.
Lawson and Cade.
Cade was leaning against the sedan with his arms crossed over his chest, looking like he owned the whole street.
He was maybe nineteen with dark hair, pale eyes, and sharp features that reminded me of his older brother.
There was a cigarette tucked behind his ear—or was that a joint?
I couldn’t tell. My gaze drifted to Lawson, who stood beside him with his hands in the pockets of the black hoodie he’d been wearing earlier.
His posture was loose and easy in a way it never was at home. He looked relaxed here. Comfortable.
That stung worse than anything.
I pulled up to the curb and cut the engine. Both of them turned to look at me. Cade’s expression didn’t change—he kept the same flat, bored stare—but Lawson’s face cycled through about four emotions in two seconds before landing on furious.
I got out of the car.
“What are you doing here?” Lawson’s eyes darted to Cade, then back to me.
“Get in the car, Lawson.”
“How did you even know where I was?”
I didn’t answer that. “We’re not doing this here. Get in the car.”
“I’m just hanging out.”
“Get in,” I said.
“Are you serious right now?” His voice cracked with disbelief.
“Get in the car, Lawson.”
Cade watched the whole exchange between us without moving. His lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile, but still signified that he found the situation amusing.
I wanted to wipe that look off his face.
“Now!” I shouted.
Lawson must have realized fighting me was a losing battle. He stalked toward my car and yanked the passenger door open, flopped into the seat, and slammed the door shut hard enough to rock the whole car.
Cade lifted two fingers in a lazy wave but didn’t say anything.
I got in and pulled away from the curb before I said something to that kid I’d regret.
The first five minutes of the drive were dead silent. Lawson stared out the window with his jaw locked and his arms crossed over his chest, stinking like weed.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.
“Doing what? Hanging out with friends?”
“They’re not your friends.”
He let out a short, sharp laugh. “You don’t even know them.”
“I know enough.”
“You know nothing.” He turned to face me, and the look in his eyes made my chest ache. It was fury, sure, but underneath it was something rawer. “You don’t know Cade. You don’t know Darren. You just decided they’re bad because of Dad, and that’s not fair.”
“It’s not about Dad?—”
“It’s always about Dad!” His voice filled the car. “Everything is about Dad. You came back because of Dad. You watch me like a prison guard because of Dad, because you think I’m turning into him.”
The words hit me like a slap.
“That’s not why,” I managed.
“Then why?”
Because you come home smelling like weed. Because you won’t tell me where you go or who you’re with, and the only name that keeps coming up is connected to the man who helped put our father in prison.
I couldn’t say any of that without proving his point.
“Because I’m worried about you,” I said instead.
“I don’t need you to worry about me.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“And you’re not my mom.”
The words landed heavy and sharp-edged. He was right.
I wasn’t his mom. Our mom had packed a bag when I was his age and Lawson was six and walked out the front door without looking back.
I’d stepped into that gap because someone had to, but stepping into it didn’t make it mine.
Not really. Not in the way that mattered to a kid.
“Darren and Cade are the only ones who didn’t leave,” Lawson said, quieter now. The anger had drained out of his voice, leaving something worse behind. Sadness. “Mom left. Dad’s gone. You left.”
“I came back.”
“Only because you had to.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t come back for him, not in the way I should have.
I’d come back because there was no other option.
Because the alternative was foster care, and I couldn’t live with that.
But the reason I’d left in the first place?
That had been for me. I’d chosen myself, and he’d been the one left standing in the driveway watching me leave.
The guilt of that sat on my chest like a cinder block.
We pulled into our driveway, and Lawson was out of the car before I’d even shifted into park. He went straight inside. I sat in the car with the engine off and my forehead pressed against the steering wheel instead of following after him.
What was I supposed to do here?
The question followed me into the next day.
It sat with me through my shift at the Grill, where I smiled at customers and refilled glasses of sweet tea and pretended everything was fine.
It rode with me to the library that afternoon, where I set up at my corner table and opened my laptop like I had any hope of concentrating.
I didn’t.
Lawson hadn’t spoken to me this morning. He’d eaten cereal for breakfast, put his bowl in the sink, and left for school without a word. I’d checked the tracking app from the Grill during my lunch shift—he was at school, or at least his phone was—and tried to feel relieved instead of pathetic.
The library was quiet around me. A few people drifted in and out, but mostly it was just me and the sounds of the librarian with the amber eyes working at the front desk. I could hear him turning pages.
I stared at my screen and tried to care about finishing the current lesson I was on.
I didn’t.
A few minutes later—or maybe it was longer, I’d lost track—something appeared at the edge of my vision. A white ceramic mug. Steam curled from the top as it sat on the table.
Tea.
I stared at it. Then I looked up, but the librarian with the amber eyes was already walking back to the front desk. He hadn’t said a word to me—had he? Maybe I hadn’t heard him because I’d been too lost in my head.
No.
He’d just set it there like it was the most natural thing in the world—like he made tea for people every day.
He didn’t.
I’d been coming here for weeks, and I’d never once seen him make tea for anyone, least of all me.
My throat tightened. It was such a small thing. A cup of tea. It cost virtually nothing, meant nothing, and probably took him sixty seconds to make. Even so, no one had done something like that for me in so long that I didn’t know what to make of it. The kindness felt too big for the small gesture.
I wrapped both hands around the mug and let the heat seep into my palms.
“Thank you,” I whispered, low enough that I wasn’t sure he could hear me.
I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. If I looked at him right now—into those steady amber eyes—I would lose it. Right here in the library, surrounded by books that were apparently very sensitive, I would cry.
I took a sip. It was good. Chamomile with a touch of honey.
At the front desk, I heard him sit back down and get back to whatever he’d been doing. I took another sip and felt myself relax just enough to finally breathe for the first time all day.