Chapter 12
Ty
The linen closet was fine.
The linen closet wasn't fine.
I'm standing in my kitchen at nine thirty on a Thursday night staring at a kettle that's been boiling for four minutes because I forgot to turn it off, and the reason I forgot is that I'm trying to decide whether to send the message I'm about to send, and the message is going to ruin the only truce we've managed to negotiate in ten years.
I turn off the kettle, pour the water over the tea bag I don't want, and stand at the counter.
"Stop it," I say, out loud, to my own kitchen.
I pick up the phone.
Me: Can I come over.
I send it before the part of me that writes and deletes things can intervene. The bubble goes through. I put the phone face down and burn my tongue on tea that's too hot. Good. I've needed something to actually hurt for forty-eight hours.
The phone buzzes.
Hanna: Now?
Me: Now.
Hanna: Ty.
Me: Now, Hanna.
A pause. The three dots appear, disappear, appear again. I don't breathe for what I'd estimate is the length of a short documentary.
Hanna: Fine. Use the side door. Cal's not here.
Cal isn’t there. Cal is at the Watershed with Beck and Aiden because tonight is Thursday. Hanna knows this. I know this. Hanna saying "Cal's not here" is her way of acknowledging we're both still pretending in writing, because pretending in writing is safer.
I get in the truck.
This time I invited myself. That's the first thing that's different.
The second is that I drove across town on a Thursday night to have a conversation I've been not having for weeks, and I'm out of grace periods, and I'm out of patience, and I'm specifically out of the kind of patience that lets me sit in a booth at Peak Grounds with a Le Carré and pretend I'm not here to say what I'm here to say.
She opens the door in sweatpants and the soft gray t-shirt with the Portland Fire crest bleached almost off, hair wet, and looks at me the way people look at a bill they've been avoiding in the mail.
"Come in."
"Thanks."
"Kitchen."
She turns and I follow her down the narrow hallway without touching her. I could touch her. The geography is there. I specifically don't, because touching her is how we got into this conversation and I'm not going to let it get us back out.
The kitchen has a single lamp on over the stove, a plate in the sink, a half-finished glass of wine on the counter, a novel on the table face down with the spine cracked. Hanna gestures at the table. I sit. She stays at the counter, arms crossed, leaning against the sink — her combat posture.
"Talk."
"I'm done."
"Done with what?"
"This." I put my hands flat on the table. "I'm not doing the secret again. Not the linen closet. Not two a.m. texts we delete. Not Peak Grounds with Micah pretending he's looking at an espresso machine. I'm not doing any of it."
"So, what is this? What am I looking at?"
"You're looking at me telling you I want the real thing."
"And the real thing is — "
"Public."
She exhales. It's not a laugh — it's the thing her face does before deploying the joke that's going to protect her.
"Right. Because going public worked out so well in my previously imagined scenarios — the ones where I tell my brother, who punched a guy at a bar in Portland for the sole offense of standing too close to me, that I've been lying to him for ten years about sleeping with his best friend?
Let me picture this. Cal is at the Watershed.
I sit down. I order a beer. I say, 'Hey Cal, funny story, remember that one night at the academy — '"
"Stop."
" — and Cal says, 'Oh Hanna, tell me more,' and then Big Jim brings out a sheet cake that says 'Congratulations on the Ten-Year Betrayal' in buttercream, and Riley flies in on a dove, and — "
"Stop, Hanna."
She stops. Her hands are shaking. I don't think she knows.
"I'm not going to do it in the dark again." I hold her gaze. "I did that once. I came out the other side of it alone and I'm not doing it again."
"You think I am?"
"I think we're doing it right now."
"We're figuring out — "
"We're sneaking around. There's no other name for it."
"We're being careful."
"We're lying. I don't want to lie to Cal. I don't want to lie to the crew. I don't want to lie to Micah, who's a good man and has enough on his plate without carrying the weight of what he watches us do."
"Oh my god."
"I don't want to lie to your mother — "
"My mother knows."
That stops me. "What?"
"She knows, Ty. I saw her on Sunday. She didn't say it. But she knows. She's been knowing probably since I moved home, because she's my mother and she raised me and I'm not actually as opaque as I think I am, which is another conversation for another day."
"Then — "
"Don't. Don't try to use that as — "
"Your mother knows. Mine doesn't, because mine is in Boise and we don't talk. Cal doesn't. Derek doesn't. Riley probably does because Riley is Riley, but she hasn't said it, which means officially she doesn't. And the rest of the crew — "
"You want me to tell Cal."
"Yes."
"When."
"Tomorrow."
She laughs. It's not a laugh. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
"Ty, you're out of your mind."
"Probably."
"You want me to walk into my brother's place tomorrow morning and say, 'Hey Cal, the guy whose back you've had since you were a kid has been in my bed— '"
"Yes."
"'And also, ten years ago during the academy he was in my bed every night for three months — '"
"Yes."
"'And we lied about it to you then and we've been lying about it to you now and I'm home to stop lying, Cal, I'm home to be honest.'"
"Yes, Hanna."
"No." She pushes off the sink and paces to the fridge and back in her thin athletic socks — I saw them once under the table at her mother's house; specific memory, entirely useless. "I can't do it tomorrow. I can't do it on Saturday. I don't know when I can do it."
"Then we have a problem."
"Don't you dare give me a timeline."
"I'm not giving you a timeline. I'm giving you a — "
"An ultimatum. That's the textbook definition of an ultimatum. I learned it in a magazine when I was seventeen."
"You didn't read magazines when you were seventeen."
"I read one magazine once. It covered ultimatums. This is one."
"I'm not giving you an ultimatum. I'm telling you what I can and can't do. I can't do the secret again. That's the information."
"That's an ultimatum with better phrasing."
"Maybe."
She stops pacing. Her eyes are the eyes I saw in the hallway at the station at midnight, when her back was against the wall — I've tried for six weeks not to think about those eyes, and I've thought about them every time I've closed my own, and thinking about them now isn't helping me keep my voice even.
"I can't lose Cal." Her voice drops. "Ty, I can't. I can't be the person who broke my brother."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I know better than anyone, Hanna."
"Then why are you — "
"Because I can't keep him either. Not like this.
" The thing happening to my voice — it isn't working correctly and I can hear it.
I take a breath and make it work. "I can't look at him on Sunday with you next to me at his mother's table and pretend I haven't had my mouth on you in a hallway two days prior.
I can't take his check for the fundraiser and shake his hand knowing I'm lying to him with the same hand.
I can't be his brother and your secret. One of those has to go. I want it to be the secret."
"Ty."
"I'm not asking you to do it tomorrow. That was a bad choice of words. I'm asking you to agree we're going to do it — before he finds out another way. Because he's going to find out another way, Hanna. The barbecue is Saturday and half the station has an eyebrow up, and Gemma — "
"Gemma?" Her head comes up.
"She found us. Wednesday. In the linen closet."
"Oh my god, I forgot."
"She was cool about it. She's a friend. But she's the canary.
We're out of canaries. Derek is going to figure it out by accident by Saturday.
Cal is going to figure it out because his best friend and his sister are making a face he hasn't seen either of us make.
His radar isn't going to be broken forever, Hanna — it's broken because the input is him. "
She's staring at me. "You've been thinking about this a lot."
"I haven't been sleeping."
"Okay."
She sits down across the table and pulls the novel toward her with one finger, spinning it in place the way she used to spin a pen when she was thinking. I recognize the spin. I'm not going to comment on the spin.
"I'm terrified," she says. "I'm specifically terrified of a very specific thing, which is that I tell Cal, and Cal looks at me the way people looked at my dad's funeral — like the thing they want to fix is already done — and he says something like 'I understand,' and he doesn't, and then we have a Christmas where he doesn't come, and my mom has to pretend, and the whole Larsen thing — the whole house, the whole — "
She trails off.
The thing she isn't saying — the thing under the thing — settles on me. Because I know exactly what the rest of the sentence is. I've been living inside the rest of that sentence for ten years.