31. Silas
THIRTY-ONE
SILAS
A MONTH LATER
The roof garden of my apartment building looks better in theory than in practice.
It always has. When I first moved in, I thought about what I could do with it since it seemed no one else in the building was interested. It’s not a huge space, but it has good light, so I bought a bench and put it by the low wall where you can see the Atlanta skyline.
The first time I sat on that bench, I thought about what I’d grow up here.
Then I went away for a job and came back and the first seedlings had died, and I went away again, and came back again, and eventually I stopped trying to grow things and started keeping one plant inside where I could manage it better.
Cathy.
Cathy is still alive, which is more than can be said for everything else up here.
The containers I had going before Pine Ridge are dead, thoroughly dead, the soil cracked and gray, the stems brown and finished.
I haven’t touched them since I got back.
I’ve been sitting on the bench and looking at the skyline and not touching anything.
It doesn’t matter.
The apartment is for sale.
I put it on the market the week I got back from Pine Ridge, which is either the most decisive thing I’ve done in years or the most impulsive—after quitting my job, that is.
I’ve had four viewings already, and the estate agent is cautiously optimistic, which in estate agent language means she thinks it’ll sell quickly.
The price she suggested is good. I don’t need the money. I have more money than I know what to do with, due to ten years of being very good at a well-paying job and having nowhere to spend my salary, but the sale means I have no ties to any particular place.
I don’t know where I’m going yet.
I know what I want. A single-story house somewhere. A garden big enough for a proper vegetable patch, not containers, and definitely not a rooftop. I want actual ground with actual soil I can work and tend and make something of.
Somewhere quiet. Somewhere that feels like the kind of place people choose rather than end up.
What I’m not letting myself think about is where that somewhere is.
The coffee cup in my hand is empty. I stand up and take the stairs back down to my apartment.
Once upon a time, the lone figure by the door would have put me on edge. But the thing about having a best friend is that you learn all the angles of their shape.
He’s standing in the corridor with his hands in his pockets, and the arm that was in a sling last time I saw him is now free.
“You look like shit” is the first thing he says.
“Hello to you too,” I reply.
I unlock the door, and he follows me in. He takes in the apartment. The sparse, anonymous quality of it, the packed boxes in the corner of the living room, the general atmosphere of a space in the process of a moveout.
“You’re really selling it,” he says.
“I told you I was selling it.”
“I know,” he says. “It’s just—” He takes in the practically bare space. “It’s very real.”
“Coffee?” I ask.
“Please,” he says. “This place is tragic.”
“It’s always been tragic. I’m just noticing it more now.”
I make coffee while he sits at the kitchen counter, watching.
“How long are you staying?”
“A few days,” he says. “Maybe a week. I’m not cleared for field work until I pass the physical, which isn’t happening until the shoulder is fully recovered, so I took some time.” He picks up the coffee I put in front of him. “Time to come and see my best friend.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to,” he says. “Also, you look like shit, and someone needs to address that.”
“You’ve mentioned the shit thing.”
“It bears repeating,” he says. “Is this what retired life is like? Because if so, I’m never retiring.”
“It’s been a month,” I say. “I’m adjusting.”
“That’s not adjusting. That’s marinating.”
“You can stay here if you want,” I say. “I’m keeping the place tidy for viewings so you’ll need to be—”
“You’re moving to Pine Ridge?” he asks, a smile opening up his expression.
“What? No. What makes you say that?”
“Because Dad is there,” he says, like it’s a fact I wasn’t aware of.
“That’s not—”
“Silas.”
“I haven’t decided where I’m going,” I say. “There are various options.”
“Silas.”
“I’m not moving to Pine Ridge.”
Rowan looks at me like I’m being belligerent and he’s run out of patience.
“You two,” he says, “are the most stubborn people I have ever met in my life. And I work for the FBI. I deal with genuinely difficult people professionally.” He takes a sip of his coffee.
“I’m the one who should feel betrayed here.
I’m the one whose best friend and father were apparently …
whatever you were, for three weeks, without telling me. I should be the one who’s upset.”
“Rowan—”
“Instead,” he plows ahead, “I’m sitting in your tragic apartment in Atlanta trying to figure out how to get two adults to talk to each other, which is not how I planned to spend my recovery.”
“Can we talk about something else?” I beg.
“No,” he says pleasantly. “But I am hungry. There’s a restaurant I want to try. Southern food, apparently very good. Come on.”
I change out of my sweatpants, which Rowan has made two derisive comments about, and into jeans and a light jacket, and we walk to the restaurant, which turns out to be three blocks from my apartment. I’ve ordered food from them several times but have never been inside.
It’s the kind of place that looks better from the inside than the outside—a narrow entrance that opens into a warm, well-lit space, and the smell of slow-cooked, good food makes my mouth water.
The server greets us and asks if we have a reservation. Rowan says yes, under Reeves.
“Right this way.”
The server leads us through the restaurant and out into a garden. It’s small, warm, strung with lights. There are four tables. Three of them are empty.
At the fourth, with his back to us, is Vaughn.
I stop walking.
Rowan puts his hand on my spine and pushes, gently but firmly, in the direction of the table.
I must make a sound, because Vaughn turns and sees us.
The way he narrows his eyes at Rowan tells me this is one hundred percent a setup he’s also on the receiving end of.
Rowan holds up both hands in a gesture of preemptive innocence.
“You can stop frowning,” he says to Vaughn. “That’s how you get wrinkles.”
Vaughn’s expression does not change.
“You two are going to talk,” Rowan says, looking between us with authority. “I’m going to get takeout, and then I’m going to the hotel.”
He focuses on Vaughn.
“Dad,” he says, “I suggest you don’t come back to the hotel tonight unless you want to catch me in a compromising situation. My good hand is still fully operational, and I need a vacation from your hovering. I suggest maybe you stay with Silas tonight.”
He turns to me.
“And you,” he says, “stop marinating.”
Then he turns and walks back into the restaurant with the server following him. Suddenly, the garden is quiet.
My hands shake from the need to reach out and hold Vaughn, so I bunch them into fists and sit down across the table from him.
I don’t know what to say.
He looks like he has plenty to say but doesn’t want to.
To think the reason we ended up in bed was because we were extremely good at communicating.