Sylvie
We’re on the edge of downtown. People are out with their kids in those draggable wagons, eating ice cream and turning their faces to the sun and every now and then peering over at me, my back against the door of my van, my hands shielding my eyes.
Winslow sits like a good boy beside me. I need to get in the car, make a plan, but I’m too hot and I can’t breathe and I don’t know if Knox will go anywhere with me right now. I don’t know why he’d want to.
“I need a minute,” I tell him. “Don’t feel like you need to wait.”
“Not really sure where else I’d go.” He sits on the ground at my feet, still cradling his takeout box.
“You can go wherever you want.”
“Can I?”
“I mean, you’re not . . . required to be here with me. You can go,” I repeat, “wherever you want.”
“Mmm. Let’s think that one out. If I wasn’t here?
What I’d want would be to get to my mamaw’s.
You’d probably want to do what you suggested, get me a plane ticket—but I’ve never been on a plane before, and anyway, without an ID I don’t know if they’d let me past security.
” His voice is pitched low and soothing, but there’s the barest hint of an edge there.
“So then maybe you’d try to get me a Greyhound or a Megabus.
But to be honest, I don’t know how I feel about taking charity from you. ”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
Deep breath. “Why?”
“No, that’s all you’re gonna get,” he says, mildly. “We’re not doing explanations, remember?”
I don’t have anything to say to that, which is what Knox intended.
“So I’d get a job washing dishes, though I’d need to sleep rough until I can get this cast off my hand.
That Irish pub across the street is packed.
Maybe they need a barback. Maybe one of the cooks will let me sleep on his floor for a few weeks while I put some cash together.
I know how to clean, and I don’t drink or smoke, and I don’t think I’m too difficult to have around. ”
His face is serene when he says it. I want to cry. How am I too exhausted to cry?
“And I’ll get down to my mamaw’s and, God, I hope everything will be okay there with her health, given what the psychics said, and if it’s not I can take care of her, make sure her bills get paid.
I’ll work nights somewhere. I could be a security guard, though maybe I’d need a GED for that.
Maybe I’ll get a GED. But one thing’s for sure.
I’d never see you again.” Knox says it like a fact.
“You wouldn’t?”
“Nope,” he says. “You’ll be at college. You’ll get away from here, and from your mom, and from me—”
“I don’t want to get away from you—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Are you mad at me?” I ask. Because I want him to be. I want to make him see me for what I am: utterly unworthy of him.
“Today has been a lot.”
“I know.”
“Listen, Sylvie, I’m gonna tell you the truth. I don’t think you killed anybody.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
“Maybe I don’t have the details right, but I think you were in a car crash with your boyfriend. I don’t think you’d feel this awful if you hadn’t been the one driving. So maybe you were. Driving.”
“I was. Driving.” I hesitate. “Knox, it’s a lot worse than that.”
But I don’t know if he hears me. I don’t think he wants to.
“And from the stuff you tell me about him, well. He doesn’t sound like a jerk, but he wasn’t nice to you, either.
Wasn’t good for you. So that makes it all complicated.
” He reaches out to ruffle Winslow’s ears.
“You feel guilty for him dying. You feel guilty because you maybe wanted to break up with him—”
“I didn’t feel like I had a good enough reason to, and then he was gone and it was my fault and it was almost like I wished for it to happen—”
“Sylvie,” Knox says. “You hold your heart right out in front of you. It’s a good heart. You wouldn’t want anyone to die.”
After the way I’ve treated him today, he can’t possibly believe what he’s saying. “You don’t know that,” I tell him. You don’t know me at all. “Come on, get in the van. I need to tell you something.”