Page 206 of What We Brave
The walk back to the truck is quiet. I try twice — point out a stall, make a comment about the weather. Laine smiles at me. Blake doesn't respond. The jokes land on dead air and I stop trying because forcing it is worse than the silence.
I drive.Laine takes the passenger seat. Blake gets in the back.
Same seat he sat in on the way here. Except on the way here it was just the back seat. Now it means something.
I adjust the rearview mirror. Catch a glimpse of him — jaw set, eyeson the window, hands resting on his thighs. Not clenched. Not fidgeting. Just still.
Hurting.
I turn on the radio. Some folk station. Low enough that it fills the silence without pretending anyone's enjoying it.
Laine stares out her window. Her hands are in her lap now, fingers twisted together. She hasn't looked at the back seat once.
Say something. One of you, say something.
Nobody does.
Twelve minutes to home and I'm checking the rearview every thirty seconds like it's a patient monitor. Blake hasn't moved. Same position, same expression, same careful blankness. Laine's jaw is doing the thing — the one Blake always calls out — where she's composing a whole dissertation in her head about how terrible she is.
They're both spiraling in opposite directions and I'm up here with my hands on the wheel and no idea how to reach either of them.
Some emotional support you are, Garrison.
At home I put on music. Upbeat, trying too hard, but it's better than the silence we dragged in from the car. Blake washes the tomatoes. Laine stocks the fridge. We move around each other the way we've learned to — practiced, efficient, careful. Nobody bumps. Nobody touches.
I'm putting the honey in the cabinet, about to rattle out of my skin, when Laine stops moving.
"Blake."
He looks up from the sink. Water running over his hands. Face neutral. Waiting.
"I'm sorry. At the market, when I —" Her voice catches. She pushes through. "I dropped your hand. When I saw Joyce. And I didn't — I kept holding Reid's."
"I know."
Two words. Steady. Almost gentle. And I hate them because I know whatI knowmeans in Blake's language. It meansof course I noticed.It meansI've already filed this with every other piece of evidence that I'm the one people let go of.
"It was reflex. It wasn't — it wasn't a choice."
"I know that too."
Laine's not letting it go, thank fuck. "She alreadyknows, Blake. Joyce already knows about us. I told her weeks ago. There was no reason to—" Laine presses her hands over her face. "There was literally no reason."
The water shuts off. He dries his hands. Walks to her. Pulls her hands gently from her face.
"Laine. Look at me."
She does.
"It's okay," he says.
And that's where I can't keep my mouth shut anymore.
"It's not, though."
They both look at me. Laine startled. Blake — something flickers across his face. Warning, maybe.Stay out of this.
Not happening.
