Page 49 of Crowe
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“That’s Noah.”
“That’s Noah.”
He tilted his head. “The same Noah you told me Wolfe wanted you to check on. The one you described as”—he adopted a flat, mimicking tone—“just someone who needed a welfare check.”
“Things changed.”
“I can see that.” He drank his coffee. “He sat here for two hours and did a puzzle with me and talked about peonies and his mother and the flower shop and his therapist, and somewhere in there, he managed to make me feel like we’d known each other for years.” He paused. “He’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Something more”—he searched for it—“fragile, maybe. Given what he went through.”
“He’s not fragile.”
“No,” Wyatt agreed. “He’s really not.” He set his mug down and looked at me directly, the teasing gone now, just the brother underneath it. “You look different, you know.”
“I look the same.”
“You look like someone who has somewhere to be at the end of the day.” He held my gaze. “I haven’t seen that on you in a long time, Jackson. Maybe ever.”
I looked at the puzzle on the table. The peony was almost complete, just a handful of pieces left in the center.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “With everything going on—”
“It’s always going to be something,” Wyatt said. “There’s always going to be a reason to wait.”
“You sound like Hawk.”
“Hawk’s a smart man.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m just telling you what I see from the outside. He talks about you the way people talk about things that matter. And you—” He stopped. “You went back into town last night.”
I looked at him.
“Bobby told me,” he said. “He thinks it’s great, by the way. His words.”
I exhaled. “Of course he did.”
“Jackson.” Wyatt waited until I looked at him. “I’ve been in Cedar Hollow, Ohio for what feels like forever, watching eighty-year-olds argue over a bingo card and a goat terrorize a bake sale. The least you can do is let me be happy for you.”
“You could always come back,” I said, pointing out.
“I could.”
“He said something last night,” I said. “When I got in. He was half asleep.”
“What did he say?”
I looked at the table. “You came home.”
Wyatt was quiet.
“He didn’t mean to say it,” I said. “He was barely awake. But—”
“But it felt true,” Wyatt said.
