Page 94 of Forest Proximity
Adam sighs. “You’re right, but—”
“No buts. Someone has to push things along. I want nieces and nephews, and thanks to my tutelage you have a girlfriend. Pretty soon—”
“Ruth.” Adam's stern look silences his sister.
She holds up her hands in surrender, though one is curled around a silver Coke can. It’s a partial surrender. Her partial smile is unrepentant.
I like having Ruth on my side. It feels like she’s on my side, anyway. I’m all for whatever pushes Adam out of his shell and closer to me.
With a long exhale he drags his phone out of his pocket. He swipes to answer, barely looking at the screen. “Yeah?”
There’s a pause, then he straightens. “Hi, Mrs. Sullivan.” A short pause. His face flushes. “Inger. How can I help you?”
Why is my mom calling Adam? They’re trading calls now? He has my full attention. And Ruth’s. Sammie is curled up with Adam’s ghillie suit, her eyes heavy. I wish Adam would crank up his volume. It’s impossible to eavesdrop like this.
He lowers his voice. “She’s here.” He turns to me. “I figured she would’ve told you.”
Oops. In the last eighteen hours I’ve gone on a date that I thought was a tour, gotten lost in the woods, woken up in Adam’s bed, and discovered that my supposed Bigfoot sighting was actually my boyfriend in costume. My phone is long dead, sitting on a pile of my dirty clothes by Adam’s front door. I haven’t called my mom, and it’s Sunday morning. She has to be panicking.
I hold my hand out for the phone.
“She’s right here, Mrs. Sullivan—” He turns red. “Inger. Would you like to talk to her?” A pause. “Okay.” Then he holds out the phone.
“Mom?”
While my mom’s tirade gets rolling, Adam scoops up his niece and whispers over her head to Ruth, “Want me to put her down for you?”
Ruth nods, mouthing “Thanks,” to her brother.
He leaves, Ruth cleans up breakfast, and my mom is only mid-lecture. “—tell me why I had to find out fromIke Wentworththat the reason my daughter wasn’t at church this morning is because she got lost during a thunderstorm.”
“I didn’t—”
“Not done.” I know the face my mom is making right now. Sullivan kids don’t no-show at church. I should’ve expected this dressing down. “And tell me why I had to find out fromIke Wentworth—”
“Why do you keep saying his name like that?”
“—that my daughterspent the night at Adam’s cabin in the woods.” She drops this information like a gotcha bomb.
I pause for a moment, making sure she doesn’t have anything else. “Is that all Ike told you?” He didn’t mention the fact that Adam is my boyfriend or any of the other stuff about the bet being over?
“Is that all he told me?” she hollers, but it’s distant, like she’s holding her phone away from her face to yell at the screen head on. “She spends the night with a man, I find out from Ike Wentworth, and our daughter asks, ‘Is that all he told you.’” She must be yelling at my dad now.
“I could’ve been on the news, Ma. Got lost at night in the woods during a storm.” I roll my eyes where she can’t see me. I’m safe. “This is what you’re choosing to focus on?”
“Stevie Saoirse Sullivan.”Rut-roh.“Your father and I are headed there now. Don’t move an inch, or so help me.”
“Ma, the road isn’t—”
She’s already hung up.
I look at her name on the screen. It doesn’t matter that I’m thirty-two years old, have a career, and am otherwise reliable. To my mother I’ll always be the little girl with braids who cried when she couldn’t keep up with her brothers. I’m a different person now, though. I think. I hope.
Crispin’s rideshare left a few minutes ago. Unfortunately that means Adam’s road wasn’t too muddy for my dad’s four-wheel-drive truck. They passed the Uber on its way out.
Adam and I are sitting on his front porch, watching my parents park. “Here we go,” I murmur, standing. “Are you ready for this?”
He joins me, taking my hand. “Not even close.”
