Page 304 of Across His Line

She stares at me.

And the room is quiet except for the fan blowing.

“I’m not,” she says.

“You are. You were. Just now.” I put my hands on my face. I rub my eyes. “You just tried to, Tess. So I wouldn’t have to do it myself.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I sit there with my hands on my face, and it all comes together. Every piece.

The hotel mirror. When would you leave. Where would you go. How far is that from your parents. Every question with you in it. Never we. Never once.

The pile on her desk at three in the morning. My toothbrush, my charger, my hoodie, folded. You’ll forget this. Packing me up before I’d gone.

The phone, from the empty room at camp, with the contract in front of me. So when do you move?

And now this. A spreadsheet. Flights. Every six weeks.

She’s already cut herself out of my life. I haven’t even gone anywhere yet and she’s already built the version where I’m gone. She built it carefully, the way she does everything. She made it small enough that it won’t cost me anything. She made sure I’d never have to worry about her. She figured out the fucking bus for Christ’s sake. And she never once asked me.

I take my hands off my face.

She’s still sitting back on her heels, looking at me with her chin up a little like she’s bracing, waiting for whatever comes next, the way she’s waited her whole life.

And I want to say it. Right now. It’s right there. In my mouth.

I don’t.

Because I’m angry. And I know what I sound like when I’m angry. I know what it sounds like to her. And if I say it now, like this, with my jaw going and my neck hot, it won’t be a question. It’ll be an order. It’ll be you’re coming with no question at the end of it, and I can’t do that to her. She deserves it as a question.

So I breathe. I make myself. In and out, the way I do in the box.

“The guide,” I say. “That’s online.”

She blinks. “What?”

“It’s all online. The guide. The videos. That works from anywhere.”

“Yeah,” she says slowly. “It’s on the internet. Why—”

“eBay?”

“People sell on eBay everywhere, Rafe. There are Goodwills in every city.”

“School?”

“I’m not enrolled anywhere. You know that.”

She’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Like I hit my head on the glass at camp and nobody told her.

“How much do you have saved?” I say.

And her face changes. Her chin goes up.

“Why?”

“Answer me.”