Instead of watching the dog, she was keeping her eye on Micah’s house, thinking of that mortifying exchange earlier, hearing Polly go on and on about how they must know each other. Like they were friends or something. She would never admit to Polly that she’d had more conversations with Micah Berg in the past two weeks than she’d ever had in her life. She wondered if Micah had guessed that the man in his yard that afternoon had been a cop. She’d bet that Micah felt about cops the way she did right now. At the very least, they had that in common.
Movement across the street caught her eye and, though she didn’t want to, she felt the little zing of excitement that coursed through her body whenever Micah was near. She’d felt it earlier that afternoon when he’d been standing right in front of her, hoping that it wasn’t the kind of thing you could give off, like pheromones or anxiety. Was attraction obvious to other people? Could they feel it in the air? She watched him walk out of his garage, grab the basketball, and dribble it, the sound of ball on asphalt its own kind of siren call. She smiled to herself, let herself imagine walking across the street, stealing the ball, and magically sinking a shot before he even realized what was happening. He would say, Hey, who taught you how to play like that?
And she would say, I learned from watching you. And then he would look at her; he would finally feel the chemistry she felt, and he would realize after all this time, that the girl from across the street was the one for him. And he would reach for her and . . .
By the time Barney tugged the leash out of her loose grasp, he was already in the road. Thankfully there were no cars coming, so he was able to scoot the rest of the way across and lope into Micah’s front yard with the leash dragging uselessly behind. She gave chase, hollering “Barney!” as loud as she could, giving far too little thought to what she looked like as she did so. She would think about that only later, when she was tucked in bed and remembering it all, dying a little inside at the recall.
Chipper, for his part, realized what was happening before Micah did and trotted over to greet his new pal, wearing what could only be described as a doggie grin. The two practically embraced in the same area that Casey and Violet had ducked into two weeks before. Violet couldn’t believe that had been so recent. It felt like a whole lifetime ago. That had been before she went to her dad’s. That had been before she’d met Polly. Hell, before she’d even considered Polly’s existence. At the thought of Polly, she glanced over her shoulder to see if her grandmother had seen what happened. There was no sign of her yet. She hoped she had time to retrieve Barney and get back to the yard like nothing had happened.
She reached down into the pine straw to grab the leash handle. She fussed at Barney like she’d seen her grandmother do, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He was having too much fun tussling with Chipper. “Barney, come on!” she said in her most authoritative voice. And, though it did nothing to dissuade the dog from playing, it got Micah’s attention. He caught the basketball on the rebound and pulled it to his chest as he assessed the situation. When he began walking toward them, she closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to be cool, to say the right words, to be anyone but her actual self.
“Got yourself a runaway, huh?” he asked, and grinned. He didn’t have on a baseball cap at all this time, but she could see the ring around his head where the hat had been.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was letting him explore a bit, not paying close enough attention, and he just took off. Yanked the leash right out of my hand.” Standing this close to Micah, she recalled what she’d been thinking about when Barney had made his getaway. She felt her cheeks grow warm. She hoped that in the dusk it would be hard for him to tell she was blushing. “It’ll never happen again.” She tugged on Barney’s leash to no avail. The dog was strong in his stubbornness.
“It’s no problem,” Micah said, looking unconcerned. They stood in silence for a moment, watching the two dogs play. Micah spoke up. “Mind if I take his leash off? He’s going to get tangled up in it. I don’t think he’ll go anywhere if he’s got Chipper here.”
Violet glanced over her shoulder again, checking to make sure Polly wasn’t standing in the front yard looking pissed. But Polly wasn’t there at all. She’d seemed preoccupied at dinner, and Violet had wondered if she’d already grown tired of being stuck there with her granddaughter. Violet wouldn’t blame her if she left. It wasn’t like they’d instantly bonded, with all the lost years falling away the moment they laid eyes on each other. It was more like they were very polite roommates who’d been randomly paired online. Though Polly had every right to leave, and no real obligation to her long-lost grandchild, Violet couldn’t help but wonder: Who would stay with her if Polly left?
“I guess that’s fine,” she said to Micah. He reached down and unhooked Barney’s leash from his collar as Barney played on, oblivious to the fact that he was no longer tethered to anything. He was free if he wanted to be. Sometimes you didn’t need a leash to keep you in place, Violet thought. Sometimes you just chose to stay.
“So,” Micah said to break the silence, “he’s your grandmother’s dog?”
“Yeah,” she said, thinking that this wasn’t the way she had imagined someday having an actual conversation with Micah Berg.
“How long have they been here?”
“Coupla days.”
“She seems like a pretty nice lady,” he said. “Kinda young. For a grandmother.”
“I think she was pretty young when she had my mom.” She blanched internally at the mention of her mother. She wondered what he’d heard about Norah, wondered what he thought.
“You think she was?” he asked. “You don’t know?”
“We haven’t really talked about it,” she said. How to explain to this boy that she and her grandmother hadn’t really talked at all in her whole life?
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess it’s not something that would come up.” He chuckled. “So, Grandma, how old were you when you had my mother? Twelve?” He started to laugh, then looked at her, alarmed. “Sorry if that was offensive. I didn’t mean it to be.”
She held up her hand. “Not at all.” She chuckled, too. “It’s the truth.”
His eyes grew wide. “You think she was twelve?”
She laughed. “No! I mean it’s the truth that it’s not something I would outright ask her.”
He nodded, spinning the basketball around in his hands. She wondered whether it was because he was bored or nervous. It had to be boredom. There was no way he could be nervous around her of all people. Of course, after months of exile, he was out of practice socially.
“You can go back to basketball,” she offered. “I can just let them play for a few more minutes, and then I’ll take Barney back home.”
He shrugged. “Nah, I’ll just hang here if you don’t mind. I can play basketball anytime. We don’t often have company.” He looked away, realizing the admission in what he’d said, then added, “Not lately, that is.”
She wanted to say that she was sorry about Olivia, about what had happened that night, and all that had come after. She wanted to say something that would make the awkwardness less awkward, or just lighten the mood. She wanted to tell him what she’d overheard that night, ask him why he’d never told anyone that part. But instead she just stood there, mute, the whole of her knowledge closed up inside her. Her mother wasn’t the only one who could hold on to a secret. If Violet hadn’t inherited her beauty or her coolness, at least she had inherited that.