“I don’t believe I know a Joe,” I tell her, staring straight into her sapphire eyes.
June is now looking at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
“Were you in the billiard league?” she asks.
It’s the sweatshirt.
Of course it’s the sweatshirt.
I am an idiot.
“Only briefly,” I tell her, relieved. I maintain eye contact, but I don’t need to look at my ancient Cumberland Billiards sweatshirt to know that, under the logo, it says Knock ‘em in good, Joe. “Back when I had just started with the forest service a few older rangers were in, so I joined. They mostly wanted to smoke and drink beer together, so I didn’t last long.”
For the briefest of moments, I let my eyes flick down to the logo and text on the sweatshirt.
“Also, I’m terrible at it. And I never did find out who Joe was, or whether he knocked ‘em in,” I say, stepping across the porch to stir the hot cocoa.
“He probably did,” June says, leaning against the porch railing, her hands by her sides. “Even I can eventually knock ‘em all in, if you give me long enough.”
I taste the cocoa. It still needs a few minutes. Camp stoves don’t tend to be fast.
“Is that hot chocolate?” June asks.
“It is,” I confirm, settling back into the Adirondack chair, crossing an ankle over a knee. “It’s a power outage tradition. My father used to break out the camp stove any time the power was out for a while when we were kids, so I started doing it too.”
June gets into the other Adirondack chair and sits cross- legged, pushing up the sleeves of the sweatshirt as she does.
“Did you ever do it when Silas was there?” she asks, eyes narrowed like she’s calculating something.
“I’m sure,” I say.
“Well, that explains that,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows, wait.
“He tried this once when he was twelve or thirteen,” she goes on, sighing, leaning her head back against the wooden back of the chair. “Only he was an idiot and did it in his unventilated bedroom, where he somehow managed to catch some homework on fire.”
I start laughing, despite myself.
“The smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide detector went off at the exact same time, which is honestly kind of impressive in the worst possible way. My parents grounded him for like two weeks and made him write them a five-page essay on the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning,” she says.
“Can Silas write five pages?” I ask, still laughing.
“You should’ve seen the font size and margins on that thing,” June says, turning to face me and grinning.
“He told me he was grounded for doing flips off the roof,” I say.
“Oh, he did that too,” June says. “He once rode his bicycle off the roof. I don’t know how no one noticed him getting it there in the first place. That one’s on my parents, really. It’s amazing that he survived to adulthood.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. It’s true that Silas could be monumentally stupid when we were younger. So could I, though never quite like that.
The heavy knot in my stomach tightens.
How long have you been friends? Twenty years?
More?
“Remember the time he drove my dad’s truck into the creek because a football fell off the seat next to him?” June says, staring off into the forest. “How the hell did he become a lawyer?”
I lean over, take another spoonful of hot cocoa to test the temperature, glancing at June as I do.
She still doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what really caused that crash.
It wasn’t a stray football. It was a passenger.
Jake Echols, to be exact. June’s then-boyfriend, to be even more exact. He was eighteen and had just graduated. She was fifteen, about to start her sophomore year.
I don’t know the inner workings of the relationship, but I know he gave her a promise ring and swore to make a long-distance relationship work after he left the next fall for West Virginia University. I heard about the promise ring constantly from Silas.
And I also know that he bragged to his friends about getting a blowjob from some college chick.
Silas gave him a ride somewhere. They fought in the car. It got physical. Silas crashed into the creek by accident, and Jake, unhurt, hopped out of the car and ran, leaving Silas to concoct a story about a football.
A week later, Jake up and joined the Air Force, and I don’t think June ever learned why.
There are reasons besides loyalty and friendship that June is a bad idea for me. Reasons like Silas has extensive combat training and Silas is not a reasonable human being when it comes to his little sister.
“It’s ready,” I say, turning off the stove. “Mugs are inside. Shall we?”Chapter FourJune“You see, these celebrity dogs are very cute,” I say, leaning my elbows on the kitchen island. “That’s what made this particular piece an important work of journalism. I’m pretty sure I’ll be hearing from the Pulitzer committee any day.”