He glanced away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry—”

“We don’t really know each other.”

She said this in a whisper.

Somberly, she watched him.

On the beds, they each waited. Neither sure what to say. Jack tried to see through her eyes, to see what she knew. If she could see how he was. What he was. He turned up his palms and examined them. They were worn down to the quick, the skin raw from the shovel.

Digging. So long ago.

“My mom was on opioids,” he said. “Getting worse every day. About a week ago I came home from school and she’d hanged herself in her bedroom. I didn’t call the police or anything. I buried her in our backyard.”

His words struck a silence between them. She stared at him with her striking gaze—that fine shade of amber green—and he stared back.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I get it if you don’t like me now.”

“I like you.”

The truth of it was there in her voice. She watched him, intent.

“I mean,” she said, “you don’t really know me.”

Her eyes flashed with something then. What? Whatever it was disappeared in an instant. A quick luster in the dimness. Water in the dark catching sudden furtive light.

She looked away so her hair hid her face.

Jack almost couldn’t bear the distance of her. He wanted her closer.

Could she hear his heart, hitting against his ribs?

He said, “I know enough.”

The gloaming light. The wail and hiss of wind at the motel door.

He got up and reached for his coat. From the pocket, he drew the folded book page. Crumpled, scraggy, thin. And heavy with significance.

He sat beside her on the bed. He didn’t touch her.

“My dad’s in prison,” he said. “They booked him on robbery, but everyone knows he stole from a place that was laundering drug money. They had him on camera, but they never found the money. People say he hid it. People say he did a lot of things. They say he killed a man, but I don’t believe that part, and nobody ever proved it either. I don’t think he did it. He did some bad things, but he wasn’t a bad man.”

Jack pushed a hand through his hair. He felt a perilous need to speak, to tell her everything, but to say these secrets was a terrible thing.