“I’d say it’s a bit late to be figuring that out.”

“I didn’t just figure it out. I’ve known it for a long time. In fact, I tried to warn you the first time you kissed me.”

“Yes, you did,” he replied stiffly. “Must learn to pay better attention. Though to set the record straight, it was you who made the first move last night, not me.”

Christy-Lynn smothered a groan, keenly aware of the irony. “You’ve been a good friend, Wade. A true friend. I don’t know what else to say, except that it never should have happened.”

“A friend,” he repeated coolly. “Right.”

His tone, clipped and frosty, stung more than she expected, not that she hadn’t deserved it. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant . . . I never meant to hurt you, Wade.”

“What’s in South Carolina?”

The abrupt change of subject should have come as a relief but didn’t. “Answers maybe. Or nothing at all. I don’t know yet.”

“You’re going to try to find your mother, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“After twenty years and all by yourself.” There was another long pause, as if he were taking time to frame his next words. “I would have gone with you, you know. All you had to do was ask.”

“All by myself is what I know, Wade. It’s what I’m good at. Say what you want about Stephen, but even he figured that out. And it isn’t about fixing anything. It’s too late for that. It’s about looking her in the eye—looking all of it in the eye—so I can finally stop reliving it and blaming myself for it. I know that doesn’t make sense to you. You don’t believe in looking back. And I tried that approach for years. But it hasn’t worked. So I have to try something else. If I don’t, nothing’s ever going to change for me.”

“Are you sure you want things to change?”

“Of course I do. You think I like the way things are now, the way I . . . am? Afraid of making another mistake? Of hurting someone else? Of hurting you?”

“Let’s leave me out of the equation for now, since you’ve apparently already done that. I just want you to think about what you’re doing—and why you’re doing it. This trip seems like a pretty spur-of-the-moment thing. Have you given any thought as to what happens when you get there? What you’ll say to her if you find her?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe you’re not as ready to do this as you think.” The hard edges were gone from his voice now, replaced with something softer.

“If I don’t do it now, I never will.”

“Look, I know you feel like you have to work through all of this on your own, Christy-Lynn, and maybe you do, but I told you once that I’d wait. That hasn’t changed.”

Christy-Lynn closed her eyes, hating the words she was about to utter. “And I told you I wasn’t worth the wait. That hasn’t changed either.”

“Christy-Lynn—”

“I come with too many nevers, Wade, too many doors it’s too late to open.”

“And I’m behind one of those doors?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Will I see you when you get back?”

Christy-Lynn swallowed past the fist-size lump in her throat. She was trying to do the right thing, but he wasn’t making it easy. She needed him to understand once and for all that they were a bad idea—that she was a bad idea. “Sweetwater’s a small town,” she said finally. “We’re bound to run into each other.”

“Right.”

“Wade—”

“Never mind. I get it. Good luck with your mom.”

She felt a strange hollowness as she ended the call, as if she had just burned a bridge she might want to cross in the future. She tried to shake the feeling as she put the Rover in gear and pulled back onto the highway, telling herself it was for the best. There simply wasn’t room in her heart right now for one more ache.

FORTY-FIVE

Walterboro, South Carolina

August 27, 2017

The Dixie Court apartments weren’t quite as depressing as Christy-Lynn had imagined them, but they were close. The treeless grounds wore a vaguely blasted look, as if a bomb had been dropped years ago and the place had never recovered, and the squat, squarish brick buildings reminded her of a prison. It was Sunday, and the parking lot was nearly full, populated with older-model cars pocked with rust or sporting mismatched fenders. At the far end of the lot, a grimy dumpster overflowed with trash, a cloud of flies humming greedily in the late August heat.

Slowing the Rover to an idle, she scanned dirty apartment doors until she located number thirteen. Strains of Blake Shelton’s “Kiss My Country Ass” drifted down from one of the upper-story windows. It took everything she had not to restart the engine and pull away.

A little girl in a stained dress and bare feet stared at her wordlessly as she approached the door and lifted her hand to knock. The front windows were open, the curtains wadded into knots to let in the spongy summer air. She tried to peer in but could see nothing. The TV was on, the volume turned way up—old Matlock reruns. She knocked again, harder this time, not sure her first attempt had been heard over the TV.