But he stopped talking when we all heard the tiny sobs coming from the corner. Molly and Nora were standing in the doorway, huddled together, both of them crying as they watched the fight.
That current between Maureen and Oliver suddenly severed, and Maureen seemed to crumple as she buried her face in her hands. “Shit,” I heard her whisper.
Oliver, for his part, looked sick, like he wanted to throw up, and he closed his eyes and said something to himself that I couldn’t make out. Then he opened his eyes and stalked away from the table, coming back a few seconds later with his hoodie in his hand, the same one he had been wearing in the gazebo the night we kissed. Had that really been just last week?
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, and I wasn’t sure who he was talking to until he knelt down in front of the twins and hugged them both, their small arms reaching up to wrap around his neck. “I’m sorry, okay?” I heard him say again. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” Then he was kissing their heads and standing up, heading toward the door and almost running out.
The rest of us sat at the table in stunned silence. My entire face was hot, but my hands were cold, like I had a fever. My mom let go of my hand and started to go around the table to Maureen, Rick went to the twins, and I sat back in my chair and looked at my dad, who was watching me very, very carefully.
“Dad?”
“Go,” he said, answering the question that I didn’t even know how to ask.
I stood up. My legs were shaking. “I have my phone,” I told him.
“It’s okay, Emmy. Go.”
I pushed my chair back and grabbed my coat, then walked out the still-open door and pulled it shut behind me. I had no idea where Oliver had gone, or even where to look, but when I went out to the front yard, I saw a small figure stalking up the street, illuminated by orange streetlights and the ever-present coastal fog. He looked like a ghost, lost and alone, floating away.
“Oliver!” I called. “Wait!”
He didn’t acknowledge me, though, and I dashed through the wet grass after him, my sneakers squeaking when I hit the street. Three years of surfing had its benefits, it turned out, including some pretty good cardiovascular skills, and I caught up to him in less than a minute. “Oliver, please!”
“Emmy,” he said, and he stopped so fast that I went running past him and had to double back. “Emmy, look. I appreciate you coming after me, that’s really nice of you but—”
“I’m not going back,” I said, and he just looked at me and started walking again. “Wait,” I said. “Stop walking, okay?”
“Just go back and stay with my sisters, okay? I didn’t mean to upset them.”
“I know. They know that, too.” His legs were longer than mine and I had to hurry to keep up with him. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know!” he finally cried, coming to another screeching halt. “I have no idea, Emmy, okay? I don’t know where the fuck I am or where the fuck I’m going! I probably couldn’t even find my own house on a map.” He ran his hands through his hair, balled it up between his fingers, then let it go with a huge sigh. “Sorry. I’m not mad at you.”
“I know,” I said again, because I did. I felt like I knew everything he was about to say, like that electric current that had snapped between his mom and him had snaked over and wrapped itself around me.
I ignored him, though, and led him to the curb. “Sit,” I said, and he plopped down next to the streetlight and leaned against it. I sat down next to him, then wrapped myself around his arm, holding him there. He took a deep breath, then let it out and rested his head against the top of mine.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, our ribs rising and falling in opposite waves, like we were breathing for each other. His pulse was racing under his skin and I ran my thumb against the veins in his wrist, waiting for him to calm down. “What happened?” I asked after enough time had passed.
“I think you saw what happened,” he said, but there wasn’t any bite to his words. He sounded deflated, like the fight had sapped his energy.
“I mean before. Did you and your mom have a fight or something? Because that was . . . sort of out of the blue.”
“Not really, not if you live in our house. It’s been coming for a while.” Oliver ran his thumb over my knuckles, smoothing the skin. But his eyes looked wild, feral, like the coyotes that sometimes snuck through our backyard in the middle of the night. “I just can’t stand it sometimes, you know? Like, I know my mom suffered a lot. I know that and I don’t mean . . .”
“Why didn’t you tell her, though?” I asked. We were standing next to each other now and I reached out and took his sleeve in my hand. He just glanced away, looking so defeated under the streetlight.
“Because how do you tell your mom that you knew your dad took you away from her and you didn’t do anything about it?” He didn’t phrase it as a question. “What kind of kid does that?”
I pulled him over to the curb, where we sat down together, Oliver falling with a heavy sigh onto the concrete. “Fuck,” he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“You didn’t do anything,” I told him, fumbling for the right words. I felt like if I said the wrong thing, he would wither up like a flower, cave in on himself and disintegrate. “You were a kid, Oliver. It’s not up to you to fix what your dad did.”