“I don’t know.” She chews on the knuckle of her thumb. “I’ve called and messaged him a bunch of times this morning, but he hasn’t answered.”
“It’s early. He’s probably still asleep,” I say, then worry that it sounds like I really mean “passed out,” so I add, “I wouldn’t be up either if you hadn’t knocked.”
“Yeah, but I thought…I don’t know. I thought he’d want to talk to us again as soon as possible,” Milly says. Her shoulders slump, and I get that weird, tight feeling in my chest that happens any time Milly looks sad.
“We’ll hear from him soon.” I say it with more confidence than I feel, because there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the stress of last night sent Archer Story on another bender. And if that didn’t do the trick, today’s news story definitely will.
“Maybe he’s talking to Dr. Baxter,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to wait, if I were him. That note was so strange.”
Dr. Baxter is strange, period. Milly and Aubrey were so upset that day at his house that I never told them what I thought I saw—him knocking into the table on purpose to interrupt the conversation about Story sibling rumors. It didn’t seem important at the time, anyway. We were all uncomfortable, and I was grateful he broke things up. It didn’t occur to me, until Aubrey read the note from him last night, that he might’ve done it because Hazel was about to share something he didn’t want us to hear.
There are things I should have told you long ago, the note said. If I were Archer Story, and I’d spent the past twenty-plus years wondering why I’d been cut off from my family fortune, I’d sober up enough to knock on his door first thing.
“You’re probably right,” I say. Milly raises a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and that big watch she always wears slides down her arm. Dr. Baxter and Archer Story both fade from my mind as I step closer, brushing my fingertips along the burnished gold band. “You ever think of getting this resized so that it actually fits?”
“No.” She slips it off easily and hands it to me. “It was my grandfather’s. It doesn’t actually tell time anymore.”
I turn the watch around in my hand. It’s heavy and still warm from her skin, the metal smooth and glowing. “Why do you wear it if it doesn’t tell time?”
“I just like it,” she says.
There’s an inscription on the back of the watch’s face: Omnia vincit amor. Yours always, M. “Was this a gift from Mildred?” I ask. Milly nods. “What does it mean?”
“Love conquers all.” Her lips twist as she lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Unless you’re talking about her kids, I guess. Or her grandkids.”
When it comes to how she presents herself to the world, Milly doesn’t mess around. I dragged her giant suitcase far enough to realize she cares a lot about appearances. So it’s interesting that the one thing she wears every single day is a broken reminder of being shut out.
I take her hand and slide the watch back onto her wrist. “Mildred’s out of her head for never giving you guys a chance till Archer forced her to. You get that, right? She’s the one with the problem, not you.”
“I’m aware.” Milly rolls her eyes. “Thanks for the free psychoanalysis, though.”
“There’s more where that came from.” I still have her hand in mine. “Did you know that sarcasm is a defense mechanism?”
She gazes around my room, looking everywhere except at me. “Did you know your room is a disaster area? You realize you have a dresser, right? And that clothes can go in it?”
“Deflection is also a defense mechanism.”
Her lips quirk. “Defense against what?”
“Feelings of abandonment, probably.” She laughs a little, giving me one of those looks from beneath her lashes that always makes my pulse speed up. All of a sudden, I’m reminded of a conversation I had a couple of days ago with Efram, when he told me how he’d asked out his now-girlfriend while she was stopped next to him at a red light, bobbing her head along to the music he was playing. You gotta shoot your shot when it comes, he’d said. Who knows if you’ll get another chance? I’d thought of Milly then, and how impossible it is to have a shot with someone when you have to pretend to