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“We are talking”

“Just stand there so I can stare without being obvious I’,” I say as I watch him over her shoulder

She gru out here”

Deacon is Sam’s brother He used to own the house, then sold it to Sa inas he loaded his boxes into the U-Haul, half teo next door and put each box back in the house so he couldn’t leave That was a couple years ago I haven’t seen him since Until now

He still looks just as a as he did back then A little more mature, maybe, and thicker with er never went away That’s easy to tell even at this distance as he goes to the back door of the truck

What’s not easy to see is what’s in the back seat of the truck I squint to see better Is that the top of a car seat I see in the back ?

“Is that …” I start to say, but get distracted and don’t finish the thought

“Is that what?” Clara says, starting to turn around, but I stop her

“Don’t look,” I say “He’ll see us watching him”

“Then tellon!”

I keep watching, holdingso hard I can feel it in h the mist of sprinkler spray When I take a step closer, a stream of water hits me dead on in the face I yelp, and Clara screaet out of way Deacon looks over at us, and I pretend I wasn’t looking

When we’re out of the way of the sprinkler streaain That’s when Deacon pulls a baby from a car seat

“Oh od, he has a baby now,” I say

Clara gets this irritated antsy look on her face “Can I please look now”

“Not yet”

Deacon enty-five years old when I first started noticing hihbor like all the rest I was thirteen I had the biggest crush on hihbor kids and I were on skateboards out in front ofout with at the time—my first crush—had built a quarter pipe for us to skate on, and we’d drag it out into the street during the summer while most people were at work and we didn’t have to worry about traffic I was too eh it ood for my crush, so I’d taken it off Well, like a du a trick either I was skating on a flat surface when ht a rock and I went face first into the cement