Sarah met Finn on the front porch wearing her coat. She didn’t say anything or wave to Carl, but the expression on her face made him wonder if he’d done something wrong without realizing it.
“What’s—” he began, but she shook her head and grabbed one of the bags from his hands. With bemusement, he followed her inside and set the rest of his bags down in the foyer. Then she turned around and went back outside again.
“Flower bench,” she announced, walking down the steps.
He walked with her around the house to the garden Blaine and Carole had planted last summer. Nothing was growing now in January, of course, but the bench remained, surrounded by frozen ground and the few features they’d managed to install before school took over their lives again.
Finn rearranged the tarp over the bench to minimize the wetness on the surface, and the two of them sat down. She still didn’t say anything.
“Do… you want to hear about my trip?” he ventured.
She glared at him. “I guess.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sarah, are you mad at me?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’m mad at everybody, and you’re a convenient target.” She poked his arm. “And you were gone for ever.”
“It was literally one weekend,” he protested.
She huffed. “Well, it felt like forever.”
He reached out and took one of her hands, holding it tightly. “Did something happen while I was gone?”
“A million things happened.”
"Like what?"
She stared at the frozen ground. “I can’t remember any of them now. It doesn’t matter now, because none of them were important, but all of them were important because you weren’t there.”
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