One leg propped on his opposite knee, he drags a hand over his jaw. For several beats, he doesn’t speak. Only pushes his chair back and forth, the creaking motion causing a ripple of water underneath the dock.
“She was…the glue. You know those people that hold everything around them together? That was Nana.”
“You were close?”
He dips his head once, skates a thumb over the ceramic handle of his mug.
“Did you grow up here?”
“No,” he says after a long sip. “But I visited every summer.”
Rowan doesn’t elaborate. The silence is heavy, but comforting too. I look out over the water, my mind returning to the flag on the mantle inside.
“Was your dad an only child?” I ask tentatively, prepared for him to shut down my line of questioning. I wouldn’t push if he did.
Rowan releases a heavy breath. “Yeah.”
“That means your grandfather is?—”
“Alone,” he finishes softly, the word shouting loud into the void.
I look back at the cabin and see the glow of the stove light through the window, imagining Norm traipsing through the tiny house day in and day out without any company. “Do you live close by?”
“Home is in North Carolina, but I’m stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia.” He pauses, takes another drink. “Pops is stubborn. With no one else around, I’m nervous he’s just gonna hide out here all by himself.”
That would scare me too. Before I can come up with some dumb platitude, he adds, “It’s really hard for me to get out here.”
“Are you deployed a lot?”
He looks at me, eyes searching. “Often enough.”
My confusion must be evident on my face because Rowan smirks.
“That’s…vague,” I offer.
The smirk tips into a full grin. “If I told you I’d have to kill you. You know, top secret, classified and all that.” My eyes roll. “I’m kind of a big deal.”
I hum through a cozy sip, sleeve-covered hands tucked around the warm cup. “Humble too,” I murmur. He swivels his head but I refuse to meet his gaze out of principle.
His crooked smile is just visible in the moonlight out of the corner of my eye. Damn the flutters in my belly when I spot those dimples of his.
“Humble doesn’t come with the job description, sweetheart.”
He winks and my cheeks heat.Say that again.
I need to steer the conversation back to safer territory.
“So, while you’re out saving the world?—”
“And growing my ego.”
Bobbing my head, I snap my fingers and point at him. “Precisely. Growing your ego, you know”—I set a palm on my chest—“for the greater good. While you’re doingthat, is there someone else who could visit him? A sibling maybe?”
His expression sobers. He goes on to tell me about his family in North Carolina. A stepsister with no relation to Norm. A mom who works two jobs to help put said stepsister through medical school thanks to her own father who disappeared before she hit puberty.
“And nobody knows where he is?” I ask of his stepdad.
Rowan sets his empty mug on the small log turned on its side between the chairs. “No. And he’s honestly not a bad guy. He came into our lives a few years after my dad passed, and I hadn’t seen Mom that happy in a long time. Everything was great until his accident at work. He was never the same after that.” He pauses, pondering over a deep breath. “The opioids for pain spiraled into an addiction he couldn’t control. He was in and out for a while until he just vanished. I had a year before I headed to basic training, but Bri was only eleven. Mom was left to take care of everything.”