Page 43 of The Comeback Summer

My chest aches. These little intimacies—details I know so well but am not entitled to anymore—bring a rush of emotion. Nostalgia? Sorrow? I don’t know.

Ever since Josh reappeared in my life, I’ve been dancing around one question:Why did you leave?

Obviously our relationship didn’t matter as much to himas it did to me, but that begs another question: If I wasn’t important enough to keep, why did he stay with me so long?

Maybe Josh dated me for all those years because it was easy. BecauseImade it easy. I never got upset when he was late for a date or got distracted in the middle of a conversation; I kept him on track with school. Then, as soon as we were separated by thousands of miles and he had to make an effort to connect with me, he moved on to someone else.

“Sorry to interrupt the QHT,” he says, “but we’re almost there. Close your eyes, please.”

“Close my—”

“Trust the process, Banana,” he says seriously. “It’ll be worth it.”

Josh is impossible to resist when he’s like this. Obediently, I close my eyes.

“Give me a hint.” I need to knowsomethingor my anxiety will keep climbing.

“I’m taking you to a place,” he says in a dramatic voice, “where dozens of young women were tortured and killed, their bodies disposed of in quicklime or cremated—”

“The Murder Castle!” I say, delighted. “We’re going to the site of H. H. Holmes’s hotel? How’d you figure out where it was?”

“I have my methods.” He pauses. “My methods being Google. I figure we can visit the site, then run through the area and talk about all the horrific things he did to his victims.”

“Sounds great.” And not just the activity—the fact that he remembers this part of our history together.

Friends, I remind myself.He wants to be friends.

He pulls the car to a stop, then parks. “Keep your eyes closed. I’ll be right back.”

I hear his door opening and closing; a few seconds later, my door opens. His hand touches mine, warm and rough, and my heart stutters. It’s too familiar, this touch. Too painfully familiar.

I yank my hand away.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding awkward. “I wanted to help you out of the car.”

I give a shaky laugh. “Okay, lead the way.”

With his hands lightly touching my shoulders, he walks me in some unknown direction. I feel cement under my feet, then grass.

“Okay,” Josh says. “Here we are!”

I open my eyes and blink in the evening sun. I’m standing on a scraggly lawn littered with trash, next to a beige building with at least one broken window. Across the street is a discount grocery store. There’s a graffiti-covered overpass in the other direction.

I hesitate. “You’re sure we’re in the right place?”

“This is the correct address. The hotel was right here,” he says, indicating the run-down building. “It’s a post office now, I guess. And...” He scratches his head. “Yeah.”

“It’s really interesting.” I’m not sure what else to say.

We stand in awkward silence. An old fast-food bag rolls by like a tumbleweed in a Western movie. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. The past century has swept away all evidence of Holmes and his many victims. There’s not even a plaque commemorating the place where dozens of people lost their lives at the hands of a madman.

I wrap my arms around myself, feeling strangely wistful. Life passes so quickly. Once we’re gone, the impact we had on the world fades, too.

Not that I’m living the kind of life that will leave a mark. But GiGi did. Which is why we need to keep the flame of the Freedman Group burning in her honor. My eyes fill with tears, and Josh must notice, because he steps closer. “Hey. You okay?”

I take a step away, forcing myself back to reality. “Just wondering if you still want to run around here?”

“Of course not,” he says firmly. “Let’s get back in the car.”

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