Page 109 of Kill Your Darlings

IfI had started to figure it out, it had not been consciously.I’d bought the whole eccentric author act.Plenty of authorswereeccentric.

He stepped back into the large tiled foyer.I walked into his suite.He let the door swing shut behind us.

Low-slung modern furniture in soft grays and coastal blues.A gas fireplace flickered beneath a wall-mounted flat screen.The windows looked out over the bay, the waves lapping almost directly beneath the suite.To the left, Cannery Row unfolded in all its quirky, tourist-tangled charm—shuttered windows, weathered brick, and the ghost of Steinbeck in every salt-bleached sign.

One large suitcase already stood next to the door.There were stacks of books going into boxes.Empty gift shop bags were scattered around.He was packing for his flight home.

The door to the master suite was closed.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”I asked.“Why did you leave like that?I thought you were dead.”

“Dead?”He looked astonished.“Why would I be dead?”

“Because you vanished without a trace.Your family filed a missing persons report.”

“Well, they had to.”

“Because youvanished.”

“Well, Ihadto.”

I suddenly remembered what an ass he could be in an argument.

“How much did you tell them?”

Milo’s expression was blank.He said evasively, “Only what I had to.”

Which meant what?I thought I knew now where Judge Baldwin had got a lot of the information he’d fed to Troy Colby: Geo.

Milo said, “I had to tell them something.I couldn’t just—”

Leave without telling them anything?Leave them to worry and wonder.

Milo said instead, “It was only a matter of time before we—I—was caught.I had to leave the country.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?You let me think—”

He made a sound of exasperation and threw his head back in a kind of full body twitch of impatience—and that too was uncannily familiar.“Because you would have begged me to stay.Or begged to come with me.”His expression was a blend of emotions: impatience, exasperation.A little guilt, too, and I remembered how he resented being made to feel guilty.

He was right, of course.I would have begged him to stay.I might even have begged to go with him, although I’d have known that wasn’t really an option.I certainly would have begged him not to leave me with what we had done.With what I had done for him.

“I loved you.”

I didn’t say it in accusation or to make him feel more guilty than he did.I was honestly bewildered at the realization of how misplaced that love had been.

He shook his head as though he too were honestly bewildered.“We were kids, Keiran.We didn’t know what love was.”

I said, “I can’t speak for you, but I think I knew what love was.Even back then.”

It made him angry.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.Could I have handled it better?Yes.I could have handledallof it better, including— Och, for feck’s sake!”

Och, for feck’s sake

He was never a good actor, but he did always throw himself into the role.I had to give him that.

“I was eighteen and terrified.If you think it was easy to leave everything I knew and create a life for myself in a fucking foreign country, you’re wrong.I had to build a life out of nothing.My grandparents didn’t leave a college fund for me.I was depending on scholarships and grants, all of which Ilostwhen I had to flee.”

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