Page 66 of The Pretenders of Copper County
Without giving myself time to questionWhat Would John Ruffian Do?let aloneWhat Would Reed Sunday Most DefinitelyNotWant Chris Sunday To Do?I sat forward, opened another browser tab, and pulled up my Instagram.
I’d started keeping an Instagram when I moved to the Hollow so I could share it with Danny when he got home, kind of like a modern-day slideshow of my time away. Since I hadn’t gotten close to any Hollowans—hadn’t tried to, as I’d told Reed—I hadn’t done anything very exciting, and my Instagram reflected this. There were three dozen pictures of charcuterie boards. There was a picture of a photograph—specifically, the photograph of me, Danny, and Nicky at Nicky’s high school graduation that used to hang on Danny’s fridge—which I’d taken and posted the day I left New Jersey, already feeling homesick. There were a few pictures of cows doing cute things. And there was a picture of the first postcard I’d received from Danny so he could see how long it had taken for it to reach me via supply plane from his remote Alaskan fishing village.
Come to think of it, this might be why I had zero followers.
I quickly scrolled back to May and located the snap of the postcard Danny had sent—a vista of a magnificent Alaskan fjord that I’d hung over my bed at Van’s house. The date on the postcard, in Danny’s distinctive handwriting,was April 13th, and according to the date of the post, I hadn’t received the card until May 7th.
I leaned in closer, examining the familiar slashes and curls of Danny’s writing.
Dear C?—
Caught a twenty-pound salmon today! Biggest you’ve ever seen. I miss you and I miss my garden, but I’m having the time of my life. And don’t worry for a moment—I’m protecting my heart.
Love, Uncle D.
My eyes stung a little. Gosh, I missed him.
But there were no secret messages on the card that I could discern, and I doubted Danny had expected me to randomly dip the postcard in lemon juice to reveal his hidden plea for help—or, wait, was he supposed to write the message in lemon juice? I never remembered how the trick worked, which was probably why he hadn’t gone that route—so I’d arrived at another dead end.
I moved the mouse to close the image, but just as I clicked the X, I noticed the postmark on the bottom of the card—a faint and barely legible P-something, New York—for the first time.
My breath left my body in a deflating rush.
No matter how much I’d suspected (okay, fine, pretty muchknown)that Danny wasn’t in Alaska, it still hit me funny to see the proof in black and white and brought on a surge of emotions I hadn’t expected.
I was hurt. No doubt Danny had invented the Alaska trip to hide the truth so I wouldn’t worry. I was sure he had the best intentions. But still, this was alie. A big, huge lie, from a person I thought I could trust.
I was also angry. What happened to “true Fromadgio honor”? What happened to family pullingtogether? Had he thought I wouldn’t be able to handle the truth? Had he thought I’d be too weak to help him?
But above all, I was really hecking worried. Even more worried than I had been. Because now Iknew-knew that my uncle was out there somewhere, possibly right here in the state of New York, caught up in something he might not be able to get out of. Was he safe? Was he lonely? Was he taking his heart medication? Was he anxious about what might happen to him? Was he missing me and Nicky?
I knew the answer to that last one, at least. Of course he was worried. He loved Nicky and me—that was one thing I’d never doubt.
I scrolled forward a bit to the family picture throwback I’d posted in July. The picture was ten years old, but I remembered that day like it was yesterday. Nicky, long-haired and slender in his cap and gown, me with my glasses glinting in the sun, Danny standing between us with one arm slung around Nicky’s waist and the other over my shoulders since I hadn’t made even a modest attempt at a growth spurt until I was seventeen. All of us were cheesing at the camera.
Three very different people, but a family. A unit, I’d thought.
Danny had raised Nicky and me as brothers after Nicky’s mom—Danny’s wife’s sister—and her husband were killed in a car accident. Danny and Nicky had been close because they both liked guns and girls and football. Danny and I had been close because we’d both loved Nonna and the Cellar. And Nicky and I… well, losing our parents was about the only thing we had in common, and he was impatient and sometimes rude to me because I was a hard person to like, but I’d tried extra hard to keep the peace between us, and it had all worked out.
At least until Danny had gotten sick last winter and decided to close the Cellar. Because while I’d been seriously hecking disappointed, Nicky had beenangry. He’d yelled all kinds of things about how the family business was the only job he’d ever wanted, and how the only reason Danny hadn’t given the business to Nicky was because ofmyfeelings, and how I’d always thought I was better than him because I was a “true Fromadgio” by blood… which wasn’t true, and also not what Danny meant when he said a “true Fromadgio.”
But instead of talking things out, Danny had let Nicky storm off and made me promise not to contact him while Danny was gone. “I know you want to heal things, but promise me you’ll let him cool down first, Christoforo. Give him time and space. When I get home, we’ll all talk, and things will be back to normal. You’ll see.”
Now, though, I wondered if I’d be happy if things went back toexactlythe way they’d been before.
Because after being around a whole town full of people who really liked me—who appreciated me for who I was, like Gina back at Trickster’s Roadhouse had said—I was starting to think my issue with Nicky wasn’t about me being unlikeable but about something deeper. Something he and I would both need to work on.
And after spending over a week with a man who protected peopleas his jobbut had been willing to listen this morning and accept that I needed respect and autonomy as much as I needed safety, I really wanted my uncle to give me the same respect. No more secrets. No more lies.
But before I could get to work on either of those relationships, I needed to figure out what was going on with Danny and get him home safely… I just didn’tknow how. Requesting information from the Division hadn’t worked yet, and I couldn’t exactly call Danny up when the people protecting him would have confiscated his cell phone for his protection. But maybe…maybe…wherever Danny was, he had access to a library with a computer, too.
I gnawed at my lip for a moment, then opened another browser tab and brought up my email account.
Dear Uncle Danny,
I’m not in Vermont anymore, but you might already know that. I can’t tell you where I am or else the person protecting me would lose his mind—and not in the cute way he loses his mind when John Ruffian does something I think is heroic and he thinks is “utterly unbelievable, by which I mean I literally cannot believe it Chris, because no portion of this man’s actions is based in reality”—but in a very serious, shouty way. But I want you to know I’m okay. In fact… I’m doinggreat. So please don’t worry, okay?
I don’t know what’s going on, and I really wish you’d told me the truth before you left. I wouldn’t have been angry, no matter what it was. I would have tried to understand because that’s what family does. I would have helped you.
