I was finding it difficult to concentrate. My books lay in my accustomed pile on the table, open to the same pages they had been the night before. I had made only a small amount of progress on my paper, choosing to edit what I already had over drafting the remaining ten pages. I hadn't touched my references. I found myself pausing between words, between sentences, or paragraphs, or pages, and jumping up to walk around the common space, or stepping outside for a breath of fresh air, such as it was. The sun was high and it was hot as hell. I couldn't get comfortable.

Was it Henry? Was it that he was back in my life? Certainly, he'd been a distraction before, for all that it had been unwelcome. Or was it the sudden reemergence of my Mansfield life, the one I thought was over forever? Did he expect me to be Fawn? What did I expect from myself? With the exception of Billy's visit to Mansfield, my two worlds had never collided before. I ran my hand through my hair, exasperated and sweaty.

"You look like you're in a pickle." I turned, surprised, only to come face to face with my father. He was standing on the sidewalk slightly behind me, exactly where I had stopped to talk to Henry Crawford the day before. I hadn't heard him arrive; either he was getting better at being quiet, or I had been more distracted than I had realized.

I blinked, then twice, then three times. He looked up at me with a bit of a hangdog expression in his eyes. Last Christmas was probably still on his mind, the way it was on mine.

"Hey, baby." He smiled a bit, showing his missing tooth. I looked away for a moment, trying to regroup. This was a week for surprises.

"Liam's not home." I regretted it the second I'd said it. I should have said that Liam was here with all of his co-workers and their brothers. I should have told them that the entire US Army was stationed here. Not that I really needed protection. Not really.

"That's cool. I won't ask you to let me in or nothin'," I tried not to flinch. Things that other people said all the time made me cringe when they came out of his mouth. "I just wanted to see you. Say hey. Stop by every once and a while." He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and smacked it to release one. He lit it and took a pull, eyes flicking from me to the ground and back.

I watched him. He twitched a little more.

"So, uh, happy birthday. That's today, right?"

I watched him. He shuffled his feet.

"What is it, twenty-one now, right?"

I watched him. He narrowed his eyes.

"Come on, baby. I'm trying. You gotta meet me halfway."

I shrugged. I watched his face contort with anger, and I watched him as he wrestled that anger back down. I was impressed; he wouldn't be throwing a bottle at me today.

"I've been going to meetings," he said, looking up at me. "Sober two months now." He pulled a chip out of his pocket, showing it to me. "They don't make a two month chip, but they did give me the one month the last time. You're gonna hafta trust me on the other month." He said it like it was a joke.

"That's good."

"Oh, so you're talking to me, now?"

I shut my mouth, turning my head away.

"Sorry. Sorry about that. Sometimes my mouth, you know, it just…you know."

"Why are you here?" The heat was becoming unbearable. It had been days since I'd felt a breeze.

He sighed around his cigarette, running his hand along the back of his head. Billy would have hated to see him do that. He was always self-conscious with his hands for a week after Will Price made an appearance. "Just wanted to give a neighborly hello, is all." I could hear Uncle Liam in his tone.

I watched him silently as his eyes flicked up to meet mine, then away, then back, then down to the ground. He shrugged.

"So, yeah, well. Happy birthday," he turned to leave. I let him go, watching as he loped along, his shoulders in their accustomed hunch, his arms swinging low and fast at his sides. There was a hole in one of the shoulders of his shirt. It may have been the same shirt he had worn the last time I'd seen him. The same shirt, the same man. Or maybe not. Maybe he had been different, or on his way to being different. He had looked me in the eye, at least. He had remembered my birthday.

Susie would have been furious with me, would have told me at the top of her voice that I should have offered him some water, at least. He'd come all this way and I hadn't even let him use the bathroom. Hadn't even called him Dad. It was what he wanted. It was so easy to give. And maybe I should have given that inch. He hadn't been drunk, hadn't been too rude. I could have given him that much, at least. Who knows where it was he'd woken up that morning, but he'd made the trip. I could give him a glass of water.

But I already had a father, and I had run out of mercy.

Henry Crawford made good on his promise to befriend me. For the next week, he offered me rides to and from campus every day, and didn't seem upset when I declined most of his offers. He bought me coffee once, and shrugged his shoulders when I told him I didn't drink coffee. He drank it himself, joking that he'd only gotten himself a small because he hadn't wanted to give the impression that he had a caffeine problem.

One afternoon I caved, however—my bag was heavy on my back and I was exhausted. I didn't think I had it in me to take the T all the way home. Not today. It was about two weeks after my birthday, and the summer semester was almost over. My backpack was stuck to my back with sweat, but Henry looked cool and comfortable in his crisp white shirt and light shorts. At Mansfield, that was how I'd thought everyone dressed. Only recently had I learned that Henry's wardrobe marked him as a certain kind of person. I wondered, not for the first time, if Tom had different wardrobes, one for Mansfield and one for everyone else. At Mansfield he always made and effort, but was there a place where he was sweaty and disheveled, like me?

Henry stood in front of me, swinging his car keys around one finger.

"Are you serious?"

I sighed, shifting my bag on my shoulders. "Is your offer off the table?"

"Which one? I've made you so many, you see," he grinned like a little boy.

I sighed again. The night before had been a late one as well; I didn't have any banter in me.

Henry took a step forward and put his hands on my shoulders. "Of course you can have a ride home. It would bring me the greatest of pleasures, Flannery Price." He walked me to his car, holding the door open for me as if I were a queen. "For the record," he said, climbing in on his side, "exactly none of my offers are off the table," he caught my eye and winked. "But that's neither here nor there."

I fought the urge to laugh and lost, and he shot me a smile so pure I almost stared at him. I turned away instead, intent on inspecting the road signs.

"You know your way around Boston pretty well," I said, watching as Henry switched into the correct lane with general ease.

I heard him chuckle as he made a turn. "Yeah, well. I know what's what."

"Oh, really?" I couldn't keep the amusement out of my voice.

"Oh, I'm pretty much at center of all goings on in these parts. Directions, birthdays, gossip…" he trailed off.

I waited.

"Gossip…" he said again, trying to bait me.

I waited, shooting him a sidelong glance.

He shook his head. "You're seriously not going to ask me about the gossip thing, are you?"

I shrugged. "You want to tell me. I can wait."

"Ugh. Trying so hard to be cool, and I end up looking needy. Not fair."

I shrugged again. He chuckled, tapping on the steering wheel with his fingers. "Okay. So. Gossip. Ready?"

"Ready."

"Okay. So. Mary, Ned? Doneski."

I turned my eyes full on his face. "What?"

"Yep. He pulled the plug like, a month ago. Huge fights, names called. He said he was done. So that's over."

I thought about Mary calling me on my birthday. It made slightly more sense in that context. But over? Done? Completely? And Ned had been the one to end things?

I thought about the way he had looked at her. The sun had risen and set with Mary Crawford at one point. And now she was calling me, desperate for my help.

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack, my friend. As a heart attack. They did some back and forth stuff for a while, then got back together, then split up, looks like for good. Crazy. Apparently she never really came around to the whole minister thing, and he never came around to her wanting to be rich thing. Though I'd like to see him be actually poor. That might shock him. But yeah, they're done. Totally done."

There was a silence as I watched him. He looked relaxed, piloting his sports car down barely-marked streets, his cherubic eyes flicking from one point to another with the calm of a practiced driver. It took a lot of practice to stay calm when driving on these streets. I'd never be able to manage it, not even now.

"You're lying to me." I said it with no venom, but I said it nonetheless.

He was silent, and two turns later he pulled over into an available parking lot. He turned the car off and then turned to face me.

"Yeah."

I shook my head. "Why would you lie about that?"

He met my eyes for a tense moment, then looked down at his thumb, which beat a silent rhythm on the stick shift.

"I wanted to see how you'd take the news. If it happened, that is."

Now I felt the anger rising in me. "How I would take it."

"Yes."

"The news of Ned and Mary breaking up."

"Yes."

"The possibility of the news of Ned and Mary breaking up."

"Yes."

"And did I pass your test? Whatever it was you were actually testing for?"

"Oh, you passed it, alright." He sounded bitter. I watched him, frowning in what felt like a thunderous way. He looked up at me, then down, then up again, and laughed.

"So you're over Ned, and you still won't give me a chance."

My eyebrows shot up so far they must have disappeared into my hair. "Excuse me?"

"This whole time I've been wondering, see, since I knew you were in love with Ned back then, and I knew that was the thing that was stopping you from being with me."

"Wha—"

"—So I wondered this time around, too. Is she being so stubborn because she wants to be with someone else still? Like, is there anyone else? That would explain a lot. But there's no one else," he looked at me calmly for a moment. "There's no one else, right? I'm right about that, aren't I? But you're still giving me the brush off."

"Henry," I put my head in my hands, longing to be home, longing to be in my own bed. "Are you trying to tell me that you're upset that I'm not in love with someone else?"

"So you admit that you were in love with him."

"And you're also telling me that when you said you'd be cool with just getting to know me again, what you were really saying is that we needed to jump into bed with each other at our earliest convenience—"

"That's not—"

"—And that because I'm not in love with someone else, or with someone else, that means that I should have jumped your bones a long time ago?"

" 'Jumped my bones'? Who says shit like that anymore?"

"I'm not giving you the brush off, Henry."

He glared at me, watching my face. I wondered what my face looked like when I was lying and when I was telling the truth. Could a person tell, just by looking at me, the way I'd been able to with Henry? Or had all those years of silence wiped it clean?

"You're not?" His voice seemed calmer.

"I took you up on your ride. I talked to you. I wouldn't have done that if I wanted nothing to do with you."

We sat in silence, considering each other.

"So…" he started.

"So you should have kept to your word. Let me get to know you. I want to be your friend, Henry. I've never been against being your friend. But this stuff? This whole romantic thing isn't going to happen. You should know that by now."

I had a habit, when it came to Henry Crawford, of making the truth seem overly harsh. I watched it as it hit him, and I watched him ingest it. I felt it burn when I swallowed.

"Wow, you really haven't changed." His tone was like a slap in the face. I fought to keep my voice under control.

"We both know I have. I just didn't change into someone who liked you more."

He drove me home. I sat in my corner of the car, as far away from him as possible. I wondered if he, too, like me, cursed every red light and every bit of traffic. It was by far the worst car ride I had ever been on before, and have ever been on since.

When he pulled up outside my house, I know he expected me to hop right out and run inside. A part of me did want to do just that. Instead, I turned to look at him, my hand on the knob.

"I hope you didn't do all those good things in New York just for me. I'm glad you did them. I just want you to do them for yourself."

"Cool. Whatever." He was a thousand miles away.

Then I did bolt out of the car and run into my house. The lights were off and I let them stay that way, curling up on the couch, clutching a pillow.

When my heart had stopped pounding and my head had stopped spinning, I fell asleep, and when I slept I dreamed of Mansfield, only Mansfield was a kingdom trapped behind rose bushes, and I had to decide whether to hack my way into it with my broadsword or use magic to open a door, and when I woke up, I was still undecided.