He smiled. Tears were sliding down his face, but he smiled. “It worked, too, didn’t it? Everyone liked him again. I saved him. Good old CJ.”
He spat out those last words so bitterly, I ached to hear it.
“Oh, CJ, honey,” said Kirsten, crying.
“There was no one in the auditorium. I made sure of it.”
He dropped his head into his hands. “I was so arrogant. I thought I was so smart that nothing could go wrong. I had it all figured out. But then the fire, it got so big. And Gray’s dad—he just slipped. Lost his footing doing something he’d probably done dozens and dozens of times before. I don’t know; I just didn’t think of the firefighters getting hurt. The fire was supposed to be small and contained, and they were firefighters. Gray’s dad was this larger-than-life guy to me. I didn’t even consider the possibility that he would get hurt. I thought I was so smart, but how stupid was that?”
“If you’d known,” I said, “you wouldn’t have done it. You would never have hurt Gray or his father on purpose.”
Kirsten got up, sat down next to CJ, and put her arms around him. He toppled sideways into her, and she held on harder.
“Nothing could ever make up for what I’d done. But I tried. I have tried to make it up to him for all these years,” said CJ.
“By being his friend,” I said.
CJ sat up and leaned back against the cushions of the couch.
“And, Zinny, I didn’t set out to hurt Daniel, either. But I’d seen him drinking near the shed, and I heard people who also saw him say he was a bad kid, a troublemaker. And I just went with it. I spread the rumors and lied to the police. But I knew he wouldn’t get in any real trouble because I knew they wouldn’t find any proof.”
“What can we do?” said Kirsten, bleakly. “Just what are we supposed to do now?”
“What do you think, CJ?” I said.
CJ wasn’t crying anymore; he seemed drained of tears, of nervous energy, of everything. He looked at me and said, “I think it’s time to tell.”
Epilogue
Late June
Avery
The water is too cold to swim in for long, but it’s beautiful: maple syrup–colored at the edges where the marble walls throw down their slanted shadows, shining like glass where the sun hits. Avery sits on the rim of the quarry, a sweatshirt over her swimsuit, and watches petals drift sideways across the dark rock face like snow. Behind her are long tables covered in red-and-white-checked cloth and laid with platters of sandwiches, fried chicken, and slabs of tomato pie; bowls of green salad and potato salad; and round plates bearing deviled eggs arranged in concentric circles like chrysanthemum petals and dusted with paprika. Metal buckets hold bottles of water, beer, and wine, and the grass is spread with quilts. On one of the quilts, Dobbsey and Walt sleep in identical curled-up positions like quotation marks, while Mose stands guard, his fur steeped in sunlight. At the center of it all is a small white party tent. Under the tent is a rocking chair (Gray carried it through the park upside down, with the seat resting on his head) and a bassinet for Gray and Evan’s month-old baby, Dahlia.
Technically, the party is part of Kirsten and Tex’s wedding week, a kind of pre-rehearsal-dinner picnic for their closest friends. But everyone here is paying homage to Dahlia, no one more than Kirsten herself. They rock her and coo over her and feed her bottles and dance around with her in their arms, whispering to her.
Earlier, Avery had sat in the rocker and watched Dahlia make faces—phantom frowns and smiles—in her sleep and thought how wonderful to be so loved by so many people. She’d thought about her grandmother and wondered if, as Avery had seen Gray and Evan do, she had ever sat spellbound, riveted by her baby’s—Avery’s mother’s or her uncle Trevor’s—loveliness or held one of them in her arms with an expression on her face that said, “Never, ever, in the history of the world, has anyone been so lucky.” It’s how it should be for babies, thought Avery, so much love, love every single second, everywhere they are.
Avery sits on the soft grass at the edge of the quarry and listens to the sweet tangle of voices and laughter behind her and feels the sun drying her hair, and she understands that in this instance, she is completely happy. Her life isn’t perfect (she has not seen or spoken to her father since the Truth and Reconciliation night), but this moment is. She remembers what Zinny had written: You know those times when the person you are and the person you want to be are exactly—down to your smallest fingernail moon and flimsiest eyelash and your left knee and the part in your hair—the same person?
Avery does know.
Two days after the Truth and Reconciliation night, Avery and her mother had talked for hours. Her mother had told her how, after Avery’s father had gotten fired, she had gone to Adela to ask her to do what she did best: take the story of what her father had done to Cressida and clean it up, make her father look better, kinder, more innocent and then send the new story spinning off into the world of their town. She’d gone to Adela because she had wanted to protect Avery.
“Somehow, I got used to imagining that you are fragile. I underestimated your ability to face the truth; I thought you weren’t as strong as you are. I swear I will never, if I live to be a hundred and twenty, do that again.”
Adela had wanted to go further, to twist Cressida into someone conniving and cruel, but Avery’s mother had told her no.
“Even so,” she’d said to Avery, “even though she agreed not to tarnish Cressida’s reputation, I knew, deep down, that she could be ruthless. I shouldn’t have gone to her at all.”
Then, Avery and her mother had talked about reparations; when they finished, the sun was coming up, and, sitting in Avery’s window seat, they watched its low light stream through the tree branches and gild the lawn.
Afterward, Avery texted her father: Cressida and her father have suffered because of our family, and we need to try to fix it. I want you to write a letter of apology to Cressida that makes it very clear what you did. Send it to me, and I’ll give it to her. Please do this. It’s the right thing to do.
Nearly a full day passed before her father wrote back, Okay, I will.
When the letter from her father to Cressida arrived, Avery sent another text, this one to Cressida: After track today, could you please meet me at the coffee shop near my school?
They met, and when Cressida walked across the room to Avery’s table, Avery watched people watch her. When she sat, Avery felt everyone’s eyes on the two of them, saw people—kids from her school, from other schools, even adults—whisper to one another. It was fine. It was what she’d wanted when she’d asked Cressida to meet. If Avery could’ve arranged for everyone in town to have been there seeing Avery and Cressida drinking coffee together and talking, she would have.
Avery told Cressida that her father had admitted to everything, even to the phone calls he made after it was all supposed to be over.
“I want you to know that my mom and I are going to do whatever we can to make sure people get the real story. We’ll spread new rumors, true ones this time,” said Avery.
She gave Cressida her father’s letter, which contained an apology that made up for in thoroughness what it lacked in heartfelt eloquence. Her father’s letter made his own wrongdoing plain; it left nothing ambiguous. At the end, he said he regretted any harm he had brought to Cressida and her family. After Cressida read it, she folded it back into its envelope and regarded Avery with astonishment.
“You asked him to write this?” she said.
“Yes. I wish he’d thought of it on his own, but at least he did it.”
“He admits everything,” she said, wonderingly. “Anyone who sees this will know that what happened wasn’t my fault.”
“That’s right,” said Avery.
Cressida looked down at the letter in her hands and then at Avery. “What should I do with it?”
“Whatever you want,” said Avery. “It’s yours.”
Gray appears and smiles down at Avery. He’s tan in
his white shirt, and he holds two cupcakes, one in each hand, and Avery thinks, as she’s thought before, that it’s no wonder Zinny fell in love with him.
“It’s not really time for dessert,” he says, “but it made me feel like less of a thief if I also stole one for someone else, so chocolate or coconut?”
“Coconut, please,” she says. “Want to sit?”
They sit and eat and talk about the baby.
“The day my mom found out you were naming her Dahlia, we went to the garden store and bought some dahlia bulbs and planted them in our yard,” says Avery. “So now when they bloom, we’ll bring her some.”
“She’ll love that,” says Gray.
He squints, gazing down at the bright water.
“It’s a perfect day, isn’t it?” says Avery.
He hesitates before he says, “Yes.”
Gray starts to talk about CJ, how strange it is to be in this particular place without him. He says the two of them have hardly spoken to each other since the day CJ told him he was turning himself in to the police for setting the fire.
“Do you think he’ll go to prison?”
“I hope not,” says Gray. “Kirsten got her dad to hire a big deal defense attorney for him. And my family will ask for leniency. I can’t even imagine CJ in prison. I’d hate that. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I can’t be his friend right now or maybe ever again, and I feel so bad about that.”
Avery’s impulse is to jump in and tell him that he shouldn’t feel bad, but she knows exactly what he means. So she stays quiet, giving Gray time to say what he needs to say.
“All this time, everyone’s assumed that whoever set the fire did it out of anger or hatred. I know CJ did it out of friendship. He was trying to help me. And he was my best friend before it happened and for twenty years after it happened. But it was there, all the time: CJ set the fire that killed my dad. Only one of us knew it, but it was there. And I can’t figure out how to forgive him for either of those things: for setting the fire and for letting me go along being his friend without telling me.”
“Forgiveness is hard,” says Avery.
“I still miss him. I can’t believe he’s never met Dahlia. I picture him holding her, how completely awkward he’d be, and I miss him. You know what I mean? Do you miss your dad?”
Avery nods. “Even though I am so mad at him. Sometimes, I sit at my dining room table doing homework and just wait for him to walk in. He used to tell me ‘math is a bear.’ I miss that.”
“Lately, I’ve been thinking about it this way,” says Gray. “They love us. And they’ve done something bad that hurt us. You’d think those facts would cancel each other out, but the crazy thing is that they don’t.”
“You really think they don’t?” asks Avery.
“Not only that, but I’m beginning to believe that the bad might not take anything away from the love. I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it? They might care about us just exactly as much as we always thought.”
Gray and Avery sit side by side at the edge of the party on the edge of a cliff on what feels like the sunstruck edge of the world with the conundrum of love between them and the azure sky overhead and the shining water below.
Ginny
In the grass, in the lilac hour just before nightfall, we are dancing.
Kirsten with Gray. Trevor with Iris. Tex with Kirsten’s mother. Evan with Tex’s mother. Daniel’s daughter, Georgia, with Dobbsey and Walt. My nephews, Sam and Paxton, with the implacable Mose. Dahlia with my lovestruck Avery. Me with Daniel. All of Kirsten and Tex’s beloveds and their beloveds’ beloveds swaying and twirling. No one’s arms are empty.
Because Kirsten and Tex will honeymoon in Paris, the music is French, Edith Piaf singing “La Vie en Rose,” wistfulness and vibrato threading through the trees, winding upward, hovering over us like the first stars, the cradle of a quarter moon.
I press my cheek against Daniel’s.
“You never know,” I say to him, savoring the words. “What might happen next. You never know.”
I feel him smile.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” he says.
When the song ends, we all stand for a moment in the lucent pool of quiet the music has left behind, holding on, before we let go, and the talking, like a joyful engine, starts up again. Avery hands Dahlia to her fathers, and the baby, tiny planet with her own magic gravity, pulls us in.
Avery’s voice shouts, “Mom!”
She is mere outline, a sapling-slender silhouette with her arms wide open. And then I am rushing toward her, stripping down to my swimsuit as I move, shrugging off my cardigan, pulling my dress over my head, laughing, leaving a trail of clothes, like husks, behind me. As she sees me coming toward her, my daughter throws her arms above her head, victorious, and says, “Yes!”
We turn our bodies away from the light and noise and the people we love and toward the enormous, held-breath, star-scattered darkness. Afterward, Gray and Daniel will meet us down below, will wrap us in quilts and hand us our shoes and we’ll travel back together, up the trail, to where everyone is waiting. But for now, it’s just the two of us, balanced on the edge, our arms extended, our fingertips as close as they can be without touching.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I say.
“I can,” says Avery.
“Don’t look down,” I say.
“Never!” says Avery, laughing. “Never, ever.”
And we jump.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to:
Jennifer Carlson, for fifteen years of being my agent, my friend, and my North Star;
Jennifer Brehl, my extraordinary editor and friend, whose keen eyes, ears, and guidance distill and sharpen my storytelling and keep my metaphors from running amok;
the wonderful William Morrow team, especially Andrew DiCecco; Jennifer Hart; Tavia Kowalchuk; Nate Lanman; Andy LeCount, Carla Parker, Mary Beth Thomas, and the entire sales team; Virginia Stanley and the library marketing team; Pamela Barricklow; Jeanie Lee; Elsie Lyons; Fritz Metsch; and Liate Stehlik;
my friends, who lift me up and make my heart happy and with whom I could (and would and might) talk forever and ever, especially Karen Ballotta, Sherry Brilliant, Mark Caughey, Susan Davis, Taiasha Elmore, Dan Fertel, Susan Finizio, Linda Jaworski, Dawn Manley, Ciara O’Connell, Theresa Proud, and Kristina de los Santos;
Jim and Dawn Manley for allowing me to spend many hours and days writing this book in the tranquility of their beautiful shore house;
my father, Arturo de los Santos, for always, always being there for me, and my mother, Mary de los Santos, whose love surrounds me daily, even though she’s gone;
my dogs, Finny and Huxley, who sit on my lap while I write and who are, every single time I walk through the door, more thrilled to see me than anyone has ever been in my entire life;
my kids, Charles and Annabel Teague, in the light of whose wit and heart and gorgeousness I am blessed to live;
and, as always, my love and my home, David Teague, to whom I’d give anything.
About the Author
A New York Times bestselling author and award-winning poet with a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing, Marisa de los Santos lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family.
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Also by Marisa de los Santos
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
i’d give anything. Copyright © 2020 by Marisa de los Santos. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conv
entions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Lisa Amoroso
Cover photographs © Stephen Studd/Getty Images (sky); © Foap AB/Alamy Stock Photo (trees); © yaalan/Shutterstock (moon); © DEEPOL by plainpicture (boy); © DEEPOL by plainpicture/Henglein and Steets (woman)
first edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition MAY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-284451-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284448-4
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