by Meg Donohue
“Maybe I’m being punished,” she says. Her throat feels stripped raw. “Peter leaving, the baby—”
“The baby isn’t punishment,” Vanessa says.
“None of it is punishment,” Dani says. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m sick of not saying it. I need to say it. I think about Colin every day. What I did to him. What I could have done differently. I feel like everything changed that summer and I can’t find my way back.”
“I think about that too,” Dani says. Kate realizes Dani’s hands are trembling.
“I do too,” Vanessa says.
Still, her friends look shocked. They are horrified by what Kate has told them, and she wonders if they will ever understand, let alone forgive her.
It gets worse the next morning. Dani smiles weakly when Kate sits on the high stool beside her at the kitchen counter. The circles under Dani’s eyes have deepened and her hair has the sheen of grease.
“Are you sick?” Kate asks. She doesn’t feel so well herself. She can’t believe Dani and Vanessa now know her secret. Also, there is a person growing inside of her, sapping away her energy. She can’t quite wrap her mind around this. The night before, they’d each gone to bed early. Kate had thought there was no chance she would be able to sleep, she was still wound too tightly, but she’d dropped into unconsciousness like a stone into water.
“No,” Dani says, but her voice is gravelly. “Just tired,” she adds, clearing her throat.
“Oh,” Kate says. She’s having trouble reading Dani’s mood. The air between them feels dense, and she has the urge to cut through the silence by repeating her admission from the night before: I set the fire and I let Colin take the blame and he died the next day. If she says this to someone every day for the rest of her life, will she feel better? She imagines herself telling strangers as she walks the city streets with Gracie, telling her clients, telling her parents—what will her parents say? She realizes she is more worried about what her friends are feeling; her parents, she knows, will never stop being her parents. But will Dani and Vanessa be her friends now that they know the truth? They loved Colin too. This is part of the reason she has always loved them: because they loved Colin.
Kate lifts a heaping spoonful of cereal to her lips. “Vanessa’s still sleeping?” she asks, chewing.
Dani nods and then slides off the stool. She walks across the room and out onto the deck without another word. Kate watches her, stunned. Vanessa is the one who deals in silence, not Dani. She realizes that she had certain expectations about how her friends would process the news that she was responsible for her brother’s death. She knew they would be shocked and then angry. She knew Vanessa would take a significant length of time to warm to her again—she tended to become cool when she felt betrayed. And she’d expected Dani, who had always been so close with Colin, to be vocal with her fury. Dani lashed out when she was hurt; she didn’t retreat. This quiet, cut only by the metallic scrape of the screen door opening and shutting as Dani walks out onto the deck, frightens Kate. She slides off the stool and follows Dani outside.
At first, the deck looks empty. Then she sees that Dani is standing at the corner near the street. It’s a strange place to stand. Her arms are crossed and her brow is furrowed.
“I understand why you’re angry with me,” Kate begins, but Dani’s eyes widen and she lifts her finger to her lips. She mouths something. Kate hurries over.
“Jeremy Caldwell is downstairs,” Dani whispers.
“Here?” Kate begins to say, but Dani shushes her. With Vanessa? Kate mouths.
Dani nods, pointing directly below her to indicate that they are on the lower deck. Kate and Dani look at each other, lips pressed shut, and listen.
“—didn’t want to wait until tonight,” Jeremy is saying.
“You were always so impatient,” Vanessa responds. Even though Kate is surprised that Jeremy has suddenly appeared, she takes a moment to jot a note in her This Is How to Flirt mental folder.
“And you weren’t? You would shut off the coffeepot halfway through brewing a cup just so you could start drinking it, and then you would turn the pot back on to brew the rest.”
“I still do that,” Vanessa says, laughing.
“Patience is overrated.”
“Jeremy—” Vanessa says and then her voice falls off.
Kate can hear them moving and wishes she could see them better. She can only catch glimpses of them through the wooden deck slats. How far apart are they? Are they sitting? Are they touching? She wants to run downstairs and stand between them, stretch her arms out wide so they can’t get near each other. She doesn’t think she can sit back and listen as Vanessa makes this mistake.
“I had to see you,” Jeremy is saying. “I know how that sounds. I hate when clichés really do express how you feel. It makes this seem so ordinary, like it’s happened a thousand times before to a thousand other people.”
“It has,” Vanessa says. Kate is heartened by this; Vanessa hates being ordinary.
And then Jeremy says, “Tell me you haven’t thought about what would have happened to us if Colin hadn’t died.”
Kate feels that spinning sensation building within her, drawing the oxygen from her lungs. Dani looks at her.
“Of course I have,” Vanessa says.
“I know you felt terrible. You tried to make things better by breaking up with me, but that was so many years ago. Please tell me that all this time has at least brought you some clarity. We didn’t do that to him. He was already messed up, anyone could see that. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did,” Vanessa responds. Her voice is so clear that it is as if she is standing beside Kate and Dani, looking directly into their eyes and saying the words. When she replays this conversation in her head later, Kate will remember that in this moment it seemed the entire island went unnaturally quiet: the breeze died and the dune grass stilled, the ocean seemed to retreat, no birds flew overhead. “Colin loved me and I broke his heart.”
Kate breathes in sharply. Dani reaches out and grabs her elbow. They stand there together, hearing everything.
17
Vanessa
“People don’t die of broken hearts,” Jeremy is saying. He is, finally, angry. He had been upset when Vanessa broke up with him in the days after Colin died eight years earlier, but he had not seemed angry. This anger has built over the intervening years. The restraint he’d demonstrated at Breslin Bar, that simmering heat, has changed. Something has provoked him and he can’t mask his feelings for her.
Vanessa realizes how strange, how serious, it feels to be with Jeremy in broad daylight, without even a cocktail as subterfuge. This should make their meeting feel less underhanded, but somehow it does the opposite. The shaded lower deck, nestled against the foliage of the dunes, hidden from the blunt beauty of the beach and the glare of the sun, feels built for clandestine conversations, but Vanessa wishes she had walked Jeremy out to the beach, farther from the house. His sudden arrival—hours earlier than their planned meeting—had thrown her off; she had not had time to prepare herself.
“Anyway,” Jeremy says, “I’m really not here to talk about Colin.”
It doesn’t matter if you talk about him; Colin is always with us.
“You loved me, didn’t you?” he asks.
“Yes,” Vanessa says. “You know I did.”
“We were great together.”
“We were.”
There are two Adirondack chairs on the deck, but they are standing and Vanessa knows this is because they want to be closer to each other than the chairs will allow. There seem to be two conversations happening at the same time—the one that is taking place out in the open, and the one that is taking place within the chemistry between them. Jeremy’s eyes are dark and glittering in the shade, and she is shocked by the strength of her urge to pull him toward her. Her desire is a slippery thing; just when she thinks she has it under control, she feels its whispered breath in her ear, asking her if sh
e remembers how it feels to press her hands against his smooth, tan back, to kiss the soft lobe of his ear. She blinks and realizes he is looking at her expectantly.
“I asked if you were happy,” Jeremy says quietly. “I really need to know.”
She feels steady in his gaze; she feels, she realizes, like herself. This must have been how Drew felt when Lenora looked at him. She does not want to empathize with Drew, but she understands the temptation now—the temptation of the emotions of another life, another age, emotions they’d agreed to trade in for something else, something they thought might last.
She does not know the answer to Jeremy’s question. He looks at her, interpreting her silence, and all the while the pull between their bodies is working its magic, its pure and beautiful science. He reaches out and traces her jawline with his thumb, and it feels exactly the way she remembers it felt when she was twenty-one years old. Her pulse quickens. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, taking in the hot summer scent of his skin.
There is something building inside of her so suddenly that it takes her a moment to realize that it is a feeling of control. She feels powerful, dizzy, and clearheaded all at once. The feeling takes her breath away.
I am not going to do this.
She opens her eyes. She puts her hands on Jeremy’s chest and pushes, gently but firmly.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Even as she hears herself echoing the words her husband used when he pulled away from Lenora, she knows she means them; she doesn’t want to hurt Jeremy again. She has been so careless with others’ hearts. “I’m married. I’m a mother.”
“Vanessa,” Jeremy says, gazing at her. “You’re more than that.”
Of course I am. And: I am not.
“It’s not too late for us,” Jeremy says. “I know you think it is, but it’s not. We can pick up where we left off.”
That, Vanessa thinks, is the last place I want to be. She thinks of how devastated she felt after Colin died, losing first him and then Dani, how her friendship with Kate wilted in the heat of everything else.
“Jeremy, there’s something you don’t know about that weekend—something I’ve never told anyone. I wasn’t with you the entire night that Colin died. That’s what we told the police, but it wasn’t true.”
Jeremy is full of tells; his eyes flicker over her as she speaks. She had forgotten this about him. It’s disorienting to consider all of the things she has forgotten about that summer; it had felt indelible, but some pieces are lost forever.
“I went back to the bay where we saw Colin swimming earlier in the night and he was still there,” she says. “I swam out to him and told him that I was in love with you. I yelled at him for starting that fire—which, it turns out, he didn’t even do.” For a moment, Vanessa loses her train of thought. Kate’s confession still shocks her. It clicks everything she thought she understood about that weekend a notch out of place, like changing the code of a safe. “I told Colin that I loved you,” Vanessa continues, her heart hammering in her ears, “and then I swam back—”
Above, there is a stampede of feet. Vanessa’s stomach twists. Kate races down the stairs from the upper deck. Dani is close behind her.
“What are you saying?” Kate is yelling. She looks as if she’s been slapped—pink circles burn on her cheeks. “What are you saying? You left him out there to die?”
Vanessa’s mind races. All these years, she has kept this information from Kate and for a moment she begins devising ways to backtrack. Then she takes a breath, sees the fierce set of Kate’s face, and understands there is nothing to think about, it’s too late. Kate has already heard everything.
“Oh, Kate,” she says. She holds out one of her hands though she has no idea why; she doesn’t expect her friend to take it. “Colin and I dated that spring before he died. We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d be upset. I should never have dated him. Or kept it from you. I—”
“You left him out there?” Kate asks again, interrupting her. “You were swimming with him and then you left him?” Her fingers are clenched in fists at her sides. Vanessa has seen her like this only once before.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Dani says, putting her hand on Kate’s shoulder.
Kate spins toward Dani. “Did you know?”
Dani glances at Vanessa. “No. I thought there was something between them, but I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t know she was with him that night.”
“I cared about him,” Vanessa says. She’s still trying to paint a whole picture for Kate; she’s clinging desperately to the hope that context will keep Kate from hating her. “I really did. I had a crush on him for years. We started seeing each other that spring. He would visit me in New York—”
“You left him out there!” Kate says again. All she wants to hear about is the night in the bay.
Vanessa begins to cry and once she starts she does not know how she will ever stop. “I met Jeremy and I fell in love with him. I let myself get swept away.”
All three women look at Jeremy. He is standing at Vanessa’s side, his face stiff with a mix of discomfort and sympathy.
“You can’t help who you love,” he says quietly, looking at Vanessa.
Dani narrows her eyes. “Yes, you can.”
Vanessa isn’t sure whom she believes.
“So you decided to break this news to my brother once he had swallowed a bunch of pills and was swimming in the bay in the middle of the night? The night after he’d spent the night in a holding cell?” Kate’s voice is weirdly high, but somehow, she has not shed a single tear.
“I didn’t know about the pills, Kate. Please believe me. I thought he had smoked some pot. I had no idea how far gone he was. I think about that night every single day. In my head, I stay with him until we both get out of the water and walk home together. I refuse to leave until he gets out. I stand on the dock and wait for him. Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t it even occur to me that something bad could happen? All I had to do was one simple thing and he would be alive.” She’s gesturing around her and when she stops speaking, her hands fall to her sides.
Kate’s lips are pressed so tightly together they have paled. Vanessa’s legs feel boneless. Jeremy is at her elbow, steadying her. She turns to him.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremy. I should have explained everything to you. You didn’t deserve to be treated the way I treated you. I just—I couldn’t be with you after Colin died. I was in too much pain, and I felt like our relationship could never be the same again. I couldn’t see you and not think of what I did to Colin.” She swallows. “And now I’m married. I have a family.”
Jeremy’s shoulders sag. “Okay,” he says. He gazes at her for a moment and then wraps his arms around her, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. “Okay,” he says again. He holds her tightly, and Vanessa takes a deep breath in his arms. All of these men she has loved, she has really loved them all. “Good-bye, Vanessa,” Jeremy says softly, looking down at her one last time before releasing her. He steps off the deck and disappears around the corner of the house. Vanessa hears his car door shut, the engine turning, tires crunching against the sand-blown road. He is gone, and Vanessa knows she might not ever see him again.
It’s just the three of them now, a wary, wavering triangle.
Kate takes a long, ragged breath. Her eyes are still puffy from her crying jag the night before; the blue in them is vibrant. “What was the last thing Colin said to you?” she asks.
Vanessa does not have to consider this for even an instant; their final conversation has replayed in her mind thousands of times. “ ‘Go,’ ” she says.
Kate thinks about this for a moment and then says, “I feel as if I never really knew either of you.” Her mouth twists to the side and she bites into her lip, holding in a sob. “You or Colin. I don’t understand how you could have kept this from me.”
“You knew us better than anyone,” Vanessa says, but she would feel the same way in Kate’s shoes—embarrassed and enraged that
she had been left in the dark. She had done this to her friend, a woman who never betrayed her in all the years they had known each other. “I was afraid you would be mad at me for being with him. I thought if I could keep being with Colin a secret, I could be with him and keep our friendship the same too. What should I have done?”
“You should have dated someone else,” Dani says. It’s the first time she has addressed Vanessa. She sounds like a dampened version of herself, as if she’s speaking through one of the cup-and-string contraptions they used to hang between the decks.
This is what Dani had done, Vanessa knows. She had loved Colin too and she had buried her feelings. “Is that what you would have wanted?” Vanessa asks Kate.
Kate sniffs. She’s no longer really listening. “You left Colin out there in the bay,” she says, staring at the dunes. “You just left him there.”
Looking at Kate’s unfocused blue eyes, Vanessa sees Colin that night in the bay, the numb look on his face as he sank below the cold, black water. Yes, she’d left him out there. “Kate,” she says. “I am so sorry.” She’s ready to plead for forgiveness, to lay her head in Kate’s lap.
Kate doesn’t even look at her. “I need to lie down,” she says. She turns and walks back up the stairs.
Dani looks as if she is about to walk away too. “I owe you a huge apology, Dani,” Vanessa says, reaching out to stop her from leaving. “That fight we had—those things I said—I was feeling so awful. I wanted to blame someone else, and I lashed out at you.” Even before there was an official cause of death, Vanessa thought that drugs had made Colin lose consciousness in the water. When the police showed up on their doorstep, she’d realized immediately what she hadn’t understood when she was swimming with him—Colin had been more than just a little stoned, he’d been really high. He’d been with Dani most of the afternoon and when Vanessa pieced this together, she screamed at Dani, sure they’d been doing drugs. She yelled at Dani, unfairly, when she knew Colin had never needed any help finding drugs, when she was the one who’d actually been out there in the bay with him—she was the one who could have saved him.