Things We Know by Heart

by Jessi Kirby

  Gran raises her glass and clinks it with Ryan’s. I grab a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and fill my own glass.

  “To new beginnings,” my sister says, and she raises her glass my way, giving me the distinct impression she’s not just talking about herself.

  “To new beginnings,” Gran repeats.

  A little rush of guilt rolls through me, and I can’t quite say the words; but I do manage to raise my glass, and between the soft crystal clink it makes against theirs and the evening light slanting in through the kitchen window, there is something comforting and hopeful about those words. I take a small sip before I set down the glass.

  Gran smacks me on the butt. “Now go get washed up for dinner. I don’t want to get in trouble with your mom. She already blames me for the way this one turned out.”

  Ryan just smiles and takes another sip of her wine like it’s an everyday thing for her.

  “Fine,” I say, trying to sound exasperated, but they make me happy, these two together. “Where is Mom anyway?”

  “She dropped me off and then went to that hipster organic market to pay three times the amount she would at the grocery store for grass-fed, massaged, blessed, heart-healthy meat to feed us all.”

  Ryan and I catch each other’s eye—Gran just said hipster.

  “Trendy hipster markets,” Ryan says with a smirk as she puts the salad in the fridge.

  “What a racket,” Gran agrees.

  I finish husking the last ear of corn, put it on a tray, and look around for another dinner task that’ll stretch out my time here in the kitchen with the two of them, because I realize right now in this moment how much I love my gran, and how much I’ve missed my sister. Having Ryan back is like having a whole different level of energy in the house.

  “Go on.” Gran shoos me. “I need to talk to your sister about her liberation from the angry pixie trope.” She gives me another smack on the butt, and I turn to head upstairs, knowing she wants a few moments alone with Ryan.

  For all the bravado each of them has, I know exactly how it’s going to go. Gran will want to make sure Ryan’s really all right, and she’ll make her give it to her straight. Ryan will let herself be upset with Gran if she needs to be, and then they’ll build their strong front back up together. It’s been their thing since Gramps died when I was seven and Ryan was nine.

  Neither one of us had ever seen Gran so completely distraught before, let alone rendered paralyzed and silent. She was—and still is—always moving, always busy, always doing something. But when my grandpa died, she just stopped. I didn’t understand it then, but now I’ve known the feeling for too long.

  When it happened to Gran, I skirted the edges of whatever room she was in while Mom took care of necessary details day in and day out. I didn’t know what else to do. But after a few weeks, Ryan marched right up to Gran one day as she sat in the chair she seemingly hadn’t moved from since the service. Ryan put her hands on her hips and gave Gran an order. “Get up.”

  Somehow those words snapped Gran out of her grief-induced paralysis, and ever since, the two of them have had this understanding and this toughness with each other that I wish they’d try with me too. Instead, when Trent died, everybody tiptoed around, and doted on me, and acted like I was made of glass. They didn’t need to worry about breaking me, though. I was already shattered all over the floor into tiny slivers—the kind that escape the cleanup and come out of nowhere, invisible little things that surprise you when you least expect them.

  I step gingerly up the first few stairs, hoping to catch some of the words that pass between Ryan and Gran, but their voices are hushed now, so I give up and head to the bathroom to shower. With the door closed and the shower on, I pull my sundress over my head so I’m in my bikini, and I look at myself in the mirror that’s already fogged up around the edge. I look for what my grandma was talking about, and I almost think I can see it—something different, courtesy of the fresh air, and the ocean, and . . . and maybe Colton Thomas too.

  My dark hair falls wavy and wild over my shoulders and chest, which are both a deep red that I know will fade to tan tomorrow. I lean in closer and can see, just barely, that there’s a new sprinkling of tiny freckles across the tops of my cheeks and nose. I smile at my reflection before it fades behind swirls of steam. I had a good day. For the first time in a very long time, I really did, which is why I almost don’t want to wash it away tonight. I like the feel of the salt and the sand on my skin, like a reminder that there is a whole world that’s alive and continuing on out there.

  And that today I was a part of it again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “The hand cannot execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  “SO WHAT ABOUT that kayak lesson you took today?” Ryan says brightly as she passes me a platter piled high with foil-wrapped corn. I feel Mom’s ears prick up, and I shoot Ryan a look.

  “What?” she asks innocently. But there’s a tiny flicker behind her eyes that asks me to go along with it. “I think it’s awesome that you did that.”

  And you don’t want to talk about Ethan or your trip or why you’re here right now, I think.

  “What was that now?” Mom asks like she didn’t hear Ryan quite right. “You took a kayak lesson today?” She looks at me, confused. And rightly so. This is out of left field for me. “Was this with you?” she asks, looking at Gran. “A Red Hat thing?” Gran shakes her head, and Mom looks back at me, even more confused. “Who did you go with?”

  I pass her the corn platter and take the plate of hipster-market steak from Ryan, trying to sound casual about it. “It was just me, by myself. Gran and I talked yesterday about doing something like that, and so today I just—I just did it. On a whim,” I add, trying to say it like Ryan would—with enough resolve and confidence that no one questions it, never mind the fact that kayaking isn’t something I’ve ever shown any interest in. Ever. Mom used to catch all those details, but since Dad’s stroke scare, she’s been a little less astute with that kind of thing.

  Either it works or it’s a story they’re all more than willing to go with anyway, because then comes a series of questions, like I’ve just returned from circumnavigating the globe rather than from a kayak lesson on the coast. Everybody talks over one another while passing food and dishing up their plates. All except Gran, who sits with a wry little smile watching the interrogation.

  Dad: “Did you have a good time?”

  Mom: “You didn’t get your stitches wet, did you?”

  Ryan: “Was your instructor a guy?”

  Dad: “Where’d you go?”

  Mom: “You could get an infection that way.”

  Ryan: “Was he cute? Single?”

  “Wow,” I say, once they’ve all got their questions out. “It was just a kayak lesson.” It comes out sounding irritated, and I know it’s because I’m mad at myself for stretching the truth and omitting one extremely important detail of this story. Why did I have to say anything?

  Mom smooths her napkin in her lap. “I’m sorry, honey. I think we’re just happy to hear that you enjoyed yourself today. It’s exciting,” she says with a smile and a little raise of her shoulders. I know she’s right, and I feel bad that me getting dressed and leaving the house is now cause for celebration.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I say, more to my plate than to her, like I don’t know they watch me every day to see if this will be the one when I finally start to move on.

  Gran cuts in. “What your mother’s trying to say, all BS aside, is, we’re happy to see you beginning to—”

  “Carry on?” I finish with her two favorite words.

  “Exactly,” she says, setting down her fork. “So my question for you, Quinn, now that the peanut gallery is finished, is, have you made plans to go again? I think you should, if you know what’s good for you. I’m old enough to know. Strike while the iron is hot.”

  “Or the kayak instructor,” Ryan adds
under her breath.

  “Ryan,” Mom warns.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “I haven’t made any definite plans.” I pause, and for a moment let myself imagine pulling up in front of Colton’s shop, walking in, and telling him I’d like another day. With him. “Maybe,” I add, and saying it out loud makes me nervous.

  “Oh, don’t give me that ‘maybe’ crap,” Gran says. She takes a dainty, pinkie-raised sip from her wine glass and nods as she swallows it. “Do it tomorrow, or you never will.”

  Mom gives Dad a look I know means she’s had it with her own mother, but I like it. It’s like Gran thinks I can finally handle a little tough love.

  “She’s right,” Ryan says, “Why would you not?”

  Why would you not?

  I hear Colton saying those same words in the café, and I can think of so many reasons why I definitely should not. But they’re getting harder to hold on to, especially with my family’s reactions.

  “What do you think?” my mom asks. “Why don’t you give it another try? We’re all busy tomorrow, and it’d be better than sitting in the empty house all by yourself, spending hours on the computer searching for . . .”

  Searching for that heart recipient.

  Everyone goes quiet for a moment, and I wonder what they would think if they actually knew. If they knew what it was they were encouraging me to do.

  “It’ll be my treat,” Dad says. He raises his beer like we’re doing a toast.

  I look at my family for a moment, at all the hope on their faces. Like this could be the thing that will finally snap me out of it. And I can’t say no.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll go again,” I say, sounding more certain about it than I am. I’m not sure if I really intend to go kayaking again, or to see Colton again to do that, but I can drive over to Shelter Cove and spend the day at the beach and come back letting them think I’ve taken another lesson if it’ll make them happy.

  “Tomorrow?” Gran asks. She arches a single brow at me, implying the answer she wants.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “It’s settled then,” she says with an authority no one challenges.

  And just like that, we all go back to dinner as evening deepens around us out on the deck. Crickets chirp in the background, and all of Mom’s candles in their Mason jars flicker and dance as talk turns to Ryan and what her summer plans are now that she’s home. They talk about trying to get her plane tickets refunded, the possibility of her spending a year abroad at the Italian art school she’s so excited about, the safety of traveling alone in Morocco. Dad’s next checkup. Mom’s latest health fact. Gran’s next Red Hat Society meeting.

  I don’t say much, and they don’t seem to notice, maybe because I’ve been quiet for so long, since Trent. Tonight’s different though. Here, with my family and their good intentions all around, I’m not wishing I could go back. I’m not replaying the past. Tonight I let myself drift away, back to the ocean and a kayak, and the possibility of another day with Colton. I know it’s dangerous, what I’m doing, but I think about how it felt being with him today, and the truth is, I want to feel it again.

  After the dishes have been cleared and washed, the food put away, and Gran taken home, I tell my parents I’m tired from my big adventure and leave them sitting on the back deck by the pool, a candle flickering softly next to the two glasses of wine on the table between them, night falling soft and blue all around. I pause once I’m inside and look at their silhouettes through the window. They’re nodding and talking, and my dad reaches across the table to rest his hand on Mom’s arm. She leans toward him and laughs, and seeing them together like that brings on one of those moments that hit me out of nowhere.

  I can’t remember the last time Trent and I sat like that. I can’t remember the last time he was at our house for Sunday dinner. He came almost every Sunday, so it would’ve been less than a week before he died. But I can’t remember it. All the nights he spent at our table with us have blurred together, become fuzzy around the edges. I can remember the easy way he chatted with my parents, complimenting my mom on her cooking or offering to help my dad with whatever big yard project he had going on. The way he always joked with Gran about her Red Hat ladies and their antics and teased Ryan like she was his own sister. The way we’d stay out on the deck long after everyone else. His arm resting on the back of my chair, my head on his chest, we sat watching stars appear in the sky.

  I can remember all those things. But I can’t remember the last time he was at our house for Sunday dinner.

  I’d give anything right now to go back, even just for a few moments, so I could pay more attention. Inscribe every detail of him, and of us together, onto my heart, where I could keep it safe always. Where even time couldn’t erase it.

  My body feels heavy as I climb the stairs to my room, and all I want is to tumble into bed and fall into the kind of sleep where I can dream about Trent; but I hesitate when I get to the top of the stairway. Ryan’s already in her room, and I can hear the muffled beat of music escaping along with the slice of light from under her door. All of a sudden my room looks too dark in contrast. Too quiet. I want to be in the light and energy and music of my sister’s room, such a welcome difference from the stillness of mine for the last nine months while she was away at school.

  I knock tentatively because she used to always make me. I’m not sure if the same rules apply. So much of her is the same, but so much is different too. Ryan has a new air about her, like she’s a level removed from this life here, which I guess is true after being away.

  “Come in,” she calls from behind the door.

  I open it just wide enough to poke my head through. “Hey,” I say, realizing I don’t really have a specific reason to be here.

  “Hey,” she echoes, giving me a funny look. “Come in. What’s up?”

  I open the door wider but stay in the doorway, still feeling a little unsure. “I don’t know; I just . . .” I smile. Try to think of something else to say. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me too,” she says, turning down the music. She looks me over carefully until her eyes rest on the stitches in my lip. Her brows come together. “How are you doing? I mean really. Like, not the Mom answer, the real answer.”

  She pats the bed next to her, and I realize that is exactly what I was hoping for when I knocked on her door. I step in and pull the door closed until I hear the tiny click, shutting me into the cocoon of my sister’s room.

  I want to tell her about today, and about Colton, and the cave, and the feeling of being out on the ocean. The feeling of being with him. But I know if I do, she’ll ask questions—too many, and I don’t want to have to lie to her to answer them.

  I don’t say anything.

  She scoots from the middle of her full bed to one side and pushes aside a messy stack of magazines to clear a spot for me. “Sit. Talk.”

  I sit. “I’m all right,” I say. I don’t sound convincing even to myself.

  “Really?” she asks flatly. “You still have pictures of you and Trent up in your room.”

  There it is. That direct approach I wished earlier that she’d use with me. I take it back. Get up to leave. “What were you doing in my room?” I’m surprised at how uncomfortable this makes me all of a sudden.

  “Wait,” she says, a firm hand on my shoulder. “Don’t get mad—I just poked my head in when I got here, and I saw them still there, is all.”

  I sit back down on the edge of the bed with my back to her. The bed shifts with her weight, and her arms come around my shoulders. “It’s like a time capsule in there. A really sad one.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Maybe . . . ,” she says gently, “maybe it’s time to . . .”

  Tears spring to my eyes, hot and angry, and I turn to face her. “To what? Take them down and act like he never existed?”

  “No,” she says, more firm now than gentle. She reaches out to put a hand on mine, but I pull away. “That’s not what I meant.” She sighs. “
Just . . . doesn’t it make you sad to look at them all the time?”

  I wipe my eyes, hating that even after this long, tears spring up so readily. “It’s not the pictures that make me sad.” It’s that without them, all those little details about Trent will start to fade.

  “I know that. Believe it or not, Quinn, we all loved him, and we all miss him, still. I know it’s on a whole different level for you, but I think . . .” She pauses, and I can tell she’s trying to choose her words carefully. “I think you’re making it hard for yourself to move on. At all. Mom told me about all the letters, and meeting the recipients, and you looking for the heart guy. She’s worried that you’ve been stuck on that—finding him—and it just seems . . . like maybe you need to let go a little.”

  I bite my cheek hard, and I can feel my shoulders stiffen.

  She moves in front of me now, so I have to look at her. “Finding the guy who got Trent’s heart isn’t gonna bring him back. Neither is acting like you died too.”

  Anger flares up in me, hot and stinging. “You think I don’t know that?”

  She doesn’t answer, just presses her lips together like she doesn’t know what to say to me. Like I’m different now too.

  “I know that,” I say softer, unsure of myself all of a sudden because I see Colton standing there on the front steps with the sunflower in his hand. I think of the way being with him felt so easy and familiar, and all of a sudden it makes me question my own feelings. Makes me wonder why I’m so drawn to him.

  I look down at my hands twisting in my lap. “I’m not trying to bring him back. I was just trying to . . .” I stare at the magazines spread all over her bed and think about how to explain what I mean, what I was actually trying to do by reaching out to the people Trent helped, though I’m not sure I know anymore. I thought it was for closure. But this, with Colton, is different.

  I push the thought away and pick up a picture of a white-sand beach.

  “What is all this?” I motion at the mess spread over her bed by way of changing the subject. There are pages torn out of magazines: pictures of beaches, exotic-looking cities, a Japanese garden, an art museum, a lake like a mirror that reflects the mountains and sky all around it. There are words cut out too, in all different sizes and fonts: create, be bold, live free. . . .