“Mrs. Atwater…”
“Jill,” she corrects me with a smile, as if I’ve told a joke that she appreciates.
“Okay. Jill. I barely know what to say.”
“I should have given you some warning, but honestly, this wasn’t something I planned,” she says, clearly trying to put me at ease. “I’ve always wanted to meet you, and I thought about seeking you out a few times, but I didn’t want to intrude on your life. I’m here this week to help my sister clear some things out of her house. Did you hear they finally sold it?”
“I didn’t know it was official,” I say. “So Gemma is really doing this…”
Jill wrinkles her brow, confused.
“The woman who bought it. Her name is Gemma Dwyer, right?”
Jill shakes her head. “I think she bid on it, but there was something about her funding falling through. In the end, it sold to a family who plans to restore it in the old Adirondack style.”
“Really?” I can’t hide my relief. “I’m so happy to hear that. It always had the potential to be really beautiful.”
“In the right hands.” Jill smiles knowingly. “Anyway, I found a few things I think might be yours. And I’m leaving tomorrow, so I finally mustered the courage to drive over here. I’m sorry I didn’t call first. We couldn’t seem to find a number for you.”
“That’s okay,” I say, reassured by her gentle manner. “I’m glad you came.”
Now she looks reassured by me. Memories start to slosh around my mind like waves, and I say, “I didn’t realize you and your sister were…”
“We weren’t close for a long time. But we reconciled—eventually—after she divorced her jackass husband.”
I smile. My father used to describe Rod Seavey the exact same way.
We begin to settle into what feels like a shared understanding. The thing that exists between us is delicate but defining. We dance around the topic of Seth’s death for a while, but eventually, it must be faced.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’ve gone over it a million times in my head. I’ve tormented myself with all the ways I could have prevented the accident if I had just done this or that differently.”
“Oh, Cricket,” says Jill. “Please don’t torture yourself with that. It was in no way your fault. It was a tragedy, plain and simple.”
“I know that’s what the adults have to say.” I keep forgetting that I am supposedly an adult now.
“Well, I’m saying it because it’s the truth. I hope you don’t think I came here to forgive you.” She holds my eye contact to make sure I’m listening. “I came here to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“I don’t know the extent of what went on between you and Seth that summer, but I know that it was something really special. It changed him, and I’m so glad he got to experience it.”
She hands me the box she brought with her, and I open it. Inside are a handful of photos: Seth and me in a canoe, Seth pulling me off our dock into the water, Seth and me curled up in sweatshirts by a bonfire. At the bottom of the pile is the Polaroid Seth took of me jumping off the boulder. I am airborne and ecstatic, plummeting toward the water below, my brown hair flying.
“I had never seen these until this week,” she said. “But they made me realize how far I’ve come, how well I’ve healed. Looking through them didn’t break my heart, like it would have years ago. Instead, it brought me joy. It gave me a glimpse of the happiness Seth experienced with you that summer.”
I look at her in near disbelief, searching for at least a modicum of resentment or regret, but there is none.
“And I found this.” She hands me a list, written in Seth’s scratchy handwriting. He must have scrawled it just before he left at the end of that summer.
pack stuff
pick up final check from mr. fisher
introduce cricket to mom (?)
We both laugh at the hesitation of the final line.
“But we never got to meet, because I broke up with him.” I put my hands over my face and shake my head. “I was such a mess.”
