My voice is slightly too high, too happy. The room spins a little and I close my eyes.
“I don’t care about that,” she says. “And honestly, I don’t need help. Hawk’s mom and mine have done everything. But come on…you thought you were getting proposed to. You’ve tried on the ring. I’veseenthe ring. I have the date on my calendar. It had to be a blow.”
A better friend would open up to her, would sob, but I just...can’t. I don’t want to open up, not even to myself. If I spend even a moment really considering what’s happened, my brain will run around unchecked, asking questions that will only hurt worse:Is there something about me that’s inherently unlovable? Or is my judgment about people and situations incredibly bad?
It's a path I can’t go down right now, with her or myself.
“This is just cold feet, Kelsey. Thomas is going to spend one week off on this yacht and realize he fucked up.”
She sighs, as if she disagrees. “Do you want to stay with us?”
I swallow. She can’t begin to understand how awkward staying at her home would be. “Thanks, but I’m gonna stay with my dad. I’m sure the house is a disaster and he’ll need some help.”
“Well, my mom would be thrilled to have you if you change your mind. She’s dying to see you.”
My throat tightens. Judy Cabot was once like a parent to me, but she’s made no effort to see me in years. Every time I was home, she made an excuse—flu, company, so many appointments—until I finally stopped trying. For all my flaws, I know when I’m not wanted, but I guess we’re all playing nice for Kelsey’s big day.
“Just promise I’m not going to be the only singleton at the wedding.”
“You’re in luck,” Kelsey says. “Lots of singles. Including my brother, of course.”
I wince.
When Kelsey got engaged, I asked her who’d walk her down the aisle. I knew it would be Elijah. I’d just wanted to hear his name—a trial run to see if it still hurt.
It did. It still does.
I really wish I wasn’t facing it, and him, alone.
One day later,I land in Savannah and take an Uber home. It’s only mid-August, but already the trees hang heavy as if tired of the weight, the leaves turning that late-summer green, so dark they look black in the shade. The highway is baking too, and even with the windows closed, I can smell fresh tar going soft in the heat.
Eventually, we get off the highway and take back roads until we hit Oak Bluff—the last bit of civilization before we cross the bridge to St. Samuel’s, the tiny barrier island where I was raised. That’s when I roll down a window to feel the thick, wet air on my skin. I’d swear that I haven’t missed home, but every time I hit this bridge, I find some old piece of myself that’s been tucked into a dusty corner of my brain.
Right now I’m remembering this: the damp air on a summer morning before the sun was full. Biking to Oak Bluff to buy donuts at sunrise, getting scolded by Martha at the Stop-n-Shop over my bare feet when we both knew I’d do it again. The glint of the sun on the ocean, visible only from the bridge’s crest, as I’d return home.
Mostly what I’m remembering is how hopeful I once felt, as if the world was infinite and mine for the taking. It’s been a very, very long time since I felt that way—so long I’d almost forgotten I ever did.
Once we’re over the bridge, the driver turns to the left rather than continuing toward the beach. Unlike the Cabots’ oceanfront home—its cozy screened-in front porch set right atop the dunes—we are several lots back, in a gray-blue house so different from theirs that it hardly seems fair to call us neighbors.
It was always an eyesore. My mother’s small efforts to keep things up ended when she took off fifteen years ago, and my dad’s small efforts to occasionally stay sober ended then too.
And yet...the house has a new roof.
I’m hard-pressed to imagine my dad expending the effort to have someone replace it, and even harder-pressed to imagine where he got the money. It worries me, more than anything else. When money flows into the Walsh household, it’s typically the illegal kind.
I lift my suitcase up the single short step to the front door, inhaling, bracing for the worst as I enter.
It’s pretty much as I expected. First of all, there’s the smell. Because we’re so low to the ground, the house floods frequently and never quite loses the stale, dirty odor of saltwater and sewage and a filthy carpet that was left soaking wet for too long. The floorboards are trimmed with pockets of black mold, but I can’t see most of them because there’s a year’s worth of garbage blocking the narrow hall: fishing gear, empty cases of beer to be recycled, waist-high stacks of old newspapers. It’s August and he hasn’t even put away his winter jacket or the insulated boots he fishes in when the water’s cold.
I guess it’s a good thing Kelsey wasn’t counting on me to help, because I’ll be here instead, catering to a man who no longer even likes me.
“Dad?” I call, and he answers with a grunt.
I find him where I knew I would: propped up in his recliner with an open can of beer on the armrest though it’s not quite noon. There’s a table full of empties in front of him.
He frowns at the sight of me. “What are you doing here?”
My clasped hands twist like a child’s. Any fondness he felt toward me was entirely gone by the time my mom left, but I wish he’d at least fake it a little.
