“Ray,” Meg clarifies, as if her subtext weren’t clear. “About seeing you at Smitty’s yesterday.” She stops, plants her feet on the asphalt. “I considered it, but in the end thought it might be best that he doesn’t know you’re here.”
Grace’s thoughts race back to her encounter with him in the market.I guess some rumors really are true,he’d said. At the time, Grace assumed the leader of the rumor mill was Meg.
“What do you mean, you didn’t tell him?”
“It’s just, he’s finally in a good place. I’m not sure it’s the right time to reopen old wounds.” Nearby, more partygoers wander past. “Sometimes I think it’s best to leave the past in the past, you know?”
An ache forms in Grace’s stomach, not because she doesn’t understand but because she does. It’s the reason she probably never should have come back here.
“But maybe that’s me being an annoyingly protective sister,” Meg continues. “Not that I even have full say.” She places one foot back on a pedal. “It’s a tiny island.” Slowly, she starts to move forward, but not before she looks back. “If you two are meant to cross paths again down here, then I have to guess that, at some point, you probably will.”
Fourteen
The streetlights are on by the time Grace turns her bicycle onto Surf Street, the asphalt dappled with orange islands of light. Shadows stretch long, the sun now almost fully set. The block is mostly quiet, save for a few kids up near the dune, their lit-up sparklers creating temporary illuminated arcs in the air. Grace watches them as she pedals, her skin sticky, hair tangled in knots from her ride. She wonders, briefly, how it would feel to be a kid again. Carefree. Lost in a world of play.
From somewhere nearby, a dog barks. Her eyes still on the children, it takes a second for Grace to fully register the sound. Before she does, a blur of golden fur darts across the blacktop. It barrels toward her, unleashed and at full speed. It all happens too fast—the running, the jumping, the unsolicited licking—like a strange sensory-rich dream. Grace stumbles, nearly loses control of the bike—but catches herself just in time.
And then, she pauses—reallypauses—and sees.
“Wait,” she whispers, her heart suddenly fluttering, wild and unexpected, like a dozen butterflies. The dog settles, but not before giving Grace one last round of inquisitive sniffs. Goose bumps ripple across her skin, her whole body reacting like she’s just plunged into water that’s ten degrees too cold. The dog continues to paw at her, as excited and rambunctious as a puppy, though it’s clear she’s not one. Grace pets the animal’s head, patting around as if she’s trying to feel out a memory. “Sandy?”
“Actually, that’s Hooper,” a voice—one that’s all too familiar—says from the steps of house Number 116. “Sandy died ten years ago.” Sadness paints the person’s tone. “She was a good dog, though. Loyal right to the very end.”
Grace turns in slow motion—an actor right before the big reveal. Not that she even needs to in order to understand what’s happening. Already, she knows who she’ll see in the shadows when her head makes it the full 180 degrees.
Ray.
Right there. Sitting on the steps. Looking at Grace. Holding a beer.
It’s as if no time has passed. Yet, of course, it has. Years. Entire lifetimes. Whole relationships. Identities that came and went. But here they are. Hereheis. The same gold-rimmed eyes. The same invisible pull. A thousand memories tightening like a piece of leather inside her chest.
“Hooper’s friendly, though.” Ray takes a sip. “She’s just feeling you out, trying to determine if you’re someone she knows.” He sets his can down next to him. “Hoop! Come here, girl!” An obedient listener, the dog bolts. She licks Ray’s arm, then settles in a heap at his feet.
“Hooper,” Grace echoes, her fingers numb. She works to untangle her legs from the bike—clumsy, disoriented. “Richard Dreyfuss,” she says once she’s steady. “Like inJaws.”
“Some things change.” Ray raises his shoulders slightly. “Some things don’t.” He pets Hooper’s body. “It’s still my favorite movie.”
You’ll love this place,he told her the summer she turned thirteen.This movie. The two of them, alone, in the island’s cinema.The story.Hands inching closer on the armrest.It’s a perfect plot, Porter.Staying long after the closing credits. Not needing to do anything. To be anything.I bet you could write something like that one day.Believing him.
Grace wheels the bike up onto the sidewalk, then sets it in the driveway in front of the Jeep. She stands there, everything inside her quivering, unsure how to proceed.
How many summers of her life has she walked into this same scene? Ray, there on the steps, waiting for her on that first day, knowing the precise time she and Birdie would arrive back after running their errands to finally settle in. Always, she ran to him—at fifteen, seventeen, twenty-three, and all the years in between—her arms wrapping around him as her body came back to life, as if the rest of the year it’d been in hibernation.
You’re back,he’d say. No matter her age, or how much she grew, or the clothes she wore, he’d smile with his whole face.You’re still you.
She’s not the girl she was back then. Right now, her body doesn’t care. Her skin flushes. She might as well be sixteen.
In the street, the kids—out of sparklers—sprint home, their laughter echoing behind them.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asks, trying to sound brave, though her voice subtly shakes. Even after all this time, he looks like he belongs here. Like he’s part of this place. Of her.
Ray adjusts his backward baseball hat. A few longer strands of hair poke under its sides. “Thought I’d drop by, see if the owner ever fixed the front light.” He glances up at the porch lantern, the glass still cracked all these decades later. “Remember that summer you freaked out when you saw the giant moth and smacked it with your sandal?”
“Ray ...” She doesn’t repeat her question. It’s already there, lingering between them, thick and unanswered, like so many other things.
He positions his arms on his thighs, looks down at the steps, then up at her the way he always has, some secret in his eyes, like he can see something about her no one else can. “Maybe I could ask you the same thing,” he says, the sound of his voice—the echo of it here on this street—enough to make her heart twist.
It was easy to say they’d loved each other for years, though that wasn’t really the case. For every twelve months that passed, they only ever saw each other for seven sandy, salt-crusted days.
