She shrugs and says, “I can use it all at my house, if you don’t end up needing it.” Then she puts her small hand on my back and pats me lightly. “Okay?” she asks, and I don’t even mind. My baby sister, taking care of me.
We stuff her tin can car full of everything we bought, and I buy her the fanciest fucking lunch we’ve ever eaten together, some restaurant where the menus are printed on vellum and kept in soft leather booklets. She tells me more about her honeymoon, about a trip she’s got scheduled next week for work, about a new paper she’s working on with Dr. Singh. I tell her about Patricia and the book, the classes I might take. When she’s taking her last bite of crème brûlée I set my elbows on the table and tell her what I should have the day she got married.
“Kit. Remember at your wedding, when you said that I gave you good things when we were growing up?”
She blinks across the table at me, the spoon still halfway in her mouth when she nods. When she pulls it out she points it at me. “I said you’d given meeverygood thing. Every one. I don’t want you everto forget it.”
I clear my throat, look down at the white tablecloth, the glass bowl filled with crystal clear water, delicate pink flower blooms floating on top. Who would’ve ever thought, me and Kit, in a place like this. “I wanted to say that it was the same for me. Everything good I had back then, it was because I had you with me. It’s you who kept me from turningout like Dad.”
Kit’s still holding the spoon in the air, like she’s been frozen in shock. “That’s not true.”
I smile at her. “It is. Or at least it’s mostly true. You were the biggest part of that for me.”
She swallows thickly, tears springing up. She’s always been quick to cry, Kit, at least around me. “Well, thanks. Thank you.”
“But after that too. You gave me a lot of good things all these years I’ve been gone, and you always made sure I had a home with you if I needed it. You always called, emailed. You always cared about everything I did. So I’m thanking you for that. And I’m thanking you for Greer. For knowing Greer, and for—being okay, being supportive of this thing with me and her. It’s the best good thing you’ve ever given me, and that’s a long list, Tool Kit.”
“I’m going to make a mess of this tablecloth, Alex,” she sniffs.
“Well, I’m probably going to make a mess of a lot of things over the next few months. I’ll probably be a gigantic pain in the ass while I figure all this out.” I make a vague gesture around the room, meaning—being here, in this city, making a life. Anew home base.
Kit smiles at me, big and bright, black eyes shining. She’s still got the spoon in her hand when she shrugs. “That’s okay,” she says. “It’ll be my pleasure, cleaning up afteryou for once.”
And after that, for the first time in my life, I let my sisterdrive me home.
Where I wait for the love of my life to share it with me.
Epilogue
Greer
They make me wear my robes and thehat to Betty’s.
It’s a big group, this “they”—my whole family, immediate and extended, sure, but also Kit and Zoe and Ben and Aiden, Henry and Sharon, a few of Aiden’s crew from his rescue squad, Patricia and Bart and Dennise and all my colleagues from Holy Cross. It’s the second time in as many months that Betty’s shut down her place for one of us, and right now she’s behind the bar, filling glasses from a tap and keeping an eye on the phone screen my dad’s holding up for her, playing the video of the moment where I walked across the stage toget my diploma.
Greer Garson Hawthorne.Lots of cheers and shouting from the audience. Cary smuggled in an air horn, and for the rest of the ceremony the campus police made him wait outside.
Last week Ava had encouraged me to practice a wave as I went across the stage. “Like this,” she’d said, and done a beautiful, smooth walk, the top half of her body perfectly turned out as she raised a hand in the air. “Mom’ll love it.”
“I’m—just going to try to stay upright,” I’d told her, and thank God I had. I thought I’d have a stroke, walking across that stage. I was so nervous that I’d said, “You’re welcome” instead of “Thank you” when the dean handed me my diploma. It could’ve been worse. The dean looks a little like Santa Claus, and I’d almost said, “Merry Christmas.” Good thing none of this was captured on the video.
Still, in my apartment last night, trying on the robes I’d had hanging from my closet door, I’d shown Alex the wave, the same way Ava had done it, and he’d laughed and laughed, pulling me onto the bed and kissing me, telling me he imagined I was a princess in another life, a queen, a famous movie star.
Across the room, he stands with Bart and Dennise, his head tipped to the side slightly, his shoulders hunched in deference to their shorter statures. Even from here he looks calm, perfectly at ease, a crooked smile transforming his face at something Dennise says to Bart. I don’t want to speculate, but I think Bart likes Dennise’s blouse, and also her face and her whole self. If those two get together I will plan the wedding. I will moonlight as a romance novelist so I can write their story. I absolutely have the imagination for it.
Shocking exactly no one except him, routines seem to have helped Alex with the panic attacks—getting enough sleep, eating regular meals, runs in the early mornings, a session with Patricia every Friday, three online class sessions a week, which he usually walks to Boneshaker’s to do. He talks to Jae every Tuesday and Thursday. Last month, we’d gone to New York for a weekend to attend a party Jae invited us to, and I’d been loudly hailed as the best thing that’d ever happened to Alex, since he’d finally responded to an Evite. All night, Alex had stood beside me, his hand occasionally coming up to rub the skin across my shoulders. “This is Greer Hawthorne,” he’d say, introducing me to journalists, photographers, artists, authors. “She’s asocial worker.”
He’s done one job in the time since he’s been back, five days spent in California covering wildfire damage, flying back late on a Thursday night and knocking softly on my new apartment’s door before using the key I gave him, crawling in bed with me and falling asleep with a satisfied smile on his face. Two of his photos were in thePostthe next morning.
“One more picture,” says Zoe, handing her phone to Aiden and coming to stand next to me, waving Kit over with her other hand. They’re both wearing the promised T-shirts, white with a big square covering the whole front, my smiling facein the center.
“Hold up the diploma,” Kit says. “Like right in front. Wait, should we get our signs?” They’re referring, of course, to the two signs they’d each made to hold up when my name was called. One said,GREER, WE LOVE YOU, and the other was a huge print—done by Bart—of my ladybug, so it’d be easy for me to find them all in the audience.
“Don’t get the signs,” says Zoe. “We want the diploma to be the focus. Aiden, make sure you can see the part where it says summa cum laude.”
“Tiny print, Zo,” he says, squinting at the phone screen, probably trying to remember where to press to get a picture. Aiden is terrible with phones. Every once in a while I’ll get a photo message from him that’s just a black screen and then a while later he’ll text,Sorry, sat on it.
“Let me,” says Alex, stepping beside Aiden. He’s got the FG in his hand—which he still uses around town here, sending a roll of film a week to Bart—and a smile on his face. He’s also got one of the T-shirts on, and it’s ridiculous, sweet and absurd and lovely, and he keeps patting at the chest of it, like maybe everyone at the party hasn’t already noticed he’s wearing my face on himself. Kit rolls her eyes when he makes us move, getting us in better light, and it’s at least a minute of him moving himself, figuring out where hewants to stand.
