I had a flash of me and Colin, curled up not unlike this at the guesthouse on graduation night. I’d had the same sudden, gasping worry then. And look how that had turned out.
As if sensing this, Ben now shifted, pulling me closer. I leaned my head back, feeling his breath in my ear. Maybe this was the moment I should ask if we’d be okay. But I didn’t even know what we were, really. So I said nothing.
A little later, I was returning to the house, the taste of him still on my lips. As I crossed the grass, I saw something by the water.
Someone, actually. They had their back to me and for a moment they were a stranger. But then, in the next beat, I realized: It was my mom. She had her knees pulled to her chest, her hair blowing back a bit in the breeze coming off the lake. I walked over slowly, not wanting to startle her.
“Hey,” I said, once I was within earshot. Despite my efforts, I saw her jump before she turned, making me out in the dark.
“What are you doing awake?” she asked. “It’s so late.”
“You’re up,” I pointed out.
She cocked her head to one side, acknowledging my point. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” Well, it wasn’t like I was going to tell her I’d been making out with a boy for hours. Even if I did know she could relate.
“I woke up thinking about the surgery,” she said. “But then everything else flooded in as well.”
I sat down beside her, the sand damp under me. “Like what?”
“My family. The house.” She sighed, quietly. “This place does that. It’s full of ghosts. One reason I’ve stayed away.”
“Ghosts or memories?” I asked.
“Sometimes they’re the same thing,” she replied, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Especially when you come home.”
Home. It was the first time I’d heard her refer to it with that word. Or any place, now that I thought of it. She’d been moving, city to city, for as long as I could remember. Unlike Ben, though, I was pretty sure that was how she’d wanted it. It was me, I realized, that was her constant. The planet, fixed, around which she orbited.
“Look,” she said. “You’ve heard a lot of stories while you’ve been here, I’m sure. About my mother and father, my sisters. Me.”
I nodded. “I have.”
“The weddings on the porch. The Judge and his legacy. My parents’ wonderful, inspiring marriage, built strong over the years, just like this house.”
I thought of all the pictures, the wedding album.
“There’s this thing about stories that are passed down, though,” my mom continued. “Depending on the person, certain details are emphasized. Others smoothed over, if not omitted completely.”
“Hard to know the truth,” I observed.
“Exactly.” She looked at the water again. “But to be here, and part of this… you have to believe what you’re told. It’s like an exchange, an agreement.”
I trailed my hand through the sand, drawing a line. “So that’s why you left? You didn’t believe?”
“I wanted to,” she said. “But then I saw my dad with a waitress from Dupont’s at a hotel in Bly Corners one day after school.”
I felt myself blink: once, twice.
“When I confronted him, he said I was mistaken.” She bit her lip. “I will never forget that. How confident—audacious—it was to tell a person to just disregard what they witnessed with their own eyes.”
“Pretty nervy,” I agreed.
She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Worse, that summer was their thirtieth wedding anniversary. They had a vow renewal and big party here at the house. All the speeches were about their great love story. Meanwhile, I’m watching everything, knowing it was a lie.”
Yikes. “That must have been hard.”
“Well, it was made even more difficult when I did some digging and found it wasn’t just one woman, but several overthe years. Including Cheryl, who was Mrs. Bigby’s best friend.”
