I finally find the garage door, open it, and have a reason to smile again. There before me is a navy-blue Audi e-tron electric SUV. The plug sticking out pulses green.
“Holy shit,” I say with a wide grin.
To my left, a row of pegs poke out of the wall. One set of keys hangs from them, with a key fob emblazoned with the Audi logo.
I run to the car with keys in hand.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Best Laid Plans
ZACH
The sailboat cuts through the waves of Puget Sound with ease. My sailing technique comes back to me quickly. A northerly wind blows, and I need to head southwest, so I’m doing a lot of tacking and jibing.
Despite constantly adjusting the sails to catch the wind, I’m making good time. I’ve already crossed the channel from the mainland to Vashon. Now, I’m following the island’s perimeter until I reach my parent’s home. Nearly there.
I’ve waited so long for this moment, and now that it’s upon me, a horrible dread fills me. I don’t think I’m ready to find out the answers I’m about to discover. If only Aiden were here to help me through this. I expected him to be here with me. But the kindness and empathy he’s shown me are replaced only by emptiness. How could we have both been so stupid, clinging to our secrets? Protecting them until they tore us apart.
I round the last bend in the coastline. A little cottage sits up on the ridge. The place I grew up. It’s an unsettling mixture of familiar and foreign. The house looks in good shape, but the landscaping is unkempt. Ivy and morning glory grow up the side of the house and extend to the roof. Our little beach is gone, submerged beneath feet of seawater. The zigzagging staircase that used to lead down to the shoreline is halfway into the sea.
Normally, I’d have to anchor the sailboat offshore and ride a dinghy to our beach. Instead, I pilot the boat up to the stairs, rising from the water. The wood is slippery and unstable, covered with algae, and never intended to be submerged. I climb the steps with care.
When I reach the top, it’s clear the house has been untouched for months. A nervous pit forms inside me. This could mean they abandoned the house and fled elsewhere. Or it could mean the worst.
The house is secure, all the doors and windows locked and intact. The overgrown garden is a maze of weeds and overgrowth. I find a flat rock etched with the phraseGarden of Weed’n, and under the rock, the spare key. Still there after all this time.
But something else gets my attention as I turn around to unlock the house—two large stones, deep in the garden. These are new. I’ve never seen them before. Written across the stones are the names Martha and Frank. My parents’ names. The pain of seeing them overwhelms me, and I drop to my knees and start weeping.
Despite what I hoped, this is what I expected to find. But that doesn’t help much. Expected or not, their deaths hit me like a sledgehammer as I sob over their graves.
I hoped that somehow, against all odds, fate would reunite me with them. I’d come home, see their smiling faces, and run up to hug them. I’d take in the scent of my mother’s hair, with her back from the garden, smelling of flowers and earth. My dad would get a hug so strong I’d never let him get away. Instead, this place is like everywhere else in the world. Dead. Empty. Alone.
After a long while, when my sobs have subsided, I go through the house and find any belongings of theirs to remember them by. I only take a few items. Some family photographs, my dad’s watch, and the golden necklace my mom’s worn since I was a child.
When I’m done, I let out a long, drawn-out breath. There’s one more task on the island—another piece of my past to reconcile. I have to find out Felix’s fate. My parents’ burial gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe he’s alive. Maybe he did it. Felix loved my parents and treated them like his own.
The path from my house to his is forever etched into my memory. I’ve hiked this route a thousand times. Before we fell in love, we were best friends. We’ve known each other since the sixth grade.
His family’s old farmhouse looks similar in condition to my parents’ house. Unscathed but overgrown. As I approach the front door, two wooden crosses staked into the yard come into view. When I get closer, a chill goes over me; I’m afraid of what the markers will reveal.
Scrawled across one isAllison, Felix’s mom. And on the other,Felix.
I’m numb. I have no more tears left to shed. They’ve all been spent.
For the last year, getting back here was the only thing I wanted. It was my singular focus. And now that I’m here, I’ve found nothing to return to. It was a fool’s errand. All that’s left here are the empty shells of my childhood memories in the form of graves. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
And the only thing left in this entire world that I care about is somewhere out there, but I don’t know where. Aiden. I’m hollowed out and filled with regret and loneliness.
It’s too late to return to the mainland before nightfall, and I’m unsure where I’d go next even if I could. So, I return to my parent’s home in stunned silence, barely looking where I’m going.
With so much loss in the last twenty-four hours, my mind can scarcely contain it. I’ve lost Aiden, lost my parents, lost Felix, and had to witness Curtis’s horrific death.
Wait—Curtis’s letter.
I reach into my pocket for the envelope Curtis had tasked me to deliver. But as I take it out, another piece of paper drops to the ground. A lump forms in my throat. It’s the letter Aiden wrote me the night he left me at the dam. I read through half of it and get swept up in conflicting emotions. It’s the closest thing to a love letter that Aiden has ever written me. But it’s also a stinging reminder of his repeated betrayal. I shove it back in my pocket, not wanting to relive those memories any longer.
Then I refocus and inspect Curtis’s letter. The nameJamesis written in careful cursive, with an address below it. It’s in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. I know that area well.
