by Meg Donohue
Sam offers a sympathetic grimace. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is. What about you? What brought you to Avalon?”
“My mom retired here after my dad died ten years ago,” he tells her. “And then, a couple of years ago, she got sick and I moved here to help her. She passed away last winter.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” He looks past her shoulder for a moment before meeting her gaze again. Then he shrugs. “I was a horrible son for a solid decade. Kept her up nights. I was that teenager.”
Colin, Dani thinks. Is this a version of who he might have become? A teacher? A good son?
“Will you stay?” she asks.
“I’m committed to teach another year. After that, I might take some time to travel and just see where I land.”
He is looking at her in a way that tells Dani he is imagining what it would be like to bring someone like her on this adventure. She pictures him with a tour book and a backpack, drinking a pint in a pub, writing postcards to former students with Avalon addresses, and wonders how long it would take for him to decide she is toxic.
“Thanks for not telling me I’m an asshole,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” he says, laughing. “Why exactly would I say that?”
“Oh, you know, here I am complaining about my father falling in love—” and your parents are dead.
Sam smiles. “That doesn’t make you an asshole. You’re never too old to fear an evil stepmother.”
“She doesn’t seem that evil, actually,” Dani admits.
“Oh. Then maybe you are an asshole.”
“At least I’m upfront about it.”
“I appreciate the warning.”
“Shhh!” Joyce hisses from the desk. Dani and Sam smile at each other. He opens his laptop again.
Dani looks down at her own computer. She thinks about Sam starting over here, becoming a caretaker, a beloved teacher. She wonders if she would be a good teacher and decides she would. She understands teenagers; she’s never forgotten what it’s like to be one, to be full of adult desires and still under the thumb of your parents, at the physical and emotional mercy of their whims, shaped by things over which you have no control. She tries to envision herself standing in front of a class and wonders if it is possible to speak with authority without sounding like a prick. Sam, it seems clear to her, is not a prick.
“What are you working on?” he whispers.
“I’m trying to finish a novel.”
He raises his eyebrows. “How long have you been writing it?”
People usually ask what the novel is about, so his question takes her by surprise. There is a lot, actually, that is surprising about this afternoon. This feeling she is feeling as she looks at Sam is a surprise. “Eight years,” she says.
“That’s a long time to think about one story.”
“Yes,” Dani says, studying him. “It is.”
She spends the afternoon writing the missing scene of her book. She has gone over the events of that day so many times in her mind that once she actually starts writing, the words come quickly. As she writes, she realizes that one of the many reasons she has put off writing this scene for so long is that she’d always assumed it would be cathartic to voice the truth, to give the events of that weekend when Colin died structure and syntax and a vocabulary of meaning, and she had not been ready for catharsis. She didn’t think she deserved it—the possibility of healing. But now she realizes she’d been wrong to think this process held the possibility of catharsis—she feels no better as she writes the final words than she did when she started this book all those years ago.
Still, it’s done, and this is something. She sends the pages to the library’s printer and listens as the machine churns to life.
16
Kate
Kate can’t believe she agreed to this. Is it Avalon that makes her do things she wouldn’t normally do? Is it being with Vanessa and Dani? She hopes she isn’t doing it to seem cool. This possibility turns something inside of her and makes the whole night feel off from the start.
She walks down the beach to the spot where she and Gabe planned to meet—far enough from Dani’s father’s house that Dani and Vanessa won’t be able to watch from the deck unless they dig out the binoculars, which Kate wouldn’t put past them. Gracie bounds ahead of her. Technically, dogs aren’t allowed on the beach, but Kate figures it’s okay now that the sun is setting. Tomorrow night, on the Fourth of July, there will be more people on the beach at this hour, but tonight, Sunday, it is nearly empty.
Gracie is licking Gabe’s face when Kate catches up with her and has already made a mess of the striped towels he had laid out. A paper shopping bag is on its side.
“Gracie!” Kate says. Gracie knocks Gabe’s sunglasses off his face with her tongue. “Gracie!”
Gabe laughs and grabs his glasses before Gracie can crush them. “Hi,” he says, standing. He leans toward Kate and kisses her cheek. By the time they look down, Gracie has licked an entire plate clean. Who knew what it had held—Gracie would eat anything, right down to the plasticware.
“Oh no,” Kate says. She grabs Gracie’s collar and tries unsuccessfully to get her to sit. “I’m so sorry. She’s normally pretty well behaved, but she has this thing with food. It turns her into a wild woman.” Kate can’t believe she is back here, introducing another man to her dog. She remembers when Peter met Gracie for the first time. The three of them had gone for a walk and Gracie had basically scrabbled down the entire length of the sidewalk in a crouch, releasing a stream of un-pick-upable diarrhea, a deeply apologetic look on her face. Kate had been so embarrassed that she was actually rendered speechless. But Peter, it turned out, was unflappable, making a small joke about securing some chicken-liver-flavored Pepto-Bismol and then kindly ignoring the situation.
“Are you a wild woman?” Gabe asks Gracie, ruffling the fur on her head. Her thick tail whips at the air. “Are you a crazy, wild woman?” In the midst of this petting, Gracie suddenly freezes, nose quivering, and then takes off, sand flying, toward a flock of tiny gray birds that skitter like windup toys along the edge of the water. “She’s awesome,” Gabe says. “And don’t worry, there’s more food in the bag.”
Kate steps out of her flip-flops and sits cross-legged on the towels, glad she wore her cute white jeans and not a dress. She rests her hands on her knees but they look strangely pale and limp, so she moves them. Gabe opens a bottle of wine. He fills a plastic cup for Kate and she pretends to take a sip before setting it on the sand.
“What a night,” Gabe says, leaning back on his palms. The wet swath of sand left by the receding tide glows beneath the setting sun. There’s a slight breeze off the ocean that stirs Kate’s hair, lifting it from her neck. Down the beach, a middle-aged couple sits side by side in chairs, reading books. A few walkers dot the coastline. Gracie races around, kicking up sand and barking into the breeze, wearing what can only be described as a shit-eating grin.
“She’s happy,” Kate says, laughing. Gabe laughs too. He passes her a small container of olives, and she relaxes a little. Anyone who could watch Gracie’s display of joy and not laugh is someone Kate does not want to know.
“I’m happy too,” Gabe says. “Thanks for joining me.”
She turns to face him, maneuvering an olive in her fingertips, scraping the meat from the pit with her front teeth. It is salty and oily and she already knows she will end up eating the entire container, weird dried basil leaf and all. “So what’s your deal?” she asks.
“My deal?”
“Why aren’t you at some house party right now, tapping a keg with your buddies? Or buying shots for college girls at the Princeton?” These questions come out more aggressively than she’d intended, but she is suddenly feeling very nothing-to-lose about this whole situation.
“Because I’m with you,” Gabe responds. He does not seem fazed by her dovetailed questions or her tone. He’s smiling at her with an easy set to his
shoulders and a cheerful look in his blue eyes. After a beat of time, he adds, “Also, I’m not really into crowds.”
This answer satisfies her. She wonders if she has caught him before anyone he loves has died, before he has made any life-changing mistakes. She breathes in this possibility, his brightness, his kindness and optimism.
“Would you prefer water?” he asks. Kate follows his gaze down to her untouched cup of wine. She looks back at him.
“Yes,” she says. “I would.”
Vanessa and Dani were the ones who had summer flings. Back then, Kate desperately wanted to join their ranks, but those sorts of romances had never materialized for her. The boys who liked her were serious and almost uniformly short; they spent their summers on anthropology digs or at science camps, not in Avalon. She never had her friends’ aptitude for feigning indifference. They were aloof and unpredictable, and guys flocked to them—continue to flock to them. Kate was always trying too hard. It would never strike her as anything less than supremely unfair that men faulted women for trying.
The last time she was on the beach in Avalon after the sun had set was at that party eight years earlier. The night had felt magical to Kate. The sky was velvety black, pricked by countless stars. The air was warm and sweet, the sand cool. She was with her best friends and her brother in the place she loved most in the world. They were on the cusp of everything changing. Soon, they would head back to college for their senior year—well, Kate and Dani and Vanessa would, at least; they would begin to think seriously about their futures. That summer—that night, even—seemed like the last time Kate was allowed to think only of the present. Even before she knew that summer was the end of something, she sensed it. She was exhilarated and she wound up drunk. And then Dani told that story about Kate hiding in the dryer when the cops came to break up the party, and Colin had looked right at her and laughed. Live a little, Dani had sniped, lighting up a joint that she knew Kate would refuse to smoke. Vanessa had wandered away with Jeremy, not even attempting to defend her. If Kate had been a little less drunk, if that night had felt a little less magical, a little less monumental, if Colin wasn’t always telling her to loosen up . . .
These are all excuses. She did what she did and no one told her to do it. She did it.
Gracie is still leaping and racing, barking at nothing, running into the water and then out again. What would it be like to gallop through the world with such openhearted joy? Sometimes Kate finds herself living vicariously through her dog.
And so when Gabe leans in to kiss her, she does not pull away. He puts one hand behind her head and the other on her shoulder and they kiss for a long time. Kate feels herself drawn toward him, into him. She is not thinking of anything but that moment, the feel of Gabe’s lips against hers, the pressure of his fingers entwined with her hair.
The cold water makes her eyes snap open. Gracie is shaking her fur, a long head-to-toe shimmy, splattering Kate’s white jeans with dark, wet sand. “Gracie!” Kate shrieks, leaping to her feet. Maybe it is that the perfect kiss has been ruined, or maybe it is being on the beach in Avalon after the sun has set, or maybe it is simply that she has eaten too many olives, or maybe it is—and it surely is—the fact that she is pregnant, but all of a sudden she feels certain she is going to be sick. She turns and heaves but all that comes out is a pitiful retching sound. She clamps her hand over mouth, but doesn’t turn back to face Gabe. She’s never been more humiliated in her entire life.
“Kate!” she hears him say. “Are you okay?”
She stumbles a few feet away, holding her stomach. She misses her orderly apartment in Philadelphia. She misses the life she had a month ago, a full, busy life that in all but its darkest moments kept her safe from the sharp ache of her memories, the truth about what she did to her brother.
“I’m sorry,” she says, turning back to face Gabe. He is standing in the middle of the beach towels with his head cocked to the side, his brow furrowed and his body tense, like a dog that has been asked to stay. “I’m so sorry. I really do like you. But I’m pregnant.” She turns and begins to run down the beach toward the house. Gracie leaps ahead of her, barking so loudly that Kate can’t hear if Gabe calls her name.
By the time she climbs the steps to the upper deck, she is out of breath and crying so hard that her eyes already feel swollen. Vanessa and Dani are lounging on chaises and spring to their feet when they see her.
“What happened?” Vanessa asks. She guides Kate to a chaise and sits down beside her. Dani drops to her other side.
“He kissed me,” Kate says. Her breathing is ragged, her words punctuated by a hiccup.
“Quelle horreur!” Dani breathes, smiling.
“It’s not funny, Dani!” Kate says. “I’m pregnant!”
Dani looks at her, her expression softening. “I’m sorry,” she says. She wraps her arm around Kate. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
Gracie stretches out at Kate’s feet and sighs. She smells of the sea. Kate can feel Vanessa and Dani exchanging a glance behind her head. “I should never have gone out with him,” she says, hardly realizing she is saying the words out loud. Her mind is turning.
“We thought it would help you stop thinking about Peter,” Vanessa says. “That’s the point of this whole trip, isn’t it?”
Kate looks out at the ocean. Colin had always loved swimming at night. Why was that? What was it about the dark water that had appealed to him? Had they always been so different? From the moment they were born? She takes a deep breath.
“There are other reasons why I wanted to come here,” she says.
Vanessa and Dani are silent, but Kate can feel how her words make their bodies tense.
She lays her right hand on her belly. She imagines her guilt as a poisonous cloud, stunting the baby’s growth. Colin is everywhere here, just as she had known he would be. She had known all along.
“I set that fire,” she says. “At the party on the beach the weekend Colin died.”
There is leaden silence, and then Vanessa says, “What are you talking about?”
“I was so drunk and I thought, why not? I wanted to be reckless for once. It seemed like my last chance.” Kate’s eyes are pegged on Gracie. “I wanted to do something stupid and wild and not think about the consequences. At least, I think that’s what I was thinking. I was so drunk.”
“Colin set the lifeguard stand on fire,” Vanessa says. Her voice is strained. Kate looks at her.
“No, he didn’t. I did.” She tells them how she had sat with Colin’s friend Tony on the lifeguard stand. Maybe he had egged her on, maybe she was trying to impress him. She was drunk and it had been so hard not to admit to Tony that she had a crush on him. She didn’t remember much more than holding a lighter up to some cardboard. How had she burned an entire lifeguard stand? It seems an impossible feat. But she had. Colin ran up, saw the lighter in Kate’s hand and tried to kick sand on the fire. But he was too late; the lifeguard stand was burning, crackling, sending smoke into the night sky. Kate was mesmerized. After long minutes spent watching Colin throw sand on the fire, Kate had finally snapped out of it and joined him. They heard sirens in the distance; someone in one of the beachfront homes must have seen the smoke and called 911. Tony ran off into the dunes, yelling for them to do the same.
“Get out of here, Kate!” Colin said. She didn’t see her friends anywhere. They both started running, but when Kate finally slowed down, all the way out on Dune Drive, Colin wasn’t beside her.
The next morning, when she woke in her bed, she was confused. The events of the night were hazy. For a moment, seeing Colin arrive at the bungalow with his citation in hand, she thought he had actually done it and was furious with him before she remembered. She set the fire. It was a stupid prank and it would change everything.
“Colin didn’t want me to get in trouble,” Kate tells Vanessa and Dani. They’re sitting completely still on either side of her; Dani’s hand is no longer on Kate’s shoulder. “He said I had so much to lo
se, and he had nothing. So I let him take the blame. I was so selfish and I just let him. I didn’t even put up a fight.” Her face is wet with tears. “He must have thought I didn’t have any faith in him. He must have thought I believed him when he said he didn’t have a future. I was his sister and I didn’t even stand up for him.”
Vanessa is crying now too, one hand covering her mouth. She looks stunned. Kate feels a rush of shame.
“You’ve been keeping this secret all this time?” Dani asks. Her skin is sallow below her tan, but her brown eyes are dry. “Why?”
“Because,” she breathes, “I know what letting Colin take the blame did to him. He was getting better, he was smoking less, he seemed happier. He was going to get his life on track, and I let him do something that set him back again. I pushed him. And then he took those drugs and he swam out into the bay and he died.” She begins to sob. “I hate myself for doing that to him.”
“Kate, it wasn’t your fault,” Dani says.
“It was,” Kate says. “Don’t you understand? It was my fault.” This is the truth. She spent her whole childhood trying not to make a big mistake that would change the direction of her life, and then in one drunken summer night she’d done it anyway. Except it wasn’t her life she had destroyed—it was her brother’s. Her twin brother, who was the opposite of her in so many ways, and whom she had loved in such an overwhelming, deeply complicated way that at times it feels like the great love of her life. There are stories about twins who feel each other’s pain across continents, who know the exact moment the other breaks a bone. Kate and Colin hadn’t had that. But there was something between them, an invisible thread that Kate sometimes thinks had also tied her to the world and kept her from feeling adrift. And then she broke it.
She was the one who called her parents and told them Colin had died. She would never forget the sound of her mother’s grief, the way it crashed through the phone, causing Kate to shiver in a way she would not be able to quell for weeks. Later, when the police told her parents about the fire on the beach, Kate could see that her parents did not consider the incident an important piece of the puzzle of Colin’s death—it was low on Colin’s rap sheet, a harmless prank. To her great, enduring shame, Kate never told them the truth. She would now though. She would go home and tell them, and Peter too.
