extra drive time themselves.
They were not suddenly back to being best friends. The
deep trust they once shared had been shattered, for Blue, on
that night long ago. Even if she wanted it to, her heart would not open too wide for Renee. But she was beginning to understand that life had a lot of pain and loss in it, so when the potential for repair was there, she should try to take it. She would leave space for something new to grow, not expect too
much, nor dismiss the possibility of what could be.
When they reached Renee’s, Blue parked the car and they
sat for a moment.
“I wish we could just keep driving,” Renee said.
“I can take a few more spins around the block,” Blue of-
fered.
Renee smiled sadly. “Not far enough.” She flipped the visor
mirror down and began to fix her hair. Her dress, the one
she’d worn the day she arrived in Montauk, was wrinkled,
her face drawn from sleeplessness, her makeup faded, and yet
somehow she looked younger, or at least less guarded. She
pulled out her lipstick, then sighed. “Hopeless,” she said as she shoved it back into her purse without bothering to reapply it.
She glanced up at the house she shared with Darrin and
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more in her life than just him. “You think I should leave him, don’t you?”
“You’re asking my opinion on a love relationship?” Blue
replied with a laugh. “I don’t know what you should do.”
“Part of me thinks I should just run. The other part of me
thinks that’s what I always do. I don’t know which instinct is right. Either could be.”
“I guess you’ll know what you’re going to do when you
do it,” Blue said.
Renee nodded. “Yeah. We’ll see what he says when I con-
front him.” She puffed up her cheeks, blew her bangs up on a
big exhale. “This should be fun. I haven’t even told him I’m
pregnant yet.”
“Good luck,” Blue said. “You’ve got this. Let me know
how it goes.”
Renee climbed out of the car, ducked her head back in,
smiled. “Thanks.”
As Blue drove back to Manhattan, she imagined what was
happening inside that house, whether Renee had walked in
and confronted Darrin or whether she had paused just out-
side the door, pulled out her compact, reapplied her lipstick, put on her Renee smile, and said nothing. Blue was sure she
knew what she would do if it were her, but everyone was al-
ways sure what they would do in a hypothetical.
It was almost evening by the time she reached the city and
dropped off the car. She walked into her apartment, set down
her bag in the empty foyer, and realized, not for the first time, how much she hated living there. And, too, how easy it would
be to forget that, to once again be habituated into the familiarities of her life, accustomed to her misery. She called in sick the next three days and wandered her hallways, staring at the East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 340
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walls and out the window and in the mirror. She drank too
much and got high and checked Jack’s social media channels
a dozen times a day and felt shame about it and reprimanded
herself for being a stalker and then kept doing it anyway. She didn’t know what she was looking for there.
The following week an offer came in on Nana’s house for
higher than what she’d asked. Blue took it off the market in-
stead and turned in her two weeks’ notice.
In September she packed up her stuff and left the city be-
hind.
Early fall settled over Montauk, blowing in waves the color
of dolphins and winds like chilled glass. Blue turned the corner onto Nana’s street, now her street, with the last of her belongings. Fear zapped her in intermittent surges. What was
she going to do out here? She had no plan, no direction. She’d been rash making so many drastic changes at once. It was so
unlike her. But death had been undraped from denial in the
days after Henry’s funeral. And death did that—it made you
scramble for life. Grab without thinking.
She’d noticed, as she drove through town, that the restau-
rant she’d once loved so much was still up for sale.
She could afford it.
Of course, she didn’t know how to run a restaurant.
And restaurants were a bad bet. Everyone knew that.
But the idea of a place where people would gather for joy,
a place she could come and go and always belong—she liked
the thought of it.
Probably she wouldn’t do it.
But maybe she would.
And of course, in the back of her mind, Jack. She knew it
was inevitable she would bump into him somewhere in town.
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She’d finally found the courage to text him an apology. His
reply had been muted. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all good.”
Blue knew it was a blow off. Whenever she thought about it,
it was like a slow, sharp razor across her chest. Still, she fantasized about the day when she would maybe own that restaurant
and he would happen to walk in, see the afternoon sunlight
spilled like a drink across the polished bar, surfboards riding the beechwood walls, a large aquarium in the corner teeming
with fanciful fish. And be impressed. This was as far as she
could walk it. With him or any other man. Love was still too
dangerous a hope to carry. For now she’d settle for making
her life better and hoping someone would notice.
She pulled in to her driveway, got out and looked up at
Nana’s house, her house. She did love it so. Dust motes floated in the panels of light through the windows as she entered. A
chaos of boxes and paint buckets and cleaning supplies was
scattered everywhere. She put down the grocery bag of sand-
wiches and snacks and drinks she’d bought for the girls and put them away. The clock on the microwave said noon. They’d
be here any minute. She went outside, lit up. She’d promised
herself she’d quit after the move, but then life hadn’t quit and there was too much stress and tomorrow, she told herself, tomorrow I’ll do it.
The traffic out front had thinned to a dribble. It was so
quiet here after Labor Day. Soon early darkness would take
over, the air would smell of wood smoke and then of snow,
and only the locals would remain.
It would be lonely. But then that wasn’t new.
And, too, she needed it—the quiet and the clean air and
the open space. It was so hard to know yourself or what you
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wanted when there was so much noise and too many people
and every city breath engaged her lungs in extra labor.
She heard the familiar sound of pebbles hopping under tires
followed by cheerful honking as Maya, Hannah and Renee
pulled in. One last drag of her cigarette, then
she stubbed it out and stepped forward to greet them.
“Hey!” Renee said, climbing out. She hadn’t started to show
yet but there was a f lush in her cheeks that made her look
more like the teenager Blue remembered. She moved as if to
hug Blue, then paused, unsure. The bond was still so fragile.
“I’ll grab your bag,” Blue said instead.
“I could kiss the ground!” Maya said, stepping into the sun-
shine. “Grandma—” she pointed toward Hannah “—drove the
last leg, clocking five miles under the speed limit and wouldn’t let us turn on the radio because it was ‘too distracting.’”
“I told you guys you could drive if you wanted,” Hannah
said.
“Technically Maya did,” Renee said. “From the back seat.”
Blue shook her head and laughed.
Hannah smiled through tired eyes. Blue noticed the subtle
drag in her movement and took her bag, gave her shoulder
a squeeze. “I’m just happy you’re here,” she said. “Seriously, thanks so much for coming out to help, guys. I should probably warn you…”
Blue let the mess in the foyer finish her sentence for her.
Maya let out a low whistle as they waded through the mine-
field of supplies and unlabeled boxes. Blue shot her a warning look. She’d given Maya a loan for her house on the condition she get a second job to pay it back. And Maya had actu-
ally done it, gotten herself an additional job selling paint or something random. Still Blue knew that whenever Maya had
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money, she spent it. If Blue was lucky, she’d see half of that loan returned, so she planned to hold the debt over Maya’s
head as much as possible.
Now she sighed, overwhelmed. “I didn’t even bother to
sort it. Just moved all my junk here. I don’t even know where to start.”
Renee put her hands on her hips, surveyed the scene. “We
should probably throw out everything you don’t need first,”
she said. “Then we can work with whatever’s left.”
They all nodded.
A daunting task.
But a start.
Perhaps even a life philosophy.
They headed upstairs to drop off their bags.
Hannah was the last one up and with an effort that belied
her years. Grief, she was learning, moved in slow, heavy turns, made a shipwreck of its inhabitants, pinned them in its murky aquatic hold. But today, or at least in this moment, the ache was accompanied by gladness. It was like a fluid leak into the wrong engine, the way hope could find its way into sorrow.
She entered their room and Maya turned and gave her an
encouraging smile. She gave one back. “You look tired,” she
said, just noticing now. Maya never looked tired.
“I worked fourteen hours yesterday,” Maya said.
“Ugh,” Hannah said.
Maya shrugged. “It’s temporary.”
Hannah knew Maya’s optimism was sincere, that Maya’s
greatest strength was her refusal to get pulled down by life’s hardships. Their whole life Maya had always been one step
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better. Still, it seemed that Hannah could see the vulnerability in everyone’s eyes lately, even Maya’s, and this, too, was a product of loss—the deeper attunement to struggle. She felt the shared question inside them, in every person she passed— will I be okay?— the uncertainty more conscious in some than others but each tending to it in their own way, this baby in need of constant soothing. And this thought gave her a great empathy
for humanity and for herself and for all the various ineffective tools that people use to beat back the terror of their own fragility, of life’s unpredictability and potential for pain. For the first time in a long while she felt that she was not alone, not crazy, that she was just coping, getting by like everyone else.
They unpacked their stuff, ate lunch at the picnic table
under birdsong and the gaze of a doe who had wandered into
the yard and a September sky the saturated blue of oceans on
a globe.
Then they began the work.
Hannah was put in charge of cleaning, Renee organizing
and rearranging with her decorative eye, Blue tossing out all that was useless or old or didn’t belong to her. Maya moved
between them, lending a hand and pausing with unnecessary
frequency for refreshments. The light shifted across their conversations, their silences. Hannah was grateful for the work, for the way it occupied her mind, pushed her back into her
body and against grief’s propensity toward inertia.
She saw Renee repeatedly check her phone, and something
in the furtiveness of the act raised Hannah’s suspicion that she was communicating with Darrin. Blue and Maya must have
noticed, too, because each time it happened, they glanced at
each other with a raised eyebrow.
“He wants to go to therapy,” Renee blurted finally.
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Maya sighed. “They all say that when they’re caught. Men
like him don’t change.”
“I think they can,” Renee said. “If they want to enough.”
She looked to Blue.
“I’m inclined to agree with Maya,” Blue said. “But I con-
cede that anything’s possible.”
“I have to try at least,” Renee said.
Hannah understood. It was so hard to know when to give
up on a person. To know who could be fixed and who could
not. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed. And so often the only answer, the hard but only answer, was to wait and see.
Still, she hoped, they all hoped, Renee wasn’t just settling
because it was easier to deny a problem than to truly face one.
The cost for that was always higher, both in pain and lost years.
They’d seen that play out before with Renee, and Hannah
worried this was merely a new version. But she couldn’t be
sure. Change was often incremental, almost imperceptible to
the observer. Failing to see it didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
The light shifted again. Shadows crossing the room and
quiet descending like weather. Everyone preoccupied with
their work and their thoughts. Hannah surveyed her friends.
They were inhabiting such different lives from what she had
once imagined. Not that she’d ever had a particular picture
of what they’d all become. It was just that she never expected their adulthood to be so…ordinary. Somehow youth had made
her friends seem larger than life, destined for greatness. But then, what was that?
Where would they all be ten years from now? she wondered.
Would the answer surprise her?
Renee stood up, looked around at the few remaining boxes
in the foyer. “I’m starving,” she said. “Anyone up for dinner?”
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“I hear there’s a great place for lobster rolls on the docks,”
Maya said. “I’d be happy to pick some up…if Blue gives me
cash.”
“Can’t possibly imagine why you’d want to go
to the
docks,” Blue said.
Maya smiled, the grin of a girl falling in love. “I did men-
tion we’d stop by. And hey, maybe Andy has cute friends.”
“Not for me,” Hannah said. “It’s going to be a long time
before I’m ready for that.”
“As if you know what life will do,” Maya said.
Hannah thought of Henry then, and her heart was pierced
with such sharp longing that it took her breath away. The girls continued discussing dinner plans but the thought of going
out left Hannah suddenly exhausted.
“If you guys don’t mind, I think I’m going to stay here,”
she said. “Close my eyes for a little while. Bring me some-
thing back?”
“You got it,” Maya said.
Hannah placed her order and headed upstairs. But instead
of lying down, she pulled out her laptop and sat down at the
desk by the window. Ever since Henry died, she and Vivian
had been meeting once or twice a week for coffee and Vivian
had been gently encouraging her—the way a mother might—
to work on her novel. She’d even read some pages and given
Hannah constructive feedback. Whatever fear she’d had that
Vivian would have no use for her if anything happened to
Henry had quickly been assuaged. She understood now that
they would always be deeply important to each other, that,
like the girls, Vivian was her chosen family.
It was so essential—she understood this now—to not be
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to do so. Alone was where pain was magnified by too much
silence and too much time; alone for too long was where fear
was bred. Gratefully even the work on her novel took her out
of her own head, put her in the company of characters. Her
favorite daydream was of the dedication she would someday
write to Henry so that he would live on as a loved person in
the first page of a book, maybe even live beyond her. And the idea of the acknowledgements at the back, to her friends, her first responders, to eternalize in print her gratitude for their lifelong rescue efforts.
Still she didn’t want the girls to know just yet that she’d
started working on her novel again. It might be a false start, another project she’d end up abandoning and then be ashamed
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