Ginny
“I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING. IT’S ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED between us, after the fire. Wait. No. That’s not exactly right. It’s about how I behaved after the fire, when I failed you as a friend. And I want you to know that what I have to say is not an excuse because nothing excuses how I acted. I don’t expect you to absolve me. Absolutely not. So maybe it’s an explanation, although that also sounds too tidy. But at the very least it’s a true story, one that’s finally mine to tell, and I hope you’ll listen. But you obviously don’t owe me that or anything else, and if you don’t want to hear it, I’ll understand. I really will. But if you do want to hear it, please know that I don’t expect you to say anything right away. Or ever, if that’s better for you. It’s why I called you on the phone instead of seeing you in person. You should have time to absorb and sort out and think about this story—or to do nothing at all with it. If you want to talk about it, you can call in an hour or a month or a year. Whenever. And if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to, and I will never, if we see each other again, which I hope with all my heart we will, I will never bring it up again, ever. I promise.”
By the time I’d finished saying this to Gray, I was out of breath. It was a mouthful and also, as I was acutely aware, a painfully stilted, qualifier-riddled way to start a conversation. But I was trying to do what I should have done twenty years earlier: put Gray’s feelings ahead of my own. Would telling him the story be an unburdening for me? Of course. Would it be the best possible gift if after I told it, he forgave me? Yes, I can’t lie. But those could not be the reasons I was telling him. Gray had had a friend who loved him and that friend deserted him at the cruelest possible time and he never knew why. And maybe he’d stopped caring about why, but I didn’t think so, because what I knew, as surely as I knew anything, was that Gray had loved me, too. He had loved me and I had let him down and he was a good, kind person, and he deserved to know the story.
Before I’d even caught my breath, Gray was talking.
“I do want to hear,” he said. “I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I told him. I told him the complete story, from overhearing Trevor’s lie about starting the fire to hearing Trevor’s truth about telling the lie. It didn’t take long. It struck me as funny: that the story of how I’d misjudged my brother and betrayed my friends and lost so many of the parts of myself I’d loved best, the story of how Zinny had been frightened right out of her Zinnyness could be summed up in ten minutes and a handful of sentences.
At the end, I said, “I couldn’t have told you or anyone that Trevor set the fire. But I could’ve worked harder at staying your friend.”
After a few long seconds, Gray said, in a quiet voice, “So now I’m supposed to think about this, right?”
“Yes, if you want to think about it. And get back to me soon or later or never, as you choose,” I said.
“Okay,” said Gray. “Thank you. And thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for hearing me out,” I said.
I’d told him he shouldn’t respond right away, that he should give himself time to digest what I’d said, and I’d meant it; I had. If I suffered a tiny hypocritical sting of disappointment that he hadn’t brushed aside that advice and verbally flung open his arms to forgive me on the spot, I also felt my reservoir of peace get a little fuller.
One thing, I thought, I did one thing right.
I would need all the peace I could get because next up was calling Daniel.
I KNEW DANIEL CLOSED HIS VETERINARY OFFICE EARLY ON Fridays, so I thought I’d ask him to meet me at the dog park, but as soon as I called him, while the phone was still ringing, I changed my mind. We don’t get many purely safe havens in this life, and even if Daniel and I never entered the sweet bubble of the dog park together again, I wouldn’t dilute its magic with a painful conversation. Our phone call comprised three short, flat sentences, one of which was his giving me the address to his house, but afterward, driving there, I felt so flustered that I pulled off the road once, just to breathe and collect myself.
I didn’t have a plan. I thought I would see him and intuit what to do and say, but when he opened the door of his little brick, slope-roofed cottage, the sight of him in the doorway—tall and lean in a flannel shirt and khakis, his gray eyes wary and serious and sad—sent such an aching tenderness through me that all I could think to do was wrap him in my arms. But as I stepped forward, he stepped back, opening the door wider, and I walked into his house.
Immediately, Mose, like walking, flowing sunshine, appeared, bumping the palm of my hand with the top of his head. I stroked him and scratched behind his ears, and he regarded me with grateful, infinitely pretty black eyes.
“Do you want some coffee or something?” said Daniel.
“No, thank you. Maybe a glass of water?”
“Sure. Let’s go in the kitchen.”
The house was scattered with signs of Daniel’s daughter, Georgia—a soccer ball and a purple backpack in the hallway, bright hairbands braceleting the coat closet doorknob, and on the stairway, pairs of shoes, one pair per step: orange soccer cleats, black-and-white-checked slip-on Vans, a pair of duck boots just (I noticed with a pang) like Avery’s.
“The idea is that she grabs them on her way up the stairs and puts them in her room,” said Daniel. “At least, that’s my idea. Hers seems to be that she ignores them until I yell.”
“You yell?” I said, skeptically.
“Uh, no. Not usually. Not literally.”
“You yell figuratively?”
“I speak in a manner that suggests yelling but without the loudness.”
“I see. I pile things outside Avery’s room door, thinking she’ll get tired of stepping over them and put them away.”
“Do you do it at night when she’s asleep, so that when she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night she trips over them and falls down?” said Daniel.
“No.”
“Well, there’s your problem.”
“Thank you, Dr. Spock,” I said.
“Mr. Spock,” corrected Daniel.
“You’re about to do that V-thing with your fingers, aren’t you?” I said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I laughed and Daniel smiled. It was a somewhat dimmer version of his usual star-spangled smile, but still, I felt as if I’d won a prize.
What if I don’t bring it up? I thought. What if we just take this moment, two people being parents of daughters and making each other laugh and smile, what if we just take this and run with it and never look back?
I might have done it, despite all my tough talk with Avery about truth, just cast the whole subject of the fire overboard and sailed on, but Daniel brought it up first.
“So I take it your brother recognized me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I guess I should feel lucky that he’s the first person since I moved back.” He shook his head. “But I don’t.”
“Can I tell you what happened after you left?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I told him.
Afterward, in a synchronous moment that would’ve been funny at another time, we lifted our water glasses and sipped and set our glasses back down onto the table. As if proper hydration might help smooth the road ahead.
“That must’ve been hard. Thinking he’d done it,” said Daniel.
There was Daniel, reaching for compassion first thing.
“Thank you. It was awful. You know, when I first heard him confess it to my mother—or throw it in her face—I didn’t believe it. I knew instantly that it wasn’t true. As reckless and angry as Trevor could be, he wouldn’t be so horribly destructive. He just didn’t have it in him. But I’d heard it. I heard his voice saying it. And then I think what I did was, once I’d heard it, without meaning to or wanting to, I constructed a version of Trevor inside my head that matched what he said he’d done. And, honestly, I didn’t have to search very hard for memories of Trevor that tipped him from being just an angry, rebellious kid to someone who could be responsible for a man dying. He had a lot of rage toward my mother back then. He would go very, very far, too far, just to try to hurt her.”
“But not that far,” said Daniel. His face was closed, unreadable.
“No,” I said. “Not that far.”
Then I said, “Although the person who set the fire probably didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. It was nighttime; the building was empty; everyone was out watching the game. It might have been a prank that got out of control. Teenagers tend not to think things all the way through. All the neuroscience stuff we know now about teenaged brains not being all the way wired together; teenagers don’t always foresee consequences.”
After a pause, Daniel’s eyes met mine, and he said, “That would have been a pretty big fire for a prank.”
“Yes, but maybe it started off small. Maybe the theater curtains were exceptionally flammable or something.”
“The building might not have been empty,” said Daniel. “There could’ve been a custodian inside. Or a thief trying to jimmy open lockers, or a drunk kid trying to find a bathroom. There were a lot of drunk kids at that game.”
“I remember.”
Daniel’s gray gaze held steady. “Including me.”
“Oh.”
“When the police questioned me the first time, they said witnesses had seen a person matching my description hanging around behind the groundskeeper’s shed, drinking. And I told them that that person matched my description because that person was me.”
“I see.”
Daniel took another sip of water. “So now I guess you’re going to ask me if I did it, aren’t you?”
I looked around at Daniel’s kitchen, at the specific elements of his specific life: chili-pepper-red enamel tea kettle; thick white diner mugs hanging from hooks beneath his kitchen cabinets; a glass bowl filled with lemons and limes; a white doctor’s coat slung over a chair; in the corner, Mose’s round bed with Mose sitting in it; and on the wall next to the refrigerator, a bulletin board pinned with postcards and photos. I could see a girl in almost all of the photos. Georgia, in every phase of childhood. I couldn’t make out her features, but I could tell, to my surprise, that she was as buttery blond as Mose.
I sat up straight, folded my hands on the tabletop, and shook my head.
“No,” I said.
Daniel blinked. “Wait. No? No what?”
“I’m not going to ask you if you set the fire. On my way to your house, in the name of finding and facing the truth, no matter what, I thought I would. I thought it would be a failure of bravery not to ask. But just now I realized that not asking wouldn’t be a failure of anything. So, no, I’m not going to ask you if you set the fire.”
“You mean not right now?”
“I mean never. I mean I think it’s time I trusted my gut.”
“And what does your gut say?”
“That you hand me dogs when I’m crying, and, when Mag is sitting on the ground, you help her up every single time. That you have the most open, unguarded smile of anyone I’ve ever met, except for Avery. That you are an all-in listener. That I can say anything to you, even that I’m not sure whether or not I am sad about the death of my own mother, and you won’t judge. That talking to you feels like coming home. That you have a dog bed in every room of your house, and I know I haven’t seen every room, but I don’t have to have in order to know that you do. That your face fills with easy, graceful, lit-up love when you talk about your mom and dad. That you came back here, to this place that hurt you, that’s full of bad memories, the place you had escaped from for what could have been forever, because your daughter missed having conversations with you.”
A smile ghosted around the edges of Daniel’s mouth. “Your gut says all that?”
“So I don’t need to ask because I know you. I know you’re a person who grants others the full measure of their humanity. And I know you couldn’t set a fire that had the potential to hurt innocent people. Not now, not twenty years ago. Not ever.”
Daniel tipped backward in his chair and let out a huge, windy sigh that ended in a hoot.
“Thank God you didn’t ask,” he said. “You would’ve been within your rights. No one could’ve blamed you. Not even I could’ve really. But I have been asked if I was responsible for that terrible, killing heartbreak of a fire so many times by so many people, and I have said no so many times, and if you had asked me—”
He ran his hands through his hair and smiled at me.
“The thing is I like you,” he said. “I’m maybe an inch away from total, point-of-no-return in love with you. But I am finished with that question. And I just don’t know if I could be with someone who felt the need to ask it one more time.”
“Yikes. Dodged a bullet there, I guess.”
Then, he shook his head and laughed. “Okay, I would’ve wanted to be with you anyway. But I am still glad you didn’t ask.”
Regarding him across the table, his lean face and his smile lines and his inky eyelashes, I wondered how I’d seen him in the dog park for all those months without realizing he was the handsomest man to ever breathe air.
“So—an inch away? Really?” I said. “Because the word inch sounds tiny, but inches are bigger than people think.”
“Maybe a centimeter.”
“I was right about dog beds in every room of your house, wasn’t I?”
“Does a walk-in closet count as a room?”
I laughed.
He said, seriously, “You know it won’t be easy. I saw the way your brother looked at me. I’m thinking that some of your friends would look at me the same way.”
I considered this. “I’ll convince them it wasn’t you.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Then shame on them. Their loss. But I will.”
“All these years and no one ever figured out who set that fire,” he said.
“I guess probably they never will now.”
“Sometimes, I wonder how hard they actually looked,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember what I said about drunk kids looking for a bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t totally hypothetical. The line for the restroom was crazy long, even after halftime had been over for a while, and I had the brilliant idea that I might go find one inside the school. So I went walking around the perimeter of the building, searching for a way in, when I saw this girl running out of a door at the back of the school.”
“A girl? What did she look like?”
“I didn’t see her face. She had her hood up, and it was dark. But she was thin and wearing white pants. It spooked me, seeing her. So I went back to the stadium and got in line for the restroom. I told the police about her when they questioned me.”
“I never heard about a girl. I was pretty depressed and out of it once I thought Trevor had done it. But I think I would’ve remembered hearing that the cops were looking for a girl.”
“No, you’re right. I never heard anything about it, either. My dad even called them a while later to see if they’d found out anything about her, but they blew him off. Said that lead went nowhere. But he didn’t get the sense that they’d taken me seriously.”
A thought struck me. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“After Trevor told my mom, I’m sure she did what she always did: made his problem disappear. I wonder if she heard about that lead and convinced someone to let it go. Trevor’s not a girl, obviously, but it would’ve been like her not to have wanted to take any chances that it might have been Trev you’d seen.”
“Well, I guess we’ll never know whether she did that or not. But it doesn’t matter now.”
Before I left, I kissed Daniel and said, “I’ll make sure everyone I care about knows you didn’t set that fire.”
“Even if you can’t convince them, it’s nice of you to try. Thank you.”
I turned around to open the front door, then turned back.
“Oh, listen,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
“I almost love you, too. In case you were wondering.”
“Me? Are you kidding?” he said. “Why would I wonder about that?”
Daniel grinned and I kissed his grin and leaned down and planted a kiss on the warm, blond curve of Mose’s head and left.
IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO WALK ON AIR WHILE DRIVING A CAR, THAT’S what I did all the way home from Daniel’s house. I’d made light of the task of convincing my friends and family that Daniel had not—could not have, for love or money or rage or sorrow—set the Lucretia Mott school fire or any other, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Still, I had kept faith with a person who deserved it; I had trusted my own instincts; and I was one slender centimeter away from true love, so it seemed like a good afternoon to give myself over to joy. And then, just as I pulled into my driveway, Gray called. He hadn’t waited a week or a year. I’d talked to him at ten that morning, and it was two thirty in the afternoon. I held my phone in my hand and listened to it ring, and for a few trills, I pondered whether it was a good sign or a terrible sign that it had taken Gray less than five hours to absorb all I’d told him and call me back, and then I decided to just answer.
“Hey, Gray,” I said.
“It’s crazy how your voice sounds just like your voice.”
“Yours, too,” I said. “Which is also crazy.”
“I talked to Kirsten and CJ.”
“You did?”
“And we were hoping you would come to my house for dinner tonight.”
“Oh!” It came out as a squeak.
“Unless—I know it’s last minute, so we can also do it—”
“No, no. Tonight is fine. Wonderful, actually. I need to check in with Avery. She seemed a little quiet last night and then again this morning before school. She’ll probably be fine with my going, but I should talk to her first.”
“Why don’t you bring her?”
“Really?”
“Sure. I’d love that.”
“So I guess that means you guys aren’t planning to rake me over the coals too hard?”
“What? Like we wouldn’t do that in front of your kid?”
“Probably you wouldn’t.”
“Well, Kirsten is pretty miffed that you didn’t tell her first.”
“It took a lot of self-restraint, to be honest, but I thought you should hear it from me, and Kirsten—”
“Would’ve had a hard time keeping it to herself.”
“Yes. She wouldn’t have spilled, but it would have taken a Herculean effort,” I said.
“And why put her through that?” said Gray.
Zinny and Gray, talking about our friend Kirsten, finishing each other’s sentences. It took my breath away.
“What about CJ?”
“CJ is not quite—there,” said Gray.
“I understand. I can’t say I blame him. He’s always been so loyal to you.”
“Yeah, but mostly I think it’s that he’s gotten used to being mad at you. He never was all that great with change.”
“That’s true. But oh, how I adored that kid. When he got excited about something? He was, I don’t know, the Gulf Stream or el Niño. A force of nature.”
“El Niño,” said Gray, and I could tell he was smiling. “That fits.”
“At Kirsten’s party, he looked like an eleven-year-old wearing his dad’s suit.”
“He may actually be reverse aging. It’s eerie. You’ll come, then? Tonight? Is seven okay?”
“Yes. Thank you for inviting me. And for not never speaking to me again.”
There was a silence.
Gray cleared his throat and said, “Before we’re with the others, can I say something?”
“Sure.”
“I can’t have you thinking you’re the only one who wishes you’d handled things differently twenty years ago or that you’re the only one who needs forgiving.”
“Oh.”
Looking out my car window, I noticed for the first time knobs of leaf buds studding the branches of the trees bordering our driveway and emerald spikes bunched in the mulch in our side yard.
“I guess I have been thinking that,” I said.
“Well, can you stop? Because the way you were, after the fire, it was a pretty drastic change.”
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry.”
“No, I don’t mean that. We should’ve realized something was really wrong. Kirsten says that she sees now that you were depressed, and even though we might not have understood that completely back then, we should have reached out. Instead, we just got mad.”
“You’d just lost your dad, Gray.”
“I know. But still.”
“There’s no ‘but still.’ I know your day-to-day must have been so rough. You were just getting through. No one could’ve expected you to take care of someone else.”
“Maybe not. But before then—”
“Before when? Before the fire?”
“I don’t know quite how to say this.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”
“It’s not, though. Look, I don’t want to say that I regret our being a couple because you were my best friend. Being with you made me smarter and better and happier. In so many ways, I loved you and loved being your boyfriend.”
“Thank you.”
“But I got into the relationship under false pretenses. I knew I was gay. I didn’t want to believe it, and I hoped it would change, but deep down, I knew. You were so good to me. You trusted me. And I hurt you.”
“You were in a really hard situation,” I said.
“What I did was still wrong. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I mean it.” And I found, as I said it, that I did mean it.
“Thank you. See you tonight?”
“Yes.”
GRAY’S HUSBAND, EVAN, ANSWERED THE DOOR. HE GREETED Avery, whom he’d charmed within an inch of her life at Kirsten’s engagement party, with a luminous smile and a hug, but even before he’d fully turned to face me, I could feel it: razor-edged, unyielding, protective. A fierce, fearless, gatekeeper kind of love, a variety I recognized because I loved Avery exactly that way. Once upon a time, it’s how I’d loved Gray and Trevor and Kirsten and CJ and everyone.
“Thank you for having us,” I said to Evan. “I can only imagine what you must think of me.”
If I’d hoped to disarm Evan with my directness, it hadn’t worked. Not a muscle in his smooth, high-cheekboned face moved.
“After your vanishing act, he never stopped missing you. Not for two decades. Did you know that?” he said, evenly.
“I missed him, too,” I said. “And I regretted what I did. I would have given anything to go back and undo that vanishing act.”
Evan was short and compact and dashing, with shiny black curls and blazing black eyes. After a stony second, his expression softened, just a little.
“You know what? If I were judged exclusively by the mistakes I made when I was eighteen, I’d be in real trouble,” he said. “At least, you’re here now.”
“I’ll do better from now on,” I said. “I promise.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Evan, then he tipped his head sideways, toward the interior of the house, where I could hear Kirsten’s crazy crow-caw of a laugh burst through the fabric of conversation and music. “Come on in. And welcome.”
After we were seated and had filled our plates from the platters heaped with fragrant shredded chicken, thin ribbons of steak, glossy roasted peppers and onions, crumbled white cheese, and half-moons of sliced avocado, a paralyzing awkwardness fell upon us. We sat and applied salsas and squeezed lime wedges and forked up food and swaddled it in tortillas (folding with great concentration, as if our lives depended on it) and listened to Thelonious Monk beat out wisdom and sorrow on piano keys and tried not to chew too loudly, and just before—seconds before—we all would’ve crawled under the table or run screaming from the room, Kirsten saved us. She worked her signature brand of miracle: turning—not water into wine—but slow, dull, sucking quicksand into champagne.
She held court, launching into a long, funny, effervescent, starry-gold flood of chatter about her wedding, her dress, the buttons on her dress, the hem of her dress, the exact lowness of the neckline of her dress, her veil, her bouquet, and, at the end, slipped in what had to be the most enchanting description of canapés in the entire history of describing canapés. When we were all laughing and joining in and when the air of the dining room seemed to be filled with inaudible birdsong and invisible iridescent bubbles, she stopped short and said, “Not to be wildly insensitive, but don’t you think it’s about time we addressed the elephant in the room?”
And maybe because Avery was in a state of bewitchment after all Kirsten’s spun-gold talk and believed that anything might be possible or maybe because she was too young to be familiar with the idiom “elephant in the room,” she began to look around the dining room, presumably in search of an actual elephant. When her roaming and quizzical gaze finally settled on me, I said, “She means what was on the torn-out journal page and how it wasn’t true after all.”
“Oh, that,” said Avery. “Uncle Trev and the fire.”
Kirsten said, “That, yes. And I have a few remarks to make about it, if no one minds.”
“Oh boy,” mumbled CJ.
“Okay with me,” said Gray.
“You’ll make them anyway, even if we do mind, right?” I said.
Kirsten raised her pretty shoulders in a conciliatory shrug and said, “Still, it seemed polite to add ‘if no one minds.’”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“First, Zin, you could have told me. Back then. You could have told me what you overheard Trevor tell Adela. I wouldn’t have turned him in to the cops. I wouldn’t even have told Gray and CJ, although I would have struggled with that, struggled mightily. You know how I do.”
“I do,” I said.
“Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone. And it might have helped you to tell me. I know it would’ve helped me to know,” said Kirsten.
“Yes, you would’ve kept it a secret for sure. But it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to get Trevor in trouble. I wanted it not to have happened at all, and I had this idea that, if I never told a soul, if I tried with all my might to pretend it didn’t happen, it would go away.”
Avery said, solemnly, “She wrote it down in her journal and tore out the page and went into the woods and burned it.”
“Magical thinking,” said Gray. “I’ve done my share of that.”
“It didn’t work, though, did it, Ginny?” said CJ, caustically.
“No,” I said.
Kirsten darted a warning look at CJ. “On to my second remark, which is: this explains a lot. Obviously, it explains how you changed and checked out and retreated into yourself.”
“Not really,” muttered CJ.
“I couldn’t tell you guys,” I said. “And I was horrified at how my family, my own brother, had caused so much pain and destruction. I felt guilty that he’d done that and guilty that I had to keep it from you all, and I just ended up living inside that guilt all the time.”
“It isolated you,” said Gray.
“Yes. And it made me feel hopeless there for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kirsten, “I wish you hadn’t had to go through that alone.” She touched her fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss.
“But,” she continued, “it explains other things, too. Like Trevor leaving. I just thought he’d had another blowup with your mom about something, but then he never came back. Did she not let him? Or did he not want to?”
“Both,” I said.
“Also, it explains Harris,” said Kirsten.
I glanced at Avery, who said, “It’s okay.”
“What happened,” said Kirsten. “How everything went crazy and fell apart. I can see how that would lead you to Harris.”
I said, “Boundaries can be good. The straight and narrow can be good. Harris was kind and steady and knew the value of boundaries.”
“It sounds like he made you feel safe,” said Gray.
“He did. We weren’t a good match, not really. But by the time I woke up to that fact, we were married and had Avery.” I smiled at my daughter. “My gorgeous, smart, sleepless, funny girl.”
“Thanks, Mom,” said Avery, blushing and fiddling with her napkin.
“Okay,” broke in CJ. “But none of that changes the fact that you let Gray down. His dad died and you just turned your back on him like you’d never even been friends.”
“CJ,” said Gray.
“No,” I said. “He’s right. Somehow, the thing with Trevor just flattened me. I shouldn’t have let it. I’d always felt so fearless and strong, and then, I just—sank. But I’ve thought over and over again for all these years that there had to have been a moment when I could’ve rallied, turned it around, and I missed it. So, yes, CJ, I should’ve fought harder to be there for Gray and for all of you. I’ll never stop being sorry.”
CJ looked taken aback, as if he hadn’t expected me to admit I’d done wrong, and then his expression shifted into one I recognized: CJ processing, his eyes narrowed, his lips tucked in, his jaw muscles twitching ever so slightly. I used to love watching CJ process.
“Maybe you should, though,” said Gray. “It seems like it could be time for all of us to stop being sorry and move on.”
I thought about that, what it would be like to let go of the regret I’d been harboring for all of my adult life. I wasn’t sure I knew how, but it seemed like a useful skill to try to learn.
Evan had been quiet all evening, but now he said, “The four of you have been carrying around all this stuff—grief and grievances and secrets—for so many years, and all the time, there’s been some person out there carrying around the true story of who set that fire.”
“That kid,” said CJ. “The public school guy people saw drinking behind the shed. Everyone knew he did it. Well, I guess not you, Ginny, since you thought it was Trevor. But everyone else knew.”
“They never arrested him,” said Gray.
“Yeah, but he did it,” said CJ. “I saw him, remember? He ran by me. He must have been on his way to set the fire.”
Kirsten looked at CJ with surprise and said, “Back then, you weren’t so sure it was him.”
CJ flushed. “Not a hundred percent sure. Not sure enough for the cops. But he was a troubled guy. Everyone knew it. He was drunk and making threats against our school. If you want to know what happened go ask Daniel York.”
“Oh, that was his name,” said Kirsten. “I’d forgotten.”
“Mom,” said Avery.
“I know,” I told her.
“What?” said Kirsten. “No secrets allowed.”
“Ha,” said CJ. “That’s funny.”
I cleared my throat. “Here we go,” I said to Avery, who gave me her best “you can do this” smile.
“He didn’t do it,” I said. “I know him. And by that I mean not just that I’ve met him but that I truly know him. I know his heart, Daniel York’s heart. He is the best person I’ve ever met, and he didn’t set that fire.”
No one moved, and I heard Kirsten gasp.
“Not the dog park guy?” she said.
“Yes. I didn’t know until the night of your engagement party,” I said. “He came over after everyone was gone, but then Trevor stopped by unexpectedly and recognized him. But he didn’t do it.”
“Wait,” said CJ. “You’re saying you’re involved with this guy?”
“I am,” I said. “Very.”
“Perfect,” said CJ. “That’s just perfect.”
“Listen, all those years ago, I didn’t trust my instincts. I heard Trevor tell my mother he’d done this horrific thing, and my first thought was ‘No. No way.’ I knew he didn’t do it, but then, I wavered and doubted and rationalized and second-guessed, all in the name of facing the truth. And the truth turned out to be a lie. I know Daniel didn’t set the fire. Trust me on that.”
“We’re supposed to exonerate him because you say so?” scoffed CJ. He tossed his napkin onto the table.
In the silence that followed, my heart did a little sinking.
It doesn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. It would be nice if they would accept that Daniel didn’t do it, but you don’t need their approval. You really, really don’t.
Then, Kirsten said, “I’m in.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said CJ.
“Zinny’s say-so is enough for me.” Kirsten was answering CJ, but she was looking at me. I felt so grateful I could have climbed across the table to kiss her.
“Plus,” said Kirsten. “It was high school. Remember high school?”
“I do,” said Avery, wearily.
Kirsten smiled at her. “There were also rumors that I’d had sex with the entire starting lineup of the boys’ basketball team.”
“Which was ridiculous,” I said. “Since all the cutest boys rode the bench.”
“Oh my God, Jack Maupin. And Dylan Dyer!” said Kirsten, fanning her face with her napkin.
“It was a travesty that Dylan didn’t start,” said Gray. “That kid could drive inside like a pro.”
“You’re telling me,” said Kirsten, fanning harder.
Everyone laughed. Even CJ cracked a begrudging smile. But then he said, “That’s different. It wasn’t just rumors. Daniel York was questioned by the police. He was a suspect, for God’s sake.”
“He was questioned, and they didn’t arrest him,” said Gray. “Presumably because they didn’t have a case.”
CJ made a disgusted sound and waved off Gray’s comment.
“Look. Just as an experiment,” I said. “What if we all assume that Daniel didn’t set the fire. Can we try that?”
I figured that if anyone could be enticed by the idea of an experiment, it would be CJ.
“He did it!” said CJ. “He got lucky, too, because there was that hidden fire wall between the theater wing and the rest of the school, built back before World War Two. If it weren’t for that old wall, the entire school could’ve gone up.”
“And more people could’ve gotten killed,” said Gray. “Thank God for that wall.”
“Someone got lucky that wall was there, but it wasn’t Daniel,” I said. “How do you know there was a fire wall?”
Kirsten rolled her eyes. “His stupid project. On the architectural history of the school. Remember how he couldn’t stop yammering on about that project?”
“Oh, right,” I said.
“That ‘stupid project’ found a permanent place in the school archives,” said CJ, and then added, “Permanent. For posterity.”
“I know what permanent means,” said Kirsten.
Then, in an instant, CJ’s moon-pale face went scarlet. “Uh, actually, though,” he mumbled, “I didn’t learn about the fire wall when I was doing that project. I somehow must have missed it. I read about it in newspaper accounts of the fire.”
“Ha! Shoddy research!” said Kirsten, wagging a finger at CJ. “Frankly, I’m stunned.”
“Stunned and disappointed,” said Gray, shaking his head grimly.
“We expect better, CJ,” I said. It just slipped out.
CJ slowly turned his head to look at me. Underneath the table, out of sight, my hands gripped each other for dear life. I knew—probably everyone at the table, even Avery and Evan, knew—that this was a moment of truth.
Finally, CJ said, “Great. I thought I’d have more time before you started giving me crap, too. Ever heard of a grace period, Zinny?”
My hands released each other. It was all I could do not to leap out of my chair and merengue around the room. Instead, I lifted an eyebrow.
“I’ve been here for well over an hour,” I said.
And then my old friend CJ slapped his hands onto the top of his beloved, silver-blond head and laughed.
“So getting back to Zinny’s experiment?” said Kirsten. “Assuming someone other than Daniel set the fire?”
“Fine,” said CJ. “Whatever.”
“Daniel saw someone that night. It was after the second half of the game had started. A girl in white pants and a hooded sweatshirt, and she was running out the back entrance to the building,” I said.
“Really?” said Kirsten. “A girl? For some reason, I always assumed whoever set the fire was a guy.”
“Um, isn’t that kind of sexist, Aunt Kirsten?” said Avery.
“You know what? It absolutely is! My bad,” said Kirsten.
“What kind of person would try to burn down a school?” said Evan.
“Someone angry,” said Kirsten.
“Someone with a vendetta against the school,” said CJ. “Like a student who was failing or suspended a lot or something. Or maybe someone from the Cole School, although they probably wouldn’t disrupt the game since their team was kicking our butts.”
“Someone who just liked to set fires, maybe,” said Gray. “My dad had stories about people like that. Firebugs.”
“But if that were the case,” I said, “you’d think there would’ve been a cluster of unexplained fires. I don’t think any others happened around here at that time. Or before that time. Or since.”
“So someone who hated the school, like CJ said,” said Kirsten.
“How could anyone hate school?” said CJ.
“Nerd,” said Kirsten.
“Slut,” said CJ.
“And, oh Lord, white pants? In November?” Kirsten shuddered. “A person who wears white pants in November is capable of absolutely anything.”
“You sound like Adela,” I said.
“I do not sound like Adela,” said Kirsten.
“White after Labor Day is for people who go to all-you-can-eat buffets and watch afternoon soap operas,” said Avery in a devastatingly accurate imitation of my mother.
“Wow,” said Gray.
“Holy crap,” said CJ.
“Oh my God,” said Kirsten to Avery. “It was like you were possessed for a second.”
Avery blinked and looked around, confused.
“What do you mean? Wait, did I say something just now?”
Everyone laughed. Gray rumbled like a car going over a bridge. CJ slapped his hands onto the top of his head. Kirsten tossed back her head and set loose a clamor like an entire flock of crows.
And I laughed, too, because my daughter was funny and because she made my old friends Kirsten, Gray, and CJ laugh and because, if only for that one glowing moment, it was exactly as if the twenty-year chasm running down the middle of our friendship had disappeared, closed up, healed.