The river ran past us, silent and deep, moonlight cast in sheets across its dark and constant pull. We built our fire as we always did: my rocks, Teddy’s fuel, Ben’s flame. The Zippo worked on the first try for once, sparks catching on the kindling, throwing light and shadows through the close-ringed trees of our cove.
Three weeks. That’s how long it took for us to find our way there, past the screams and the blood, past the howling, broken disaster of our families.
Ben had emerged with a bruise on his jaw and a blade through his life. He hadn’t been back to the house since, tucked himself instead into a spare bedroom at our grandparents’ place a few doors down from my own. He took the time to ascertain only that his mother was alive and had been transferred from the hospital to a psychiatric facility to await her trial, then set about dismantling their relationship, brick by brick. He hung up on her collect calls, blocked her e-mail, burned her snail mail letters. Spent hours crafting replies, only to destroy the finished pages in various impulsive, violent ways.
“They’re not for her,” he’d informed me, the one time I’d worked up the nerve to ask why he bothered. “Nat was my sister. I had a sister—we could have grown up together, had this awesome life, and my mother stole that from me. She took us from each other way before this summer, just like she took everything else that meant anything. The things I have to say—she’d kill herself for real if I let loose.”
“Sounds like an easy fix to me,” I muttered, earning an appreciative chuckle that closer resembled a gasp.
“Jesus, Ames. I thought I was the vindictive one.” He shook his head. “But nah. I don’t literally want her dead—I don’t want her blood on my hands. I want to make her live with what she did, knowing she’s dead to me. Forever.”
If she ended up in the water, it’s because someone put her there. Ben’s words, spoken in what seemed like another life, had been the answer all along. The car accident had been just that—a distracted driver and a carefree, mischievous child. A tragedy so commonplace it wouldn’t have garnered more than a mention from any but the most local news outlets. But Nat had drowned, in the end—sank into the river with life in her veins and air in her lungs. Left both beneath the surface long before she washed ashore. My aunt had erased her from the world with the same cold-blooded precision with which she’d years ago erased her from the family, robbing both my boys of a bond both precious and irreplaceable. Robbing us all of past and future both.
Forgiveness is finite in even the best of times. Absolution, for this, was nonexistent.
So Ben—mama’s boy Ben, who’d spent years clawing after love and brushing off his own abuse—did what he always did at the point of no return: scorched every square inch of visible earth. Instead of a long, rambling missive of accusations and pleas for explanations, he’d sent Aunt Mattie a short, brutal note. It hadn’t stopped the onslaught of letters, but he no longer bothered doing more than dropping them straight into the trash, unopened.
He’d seen his father once, though—at the police station, the day after the world imploded. Uncle Peter was a broken, one-eyed mess, wracked with guilt, brimming with excuses and justifications. His marriage had been in name only for more than fifteen years. With Ben on the way out, his gaze had naturally returned, as it always did, to June—his childhood love, sweet and vulnerable and needy and there, forever hovering a shade past his fingertips. His second chance to grasp the happiness he’d long ago relinquished for the sake of his lifelong friendship with Sam Fox—trusting, oblivious, faithful Sam, who’d loved her just as much. His second chance to have a family.
June and Pete. A match so untenable yet so instinctively obvious we’d made it a joke. Twisted an unspoken inkling into a decoy and set it in a full-blast spotlight so we wouldn’t have to see its face.
And Aunt Mattie, who apparently cared more than she let on, was having none of it. The sight of her own husband’s eyes peering from a childlike copy of June’s face had mocked her for years, chipping away until she turned her wrath on Uncle Peter. She’d hurled accusations he didn’t bother denying, dared him to break up his real family, leave his son and lawful wife for the sake of his bastard daughter—the daughter who’d be left with even less than the little she had once the lawyers cleaned him out. And when he appeared more than willing to call her bluff—and fate had unexpectedly put Nat’s life into her hands—Aunt Mattie had made a split-second choice, tearing the roots out of every possible compromise.
Ben had listened in silence, stood up from his chair, and walked away. Turned his back on his father like only a Hansen could.
Uncle Peter had been released soon after, ordered to remain in town pending various possible charges. He knew better than to come to the house. We hadn’t seen him since.
Three weeks later and the fervor had faded, the phones had stopped ringing, and it all came down to us, gathered once more in the place that had borne quiet witness to our history—to the beginning and the end of everything. The night belonged to the flames and the trees and the call of the rapids. To Nat’s memory, woven through it all. To the three of us, huddled together beneath a dark, indifferent sky.
“So this is it,” Ben said, breaking a long stretch of silence. “The last bonfire—probably forever. If I’d known things would shake out the way they did, I never would have fucked up last year’s.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, sending over a soft smile. “It’s sort of pointless to hold that against you now.”
“Yeah, man, no worries,” Teddy added. “We know you can’t help being a fuckup.”
“It is one of my more endearing qualities.” The shadows hid the corner of his smile. “Tonight just feels too final. Who knows where we’ll all be next summer.”
“No real mystery here,” Teddy said. “If you need me, just wave from the top of the quarry. Toss me down a beer every now and then.”
“Goddamn it, Teddy, if I see even a trace of your ass in that pit, I’ll fire you on the spot. You’re not breaking rocks on my watch, man.”
“Rent’s not paying itself, Benny. Staying with Mom even a day longer than I have to is just not doable.”
Since Nat’s death, June had clung to sanity with ever-weakening fingers; Aunt Mattie’s arrest pushed her over the edge. During the mess that followed, she’d admitted her primary source of income since Sam’s death had been Hansen guilt money—an arrangement she’d neglected to mention to Teddy. He’d handed over his paychecks for household expenses, and she’d dumped them straight into the offering plate at her weird church. Things had been less than stable between them once that little detail slipped into the light.
“I get it,” Ben said. “I won’t live in my old house ever again, that’s for sure, and fuck the old Franklin place too. I’m eighteen in two months. I guess I’ll stay with Grandma and Grandpa until I graduate, officially inherit my trust, all that. They still have to work out the legalities with the money and the business once Mom is sentenced, but who knows how long that’ll take to iron out.”
“Wait—are you broke? Dude. Dude.”
“It’s temporary,” Ben huffed, tossing his head, cheeks pinkening at Teddy’s laughter. “But yes—my money is technically theirs until I’m no longer a minor, which means right now I have access to exactly jack shit. But Dad said everything that’s left of Mom’s will eventually belong to me, including her share of Hansen, Inc. He wants me taken care of, I guess. Not that I’m talking to him ever again, business partner or not.”
“Oh good, I was worried there for a second. So I’m hired, right?”
“Not in the pit. What do you know about quarterly reports?”
“Literally nothing.”
“Yeah, me neither. Seriously, name the job and it’s yours. I’ll have the lawyers appoint someone to run things in my place for the next few years, sort shit out, get everything set up for my takeover. Until then, who knows? Maybe I’ll get out there, see the world. Don’t want to deprive the world of Ben Hansen, after all.”
“The real Ben Hansen?” I asked, giving him a careful look. In the weeks since he’d come out to us, Ben had resumed the status quo as promised, upped his douche factor threefold to cover his tracks.
“For someone who spent all summer perfecting the art of the secret hand job,” Ben drawled, “you’re way into up-front honesty all of a sudden, Ames.”
“I was not giving secret—” I huffed the end off my denial as both boys cackled. “Our entire family tree is rooted in fiction. Every horrible thing that happened this summer can be traced back to people’s secrets and their lies and hiding the things that made them suffer. Things that ruined our lives before we were even born. If we don’t do better than that, what was the point in any of this?”
“I get what you’re saying. And I will do better—eventually. But it has to be on my time. Let me get through the school year first. Get on my own two feet so I don’t end up on the way to conversion camp or some shit.”
“I just can’t see our family doing that to you,” I persisted, voice catching at the horrible but very real possibility that Ben’s fears weren’t unfounded. “I know you’re scared, but I’ll be there the whole time. We can tell them together. And if they have a problem—”
“Then what, Amy? It’s fine for you to say that like I have a choice—you could come out at breakfast and, assuming they bothered to give a fuck either way, your parents would have a Pride flag on the porch by sundown. The grandparents? Maybe not so much.”
“Maybe not, but you don’t know for sure. You could be completely wrong.”
“Or I could be right. Look, I get it—we both want to think the best of the few people we have left. But that’s not my reality. They’re all I care about apart from you guys, and until I know where they stand, I’m keeping it to myself. I have to.” Ben sighed, turned his face toward the water. “Because if you’re wrong, and they can’t handle it? I have nowhere else to go.”
“The air mattress offer is always on the table, dude,” Teddy said, the gentle pressure of his fingers around mine quelling my protest. “I’m in your corner either way, but do what you need to do. This town’s not changing any time soon.”
“I don’t care about this town,” Ben scoffed. “Let them try to fuck with me when I’m months away from owning most of their jobs. If they want to play hardball, they should take a hot second to remember who runs the playing field.”
“You’re not worried?”
“Sure I am. This is borrowed time, my dude—maybe not out in the open, but behind the scenes, at school and stuff? Regular ass-kickings are basically guaranteed. Most likely delivered by the same guys who’ve been sucking up to me since grade school.”
“Nope. Fuck that.” I felt the shudder run through Teddy’s frame as he spoke, and tightened my grip on his hand. He slid an arm around my waist, pulling me close. “They come for you, they better hope they catch me on an off day. All I ask is that you spot me bail money if it gets too wild.”
“Anytime.”
We fell silent, sobered by the horrible road we’d walked to arrive at that moment. Ben stared into the fire, but Teddy looked to the river, his face a collection of shadows and ghosts. I leaned into his heartbeat, let my eyes fall shut at the brush of his lips against my hair as he turned back toward us.
“Hey,” he said, pressing something small and flat into my hand. “I have something for you.”
“What’s that?” I squinted, then did a double take. “Whoa, seriously? Where did you get this?”
“Nat’s room. Looks like she found it in the cove, after you left last year.” His chuckle drew an answering smile from my lips. “Check out the back.”
I flipped through my lost sketchbook, joy and nostalgia warring with the sorrowful squeeze of my heart. My drawings were untouched, but the last page in the book was filled top to bottom with Nat’s handwriting.
Hi Amy,
Don’t worry, I didn’t take your book. It was in the old tree house down in the woods. I didn’t show it to Bear because I didn’t think you’d like that. I think he would, though. I think it would make him happy to see how you see him. You should show him your pictures, and you should tell him you love him, because I think he’d like to say it back. FINALLY.
Your friend,
Nat
The words went soft through a well of tears that promised full-on waterworks had they not been interrupted by Ben’s howl of laughter. He’d butted his head in between ours to read over Teddy’s shoulder. Of course he had.
“That kid,” he cackled. “I swear to Christ, you guys, no one had your number like Nat had your goddamn number, am I right? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“I’m not worried,” Teddy said, palming Ben’s face and pushing him playfully away. “If I had to get a message from beyond the grave or whatever, this is the best one I can think of.”
“I’m fine with it too,” I said. “At least we know she’d approve, wherever she is.”
“And she was right.” His finger appeared on the page, brushed gently over the last word of the note: finally. “All the time we spent in denial—with each other, ourselves, our parents—it was nothing but a waste. We’re here now—that’s what matters—but I feel like it would’ve been nice to skip over all that shit. Get here on our terms, you know?”
It wasn’t unfamiliar, the weight of that specific, useless regret—the months, maybe even years, swallowed up by what we couldn’t face. Lies of a different, silent sort, no less damaging for all that had gone unsaid. Everything we’d missed; no one to blame but ourselves.
It ate away at me in random intervals. It likely always would.
I closed the book and set it aside, rested my head against Teddy’s chest. Felt the rhythm of his breathing: slow, then faster, stuttering to nerves. I looked up, saw the words hanging just behind his lips.
“You okay?” I asked. He nodded, frowning, then raised his eyes to Ben’s.
“I asked Mom, you know—if Dad knew about Nat. She said he never had a doubt from the moment she was born. Even though she looked like Mom, same face and hair and coloring and all that, he knew a Hansen kid when he saw one.”
“We are all kind of the same,” Ben said. “All pale and beautiful and fucked up. Devoid of shame and boundaries. Still, he stuck around.”
“Only just barely. Mom said he went nuts. She went around behind his back with your dad for years, and everyone knew—your mom, Amy’s mom, even your grandparents. Pete was always in love with her, all the way since high school. Never denied it, and never did get over it, even after Nat died.”
“Damn.” Ben shook his head. “Sorry about all those ‘your mom’ jokes, I guess.”
“Dude, you and me both. But Dad lost his shit in a big way. Almost took me and left for good, but couldn’t go through with it. He loved Nat anyway—blood or no blood, he was her dad. All the way to the end.”
I thought of Sam, of the countless times I’d seen him with Nat. Her riding his shoulders every Fourth of July, a pair of spitting sparklers clutched in each fist. Him teaching her to currycomb a horse, his work-worn hand huge over her tiny, spidery fingers. Her proudly clutching a handful of brightly painted river rocks, “paperweights” she’d made for Father’s Day, and his sheer delight at receiving them. Him broken and weeping the day she’d almost drowned, slumped on the trailer steps, clenched fists pressed to his eyes. A better dad to that girl on any given day than my own had been to me at the best of times.
“This might sound weird,” Ben said, “but I think old Sam got the better end of the deal, even if he was being royally screwed over. Hey, Teddy, I know I can be a dick, but at least you never have to worry about me knocking up your girlfriend and leaving you to raise the kid.”
“Dude.” Teddy put up a valiant struggle, but his poker face caved to laughter in under a minute. “That’s disgusting. On many, many levels.”
“It’s a silver lining.” He stared into the fire, a spasm of sorrow breaking his impish grin. “Gotta break that cycle somehow.”
“This is what I’m hoping.” I sighed, still feeling a twinge of dread at the thought of returning home, reconciliation notwithstanding. “I think things can be better with Mom now—I want them to be. But what if nothing changes? I can’t go back to how it was.”
“You won’t,” Teddy said, lifting my chin to look in my eyes. “You’re strong, Amy, and you’re not alone. No matter what happens, I’m in your corner.”
“We both are.” Ben reached across to nudge my knee. “Anything you need. And when we’re together again and can legally take you across state lines without risking prison time, we can really start some shit.”
“Countdown begins now. In the meantime, I think she’s genuinely sorry. Plus, Grandma ripped her a new one, so there’s that.”
“If you’re really worried, you can always stay. I know the town’s a steaming turd, but you can draw from anywhere. I’ll introduce you to my therapist and everything.”
“It’s only a couple years. I need to give her a chance to be better. My dad—I thought that ship capsized on the high seas sometime back in middle school, but he seemed genuine enough a couple weeks ago. And if Mom really wants to try, I do too.”
“And if she backslides?”
“I guess I’ll deal with it. Long enough to get my tuition paid, anyway. I’ve made it this far. I can do what I have to, and then she’ll never hear from me again.”
“Nope, not good enough. If she fucks it up you’ll come back here and she’ll shell out no matter where you live, because it’s that or I’ll put all her shit on blast, on every platform I can think of. She may have defected from River Run, but she’s still a Langston—you can’t tell me money matters more to her than reputation.”
“So you’ll blackmail her. Even knowing what we know now—even if she genuinely does try with the whole grow-and-change thing?”
“With a smile on my face. It’s called atonement, Ames—the bare minimum start for the shit she’s pulled. I’ll burn her world to the ground before she even smells the smoke. It’ll be awesome—we’ll do our whole European dream tour on her dime. I’ll even drop you off in Paris myself on the way back from the fjords. Make her fork out for your boy’s ticket, just to twist the knife. We should all go anyway, even if everything works out—yep, it’s happening, I just decided. Next summer, you guys. The perfect end to senior year.”
“You’ll have to get Teddy on a plane first, Ben. Get him a passport, trick him into your suitcase. Poke holes in the sides so he doesn’t suffocate.”
“I’ll go.”
My breath caught at Teddy’s words—at the determination in his voice, the hesitance and hope in his eyes. At the sorrowful lines of his mouth, which smoothed into a reflection of my halting smile.
“You will?”
“Always wanted out of this place. Can’t think of a better way to make it happen.”
“Jesus God, dude.” Ben lit a cigarette in the fire, shaking his head as Teddy fell into him under the momentum of my kiss. “Get a room.”
“Deal with it, Benny. There’s more where this came from if she sticks around.”
“If,” I scoffed. “Like I went through this whole dumpster fire of a summer for nothing.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a hell yes.” I reached past him to squeeze my cousin’s hand. “If you’re in, I’m in.”
“World without end, Ames.”
The firelight played tag across my boys, bouncing beams off Ben’s gleaming hair, teasing shadows from the angles of Teddy’s face. We three, bound by choice. In the same way Sam Fox had bound himself to a daughter—gave her his name and his life, loved her despite her twisted origins.
We’d been raised to conform. To let their rot creep through our veins and past our fingertips; to chain ourselves to time and blood and obligation. All of us, butterflies beneath the lid, racing in the same predestined circles.
Together we were stronger than what they’d made. We were more than their children—more than limbs and joints and dangling strings. So much of what we’d almost lost still shone through, bright and vital as any sun. We were our own family, stretching upward through the pull of the unchanging current, past the surface and the sky.
My boys and me, reaching endlessly for that burning, distant light.