St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
I TURN AROUND. SADIE IS the source of the scream, and she pulls Andrew off Kyle, whose face has been bloodied by Andrew’s fists.
“Hey,” she shouts. “Andrew! Let go of him!”
At her touch, or the sound of her voice, Andrew stops, staring at his reddened knuckles like he isn’t sure what he has done. Kyle winces, pressing his hand to his nose, and staggers to a standing position. I want to comfort him, to take care of him, but I can’t bring myself to move closer. I’m afraid to choose a side because I’m afraid I will choose wrong.
“I’m not letting him go,” Andrew says, staring down Kyle like a predator hunting its prey. “He’s the one. He’s the connection. It has to have been him.”
“Andrew,” Sadie says, reaching for his hand, which he yanks away. “We don’t know that. We don’t know anything for sure. Without proof—what exactly were you going to do? You need to let this go.”
Kyle’s gaze flits from Andrew to me. “I didn’t kill Josh. You know I’m not capable of killing anyone, June.”
“You’re lying,” Andrew says.
Kyle keeps talking. “Think about it—how many places can you play tennis in the city if you’re not part of a private club? By the time I figured out Josh was your husband, I made the decision not to say anything. I chose to keep the rumors about Josh from you, which also meant not telling you he was a twin. You were mourning him, and I didn’t think it was fair to throw all of this doubt on somebody you loved so much.”
He pauses for only a second, but in that second, I see myself when I met Josh, bored with my life, bored with my lackluster job. Josh swept in and filled my world with color.
She deserves to know everything about you. I hear the words Bev had spoken to Josh, her skepticism. Maybe she hadn’t disapproved of us, as I’d always believed. Maybe she’d just been trying to protect me.
“The world isn’t that small,” Andrew says quietly. “It can’t be.”
“I can prove where I was the day Josh died,” Kyle continues. “I would have been in Manhattan, working fourteen-hour days at the firm. I didn’t take any trips to San Francisco. I was thousands of miles away.”
None of us say anything, so Kyle keeps talking. “I didn’t tell you about Michelle, or Andrew, because honestly, what was the point? Josh wasn’t coming back. All you had left of him was six months of great memories. Who was I to take that from you?”
Our eyes lock. He’s not wearing his glasses. They must be on the nightstand in our room. Without them, even with his battered face, he looks younger, and so earnest, like this confession has almost broken him. And in him I see the man who has loved me for six years, who has been everything I thought a partner should be. Kind, funny, caring. But now it’s like flipping a coin and seeing the other side.
“I believe you.” As I say it, I realize it’s true. “But I don’t know if I can trust you again.”
Even if the choice seems like it should be easy for me, it’s not. Kyle has felt like a safe place for so long, not just a partner but a best friend, someone warm and considerate. The kind of relationship I always told myself Josh would have wanted me to be in. But what do I know about what Josh would have wanted? There are some truths I’ll never be ready to hear. I can see Kyle’s side of things, his reasons for not revealing those truths.
But that doesn’t change the fact that he’d lied by omission, the same way Josh had. He chose to keep me in the dark.
Josh never got a chance to screw up with me. Had we been given time, we might have figured out that we weren’t actually compatible. I’d held him up on a pedestal for years, comparing every other man—even Kyle, sometimes—with a larger-than-life ghost.
I take a step forward to Kyle, but Andrew gets between us. “He was there, I know he was—I just can’t believe it’s all a coincidence.”
“I’ll prove it. Look through my old photos. Old emails. I had no communication with Josh Kelly at any point. Everything I heard about him was through rumors.” He pauses. “I didn’t even know he died until I met June.”
“I don’t believe it,” Andrew says. “It can’t be …” His hands are balled tightly, his jaw tense, his face warped in anger. My adrenaline surges. I don’t know what he’ll do next, and it’s the uncertainty that scares me most. What is he capable of doing to Kyle? To us?
But instead of physically lashing out, he droops, his eyes dimming as his shoulders curve inward, as if the live-wire electricity were abruptly exiting his body. A mumbled noise comes from his mouth, but I can’t make out what he’s trying to say.
“Andrew,” Sadie says carefully, placing her hand on his back. “It’s over. Let’s go home.”
He shakes his head and crouches to the ground. There are tears on his cheeks, and a sob rips its way out of his throat, a violent sound that breaks my heart.
“I thought …,” he manages. Sadie sinks down beside him and wraps her arms around him. Briefly, her eyes meet mine, and I can see the weight she has carried too—trying to keep her husband from sinking under, from giving in to the darkness. I had thought Sadie just wanted me to go away, and maybe she did. Maybe all she wants is to move on from this, from her husband’s theories about the past that won’t do anything to change the future. Maybe it’s something she and Kyle have in common, carrying the heavy burden of a loved one’s guilt.
When Andrew lets Kyle and me walk away without following, I know that he never intended to do us any harm. He has no evidence that Kyle is guilty of anything, just like he had no proof that Josh was involved in Michelle’s death. Suspicion will never be fact. And I don’t think Andrew is capable of hurting anyone.
I glance back at Andrew and Sadie, who are still locked in a tight embrace. Each of us has a different version of Josh Kelly, the one man who could explain everything. The one person who could clear the air. But he’s not here to do that, so we need to learn to breathe without him.