As he stood on a barge packed to capacity with explosives, Ziggy’s debut at Rock Star Readers twenty-four hours earlier seemed like a distant memory. Every year, on this day, a dozen men paid an hourly wage boarded the flat-bottomed boat before sunrise to make the town millions of dollars in twenty minutes.
The biggest annual event in Sea Point, the Fourth of July had been Zeke’s favorite holiday, which meant it would now be the hardest for Ziggy. He had known this ever since winter had started to thaw. Driving through the predawn darkness, Ziggy had anticipated the morose fog in his head and the sludge in his legs, but what he could have never predicted was the sight of Miles Hoffman waiting for him in the parking lot, holding three boxes of doughnuts and two hundred ounces of coffee because he always did know how to buy his way into the hearts of men.
As Zeke liked to say, anything was possible on the Fourth, and so Ziggy swallowed his worries with a glazed doughnut before getting down on his knees with a knife in his hand. There was so much to set up in the next twelve hours that there was no time for all of Miles’s silly questions, and yet Ziggy took a break from unpacking the pallets to answer each one. Showing Miles the racks of cannisters and explaining they’d shoot off thirty-two thousand fireworks in just over twenty minutes was like watching a little kid learn about Santa’s workshop—his excitement resuscitated the experience for Ziggy, too.
Billy Croce was the reason why Ziggy had spent every Fourth of July since high school on this barge. An accomplished pyrotechnician, Billy ran the Sea Point fireworks show but, more important, he had been Zeke’s best friend. They’d grown up together, near Hammonton, and even though Zeke left the Pine Barrens when he was nine, he and Billy had remained close. As kids, they kept in touch via handwritten letters, and as teenagers, Billy and Zeke saved their money to buy glorified boxes of rust with just enough tread on the tires and gas in the tank to get them through the woods and back again.
After high school, while Zeke helped his father with MVP, Billy developed a keen interest in fireworks that took him around the country to attend different conventions before ultimately earning his certification. For as long as Ziggy could remember, Billy had made a living by traveling up and down the East Coast shooting fireworks for major league baseball games and amusement parks. But ever since he’d joined the board of directors for Pyrotechnics Guild International a few years back, Billy’s reputation had, as he liked to pun, “skyrocketed.” Now Billy globe-trotted most of the year, attending various intercontinental conferences, judging competitions, and organizing PGI’s own highly regarded convention, held every August somewhere in the Midwest. It was because of Billy’s hunger to see what was new in the world of fire that Ziggy only saw his godfather once a year, on this holiday. No matter what opportunities tried to lure him elsewhere, Billy had always made sure he spent the Fourth of July in Sea Point with his best friend Zeke.
“I keep waiting for him to clap his hands and tell us to get to work,” Billy said now, standing next to Ziggy on the perimeter of the loading site as the big men began to fill the long tubes. Ziggy nodded but didn’t look at Billy, afraid to meet his eyes—it was too early in a long day. As they filled each cannister with explosives, the crew was careful to leave at least a foot of string dangling outside the tubes. When it came to fireworks, even the biggest hothead learned to appreciate a long fuse.
For Ziggy’s high school graduation, Billy’s gift, sealed in a stiff white envelope, was a handwritten note extending a lifelong invitation to come out on the barge on the Fourth of July, and for sixteen years, Ziggy had joined Billy and Zeke. In the past, the sun would rise as they chugged cans of Coke and ignored the sunburn seeping into their skin. Ziggy would listen to his father and Billy razz each other about long-ago errors and miscalculations—Zeke’s high school mustache, Billy’s ex-girlfriend—“extorter ex-girlfriend,” Zeke had specified. They would laugh until someone took it too far, until someone else said to lighten up, until they all laughed, until it was finally time to start the show. Only in hindsight did Ziggy appreciate the sanctity of their Fourth of July tradition. Like a higher calling, preparing the fireworks and shipping out on the barge to light up the sky with his father and Billy was both humbling and transcendent.
But now Zeke was gone and Miles had just tried to put a six-inch jellyfish firework into an eight-inch tube. Billy looked at Ziggy to make sure that jellyfish didn’t stay there. Even though the guys hustling around in gray XXL T-shirts loved a dirty joke, the barge was a place of serious business. If the tubes were loaded incorrectly, the consequences could be fatal. When Billy barked at Miles for applying the wrong firework, Ziggy was surprised to see Miles absorb the abuse quietly before apologizing to Billy and then to the group as a whole. Instead of making excuses like he usually did, Miles accepted responsibility. As a result, the crew softened toward the Prince just as Ziggy felt his resentment double. Miles could easily apologize for misloading a jellyfish but he couldn’t own up to having avoided his best friend all summer?
Oblivious, Miles asked, “So how high do these things go?”
“If it’s a four-inch shell, it’ll go four hundred feet in the air,” Ziggy explained through gritted teeth, “and if it’s an eight-inch shell, it’ll go eight hundred feet up.”
“Can you tie the two together?” Miles asked. “And if you can, do they go six hundred feet up? How would that work?”
Ziggy shook his head. “It’s just one shell that gets loaded into each mortar. If you want something to go six hundred feet up, you just use a six-inch shell, like this.” Ziggy held up an orb. “We don’t need to get into the details but each firework needs fuel and an oxidizer, so black powder is the—”
“I’m having physics class PTSD.”
“This is chemistry,” Ziggy said. “But what I need you to do right now is just take the four-inch cylinders over there and load them into the four-inch mortars.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Miles gave Ziggy a salute and then a caress on the cheek that was so tender it was impossible not to laugh. The trouble with Miles was that he was the best company you could ask for, as long as you didn’t ever actually ask for it. He showed up when he wanted to, when he was intrigued or had nothing better to do. Bev called Miles “an experience junkie” but Ziggy called him a flake.
“Why are these cylinders and those are balls?” Miles asked.
“The spheres are Japanese and make starbursts; the cylinders are European and send off whistles.”
“Righteous. You know your stuff, Zig.”
Ziggy considered using this opportunity to point out how they could have been working together all summer, but today wasn’t about him, or them—it was about his dad and this town. Zeke wasn’t here, but his voice was stuck in Ziggy’s head like a relentless radio pop song: Let’s give them the best show yet! It’s what Zeke said every morning on this day. Other people set New Year’s resolutions, but Zeke Miller set off Fourth of July fireworks. Tonight, Ziggy would give them the best show yet.
While Bernadette lay prostrate on the couch being pregnant, Kate moved purposefully around her parents’ kitchen, trying her best to keep up with the dictates of her mother’s dinner prep. She looked out at the back deck and saw her brother-in-law Rob standing next to her dad, doing nothing, as Dirk painted another coat of barbecue sauce onto ribs. Kate wondered if Rob even knew how to grill before realizing she was in a terrible mood and it was her sister’s fault.
Superficially, Kate was annoyed because when Bernadette saw her short hair, her immediate response was the worst kind of deflection: “Do you like it?” That question had come on the heels of Dirk’s response, which was a prolonged hug before asking if something bad had happened. When Kate’s mother had seen her hair, she’d inquired, “Should we consider this our forewarning of another meltdown?”
Thankfully, everyone at the Jetty Bar had loved the cut, especially Miles, who’d gone out of his way to say that he found short hair on women “beyond sexy.” Even better, when Kate caught her reflection in the Wharf’s kitchen door’s circle window, she relished what she saw—it had taken forever to take the risk, but she had been born to bob.
So it wasn’t actually about her family’s lackluster response to Kate’s dramatic haircut. It was their lackluster response to Rock Star Readers, which was Bernadette’s fault and why the Fourth of July was shaping up to be a shitty night. Kate had always known her parents wouldn’t be able to attend the debut of Rock Star Readers, or any future Rock Star Readers, because Dirk and Sally Campbell taught summer school. But she’d assumed Bernadette would have filled their parents in on the success—the immense success, as Patricia had said—of the inaugural event. When she’d first arrived at the library, Bernadette had basically been crying with pride. But last night, Sally had asked Kate how the event had gone with the nervous energy of someone who thought maybe it hadn’t gone at all. Bernadette hadn’t bothered to send so much as a text to her parents, and so Kate had had to tout her own praises, which wasn’t nearly as much fun as hearing her sister sing them.
Then today, when Bernadette arrived for the Fourth and their parents had asked her in person about Rock Star Readers, Bernadette had simply said “It was good” before asking for a seltzer.
Good? Kate thought. Just…good?
What about the record-breaking turnout? Or the hundreds of signatures Kate had collected to stop Harry Leeper? Patricia wanted to meet, and the local paper had reached out this morning looking for a quote about her efforts to fight the redevelopment zoning. Kate had practically started a movement yesterday, but suddenly the only thing Bernadette found worthy of discussing was the baby kicking in her stomach.
Pouring Bernadette her seltzer—“Can you throw a lime wedge in it?”—Kate sensed a murky tension she decided to tackle head-on.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked, returning to the living room.
“Why would I be mad at you?” Bernadette replied, offering Kate a tired smile just as Sally asked for help in the kitchen.
“Kate?” Bernadette called from the couch. Abandoning the boiling water on the stove, Kate jetted back to the living room, where Bernadette wanly lifted her head to ask, “On a scale of one to ten, how fat do I look?”
Kate turned on her heels without responding and then, standing alone in the hot kitchen, annoyance flickering, Kate called out, “You’re not fat, you’re pregnant, and you’re setting a bad example for your daughter.”
The timer for the corn went off just then, but Kate could still hear the “hrumph” from the couch. She reminded herself that Bernadette was dealing with surges of hormones, and there was all that stuff about baby brain, but right now it seemed like her pregnancy was just a convenient excuse to be a lousy sister with swollen ankles.
Across town in the late afternoon, Miles helped the crew pack up while Ziggy pulled Billy aside. He knew Miles would appreciate the opportunity to go out on the barge for the show. It was a big ask, a liability for Billy, but he agreed. “It’s a barge,” Billy said. “I think we can fit the Prince’s scrawny hide.”
They’d finished loading the tubes with just enough time for Ziggy to go home, wash off the day, and return before launch. In the parking lot, Ziggy was about to invite Miles back on board for the show when Miles looked down at his phone and said he’d better run—he needed to get to the Wharf.
“You don’t want to come out on the barge?”
“I can’t—they need me at work.” Miles said it so casually that Ziggy, speechless at such sacrilege, headed toward his truck without a word. As he searched for his keys through dark spots of rage, Ziggy heard Ace of Base blasting and looked over to see that absurd Porsche convertible idling five feet away. “Hey,” Miles called over, taking off his sunglasses and looking Ziggy in the eye. “I know we haven’t talked, but I’ve been meaning to tell you”—he turned down the stereo as Ziggy held his breath, anticipating the long-awaited breakthrough: Here came Miles’s overdue apology, his acceptance of responsibility, his commitment to go through Zeke’s books and be a better friend.
Instead, the sentence that rolled off Miles’s tongue hit Ziggy with the force of Harry Leeper’s wrecking ball. “I wanted to tell you in person that Kate asked me to go to Nessie’s wedding with her—not in a romantic way or anything, just to make her ex jealous. But I thought I should tell you that it really doesn’t mean anything to me. Seriously.” Five thousand pounds of forged steel knocked Ziggy out of his body, and yet he willed himself to remain on his feet. Demolished but standing, he dug impossibly deep to appear physically unfazed as the Porsche idled and Miles waited for a response that arrived as an enigmatic shrug.
It was only after the convertible turned left toward the Wharf that Ziggy allowed his knees to give way as he slid down the side of the truck until his back rested against the front tire. What Miles had nonchalantly tossed at him like a Frisbee had detonated like a grenade and landed Ziggy here: alone in a parking lot on what used to be the best day of the year.
As soon as Ziggy was driving on Ocean Avenue, it hit him even harder than he could have fathomed: He was supposed to go out on the barge and light up the sky and put on the show without his dad. The debris of anger in his head rose up like a cyclone and made it difficult to navigate the road, which is why Ziggy second-guessed himself when he passed the nature preserve and saw open space where there shouldn’t have been any. Ziggy slowed down, his eyes tricking him: The sky was too big, that new Creeper McMansion too prominent. Then he realized: His favorite tree was missing. The white oak was gone.
Pulling off to the side of the road, Ziggy stared at the scene from the opposite side of the street. His tree was a stump. This wasn’t possible. This wasn’t legal. He’d just patted the white oak two nights ago during a walk-off with Kate—who’d since asked Miles to be her plus-one. Miles, who couldn’t be bothered to look at the MVP books, who was too busy at the Wharf to go out on the barge but free to accompany Kate to Nessie’s wedding.
Gripping the steering wheel, Ziggy cocked his head and tried to see how this could have happened. He looked at the land with cold eyes, Leeper eyes. Envisioning the property line of the McMansion next door to the nature preserve, Ziggy now understood. The tree trunk, as wide as it had been, well-ringed as it was, had made the mistake of growing bigger—so big, in fact, that the circumference of its trunk had become enough of Harry Leeper’s property to become all of Harry Leeper’s property. He’d cut it down and no one had stopped him. Just as Ziggy knew no one had protected the white oak, he knew no one would notice him get out of the truck, lean his head against the stump, and sob. No one intervened because there was no one left.
Bev was at her easel when someone stormed through her front door with such rage that she knew she didn’t have time to call 911 before seeing her son, a blur of limbs and fury, appear in the kitchen, his face so contorted with pain that she scanned his body for blood.
“What happened?” Bev asked.
“Let’s go!” Ziggy exploded. “Let’s just go!”
“Why aren’t you on the barge? Go where?”
“He won,” Ziggy continued to shout, pulling at his hair. “Let’s go.”
“Who won?” Bev asked, trying to catch up, desperate to understand her son, who was sputtering through tears.
“You were right. Before. Let’s just sell to Leeper and leave.” Ziggy used a fist to wipe his eyes. “He’ll end up with all of it anyway and we’ve already lost everything. There’s no point in staying. There’s nothing for us here.” That’s when they both heard a high-pitched whistle—a girandola—and Ziggy realized Billy had been forced to ship out and start the show without him.
The sun had set and Kate was still at home trying to wrangle her impossibly slow-moving family when she heard the first firework explode in the sky. Walking faster with every hiss, whistle, and crackle, Kate led the way up the rickety wooden boardwalk and scanned the crowded beach for an empty patch of sand.
“Not there—it’s too close to the water,” Bernadette yelled from behind. They’d left the house late because Bernadette kept having to pee one more time. Now the tourists had claimed all the prime viewing spots, and they’d missed the first five minutes of fireworks. The dunes were off-limits so Kate marched toward the water, trying her best not to step on the blankets, toddlers, or liplocked teenagers. Kate wished she hadn’t requested tonight off—at least at the bar she’d be getting paid to take orders instead of shouldering them from her sister.
Rob pointed out a small open space between two families who watched the fireworks through their phones. Once everyone was settled and Clementine had distributed glowstick necklaces with autocratic glee, Kate looked up and thought of Ziggy. He was out on the barge, sending up flares to his father.
“I heard something interesting yesterday after Rock Star Readers,” Bernadette whispered to Kate between bursts of light.
“Oh yeah?”
“You asked Miles Hoffman to be your plus-one?”
Kate clenched her jaw. “Did he tell you that yesterday? Before I saved you?”
“So it’s true?” Bernadette asked.
“Yup.”
“Why?”
Kate shrugged, as petulant as an eighth grader.
“It would be far more impressive if you’d just go by yourself,” Bernadette said.
“Is that why you haven’t done anything by yourself since you were fourteen?” Kate asked.
“Going to a wedding on your own is such a statement of confidence.”
“Going with the guy who owns the venue isn’t a bad statement, either,” Kate fired back.
Bernadette picked up a broken seashell and drew lines in the sand by her sandaled feet. The sandals, Kate knew, cost more than Kate’s entire outfit and had been a birthday present from Rob. “It’s juvenile, Kate. You’re bringing one rich kid to cancel out another rich kid. And it’s not like Miles is your actual boyfriend, so I don’t—”
If Clementine had begun to cry just then, perhaps the night would have been saved by distraction. But Clementine was in her grandfather’s lap, singing to herself. And so the sisters continued their private battle on the crowded beach as the fireworks dazzled overhead. “Don’t take it so personally, okay?” Bernadette said in her courtroom I’m-always-right voice, between booms and crackles. “Try to listen to what I’m saying: You’re pretending Miles is something he isn’t, and I think it’s time you stop.”
“That’s it,” Kate said, standing up and wiping the sand off the backs of her legs. “I’m gonna go.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” Bernadette persisted. “You’re only going to wind up feeling even more rejected. You focus so much on money with these guys, it’s like—I mean, I know you’re not a gold digger, but at the same time—”
“Enough!” Kate yelled. Clementine stopped singing. “You do not get to lecture me about relationships or money when Rob was just Slobby Robby, the rich guy with the pool, until the day you decided it was time to settle down. Or I guess just settle.”
“What?” Rob yelled, cupping his ears. He hadn’t heard what Kate had said over the fireworks, but Bernadette seethed. Her eyes sparkled with threats, but Kate kept going.
“You have gotten everything—everything!—you’ve ever wanted—the plush job you then quit to be the perfect mom, the husband, the body that bounced back in, like, a week, the big house in the nicest part of town. But in case you forgot, the first thing I wanted—really wanted—was to go somewhere that you hadn’t touched, that you hadn’t already peed on like a fire hydrant with your perfect dumb face.”
“What?” Rob called over, thinking he must have misheard. “Bern, did you wet yourself again?”
“But I didn’t get to go,” Kate continued, struggling to breathe and fighting back angry tears. “Even though I tested in, even though I got financial aid. I went to Sea Point so you could go to Rutgers, full tuition, because you’re not even that smart! You’re just pretty!”
“Kate!” Sally interrupted, but she was too shocked to find more words. Dirk looked absolutely gobsmacked. Rob asked Kate to repeat that last part just as Clementine began to cry.
“Wow, way to live in the past,” Bernadette scoffed before turning her back on Kate and looking up at the fireworks. Yawning, she added, “At least you think I’m pretty.”
As a blue Japanese starburst dazzled onlookers, Kate decided Bernadette didn’t deserve her mercy. “Actually,” she said coldly, “I used to think you were pretty—now you’re just fat.”
Kate stormed off the beach and down the street toward home. As she walked through the darkness, fireworks continued to splatter across the sky. This is why she hated home. This is why she had fled to New York as soon as she could. Because Bernadette had been the Sea Point homecoming queen before she’d become the Sea Point PTA secretary and the hottest MILF in mommy-and-me yoga class. But Kate was not Bernadette. Kate had not returned home with a husband who wore Lululemon athleisure wear, or an app on her phone comparing their zygote to different-size fruit. She was not a small-town boomerang. The world had so much more to offer than the godforsaken Garden State Parkway.
It was after midnight when Miles emerged from the Wharf, the sweat from the night now a cold jacket he’d have to shower off. When the fireworks had started, most of the kitchen staff had ducked out onto the loading dock to catch a glimpse, but Miles had stayed put. The Jetty Bar was dead—he didn’t have a single dupe because all the patrons had gone outside to the wharf to watch Billy Croce’s show turn the sky into a pyrotechnic Lite-Brite. Even Natalie had wiped her hands on her rag and given Miles a nod toward the open door before walking through it herself and joining her team—albeit while yelling to Denise about a squash blossom delivery.
Miles wiped down his station. He’d never felt so at home as he had over the past couple of weeks in this kitchen, but tonight he was in the wrong place. He should have been out on the barge, standing next to Ziggy and taking credit for every four-inch cylinder that launched into the sky. He should have been honest with Ziggy about the books, told him about the debt, offered to devise a payment plan together. He should have been the loyal friend, the decent person, the good man whom Zeke had believed him to be.
Pulling out of the employee parking lot, Miles found himself cruising through Sea Point with the cabriolet’s top down, desperate for an excuse not to go home. Early in the evening, he’d prepared seared scallops and broiled oysters for Pete Wells of The New York Times. Before Emmy had carried the plate out of the kitchen, Natalie had examined Miles’s work and said with a sincerity that embarrassed them both, “Nice job.” He was bursting to tell someone, anyone.
Miles texted Bell and asked if she wanted to meet him at the beach closest to the lighthouse, their old spot. As soon as he sent it, he felt an immediate twinge of regret: Their exchange was just a series of blue messages sent from him, unanswered by her. Still, he stared at his screen, begging her to respond.
Five minutes went by before Miles turned up his music and released the brake. He’d drive to the lighthouse for no other reason than it was a destination across town and who knew, maybe Bell would show up.
Turning off Ocean Avenue, Miles did a quick loop past the lighthouse and around all of East Sea Point before heading toward Ziggy’s house. If the lights were still on, he’d call Ziggy, ask him to come outside, and, in person, he’d tell him about the books. They’d figure out a solution together because Kate was right, Ziggy deserved to know.
Much to his relief, the Miller house was completely dark.
Miles was about to turn left to go home when he hallucinated. Looking right, he thought he saw Zeke’s truck crossing the intersection one block down. After rubbing his eyes, Miles remembered that Ziggy drove that truck now, he wasn’t hallucinating at all, and so he turned right and then left, just in time to see the truck pull into the driveway of Daffodil Cottage. Turning off his lights, he slowed the Porsche to a crawl and parked on the street. The distinct jangle of a woman’s laugh floated through the dark like wind chimes, followed by the familiar groan of a rusted passenger-side door he knew all too well.
Cutting through the grass, Miles peered through the hedge, over the sleeping daffodils to the front door just in time to hear shoes on the crushed shell driveway. Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like, Miles hoped. As if in response, Ziggy announced, “This is it!” as he stumbled up the steps. Opening the front door, his tongue thick with authority and whiskey, Ziggy didn’t know the extent of his audience when he declared with a slurry, borrowed smugness, “Welcome to my humble home.”