FOURTEEN

CLAIRE

Slow down, Sean!

I hang on to his bicep, pulling and tugging, demanding he pay attention. We bend around the winding roads at unsafe speeds, the headlights only strong enough to light the few yards in front of us. Sean swerves, narrowly missing a car that has slipped into the wrong lane. Or maybe we’re in the wrong lane. It’s so hard to tell.

I’m serious! You’re going to get us killed!

I beg him to be careful, but it’s too little too late as the guardrail comes into view. I scream just before the sickening crunch of metal making contact. We stop instantly, airbags deploying. I look at the driver’s seat, but Sean is gone. I reach for the handle to open the door, fumbling, and stumble out into the cool night.

Sean? I call. Sean where are you?

The headlights are still on, lighting the first row of trees in the woods. The guardrail is crushed beneath the car, the hood crumpled like an accordion.

Sean?

He’s standing on the other side of the car, assessing the damage, not a scratch on him.

This is all your fault, he says, voice even.

I’m sorry, I tell him. I’m so, so sorry.

I jerk awake, heart pounding. My face is wet, like I’ve been crying. It’s just after four in the morning.

I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling.

After it happened I dreamed about Sean all the time. I’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night, my mom running into the room, telling me it’s okay, trying to soothe me back to sleep when all I could do was sob into my pillow. I could never tell her about the dreams. After a few minutes I barely remembered the specifics, anyway. Only that there was me and there was Sean, and it was always my fault.

I sit up, smoothing my hair and wiping the last of the tears from beneath my eyes, and take a deep, shuddering breath.

The streetlamp casts warm shadows in my room.

When Nolan was still a baby and sharing my bed I kept the curtains tightly drawn in hopes I could coax more sleep out of him. He didn’t want to keep a regular schedule, and I was too exhausted to care about things like darkness. But once he moved into his own room and was sleeping through the night, I started keeping the curtains open. It was too much, the black.

I turn on my lamp and grab my laptop from the floor, wait for it to boot, and open the JESSE’S HOUSE file on my desktop. It’s full of research and numbers that still need to be crunched and organized, but nothing wants to make sense at this hour, and after a few futile minutes I close the laptop and set it beside me. I grab my phone from the nightstand and scroll through my most recent texts. None of them are from Jesse.

But there is David, again and again, finalizing our plans for dinner Wednesday. And I realize I can’t. I can’t do this. Not right now. And not with David. I’m not ready. So I respond to his last message with an apology—that something came up and I have to cancel—knowing that he is likely going to tell his mother, who will tell my mother, who will tell me exactly what she thinks of me for passing up this opportunity.

But then Sean’s voice rings in my ears.

This is all your fault.

And it is. I know it’s my fault. I know that if I hadn’t been texting Sean that morning he never would have hit that guardrail. He might still be here. And that means his mom would be here, which means Jesse would still have a family to come home to. People to look after him. His house wouldn’t be on the market. He might not have missed the last four years of Nolan’s life. We could’ve been friends. This whole time, we could’ve been . . . something.

But he’s all alone.

And it’s all my fault.

* * *

My week is spent working with Deb, ironing out the last-minute details before our final meeting with Mia Porter and her mother. We are less than two weeks out from wedding day. Barring catastrophe, two Fridays from now, the tables and chairs and tablecloths and china and candelabras will arrive, transforming Jesse’s house into a wedding wonderland.

On Thursday I get tied up on the phone with a stationery company that we’re using for the invitations of a wedding that’s six months out. The pattern is showing in the operator’s database as being discontinued, but that’s impossible because it’s brand new: I’m looking at the newest catalog. The seconds tick by as the salesperson becomes more and more incompetent. What I really want to do is hang up and forget the order altogether, except that it should have been placed yesterday, and they are invitations determined by the bride and groom, and this is exactly why they are paying us to plan their wedding—so they don’t have to deal with ineptitude.

Because of the delay, I’m last to arrive at Jesse’s. He’s been quiet this week, too—our only texts consisted of my quick reminder of our Thursday meeting and his equally sparse “okay” in response. I wanted to get to the house early because I was hoping for a few minutes alone to talk. I wanted to tell him I canceled with David. That he was right—I am scared.

But I am almost late and Deb and Mia are eager to get started.

Jesse passes through the rooms every now and then—barely a shadow—but when the couple who’s interested in the house arrives with their Realtor and decorator to do another walk-through, he heads straight out the front door without so much as a look our way. He still hasn’t returned by the time we finish, so I stay behind for a few minutes then lock up the house. I text him to let him know we are all gone. He replies with a quick “thanks.”

That’s it.

Maybe he thinks I’m still mad at him. Maybe he doesn’t remember that I accepted his apology from Saturday. He’d been drinking, I could tell. His voice seemed so lost. So far away. Like he was calling from four and a half years ago, just after everything happened.

What have I done to him?

I check my phone throughout the day, hoping to see his avatar on my screen. A text to say hello. An update on the house. Anything would be preferable to this strange silence that’s settled between us. I vacillate between something being wrong and me reading too deeply into something that isn’t there.

Either way, I miss hearing his voice.

I miss our day at the museum.

I miss how he makes me laugh.

I blame wedding stress when I snap at Nolan for not eating his vegetables and my mother calls me out even though we both know he loved broccoli just last week, and this sudden loathing of it doesn’t make any sense at all.

I finally send a text message.

You’re quiet this week. Is everything okay? I ask.

Yeah. Everything is fine, he replies after a few silent minutes.

I debate whether or not to follow up, to press the issue, before setting the phone down.

This is stupid. If Jesse says he’s fine, then he’s fine. Or he’s not and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Either way, if he wanted me in, he’d let me in. Anyway, I have the Porter wedding to worry about, which has to go exactly as planned if I’m going to get half of Lynette’s commission—a commission which rivals what I make in an entire year. A commission that could allow Nolan and me to skip an apartment altogether and begin thinking about a down payment on a house. I also have Nolan to worry about. I have my project to finish and submit.

If Jesse needs anything he knows where to find me.

I just don’t understand what his apology was about if he was going to disappear.

My phone stays silent through Nolan’s bath and bedtime routine and my bath. It’s still silent as I sit in bed—long after everyone else has turned in—working on my project.

No new messages. No one typing.

Dissatisfied, I text him again:

Do you want to get lunch tomorrow? I’m free after one.

I set the phone aside and return to my project, trying not to anxiously await the return text until I hear the “ding” of a new message.

Can’t. I’m traveling all day.

My body deflates at the news—my lungs, my head, my heart. I’d completely forgotten that he told Cathy on the phone that he would be out of town on Friday.

Or maybe it’s all too much. Coming home. Meeting Nolan. Spending time with me. This wedding reception. Or maybe he’s distancing himself. He’s leaving in a couple of weeks, anyway. Maybe this is his way of preparing.

I feel like you’re avoiding me.

I type the words.

Stare at them.

Re-read them.

Erase them.

Set the phone aside.

A few minutes later:

Can you do a late dinner instead? he asks.

How late?

After you put Nolan to bed late.

I don’t hesitate to answer because I’m relieved—relieved he’s still speaking to me and wants to see me. And this relief only confirms the fact that something has happened between us. Because something has been missing this last week. Something I didn’t realize I needed. Something that’s become important without my even knowing—not until it was taken away from me.

Again.

Yes.

* * *

“It’s just dinner, Mom,” I say. I close Nolan’s door, leaving it cracked enough to let a thin stream of hallway light inside. “I’ll have my cell phone with me. If Nolan wakes up or you need me, call or text. I’ll come right home.”

“This isn’t about Nolan, Claire.”

“I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear.” I struggle to keep my voice low.

It seemed to take Nolan longer than usual to fall asleep. Extra time spent brushing his teeth. Another drink of water. One more book. One last trip to the bathroom. Me begging him to keep his head on the pillow. I didn’t mention to Nolan that I was going to see Jesse, but it’s like he knew—he’d been asking me about him all evening. And now, with my mother cornering me in the hallway, it’s like the whole world is conspiring against me.

“I don’t understand why you will cancel a perfectly good dinner date with David only to sneak out a couple of days later with Jesse.”

I bite back a laugh. “I am not sneaking out, Mom.”

“I just don’t want this—whatever it is—happening,” she admits.

“Then it’s a good thing it’s not up to you.”

“Well, that’s something I haven’t heard in a while. I honestly thought we’d grown out of the attitude, but it’s like you’re a teenager all over again,” she snaps.

“And not once did you ever keep me from going out then,” I remind her.

“You barely left me with any choice!”

“I respected your rules and your curfew.”

“And a fat lot of good those did us,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.

“You’re really bringing Nolan into this?” I ask. It was the lowest of all the blows she could throw—reminding me that I was an unwed teen mother—when I have worked so hard to make a good life for my son.

She exhales a frustrated breath. “No. I love Nolan. And I love you, too, and I don’t want to be some wicked stepmother-type who locks you in the tower to keep you safe, but I don’t want to see you hurt again. I can’t handle it.”

I laugh because she’s overreacting, blowing this entire thing out of proportion. “There is nothing to handle! This isn’t a big deal.”

“It’s never a big deal, Claire, until it is. Everything was fine with Sean until it wasn’t. We knew something was going on between the two of you in those last weeks. We weren’t ignorant of everything you were going through. And then, when he died, you holed yourself up in your room. Barely left your bed. I spent entire nights staring at the ceiling because I couldn’t sleep because all I could focus on was you crying down the hall. And don’t get me started on the nightmares.”

“You didn’t want me coming out of my room,” I say, voice quieter. “And I couldn’t help the nightmares.” I fail to mention that those nightmares? They’re back.

“I just wanted you to be okay, Claire. Sean broke your heart. I watched it happen. And when he died he took part of you with him and it took a long, long time for you to move back to normal. Forgive me if I don’t want his younger brother screwing up the progress you’ve made in the last couple of years.”

“Jesse was my friend first, and, yes, Sean might have taken some small part of me with him when he died, but he gave me Nolan, and Nolan is the biggest piece of my heart now. And sure, there might be a few holes or gaps, but I get to decide who fills them. Not you.”

I leave her standing in the hallway just outside Nolan’s door as I hurry down the stairs, grab my purse and keys from the table in the foyer and head out, locking up behind me. I gulp a breath of warm air, but it doesn’t want to fill my lungs. My “broken” heart, according to my mother, wants to beat its way out of my chest. My hands tremble as I unlock my car at the street, the lights flashing, but I don’t want to drive. It’s only a few blocks. Walking will give me some time to calm down.

To think.

I suck in another lungful of air. Re-lock my car door. Try to steady the pounding rhythm of my heartbeat.

The sun has already set, the sky a deep blue, the first of the summer stars appearing. The air is warm and humid against my skin, and I remember again how much I used to love this time of year.

I text Jesse.

On my way. Walking.

A breeze blows through the trees, rustling the leaves overhead.

My phone dings.

Watching out the window.

My pulse ratchets another degree. He’s watching for me. Waiting.

But the walk doesn’t work to soothe my nerves or calm me down. In fact, I’m even more amped, tiny beads of sweat forming at my hairline, when Jesse’s house comes into view. But then I blink and the door is wide open and he’s standing there and something inside lifts at the sight of him. He is both stranger and familiar at the same time. And for the first time in a week, the ground feels steady beneath my feet. He is like an anchor.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

No. I’m not okay, I want to tell him. I am scared to death. I don’t know what’s happening except . . . except Jesse. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how to explain it. I am happy because for the first time in a week he’s here and I’m here and nothing stands between us. I am angry because my mother warned me about this. I hate that she saw this happening long before I could. But I can’t bring myself to stop it. I don’t want to.

“I am now.”