I want to run away and I want to stay. There is love here and pain here. “I can’t do it. It hurts.”
“We remember pain,” she says. “Maybe someday we won’t.”
But we will, at times. At the tea party, it will hurt to see my young self for the first time and to know the price of coming to the lake house. In the Summer of Thrashers it will hurt to see Emily walk through the door. It will hurt to let that raccoon kill our beloved pet. It will always hurt to see our younger selves grow angry and estranged, because that is what led to our downfall, our death. But what happened happened and we can’t change the past.
“We made it through the fire,” she says. “We survived death itself. What do we have to be afraid of anymore?”
I take a deep breath, and the memory of smoke evaporates inside the memory of my body. It’s beginning to fade already. “This was the last puzzle. The biggest fear. We faced the truth and broke the spell. What we did to Ryan. What Emily did to us. We could be done with all of it, Kennedy. Leave the lake house.”
“And what? Disappear? Cease to exist?”
“Or something better.”
“But not together.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I choose forever in a burning house if it means I’ll wake up and see your face every day. I don’t want something better. I don’t know that there is something better, and neither do you.” Flames surround us, but the heat has dulled to a gentle warmth. Kennedy’s hands close around my face, and I remember heat. I remember salt and fear and sadness and longing. “Chelsea. Stay.” She kisses me and I remember stars and fireworks, laughter. I kiss her back and remember rain, hope, beauty.
We remain until the world is gone.
We cannot go forward, or backward, or remain, alone. We have played dolls and demons, fire and first love, blood and betrayal. We have kissed and killed and broken hearts and bones and promises and trust. But we have done these things together, always. We always come back. Wearethe invitation. We came to the lake house, to live and to love and to die. Tothe Hartford Cabin, our grave and our home. We come one last time, every time, before we all go. June 17, the day we die, every day, forever. We will always come to the lake house. We will no longer burn. Time will move backward, sputter, spin on its axis. The house will rise and fall and rise again, and still we will remain. It lives on, and so do we. No one can make us leave.
How could they?
We are the lake house.