3
By the time everyone hasarrived, it’s nearly sunset. I’ve settled myself into the old hammock with the rusty chain on the screened-in sundeck with a dozen pillows and a battered copy ofMurder on the Orient Express. Chase is off in the game room playing Ping-Pong with Mila, who arrived in a lime-green barely-there bikini and is still wearing just that, although the temperature has dropped considerably. Kennedy is whipping up some spaghetti and pesto with fresh basil from the herb garden, and Ryan has just arrived, uncharacteristically late. I see Kennedy’s shoulders tense as he passes through the kitchen before he reaches my side. He settles down in a beach chair across from me, silhouetted against the screen panel, a shadow figure against the brilliant painted backdrop of pink and purple sky over the dark, still water. I struggle to raise my eyes to look at him. Emily’s twin, her other half. The guilt I feel just thinking about him is overwhelming.
“Am I interrupting?” he asks.
“Of course not.” I put the book down and struggle to sit up. It’s easy to sink into the ancient hammock and get impossibly tangled.
He hugs me awkwardly. Ryan is all angles and few lines. It’s hard to find a comfortable spot to hug. There’s always asharp bone jutting out, a shoulder in my throat, a hip in my thigh. I don’t know how he manages to arrange himself in that way. He’s skinny, but so was Emily, and she was a great hugger. A clinger at times. Ryan never quite got the hang of it.
“How’s things?” He relaxes back into the chair, and I hover over him for a moment, directionless. I’m not going to sink back into the hammock.
“You know.” It’s hard to casually talk about the past year I spent in a psych hospital. Or his, mourning his sister. The one I left behind to die. All the words we haven’t said, paperweights. There are few casual details among us. But I can see how hard he’s trying to make this allnormal, and I appreciate it. “Hanging in there.”
He studies the hammock, the intricate tangle of rope, and the rest of the room. “They did an excellent job.”
They did. The whole building burned to ash, and Kennedy’s family took pains to recreate it almost flawlessly. It’s difficult to find even a single detail out of place. But that’s the Hartfords. Stubborn, perfectionist, traditional. They wouldn’t let a fire, not even a tragedy, ruin the vacation home built by Kennedy’s great-grandfather. One terrible memory of an event that Kennedy’s parents didn’t even witness doesn’t outweigh four generations of pleasant ones. I wasn’t surprised that they rebuilt the house. It’s perfectly in character for the Hartfords.
It does make you wonder if there’s more to the restoration than appearances—if there were some things the Hartfords wanted to stay buried. The demolition and reconstruction of the house left no evidence, no trace of the fire. And although they weren’t at the lake house that weekend, itwastheirhouse. I’m sure of one thing: If there was some code violation or structural flaw that contributed to the fire in the slightest, itwillstay buried. Because Mr. Hartford, distinguished attorney, senior partner at Weston Hartford, would never admit to even the passing appearance of fault.
It’s where Kennedy gets it.
“How are things going at home?” I ask tentatively. “I’m sorry I haven’t sent a card or anything.”
“I understand. I know it hasn’t been an easy year for you, either.”
“It hasn’t.” Such a delicate way of putting it. But I’ll allow it. Ryan is the only one who doesn’t make me feel like a weirdo. That means a lot these days. “How are your parents doing?”
He sighs. “I honestly have no idea. They’re so completely closed off it’s pointless trying to talk to them. But the truth is, they were that way even before the fire.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “What about… your situation?”
I laugh. “Smashing.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Ryan says. “I don’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“Other people have it worse, you know?” I really can’t complain to Ryan after all he’s been through. I had the same issue in group therapy, where I’d sit frozen to the tiny cold plastic chairs, lips sealed, silently waiting out all these horror stories about lives way worse than mine. I felt like I didn’tdeserveto speak. All I did was get out of the lake house alive. After the tragedy, I was afraid to sleep. I drank vats of caffeine. Stood for hours in icy showers. Walked around our basement in endless loops, blasting the air-conditioning. Eventuallymy parents loaded me into the car, drove me to the hospital, and left me. The nurses stuffed me with pills, and I slept for a thousand years. And all I did was leave a friend behind. I can’t imagine how devastated Ryan must have been losing his twin. I can’t imagine ever being the same. I steal a glance at him. “Nothing to write home about.”
“At least you had someone to write to, right?”
“Word travels slow. Kennedy and I broke up.”
“Oh?” He’s staring at me so intently that it immediately irritates me.
“Yeah, well, it’s kind of hard to keep up a relationship with someone who never answers the phone. But you didn’t either, did you?”
Ryan looks taken aback. “I would have picked up if I’d recognized the number,” he says. “Why didn’t you ever leave a message?”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Ryan, it’s Chelsea from the psych hospital. Sorry for leaving your sister for dead.’?”
He recoils at the words, and I see something flicker in his eyes. I’m drowning in shame. Then the moment passes like clouds moving over the moon. “I see your point,” he says softly. “But just so you know, I would have picked up.”
“Thanks.” But the mood is off now, tilted all wrong, and I feel naive for thinking this weekend could be anything but disaster. “Maybe it was a bad idea to come back so soon.”
Ryan sighs. “It was messed up to come back at all. But I always do. And I always regret it.”
“Then why do you?” I study his pale face, his reserved jaw and delicate lips. His eyes, set on mine, always so difficult toread in between smiles. There was a reason I fell for him once.
He smiles faintly, flushing pink in the embers of the sunset. “Aw. Don’t make me say it.”
I hear Mila scream in the other room, and Chase bursts through the sunroom door carrying her over his shoulder. The new girl. I don’t know why I still think of her that way—Chase has been dating her for a while. She pounds her fist into his stomach, and he deposits her on the floor, his amber eyes gleaming.