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  “But you married him,” Owen said. “Then what was I supposed to do? I can’t leave you alone. I can’t ever give up.”

  “You gave up every single time you left,” I said.

  There was silence for a moment and I heard him gathering his breath, slowly.

  “Can I come visit?” he asked.

  “You’ve never asked before,” I said. “Why now?”

  “Because it seems different now.”

  “It is different, and you can’t come. I’m with my daughter . . .”

  “Well, there you go,” he said. “It’s why I’ve never asked before. Because you’ll say no.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say that you miss me, and that you don’t blame me and that you still love me . . .”

  “I can’t say those things.” I closed my eyes against the lie, held my hand over my chest. I did miss him. I didn’t blame him and I loved him. But I couldn’t tell him that because it needed to not be true.

  “I understand,” he said.

  We hung up without good-byes, and it was a foreign feeling, keeping my heart hidden from him.

  Inside the house, Piper slept and a fierceness rose in me, the kind of protective feeling I felt when someone else tried to hold her when she was a baby or when I placed her in the crib at night. A doctor knew what could happen between dark and morning light. It was a mother’s lioness-protection that caused me to do anything, absolutely anything, to save my daughter from sorrow or pain. I’d wanted to set a dome around her—a force field where nothing harmful might penetrate.

  I ached for her heart, and her safety, and for my mistakes. Why would she choose to drink herself into oblivion or skip her classes or choose a boy like Ryan who would hurt her in such awful ways? Where had I gone wrong? The Halloween when I had to work and so sent her to stay with friends? The fourth birthday party where I was so tired I barely got through the candle-wish-blowing before falling asleep on the couch? The lunch boxes I forgot to pack? The mommy group I didn’t join. The mommy group I did join. The list was endless and formidable. I wasn’t the woman, the mother or the wife I’d meant to be. If I’d meant to be one at all.

  Loving a man who wasn’t her father seemed the biggest sin so far and yet one she didn’t even know about. I’d never done anything about it, unless you counted the one true fact that my heart was always with him, with the possibility of him.

  Had I destroyed my daughter’s concept of love, all the while meaning the best? I felt nauseated at the possibility of all my mistakes cascading down to her, invisible and as powerful as a waterfall. I wanted to prevent all heartache, all damage and all failure from touching her fragile soul.

  I gingerly stepped across the damp and dark backyard, fireflies flickering and diving, and the moon high. I startled as I reached the porch and opened the screen door. Piper stood there with a glass of water in her hand.

  “Hey, sweetie. I hope I didn’t wake you.” I kept my voice low and calm.

  “No, Daisy was kicking me. Who were you talking to? Just now?”

  “An old friend.”

  “Owen?” she asked.

  Hearing the rounded sound of his name made my heart lurch and roll inside my chest. “Yes,” I said. There was nothing else to say but yes.

  “Isn’t that Lainey’s brother?”

  “It is,” I said.

  “Why don’t you tell her that you talk to him?”

  “She knows I talk to him.”

  “She talks about him all the time, about how much she misses him.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “I don’t get it.” The porch lights illuminated Piper’s face and she squinted at me as if trying to read my own expression.

  “I know. I don’t think we get it either, Piper. He doesn’t think we should be here after what happened to their mom. That’s all.”

  “Whatever.” Her face told me she didn’t believe me, and she slammed the screen door a little too hard and left me alone.

  How could I have believed my life was ever separate from hers? That we weren’t inextricably tied together in a way that what I did affected her and what she did altered me? Our lives were mirrors, and tangled at more than the level of DNA. She was more than the sum of my parts plus Lucas’s genes. She was all of herself and all of me and all of him.

  chapter 25

  PIPER BLANKENSHIP

  All drunken nights were different, but all hangovers felt the same. After that little tiff with Mom about being on the phone with Owen, sneaking around in the dark backyard like a teenager, I woke in a damp sweat with the profound feeling that I was going to be sick. My mouth was dry and open; my heart raced. There was a spinning feeling inside my head, a roundness of thought trying to land on the one very reason I felt so badly. Then thoughts formed, one by one, like fog lifting off a jagged horizon so I could see small mirages of the things I’d drunk and the things I’d done, but not the entire knowing of it all. Tequila, no, it was Fireball shots. Sitting on a curb crying, no, that was last time, it was a bar stool and a stranger . . .

  That was how it went every time until I dragged myself from bed and found a huge glass of water, some Advil and something greasy to eat. Then after that, the awful realization that I was going to lose the day to the feeling and, like being strapped in a bad carnival ride, I couldn’t do anything but bear the sudden rises and drops, the terror. Even sleep wouldn’t help because I couldn’t sleep through this.

  Finally, and this was the best part—my vow—my eternal and blood vow:

  I’m never going to drink again.

  Last night I hadn’t meant to get shit-faced, obliterated, plastered, whatever the favorite and best term is. It wasn’t on purpose. Was it ever? Yes, sometimes it was. But last night it was not.

  Here was how it usually went in Watersend: I’d tuck the kids into bed with Goodnight Moon, which I had now memorized and could ad-lib and act out, making them squeal with laughter. I’d pretend to find another mouse, which there would never be. One more book, their constant refrain, and one more it was, until six books later I’d say no, and either go join my mom and Lainey on the porch, where they talked about their lives, or to my room, where I’d read and fall asleep with the windows open and the hum of the moms’ voices rising and falling, their laughter like exclamation points through the night.

  But last night after slamming the screen door on Mom, I scrolled through Facebook and actually, to my own delight, deliberately avoided going to Ryan’s page. I scrolled and felt that old I’m-not-enough feeling crawl over me, and I closed the computer, settled back on the bed and opened a novel to find the pages I’d folded to discuss in book club at Mimi’s. Then my phone vibrated and I glanced at the screen. A text from my friend Childers. OMG, did you see the Insta from Hannah????

  I knew better. I really did. But I looked. Even though I’d un-followed them both (Ryan and Hannah), and had promised myself to never look again, I did. Another broken promise. There they were. Hannah’s profile kissing Ryan’s face. His smile broad and wide as he received her kiss, staring directly at the camera as if to say, See? She loves me.

  I only wanted one sip of the Jack hidden in my bottom drawer, just the tiniest numbing of my feelings and my heartache. But it wasn’t enough, and this was where the story got boring even to me, because there was nothing fun or interesting about sitting in bed alone drinking until the room spun and I fell asleep.

  Then slowly a memory surfaced, a fuzzy cell phone memory. Oh, God. Had I done this thing or dreamed it? No, my deep headache told me, you did that. I’d gone into Mom’s room and, while she slept, I’d taken her phone, gone to her text messages and looked for Owen McKay. Sure enough, there he was in her contacts. I typed quickly.

  Don’t write back, but we need you here in Watersend.

  And then, after I hit send, I erased it so Mom couldn’t se
e what I’d done. Just like that—a dumbass-drunk move that had somehow seemed noble and righteous under the Jack haze. Let him show up so that Lainey could see the brother she missed so much. Screw what Mom wanted.

  My anger at Mom had surfaced in one huge wave. She’d forced me to come to Watersend when I could be with Ryan (as if Ryan loving Hannah was Mom’s fault). And then I’d gone and sabotaged her in some fit of irrationality.

  Shit.

  Then the little ones came in and jumped on my bed, and the day started and I wondered with headachy dread what I’d set in motion. What idiocy had prompted me to text their uncle? If Mom hadn’t told him to come, she’d had her reasons. Then again, I’d had mine.

  The book club I’d started was my idea, or I told myself it was my idea, but really it was probably Mimi’s. I’d gotten it into my head the day I arrived and she told me there was a book club for everything. I wanted to read books about girls who weren’t expected to do much and then surprised everyone because they did do something extraordinary. But there was no such category. So I just called it “Girls in Books.” Mimi liked it; I taped flyers in all the downtown store windows and Fletch helped me.

  It was the first meeting, and I arrived an hour early to set up the little space. I set out the crackers and cheese and fruit—all donated by the Market—and a pitcher of water with peach slices floating in it. I placed a bouquet of wild daisies that I’d picked off the side of the road into a vase on the kitchen table, and waited with tiny butterflies skittering inside—part hangover, part Owen dread.

  Lately, time had passed so quickly that I sometimes forgot what day it was because they were all the same without school or schedules. It was a lazy feeling like everything would wait while I cut sandwiches for the kids and read books and delivered groceries with Fletch and fell asleep in the hammock. He’d taken me out in the little boat that appeared too rickety to keep us afloat and introduced me to the waterways and secret passages of the river and ocean.

  Now I’d gone and screwed it up. But I’d made it this far through the day, and it was my first book club meeting. Maybe four people would show. Maybe two. Maybe none. But I was prepared.

  Mimi arrived at the top of the stairs. “Look at you,” she said. “I don’t have to do a thing.”

  I shrugged. “Might be for nothing.”

  “Nothing is for nothing, right? You read a great book and tried for something. Who knows?”

  I checked my phone. “We still have thirty minutes. I won’t panic yet.”

  Mimi tilted her head before catching my gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t feel so well,” I said.

  “Oh, dear. Why?”

  “Cocktail flu.”

  She laughed but stifled it quickly. “Oh, Piper.”

  “I know.” I sank into a chair. “I’m not at all who I want to be. Why do I keep doing this?” I dropped my face into my hands. “Seriously. There’s something wrong with me. It’s so stupid. Why do I act the exact opposite of who and what I want to be?”

  Mimi sat in the chair next to me and I felt her hand on my knee. “We all do that sometimes. It has a really technical name to it.”

  I glanced up, so hopeful. “And what is that?”

  “Being human.”

  I laughed and shook my head. Then changed the subject. “What if no one shows?” I asked.

  “Twelve people bought the book, so that means someone will show. I promise. Two girls came in today to ask where we’d meet.”

  “Okay.” I nodded and settled back into the chair to down another glass of peach water. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any left when and if someone did show.

  “I’m nervous,” I said. “I so regret picking this to be the day to feel awful.” I sighed. “I bet you don’t have that many regrets.”

  “Where do you get these crazy ideas?” she asked.

  “Crazy ideas?”

  “That you are the only one who ever messes up. That you are the only one who doesn’t do something you should or who does something you wish you hadn’t.”

  “I don’t know. I look around and everyone seems to have it together.”

  By instinct I pulled out my phone and scanned it.

  “Look up, dear. Look up from that phone. Maybe you won’t feel so brokenly special.”

  “You’re right.” I tucked my phone into my back pocket, turned away from the world of photos and images, of updates and film filters, and into her gray eyes. “The wrong places,” I said with a smile.

  Together we peered toward the stairwell as a man’s voice said, “Is there someone who works here?”

  “Oh, my.” Mimi stood. “I didn’t even hear the bell ring.”

  “Ms. Mimi?” the man asked, sounding astonished, as he reached the landing.

  He was really handsome, even though he was kind of old. Dark hair that curled everywhere like Justin Timberlake in his boy-band days, and a tan that wasn’t fake like those old politicians on TV. His dark T-shirt was untucked and he wore a pair of faded jeans, which ended in tattered hems over those hiking sandals everyone wore at my college.

  “You look like your father, a time traveler,” Mimi said and her right hand fluttered to her throat.

  I wanted to guess who this man was to her. I wanted to stand and say, Wait, before you tell me, let me guess. Long-lost son? Old boyfriend’s son? Ex-employee? But I just sat and watched with my dull headache.

  “Ah, so they say.” He grinned and closed the few steps between them with long strides. His hug enveloped all of her and he even lifted her an inch off the ground.

  “It’s so good to see you again. Just so good.” His voice had lost the astonishment and was now on to gladness. Then he noticed me, his gaze catching on mine and sticking. I realized I was standing, still holding my glass of water.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Mimi stepped between us and reached behind her back to take my hand. It was a protective move I didn’t understand at first, until she spoke.

  “Owen, this is Piper Blankenship.”

  The world scuttled out from underneath me.

  “Owen,” I echoed.

  His smile shook even as he tried to hold it steady, and he glanced at Mimi for help, which she seemed uncharacteristically unable to give.

  “Why don’t we go on downstairs?” she said. “Piper here is waiting to start a book club meeting.”

  He nodded, but his feet were rooted to the hard plank floors. He moved his upper body as if to turn, but nothing happened. He stared at me and then looked away and then back again.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said in a weird, tight voice like those GPS-directions voices.

  “You, too,” I said. “Does Mom know you’re here?”

  He didn’t answer and the air changed. I’m not making that up like some metaphor, a way to say something was trippy; it did change. It turned warmer and fuller.

  “No.” He stopped and scanned the room. “Is she here?”

  “Not here,” I said. “Here, but not here. In town, but not at this store right this second.”

  Then we all stood there in the most awkward moment of all my life. I’ve been in a lot of awkward moments—like finding Ryan on top of Hannah, or waking up on the wooden bench on the common, or seeing a picture of me dancing on top of a bar—but this won hands down.

  I wonder what would have happened if this eager and beautiful girl with a singsong voice hadn’t arrived at the top of the stairs with the book in her hand, asking, “Is this where book club meets?”

  I turned away from Owen and said, “Yes!”

  In the end, six girls showed. I’d seen some of them around town and I knew the one who didn’t speak one word was Fletch’s high school ex-girlfriend from the bonfire, and she was only there to check me out. But I didn’t care because at least she filled a seat.

  T
wo hours flew by and Ms. Mimi came upstairs to let us know it was closing time. We all exchanged phone numbers and friended each other on Facebook, and that was that. I’d had my first book club.

  After I cleaned, I went downstairs, said good-bye to Mimi and went outside. Fletch was waiting for me and tossed his arm over my shoulder. We headed toward his Jeep, which was parked crooked like the rest of the town’s cars.

  “What is the deal with parking around here?” I asked. “No one parks in between the white lines. I noticed that my very first day.”

  “Oh, that.” Fletch pointed at his Jeep. “They repainted the lines from slanted to straight about six months ago and no one pays it any mind.” He pulled me close. “So, how was it?” he asked.

  “Really great,” I said. “And”—I elbowed his ribs—“Julie came.”

  “I saw her come out.” He elbowed me back gently. “She’s really nice. Don’t be scared of my exes.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said. “Just jealous.”

  “Jealous?” We’d reached his Jeep, and he threw both arms into the air. “That’s the closest you’ve come to saying that you care even a little bit.”

  “Stop,” I said, but I laughed. “You’re embarrassing me now. Making a scene in the street. What will people think of you?”

  He took both his hands, placed them on my cheeks and pulled me in for a deep kiss. “If you only knew all the many things they thought about me,” he said when he pulled back. “But all that matters to me right now is what you think of me.”

  “What I think?” I stepped back and tapped my finger on my temple. “I think you’re funny. And I love your Jeep. And you kiss like you’ve been practicing all your life. And you have the best hair when the wind gets ahold of it. And you make me feel safe. And when I’m around you I’m not thinking about anything else hardly at all.”

  Fletch drew me so close then that I felt my spine give way just the littlest bit, as if he was aligning me to him, making things right and straight. Then he kissed me again and we sank back against the Jeep. My body adjusted under his, the pressure of him. My limbs loosened and the air felt liquid. We were swimming and standing still. I wrapped my right leg around his calf, my flip-flop dropping off. He drew himself away from me and settled one finger on my lips.