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Micah let out a taut breath. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“That’s the question, right? That’s always been the question.”

Micah didn’t speak, but I could see that he was struggling to come up with some kind of explanation. Some reasoning that would dispel the implication of what I was saying. Because I wasn’t just talking about the owls. I was talking about Autumn, Griffin…everything. I was even talking about him.

“How did you know that Johnny knew about us?” I asked.

Micah stayed quiet, turning his face into the wind blowing up the beach. It pushed his hair across his forehead, making that flash of his younger self come back to life.

“Tell me.”

He thought about it a moment, as if deciding how much he wanted me to know. “Because he told me he did.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A while before the night Griffin died.”

I folded my legs beneath me, shifting so that I could look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Delaying the inevitable, I guess? He told me to break things off with you, that I was going to hold you back.”

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “From what?”

“From everything. Life, leaving, whatever.”

“And were you going to? Break things off, I mean?”

His eyes were still pinned on the horizon. “I didn’t have to.”

A sting lit behind my eyes as a familiar anger bubbled up inside of me. I never had to break the news about Byron to Johnny and Micah, because Griffin had done it for me. And when I told Johnny I wasn’t sure about going, he’d been furious. It was the worst fight we’d ever had.

I could still see him pacing our living room, my acceptance letter clutched in his hand. His voice boomed in the claustrophobic space of the cabin as I leaned into the fireplace, watching him. He was coming undone in the days after Griffin died, and even I couldn’t hold him together.

For the first time, Johnny looked different to me. I couldn’t un-feel that rage that had coursed through his veins. I couldn’t erase the sight of him going after Griffin, of them both disappearing into the dark.

I think Johnny felt it, too. I think he’d scared himself that night. And in the days that had followed, he’d barely even looked at me.

You’re going.

He said it with a finality that loosed the knot inside of me. I’d dreaded making the decision, but now Johnny was making it for me. Like he didn’t just believe that I needed to get away from him, but that he needed me gone, too.

If you don’t…I mean, if you don’t, James, then what the fuck are we even here for?

What I hadn’t expected was that Micah hadn’t once tried to stop me. He’d never even said that he didn’t want me to go. After that night in the gorge, he stopped calling. Stopped coming by. He pulled away from me until I was so alone that I didn’t feel like Icouldstay.

It wasn’t until Griffin’s funeral, as the three of us stood side by side staring at that casket, that I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t just afraidof becoming my mother anymore, getting stuck in this town and letting it erase me. I was afraid of the person I’d already become.

The waves climbed higher up the beach as Micah and I sat there, the sound of the ocean roaring.

“What if he wasn’t who we thought he was?” I whispered, my voice nearly lost to the wind.

Micah didn’t answer.

“Well, I guess he got everything he wanted,” I muttered, voice broken. I couldn’t say the same for the rest of us.

“He wanted you away from here, James. Away fromhim.”

I wiped the tears from my face, trying to breathe through the pain waking inside of me. I wondered now if I hadn’t known that, even back then. Because I wasn’t ever actually scared of Johnny. I knew he’d open his own veins before he ever let anything happen to me. But Iwasscared, I was terrified, of finding out who he really was.