Page 18 of A Curse for the Homesick

THIS PLACE

2017

Once I’d turned in my final assignment of the term and started packing my suitcases, I was left with the same uprooted sensation that had marked the beginning of my time at Stanford. Everyone else was going off to work or travel, and I didn’t know what I was meant to do. Kitty and Georgia had invited me to Greece with them, but the trip was supposed to be romantic and perfect. I said thanks but no. The obvious solution was for me to go to Stenland, where at least I could work for my dad for the summer. It was a job involving cars, after all, which was more than I’d been able to get on my own. The prospect of seeing people was also tempting—Linnea, Henrik. Soren. I even wanted to see Delia, who Kitty told me had had the tremendously bad luck of becoming a skeld a second time last year. No one had died this time.

On the other hand, I had the feeling that I had insulted the island by leaving and if I went back, it would punish me by turning me immediately into a skeld. Also, if I was being honest, I desperately did not want to meet Abigail.

I decided to stop packing and FaceTime Bianca, thinking absently that maybe she wanted to offer me a place on her floor for the summer. When she picked up, she was sitting with her feet in a fountain. Damian was next to her. They were both wearing sunglasses and looking celebratory.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries. It had been weeks since I’d spoken to either of them—a long time for my supposed closest college friends—but we all bobbed through the conversation like nothing was wrong. When I told them August and I had broken up, they looked relieved.

“Oh,” Damian said. “Good. I mean, you two never made that much sense anyway.”

“What he means,” Bianca said, “is that we hope you’re doing okay.”

“You didn’t think we made sense?” I asked.

I was sitting on top of my suitcase with my back against the bed frame. The wood was digging into my spine, but I didn’t move.

“August is just quirky,” Bianca said. “You knew that.”

Did I?

“Right,” I said, “well, I think he lied to me about things.” I hurried to add, “Nothing that important,” but I wasn’t sure why I was defending him.

Damian and Bianca nodded. “Yeah, classic August,” Damian said.

Classic August—of course, classic August. The static was coming back, the ringing in my ears that was becoming an increasingly regular companion. I was glad I was already sitting down. As if through water, I heard myself say, “Did he lie to you about something?”

“Oh, god,” Bianca said to Damian. “Remember the kidnapping story?”

Damian laughed. He responded, but I didn’t hear what he said.

I wanted to say Is that really the same thing as being quirky? I wanted to say Jesus fucking Christ, why didn’t you tell me?

They assumed I knew. Who would be so stupid not to? Who could possibly be so naive? What a sad, small world I came from.

I ended the call with an abrupt goodbye. In the hallway, there were two male voices, and though neither of them sounded quite like August, I was suddenly and utterly convinced he would be knocking on my door within the hour. It was the day he’d originally intended to fly in; who was to say he hadn’t just gotten on the plane anyway?

In response to my text, August had said he was sorry things had been so distant over the past few months. He’d said he hoped I was doing well.

He had not said he was not flying out to see me.

I called Kitty and asked if she and Georgia could drive me to the airport. I put her on speaker and started looking at tickets.

“Wait, right now?” Kitty said. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” I said.

* * *

Part of me thought I’d see Stenland through the fog as my plane came in to land and feel—love, I supposed. But as the hills resolved themselves and the little toy buildings sharpened into focus, I felt the first swells of panic. When I’d flown into London, seeing all that rained-on green and old stone, it had felt like coming home. But as the plane jostled its way toward the runway, I was so aware of the lack of city beyond the airport. When I stepped outside with my bags, the air was quiet of all human noise. Just ravens and that fog.

I checked my phone and had no messages from August, which made me feel like maybe I’d invented this fantasy in my head, the fact that he was coming to find me. It made me feel both relieved and guilty. I called my dad, realizing that I probably should’ve called him sooner to let him know I was coming, but it went to voicemail. Linnea still didn’t have her license. I briefly considered calling Soren but remembered Abigail.

How did tourists get to their Lundwall hotels from the airport? I’d never needed to consider it before. We certainly didn’t have an underground; I didn’t even think we had a bus. Maybe you were required by law to rent a car. Or there was a single driver who ferried everyone back and forth very slowly.

In the end, I called Kitty’s mum.

She answered on the second ring, sounding breathless. Upbeat, folksy music twanged in the background.

“Tess,” she said. “Is Kitty okay?”

I stared at the small parking lot in front of the airport and kicked a bit of gravel with my toe. Beyond the flatness of the lot rose a golden green hill flecked with blooming crowberry bushes. We were too boxed in by fog to see the ocean, but I could sense it, maybe in the saltiness hanging in the air. “Kitty’s great, Mrs. Sjoberg.”

“You’re twenty-one, honey. I think you can call me Michelle.”

Over the music in the background, I thought I could hear someone calling out instructions.

“Are you at a dance class?”

“At the community center. Are you okay?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Tess Eriksson, you are near enough my own daughter to know you cannot possibly get away with this sorry to interrupt act. Tell me why you called and tell me what I can do.”

“I might be at the airport,” I said.

She paused. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Twelve minutes later, I was climbing into the passenger seat of Michelle’s car. It was a new one, still a BMW but now small and sporty instead of giant and meant for lugging around three girls.

“Is this an M3?” I said.

“As always, your father’s daughter.”

Growing up, I’d always thought the Sjobergs were the richest people in the world. It had been hard to imagine what you’d do with more money than they had. It was still hard for me to imagine, actually. Like Kitty, Mr. Sjoberg had gone off to study something business related at Oxford. He’d spent the next decade working in London and Paris and Hong Kong. He’d met Kitty’s mum, started investing in businesses and properties back in Stenland, and moved home just before Kitty was born.

“Do you like living here?” I asked.

She glanced over at me as she threaded the car through a roundabout. “So we’re not going to talk about why you hopped on a plane without telling anyone you were coming? Okay, that’s fine. Yes, I do like living here. I love my friends and I love my husband and I love my life. I hate the weather, and I could die happy if I never again ate herring. But do I like Stenland? I do.”

“Did you always?”

“Of course not. I’d never been anywhere with people who were so polite yet so cold. And I knew we were having a girl, which was horrifying once I realized skelds were real. I’d always thought they were folklore—like elves or something. Mind you, I also thought narwhals were folklore. Bit of a shock all around. But when I found out—I’ve never shouted so much in my whole life. My voice was gone the next day. I was so angry Kitty’s father would bring her to a place she might end up cursed. It never even occurred to me that I might. Hasn’t happened, but—if there were a way to bear the curse for someone else, I’d do it. I can’t say I wasn’t relieved when you and Kitty left. I was always sure the three of you…”

I tucked my feet up on the seat. “Why stay?”

She made a soft thinking noise, an mmm , and we both gazed out the windshield as Lundwall winked into view. Red buildings; turf roofs. Stone fences essing like snakes through the grass. At the center of town, right in front of the parliament house that I’d come to realize was the size of a normal city hall, there was a bronze sculpture. She was maybe twice life-size, her hair flowing out behind her and her arms raised like she was summoning something. Her skin was gleaming from the wetness in the air. A simple dress from an indiscernible era fluttered around her legs. In one hand, she held a length of fabric that had, perhaps, been tied recently around her eyes. Her lids were closed, but you got the sense she could open them whenever she wanted to.

“This place gets in your veins,” Michelle said finally. “You know?”

“I know,” I said.

* * *

Michelle dropped me at my dad’s house. She asked if I needed her to hang around in case I couldn’t find him, but he hadn’t locked his front door in years, so I said I’d be fine. From his workshop, I could see the flicker of lights. It was only seven at night, and the sky wasn’t even pink yet, so I figured he was probably bent over the guts of a car fiddling with something. My palms were sweaty. I readjusted my grip on my bags and walked toward the garage door. It was rolled open. From inside, I heard a trickle of voices and the occasional clank of metal.

“—the red house,” a man’s voice was saying.

“But it’s so close to the cemetery,” a woman said, and my heart swooped in my chest.

“That’s probably why the price is so low!” the man said cheerfully.

I stepped through the garage door.

Henrik was leaning against a car with the hood propped, a wrench in one hand. His beard had grown thicker and his face had rounded out, but he had the same pink cheeks, the same bright blue eyes as always.

Linnea sat on a tall worktable, her legs swinging. She was wearing a lavender dress and a cardigan. Her hair was in loose waves down her back like she’d just taken it out of a braid. No one had ever in history looked more like a goddess of springtime.

She saw me before Henrik did.

His gaze was still fixed on her when he said, “We can afford it if we let my parents chip in. And we’ll pay them back, obviously. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

Linnea’s lips parted.

“Hi,” I said.

She toppled forward off the worktable and flung herself at me. I’d forgotten how tall she was, and when we crashed together, I had to catch myself on the car Henrik was working on to keep us both from hitting the concrete. A rain of kisses descended on my head.

“Henrik!” Linnea said. “Henrik, I found Tess!”

I laughed and tried to wriggle out of her grasp without success.

“I can see that,” Henrik said. He set down the wrench and approached more cautiously. “I’m covered in grease. Can I hug you anyway?”

I nodded, and Henrik wrapped his arms around both of us, pinning us together in a knot. When we finally disentangled, Linnea’s cheeks were bright. She looked like she might cry; if she did, I would too.

“Are you here for the weekend?” Linnea asked.

I felt that I needed to ask their permission. “The summer, I think.”

She shrieked, then pressed her fingertips to her lips.

“Is my dad here?” I asked.

“He’s at dinner,” Henrik said. “With Anna. They should be back any minute, though.”

On cue, I heard the hiss of tires against wet stone. Three years. I hadn’t seen my dad in person in almost three years because he never left Stenland and I never came back, and FaceTime was fine, but it wasn’t the same as seeing him make toast while singing off-key to Adele. I turned and took a step out of the garage—god, I was definitely going to cry—but then out of the driver’s seat of a muddy white truck swung Soren.

His feet hit the ground.

A precarious hope hovered between my throat and my heart. We stared at each other, maybe both in shock, though it was probably fairer for him to be shocked as he wasn’t the one who was supposed to be a thousand miles away. He looked taller than the last time I’d seen him. Or older, maybe, with his hair shorter and his shoulders broader and his face narrower. The eyes, though, same as always, under those heavy brows, behind those long lashes.

Linnea pushed between my shoulder blades. I took a stumbling step, and that seemed to jar Soren too because the next minute, his arms were wrapped around me and my nose was in his collarbone.

Soap and sea and earth and toothpaste. You never forget what a person smells like once you’ve been in love with them.

We stayed like that until I started wondering how long you were allowed to hug your ex without it being weird. He was the one who let go, which felt the same way it felt when he texted me something too clever to counter.

“I don’t…” he said. “What?”

“She’s here for the summer,” Henrik said.

I watched Soren’s face for clues about how this news was received. He still looked vaguely dazed.

“Okay,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What am I doing here?”

“We were going to get dinner,” Henrik supplied.

I wondered if dinner plans included Abigail, but was afraid of how it would sound if I asked. Before I could think of a way to say it without reminding everyone of just how long I had hugged Soren, another car pulled into park in front of the house, and when I turned, there was my dad.

No dazed hesitation this time. I ran straight to him and he was saying my name like a question and then I hugged him for the first time in three years. He was already crying.

“Can I stay with you for the summer?” I said. “I probably should’ve asked sooner.”

He said yes, then, oh my gosh, then, of course, absolutely, all summer?

“If that’s okay.”

“Oh my gosh,” he said again. “Of course. Absolutely. I thought you’d be working again.”

“I didn’t get any internship offers,” I said.

They all frowned sympathetically like they were wondering if this condition was terminal. It had felt that way when I’d been talking to my classmates, but I supposed none of the people currently assembled had ever done an internship because, if we were being honest, it was a bit of a stupid premise anyway.

Once my dad had his bearings, he remembered to step out of the way so I could say hello to Anna (whom I should probably have long since stopped calling “Anna from the hospital”). She wore practical shoes and had her gray-brown hair in a ponytail and her round face free of makeup. When she hugged me, it felt soft and sincere.

My dad showed me to my room while Anna chatted in the driveway with the others. It was funny, my dad leading me through the house, like I might’ve forgotten the way. When he opened my door, he said apologetically, “Sorry I didn’t keep it like it was. I figured you wouldn’t have wanted me to, since I knew you didn’t want to—well.”

It was a clean and bright guest room. My swim ribbons had been packed away, as had my child-sized bed. Everything was blue and white now, and the curtains were open to let in the evening sun. I had a feeling Anna had contributed to the redecorating effort because it was hard to imagine my dad selecting throw pillows.

I was glad he’d changed it, and I told him so. I didn’t want a dusty shrine.

The six of us crammed together in the kitchen, and I was regaled with town gossip. Lukas had started dating someone named Johanna; a politician had been fined for bicycling drunk. Soren didn’t say much, but he never stood more than an arm’s length from me. Once, I glanced up and found him leaning against the fridge, his hands in his pockets, his eyes soft on mine. I looked away again quickly. No one offered any gossip about the current whereabouts of Abigail; I was still too embarrassed to ask.

Once we’d been huddled in the kitchen for nearly two hours, my dad said, “Oh, you were all meant to go get dinner, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t want to complain,” Henrik said, “but I may faint.”

My dad shooed us out the door, and Anna waved. We left the cars behind and walked to Hedda’s. The mist had mostly blown off, so I could see all the way to the ocean. It was past nine, but coming up on the longest day of the year, the sky was still a pale and powdery blue.

When we pushed open the door to Hedda’s, her voice rang out from the kitchen in warning that they were closed.

“It’s me!” Linnea called back.

We sat in the booth where we always used to sit, in the places we used to claim: me next to Soren and Linnea next to Henrik. We would drag a chair to the end of the table for Kitty, and I wished we needed to now.

Hedda swept past us with a rag over her shoulder, muttering about how we’d better just want the usual. Then she stopped. Turned back toward us.

I waved.

“What year is this?” she said. “Should I expect Kitty to come blowing through my door next?”

“I can lock up.” Linnea blinked her big eyes up at Hedda. “If the kitchen’s still open…”

“I was just about to turn the griddle off,” Hedda said.

“Please? It wouldn’t be right for Tess to eat someone else’s cooking on her first day back.”

Hedda gave Linnea a mutinous look. “Fine.”

“I’d love some pancakes,” I said helpfully.

“I know what your order is,” she snapped, and she stalked away before anyone else could try to tell her what they wanted.

“I missed her,” I said.

“You know,” Linnea said, “you can tell she missed you too.”

It was painful, how normal it was. How normal it used to be. Hedda brought two coffees (me, Soren) and two hot chocolates with whipped cream (Linnea, Henrik). A few minutes later, she brought pancakes (me) and fish and chips (Soren) and a burger (Henrik) and two eggs and a slice of cake (Linnea). Linnea told us she’d been thinking about quitting, actually; Anna had convinced her to enroll in the nursing course at the university the prior autumn, but she hadn’t yet committed to a second year.

“I just don’t want to leave Hedda’s,” Linnea said. “Also, what if I have a terrible bedside manner?”

“You wouldn’t,” Henrik said. To me, as an aside, he added: “She’d be so bloody good at it.”

“Henrik thinks I’d be good at everything.”

“Well,” he said, “you are.”

Conversation veered, as I knew it would, toward Kitty’s absence. Linnea told me that aside from a happy birthday message, Kitty hadn’t texted her all spring, much less called. I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I made a mental note to berate Kitty; she’d promised me she was keeping in touch and that Linnea was just being dramatic.

“She’ll come around,” I told Linnea. “You know how wrapped up people get in new relationships.”

Linnea’s fork clattered against her plate. “Kitty’s in a relationship?”

I blinked a few times. “You knew this. Georgia’s been in the room while I’ve FaceTimed you.”

“Kitty’s dating Georgia ?”

“You knew this!” I said.

“I thought they were just really good friends!”

“Well—” I started to say something like they haven’t been together that long , but that wasn’t actually true. “They’re also good friends?”

“Kitty’s gay ?” Linnea said.

We all stared at her.

She whipped an accusatory look at Henrik and Soren. “Did you two know?”

In what was perhaps not his most tactful moment, Soren said, “How did you not?”

I kicked him under the table.

“I didn’t know,” Henrik said. “For whatever that’s worth. I definitely did not know.”

Linnea was gripping her fork so tightly I could see the white ridges of her knuckles. Had I not told her on purpose? Had Kitty not told her on purpose? I hoped I hadn’t just spoiled a secret, something Kitty was safeguarding, but it had been so long since she’d cared for Linnea in that way that it hadn’t even occurred to me that Linnea might still not know.

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “So,” I said. “Where’s Abigail?”

If I had hoped to find a less awkward conversational topic, I had, apparently, failed because Henrik and Linnea both went very still on their side of the table.

“Ah,” Soren said.

A long pause.

“Toronto,” he said, “one assumes.”

I felt lightheaded. “One assumes?”

“We broke up,” Soren said.

“Ah.”

“About a month ago.”

“Mmm.”

Another silence. Linnea broke it with, “Well, at least I am not the only one who doesn’t get told anything.”

I was suddenly uniquely conscious of Soren’s leg beneath the table. His knee was an inch from mine. When he shifted his weight, the bench shifted under us.

“What happened?” I asked. “You don’t have to say.”

He made an uncomfortable noise. Linnea and Henrik pretended to be very interested in their hot chocolates.

“She…ah. Told me she loved me. In March.” Soren ran his hand through the back of his hair. “And I said I couldn’t say it back yet. She said, you know, no worries. But she said it again in April.” He winced. “And then when she said it in May, and I still didn’t say it back, she asked if I thought I’d ever be able to. I said I didn’t know. So she left.”

“Oh.” My voice sounded high and strained. “Well. It can be hard to know. If you love someone.”

He finally looked over at me. Then he let out this helpless laugh, which made me laugh back, which made Henrik and Linnea laugh, and it was good that they did because I’d forgotten they were sitting there.

“How’s August?” Soren asked.

“What?”

“Van Andel,” he clarified.

I tried to keep my voice level. “We broke up. Actually.”

Soren’s face remained fastidiously devoid of emotion. “You did,” he said. “Ah.”

“You didn’t,” Linnea said.

I frowned at her. “Last week.”

Her voice pitching higher, she said, “Why doesn’t anyone tell me things?”

Soren and I looked at each other. Henrik put a concerned arm over Linnea’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

She was going alarmingly pale. “You really should’ve said.”

“I should’ve. We can get breakfast together tomorrow. We’ll catch up on everything.”

“No,” Linnea insisted. “You really should have said.”

I opened my mouth. Then: “Oh.”

“Oh, what?” Henrik asked.

“He’s coming here, isn’t he?”

“He messaged me on Facebook right after you got here,” Linnea said. “He just said he wanted to surprise you, that I shouldn’t say anything. Tess, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”

I couldn’t string the words together. A part of me wanted to ask that they hide me somewhere, but most of me thought that sounded melodramatic. Because what had August done wrong, really? He was no physical danger to me. Maybe this was my own fault, for being too much of a coward to break up with him in person or at least over the phone.

“Tess hates surprises,” Soren said. It wasn’t accusatory, exactly—but it wasn’t not that either.

“I’m sorry,” Linnea said again.

That was when the bell on the door jingled.

There is a very specific, incongruous sound when a man in expensive shoes walks across a floor that needs mopping. There’s that faint heel-tap and the shifting of leather, and then, beneath it, the staticky noise of a sole clinging to sticky tile. A shadow crossed in front of the table, and I looked up, and there was August.

He was wearing pale yellow shorts and a Patagonia vest, and he had a North Face duffel bag slung over one shoulder that made him look more outdoorsy than he was. His sunglasses were propped, pushing his hair off his forehead. Behind him, through the windows, the sky was awash with pink midnight light.

“Surprise,” he said. He said it pleasantly. He said everything pleasantly. August Van Andel was not a scary person; it was not fair that I felt scared.

“Oh,” I said.

He smiled at Linnea. “Hi, Linnea. Great to meet you in person.” His eyes drifted over Henrik, whose arm was still around Linnea’s shoulders, and then found their way to Soren. When they did, his smile thinned.

Soren extended a hand without standing up. It forced August to hunch if he wanted to shake, which of course he did, because August was nothing if not polite.

“Soren,” Soren said.

“August.”

I wondered if August knew. I’d never spoken Soren’s name aloud in front of him—very carefully, actually, like I’d been conserving a precious resource—and had only ever referred to him on the odd time he’d come up as my high school boyfriend. But there were artifacts. Old Facebook posts we’d both been tagged in. I could picture this one particular photo Kitty had taken after one of Soren’s soccer games, me in his jersey, him standing behind me with his arms draped over my shoulders. I wondered if August had seen it. I wondered if he was picturing the same photo.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Surprising you,” he said. “I thought, hey, what’s the point of money if you’re not going to use it to book a last-minute flight from London to Copenhagen to Stenland to visit your girlfriend?”

Soren had been rolling a balled-up straw wrapper back and forth across the table, and at the word girlfriend , his finger stilled, just for a second. “I’m sure you could find a rainforest foundation that would take your money instead,” he said.

Linnea laughed like she wanted to melt into the floor.

“So,” August said, “it’s probably been a while since you all saw Tess, huh? I don’t mean to steal her away. I’m sure she’s been catching you up on everything she’s done since leaving, right? Stanford, America—she must be a celebrity around here.”

“Yeah,” Henrik said uncomfortably. “She was just telling us.”

August turned his smile, still pleasant, on him. “Sorry—what was your name?”

“Henrik.”

“Ah,” August said. “Linnea’s boyfriend?”

Henrik looked surprised he would know this. I wasn’t. August had a good memory. He was always saying so. Reminding people he did. Suggesting, pleasantly, that perhaps your memory was not quite as good as his.

To Soren, August said, “And you’re…?”

Soren looked at him for a long time. August shifted his weight. Readjusted his bag.

“Kitty’s cousin,” Soren said.

“Funny,” August said. “I haven’t heard anything about you.”

“Interesting.”

“I actually don’t find it all that interesting that I wouldn’t have heard about you.”

“No,” Soren said. “I think it’s interesting that you’d rather be the one she talks about than the one she talks to.”

“Excuse me?” August said.

Soren turned his head away from August so his temple pressed against the back of the booth and his eyes fixed on mine.

“August,” I said, “I think we should talk outside.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Great.”

Soren had to stand to let me out of the booth, and when he did, August’s eyes swept across him. I felt a pang of secondhand embarrassment as his eyes lingered on Soren’s muddy shoes, on the hole in that sweater that he had long-since worn to death. Soren slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the edge of the table. When August looked down at him, it was like he was pleased to find he was taller.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Linnea said nervously.

“It’s fine, Lin.” I kept my eyes on August. “We’re good.”

I followed August out the door. The bells jingled again. August started walking down the street, not even looking back at me, and though there was a part of me that wanted to stay where my friends could see us, I was too embarrassed to let them. I followed him until we’d passed the last of Hedda’s windows, and then I grabbed his arm.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

He turned.

The path ran along the harbor; all to my right, the ocean lapped against hulls and docks and cement posts. When the wind skated in, it ruffled August’s hair, and he frowned like the gust was a personal inconvenience.

“Were you trying to embarrass me?” he asked. I was surprised by his voice—how tight it was, how quiet.

“Why are you here?” I said again.

“Do you know how shitty that felt? To fly all the way to fucking London just for the guy across the hall to tell me, ‘Oh, sorry, Tess left an hour ago’?”

I lifted my chin and stared at the waves.

“Fine,” he said. “I can talk. I knew you were mad at me about something. I figured it was just the distance, or maybe you were pissed I didn’t come visit you. But it was just a fight, okay? We had a fight, but I figured we’d still go on our trip. I mean, fuck, I was going to ask if you wanted to live with me over the summer, since you clearly don’t have anywhere else to go.” When he said this, he gestured at the harbor. At the fishing boats with their fishing-boat smells and their incriminating bloodstains.

“Are you really from Connecticut?” I asked.

He looked blankly back at me. “What kind of question is that? Where else would I be from?”

“Did you get kidnapped in Italy when you were ten? Did you almost go to a ski academy until you broke your leg? Did your high school girlfriend cheat on you?”

August’s lips parted.

“Did your uncle get turned to stone by a skeld?”

“Look. Maybe I… Maybe I exaggerate sometimes, okay? For the sake of a good story. Maybe it speaks to some youngest-child thing or some repressed insecurity, but…” He shook his head. “You think I lied to you? Tess, come on. I know you. I know how much this matters to you.”

I had always been afraid of being trapped, but I had pictured being trapped in a place: a small island, a small home, a small life. What I realized, standing there with August, was that there were more ways of being trapped. By someone else’s power, money, family. Inside someone else’s version of reality, as a supporting character in the story they wanted to tell. I tried to walk away, but he took my arm.

“Please just look at me,” he said. And I did. His frighteningly blue eyes and his kohl-black eyelashes. The polished, even teeth. “It’s about that guy, then?”

“No.”

“Because you know what happened with Val,” he said, “and I’ve got to say, this is starting to feel really fucking familiar. Girlfriend promises she loves you, you start to trust her, goes and hooks up with her ex—”

“Your best friend,” I said.

“What?”

“You told me Val cheated on you with your best friend. Not her ex.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “I guess you must’ve misheard me, then. Because I don’t know why I would’ve said that.”

“We’re done, August. Go home.”

He let out a sharp, unbelieving laugh. “Right,” he said. “Okay. Have a good time with your fucking farmer. I’m sure the ME degree will serve you really well here.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not a dick,” he said. “You’re just mad because you know it’s true.”

“What’s true?”

He gestured at the empty boats, the exhausted cars parked along the street, the railing gone rusty from sea spray. There was a garbage can coated in bird shit and a dog barking where it was tied outside the pub and up the hillside, just visible, all the stone statues in the church graveyard. I imagined how he saw it: not as a home but as a subject for examination from a safe remove. The lucky recipient of his pitying interest.

“This place ,” he said.

Before he walked away, I said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

But we both knew I did.