Page 27

My phone has no response this morning.

It’s the first thing I do: shift in my sunlit covers, unlock my phone, and stare at the conversation still open on the screen. I close my eyes again, rest the phone on my chest.

I picture that conversation if it happened face to face.

We’d be on the public dock on the sound. He’d come to visit and we’d go fishing to rekindle a long-lost father-daughter relationship. I’d tell him about everyone and everything.

How the twins and I fished on the same dock and how I thought of him whenever marshmallow creme glued my fingers together.

I’d tell him about the days spent smelling of sunscreen, wearing a bikini under my clothes just in case. Thoughts of him when fireflies flickered.

Laughing over a takeout box of warm hushpuppies. Popsicles. Ashe’s doughnuts. My feelings for Everett.

The good life I managed without him.

He’d smile and tell me he’s happy for me. He’d wish to be part of the rest, work to earn my forgiveness, tell me it’s okay to stop being so guarded due to his mistakes.

We wouldn’t catch any fish, but he’d think my company made it worth trying. We’d have one of those moments under the purple sound sky that only happens in movies.

Same as the ones we used to have with the fireflies back home. Only now, the fireflies would be frog croaks from the edge of the marsh.

We’d try to predict the next time a frog would croak. He’d mimic one at the perfect moment, at almost the exact pitch. I’d laugh like it was the funniest sound I’d ever heard.

Because it would be.

And I’d be happy.

Then I’d say it, more confident than I’ve ever been: “I love you.”

Then he’d apologize.

I can’t figure it out after that. My daydream rolls into a credits scene that only happens in movies.

Is there remorse in his eyes? How does the “I’m sorry” leave his mouth? Is it a gentle inland breeze on reddening skin? Is it stormy beach wind that rolls like beach thunder?

Is it the most windless day Piper Island has ever seen? I can’t decide, but the most telling thing is how void it is of “I love you, too.”

He doesn’t say it over text, but could he tell his daughter he loves her while he stares at the parts of her that bleed his shade of red?

He can’t.

He doesn’t.

He hasn’t.

If he really loved me, he would have said so.

He wouldn’t have left me waiting so long for a reply.

He would be here. He would see the woman his daughter has become. He would be here. He wouldn’t have left me a fatherless mess nine years ago.

He would be here.

I know that. I know my dad stopped loving me years ago. I was stupid to think otherwise.

My reply taunts me on the screen: I know.

Why did I respond in the middle of the night, the exact minute he sent his? Why did I respond at all? In my sleepy stupor, I was a desperate puppy waiting at the door for my owner to return. Ready to douse him in kisses, already clueless about how long he’d left me alone. What an idiot.

I find a different reply from that same night at the Rivera-Sanchezes’. From someone who didn’t need time to respond. With my mom, it never takes more than thirty minutes.

I love you, too, baby. Is everything okay?

I reread her excited response to the Gibson’s selfie with Everett. My mom, who I’ve painted as cold and broken since everything happened, sent me a selfie back, smiling beside a glass of mango smoothie. Most of all, she loves me back.

Good morning, I text, and vow to have one myself.

I slink from my bed and ignore the dull whine in my ankle. I wake up in less pain each day, but I’ve kept it wrapped since Lake Lockwood.

That night on Adriana’s couch, my sunburn and sprained ankle took turns keeping me awake.

The sunburn lit a fire within me while my ankle throbbed in a rehearsed beat.

I felt like I was roasting on a spit.

I listened to the ceiling fan squeak, listened to Everett breathe rhythmically on the air mattress next to the couch.

Eventually his breathing turned into the silent, awake kind.

I whispered for him, and we spent whatever time passed between sleep hypothesizing about what happens in a blackhole.

He was close enough to touch, close enough to quell the scary, deep-rooted thoughts that befell a dark, lonely room, close enough to help me defeat my night demons.

On my way to the kitchen, I pass Blair on the couch. Her hair’s up in a lazy Sunday morning ponytail and she watches a couple on TV get their beach house remodeled.

I grab a mandarin orange from the fridge and sit next to her. I find an empty space on the coffee table, prop my ankle next to a stack of books and a day-old coffee mug. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Her tone shifts when she sees my face. “What’s wrong?” There’s no sense in questioning how she just read me like one of her romance books. She is Blair Reinhart, after all.

I look at my orange, shove my thumb into the skin, feel the juice run down my arm and think of Haven and cherry popsicle juice. “Do you think my dad still loves me?”

“Oh, Quinn. What’s gotten him on your mind?”

The first thing I notice is the deflection—how she doesn’t answer my question but instead makes her voice pillowy and disarming.

The second thing I notice is her body shift my way, her fingers pulling at the ends of my hair.

Comfort, because the outlook is not good.

If anyone knows that, it’s Blair Reinhart.

“I texted him a few weeks back. Told him I loved him. He responded last night. Didn’t say it back.”

“What did he say?”

I shrug, peel the fleshy webbing off the orange slice. “He said he was sorry.” My nose starts to tickle. I can’t afford to keep crying, but my eyes don’t keep a tally.

“That’s good.”

“Is it?” My own voice changes, authoritative and accusatory. “I can’t figure out how you can leave for nine years and think that texting a lame apology is good enough. He ruined me, Blair.”

My voice changes again, a freefall to rock bottom. I inhale to stop more tears from forming.

“I’m sorry.” She laughs. “Shit, sorry. Oh God, I’m really bad at this.”

I find a laugh deep within me. She’s perfect at this. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You and Mom, I can always count on you guys. I don’t give Mom enough credit.”

“She knows,” Blair says, serious again. “Listen, if you asked me, I wouldn’t call your life ruined. Your life here, from the outside looking in, has been wonderful. Enviable, even. Hadley thought so too. She wanted to be just like you, doing all that living you do.”

Finally I look up from the orange to drink up Blair’s face. Her lips, the soft smile always on them; her eyes, the sliver of pain always behind them.

“She did?” How on Earth could someone see my life and wish it was theirs? Nobody wishes to be broken…unless they’re a little girl who sees nothing but the good in everything, coral pink on a black and white day. Unless they’re Hadley.

“She talked about you all the time,” Blair says, her voice crumbling.

In the last moment Hadley and I shared together, she asked me about my friends, but I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t realize how she saw me: a teenager whose fun night always began when her dreams did. I literally lived out her dreams.

And I’ve done even more than that. I had fun without my dad’s love. Formed relationships without one of the biggest relationships I wanted in my life. Trusted people despite my dad. Became Quinn Kessler without my dad.

It’s here, sitting next to my aunt with an orange slice warming in my hand, that I realize how much I’ve filled the void my dad left behind.

He’s not the one who gave me this piece of Piper Island to cherish forever. He’s not the eight coquina clam shells that hug my neck. I can’t find him in the sun provoked afternoon naps. He’s not swimming in Lake Lockwood’s sweet tea water or dewed on the trampoline under blankets of constellations. He’s not tucked in the hushpuppy picnics or palm tree shadows. He doesn’t clamber up the rungs of a lighthouse or rush across a road from a phantom cop car. He’s not in a bed of pine needles or the path of seashells laid to rest like breadcrumbs. He doesn’t zap through the neon-tinged world of cotton candy and Ferris wheels.

Only those who matter exist in these smudges of joy.

Like Hadley in every night sky.

“I miss her.” I shove the orange wedge in my mouth and chew on its warm silence, let the words linger for a moment, then will them away. I smile an orange smile, the kind that kills hard conversations. “Thank you, Blair. You always know exactly what to stock the fridge with.”

“And you make it my pleasure.” Blair taps my nose, then peels the wilting skin off its bridge like it’s an orange slice. “What fun day of living is this from?”

“Lake Lockwood.” I swallow another slice. “I really should reapply my sunscreen.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years, Q.” She stands up and kisses my forehead. “I’m getting you some aloe, you lobster.”

Then the moment is over, soothed with mandarin orange slices, sunburn, and aloe.

I’m still on the couch when the afternoon rolls around. Blair left to pick up groceries for crab cakes and a vat of SPF 100 sunscreen, “for now and every time you go out in the sun forever!”

The home renovation marathon on TV continues well after my nap. Haven asks me to join her picnic lunch with Holden and Mason on the pier. Holden swears he and Santiago are going to catch a kingfish once and for all. Haven’s only keen on watching for an hour or two.

Impossible, I reply. I’m trying to rest my ankle today. Doctor’s orders.

who’s doctor?

Everett.

if he’s your doctor, then i’m coming over later to be your nurse

Will you bring me a lollipop?

duh. and a sticker

I almost make it to the end of the current episode when I get an idea. It’s less of an idea and more like my mind opened a fortune cookie or read a horoscope written by the stars, telling me what I need to do.

Hadley.

I can do this. I sit up and let my bad ankle get used to bearing weight again. My phone dances between my hands. I debate texting Everett to talk me out of it, but he wouldn’t.

I can do this.

I limp to the hallway, stop at the door that I’ve gone the summer pretending is just a part of the wall.

I put my cheek against what is very much a door and feel the cold wood soothe my sunburn.

I feel something else, too—my heart thumping a soft knock against the wood, like it’s okay to go in now.

I open the door and step inside a snapshot of last August 11.

My bath towel rests on the floor, the strawberry shampoo smell long-since faded from it.

Her unmade comforter falls off the bed the way she insisted was just how she liked it.

Blair and I both knew it was just her way to get out of making her bed.

Her bathing suit drawer hangs open, five bathing suit choices scattered on her floor. I picture her trying on each one but landing on her usual pink gingham.

On her dresser lives a photo of us from a picnic eight summers ago.

A year’s worth of dust coats the frame.

I wipe our faces with my thumb.

The humid evening comes back to me.

It was so hot even after the sun went down.

I remember how many times Hadley said “bumblebee,” a word I taught her when one landed on the bouquet of weeds we picked for the windowsill.

To us, those weeds were the prettiest things ever plucked from the ground.

Worthy of a vase and that special sunlight the sun reserves for a windowsill. When you’re a little girl, everything is beautiful and you don’t know a weed from a flower.

Hadley’s freckled face smiles back at me.

Her baby teeth take up her whole smile.

Her eyes are sealed shut from the golden hour rays.

I smile with my teeth, too, despite the heat and bright sun.

Blair tried countless times to get the perfect shot, but nothing beats the candid imperfection of this one.

Hadley fell in love with the stars that night.

Now, she is the stars.

I look at the glow-in-the-dark stars strewn on her ceiling.

At the bathing suits on the floor.

Her books stacked beside her bed, the original constellation book and a couple newer ones too.

On her bedside table, next to the sand dollar I planted for her to find, her blue heart necklace sleeps.

Haven’s gift to Hadley once she was old enough to wear it.

I’d kept it safe in my dresser until Blair finally let us give it to her.

Haven came over with an empty chain and presented it to her.

Hadley said it reminded her of a sky full of rainbows. She wore it every day, just like I wore mine. She never wore it to bed, just like I didn’t.

I’ve never taken mine off to swim, so why didn’t Hadley wear hers to the beach that day? Why did Hadley even go to the beach that day?

I pick up the glassy pendant, stroke its smooth surface and picture Hadley’s hands clipping it on in the mirror every morning.

Why did Hadley jump the waves that day? My knuckles bleed white around the cold blue sky.

My nails dig into my palm.

Why did Hadley die that day?

My knees buckle.

Her strawberry bed catches me.

And I cry.