What I Thought Was True

Chapter Thirty-six

They’re walking side by side. Not holding hands or anything. But side by side is startling enough. Mom with any man but one on the cover of a book is a jolt. I jerk the truck to a halt. “Mom. Coach? Where’s Nic? Have you seen him?”

Mom’s frowning, worried. Coach’s face looks, if possible, even ruddier than usual. He’s out of his element, no whistle, wearing a baggy yellow windbreaker that somehow looks sadder, so much less official than his SBH jacket.

“We were hoping with you. He was headed to that bonfire,” Mom says. “Wouldn’t talk to me. He was wicked upset.”

Wicked. Dad’s word.

“I’ll say,” I snap, trying not to glare at Coach. Who’s just doing his job and not actually responsible for this whole mess.

“Look, Gwen,” Coach says, weary but resolute. “Inches from winning state this year. We need captains with nothing to prove. Gotta have that. Nic’s a solid kid . . . but these days, he’s no team player.”

“I should have insisted he talk to me,” Mom says. “I tried calling after he left, but I just got that damn voicemail. He never recharges his phone.” She pulls out her own, punches in a number, shakes her head. “Stupid voicemail again.” The creases in her forehead deepen. “Get Vivien,” she tells me. “She’ll know where he is.”

He’s not at Abenaki. I strain my eyes, looking way out beyond the pier, but there’s nothing in the water but a flock of seagulls, and a lone kayaker way far out. The bridge by the Green Woods is still and deserted. Standing there, I feel a pang. What used to be Nic’s and my place, years of memories, feels as if it belongs to me and Cass now. That thought leaves me feeling strangely disloyal. How did I not know about Viv? I’m so off balance, the way you are when you step off a rocking boat onto land, not sure how to find your footing.

I drive back to Sandy Claw, but the logs from the bonfire are just embers now, and no one’s still hanging around. Nobody at Plover Point, not even the plovers, who have raised their eggs and moved on. I pull into Hoop’s driveway to find him sitting on the steps smoking.

“Not here?”

“Nope.” Hoop drops the cigarette, grinds it out with the heel of his flip-flop. “I was hoping you were him when I saw the Bronc. Not answering texts either. Dunno where he is, but he’s on foot, since we hit the beach in my truck. Wanna beer?”

I shake my head, tell him to text me if Nic shows. He nods, lighting another cigarette, popping open another beer. As I drive away, I see him in the rearview, rumpled shirt, shoulders slumped. Will he still be sitting on those same steps, doing those same things, twenty years from now?

I find myself driving to Castle’s.

It’s ten thirty, a slow night, and it’s shutting down. All the other workers have long since gone home. There’s only Dad, tossing water on the grill, scraping off the last particles of grease and onions. Pulling out Saran Wrap to cover the tubs of ice cream in the freezer so they won’t get freezer burn before he jams the lips on. Chopping onions and peppers for tomorrow’s hash browns, knife flashing so fast it’s a blur. Those jobs are so familiar. I’ve done them all. Dad’s concentrating, never looks up to see me watching him.

This is the last place Nic would ever go.

I’m not even sure why I came. That “fix it, Dad” feeling? I can practically hear Cass saying, “You get pissed off when I rescue you.” I swallow the lump in my throat.

We were doing so well there for a second.

I drive back toward Seashell, hitting the gates just as Cass’s BMW roars up the other direction on Ocean Road, a little too fast over the speed bumps.

We both slow to a stop, our headlights picking out individual blades of grass on well-mown, carefully tended lawns on either side of the street, their brilliance turning the green into gray and white.

The passenger-side door of Cass’s car opens, and Viv climbs out, crossing over to me.

“You gonna hear me out?” she asks.

“You gonna help me find Nic?” I return.

She walks around the front of the Bronco, opens the passenger-side door and slides in.

I expect Cass to zoom away immediately, but he doesn’t, idling the BMW by the side of the road, waiting . . . for what? Me to get out and talk to him? What am I supposed to say?

I stay where I am, and after a few seconds, he pulls forward and leaves us in the quiet of the night.

“I didn’t mean to,” Viv says, quickly, like she’s accidentally broken a plate or something.

I slow to Seashell’s only stop sign. Shift into park, because no one’s behind us. No one’s in any hurry this time of night. Ever, really, on Seashell. That’s one of the promises that should be on the sign separating us from the causeway. All the time in the world.

Except that that’s a promise no one can really make.

Forever.

“You got together with Spence by accident?” I ask, then hate the harshness in my voice. If anyone can understand that, it should be me. But Viv isn’t supposed to have “crumble lines.” Or not this kind. And if she did . . . why didn’t she tell me?

She leans her head back against the headrest, eyes shut. “What do I say to you, Gwen? I hate that you know this. I’m glad you know this. I want to make excuses . . . I want to say they’re enough. But they’re not. I hurt Nic. You. If I didn’t lie to you, I sure didn’t tell you the truth, even when we said no secrets. Joke’s on me. Because, let’s face it, in my head I was all judgey about you and some of your choices. Alex, freaking Jim freshman year. Ugh. Cass, the first time around. Spence . . . I pretended not to be, but I was . . . smug. Like I couldn’t get what you were thinking, so you must have been wrong. I guess you knew that. You had to have felt it. I guess that’s why we couldn’t really talk this summer. ’Cause I suddenly got it. And . . . and I didn’t want to get it! I wanted Nic. Only. Ever. Until . . . Until I didn’t anymore. And I didn’t know what to do with that.”

Did I know, deep down? Maybe. This weird feeling I’ve had this summer . . . I thought it was because things were different—me the third wheel, not a threesome anymore. But maybe I somehow knew that we really were, really, not a threesome anymore.

I lean my forehead on the steering wheel. “But Spence, Viv? Why him—of all people?” I turn so I can see her, flipping my hair away from my face. “Did you do it to . . . to hurt Nic? Is that what this—Spence—is about?” As I ask, I feel an unwanted pang of sympathy for Spence, the handy weapon in someone else’s war. Again.

“No. Not at all.” She flushes. “But hell, Gwen . . . I thought Nic and I were . . . in this together. And then he’s all . . . ‘well . . . eight years from now, we’ll’ . . . Eight years! What am I supposed to do, while he’s off having adventures, meeting girls who . . . I don’t know. Dangle from tow ropes with their teeth? He’s supposed to stay impressed with the girl who keeps everyone’s water glasses filled? Screw that. I . . . can’t compete. And I . . . don’t want to. What’s wrong with wanting to be here? If what I want is a little less big, less noble, than what he wants . . . does that make me a loser? That’s the thing. I don’t feel like a loser with Spence. He . . . I . . . Al got that contract to work with the Bath and Tennis Club late this spring . . . and it seemed like everything he did there, we’d run into Spence, because even though his dad owns it, his dad is kind of . . . out of it. At first I started talking to him just because of business. But then . . . he’s not who I thought he was. At all.”

I’m starting to wonder who is. But to be fair, I have to weigh the six or whatever girls in the hot tub against Cass’s unflinching loyalty and those flashes of perceptiveness I’ve seen myself.

“I started feeling . . . really liking him . . . that’s why I wanted the ring. I thought it would make me stop thinking about Spence and focus on Nicky.”

“You do know that’s incredibly messed up, right?”

She raises her hands in defense. “You don’t get to be the only one who can be stupid and blind, Gwen.”

“Yeah, welcome to my world.” I’m laughing despite myself. But then I sit up and look at her, my lifelong friend, with the cartilage piercings at the top of her ear that Nic hated, but never told her because she wanted them, and I hurt so much for my cousin—what he had, what he lost—that I have to fold my arms against my stomach to keep the pain contained. “Viv? Did you ever really love Nic?” I ask it, and then wish I hadn’t. I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

“I’ll always love him.” She responds so quickly that I know it’s true. “He was my first . . . everything. I never thought—I never planned—he’d be anything but my only everything. But these few months, and especially the last few weeks—it’s not the same. He’s . . . not the same.”

“Maybe it’s just that he’s really tense,” I say, “maybe . . .” Then I stop. Viv puts her hand on mine, clenched tight on the steering wheel, squeezes. Maybe I stop talking because I don’t know what to say. Or maybe I stop because I finally get that sometimes we hold on to something—a person, a resentment, a regret, an idea of who we are—because we don’t know what to reach for next. That what we’ve done before is what we have to do again. That there are only re-dos and no do-overs. And maybe . . . maybe I know better than that.

We can’t find Nic anywhere. We try the same old places in another loop, but no luck. We text and call him. Nothing. Viv’s eyelids begin to droop, and as I’m driving over the bridge yet again, she falls asleep, cheek pressed against the passenger door, so I carefully maneuver the car to the Almeidas’ house, shake her awake and urge her into the house. Luckily, Al and her mom are out, so I just have to get her to her room, take off her shoes, and cover her up with the puffy green blanket she’s had since we were little.

He has to be at the creek. He must have been walking through the woods before and now he’s there. Of course that’s where he’d go. Dangerous, but familiar. I pull the Bronco up, get out so fast I don’t even shut the door, run to the bridge, looking out at the dark rushing water. But it’s a cloudy night and there’s not enough moon to see anything, so I pull the Bronco closer, snap on the headlights and run back.

The lights cast stark shadows. It’s high tide. I stand at the place we always jump from, scanning the water, but there’s nothing but the dark outline of Seal Rock and the gradual widening of the creek shore as it empties into the ocean.

When Nic and I were little, people who didn’t know us would ask if we were twins, even though I was tanner skinned and darker haired than him. Now I wish like anything we were and had that twin bond you hear about. I wish I could reach out with my mind and know—just feel—where he is. But when I think . . . all I feel is scared.

Mom and Grandpa Ben both jump up from Myrtle when I come in, looking over my shoulder, faces falling when they see I’m alone. Emory’s awake, cuddling Hideout, staring big-eyed at the television, which isn’t even on.

“No panicking,” Grandpa says sharply to Mom, despite the fact that he’s reaching into the cabinet in the kitchen where he keeps his pipe, pulling it out and packing it with rapid, jerky movements completely unlike himself.

“I shouldn’t have gone out with Patrick.” Mom’s twisting her hands nervously. “All we did was talk about Nico, but still, I knew better. You should have seen Nic’s face when he told him. Like his last dream had died.”

Sometimes the melodramatic phrases she picks up from her books are so not helpful. “Well, it didn’t,” I snap. “He’s eighteen. He’s got plenty of time to dream. He’s still got the Coast Guard Academy.”

But not Viv.

Which Mom and Grandpa probably don’t even know. I’m not going to tell them because the rush of worry in my head is dark and loud as the creek water. They don’t need to be there too, staring into the shadows, afraid to see what they’re searching for.

I sit on our steps, looking up and down the road, waiting for Nic’s broad-shouldered figure to appear out of nowhere, illuminated in the orangey glow of the porch light. But there’s nothing except the dark road, the distant waves, the hulks of houses, the Field House rising a little higher than the ones before it.

Five houses down.

The Field House is five houses down. What, an eighth, a sixteenth of a mile? I could walk there. But I can’t. Because my first instinct was to tell Cass he screwed this up for me. We finally had that conversation about what we were doing together. And doing this right. Is that gone now? Now that he kept something from me, and I left him without a word, or with all the wrong words, choosing my cousin’s side without a second thought?

I let the screen door slam closed as I finally head inside.

“Anything?” Viv texts the next morning at five.

“Nicky Nic Nic!?” Em asks, throwing back the covers of Nic’s bed as though he’s sure to find him there.

Grandpa Ben frowns over his raisin bran grapefruit. Instead of leafing through the newspaper while he eats, highlighting the yard sales, he focuses on the food, only occasionally flicking a glance to the screen door.

I try Nic’s cell again and again. It goes straight to voicemail every time. He never remembers to charge that thing, I repeat to myself, again and again. It’s in his pocket, dead. It’s not somewhere under water, somewhere where Nic jumped deep, somewhere he didn’t swim back up.

Mom doesn’t even ask. She gives me one swift look when she comes out of the bedroom, then, shoulders slumped, piles her supplies into her cleaning bucket, bumps it down the stairs to the Bronco.

Then she turns back.

“Shouldn’t you be dressed to get to the Ellingtons’?”

“Mom. I can’t go today.”

Her gentle face turns as stern as it ever gets. “I didn’t raise you to let people down. Abandoning an old lady who counts on you is out of the question. Get to work, Gwen. That’s what we do when we don’t know what to do.”

So I go.

All morning I’m preoccupied, peeking out the front window, looking across at the Tucker house, waiting to see Hoop’s truck, Nic hitching out of it, paint-covered, complaining, resentful, or sad or angry . . . just—alive.

Or the flash of a pink shirt or the gleam of a blond head.

But Cass, who was everywhere at the beginning of the summer, and especially in my days and nights lately, is nowhere to be seen. Half a dozen times my fingers hover over the buttons of my phone to call him. Finally, Mrs. E. reaches out her hand, exactly like one of the teachers at school, and confiscates it, saying briskly, “You will get this back at the end of the day. We agreed from the start that you would not be one of those texting teenagers, and I am holding you to our agreement. Now, I’m in the mood for some hot tea, so please make me a pot. You look as though you could use some as well.”

I go through the motions, the lemon thingie, the scalloped silver spoon . . . but the little silver creamer and the silver sugar bowl are nowhere to be found. Great. Somehow, from the moment I saw Henry and Gavin Gage doing . . . whatever they’re doing, I knew that the person who’d be there when one of those itemized things turned up missing was me.

Mrs. E. taps her chin with a finger, brow crinkled. “I had it out just a few days ago to serve tea to dear Beth. I know Joy put them back in the cabinet afterward because she was so cross about having to do so. Really, that woman is unpleasant. I believe I should tell Henry to find another nurse.”

I open my mouth to speak, shut it, open it again.

“You look like a codfish, Guinevere, and are most distracted today. Your young man was also supposed to be pruning the boxwoods and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. Is there anything you need to speak with me about? I was young a thousand years ago or more, but I do remember. Sometimes better than I remember what happened yesterday, truth be told.” She reaches over and pulls out the cornflower-blue painted kitchen chair, gesturing to me to sit down, then takes one of my hands in her soft, wrinkled one.

“Does everyone just keep secrets and lie all the time?” I ask at last, my voice loud in the quiet kitchen. “Is that just how it goes?”

She blinks, her gray eyelashes fluttering in surprise.

“Because remember how you told me there were no secrets on Seashell? There are nothing but secrets on Seashell. Everywhere. It seems like this big open place . . . I mean, no one has fences and there are hardly any trees, people leave their windows open, some of them don’t lock their doors. But . . . but it doesn’t matter. There are all these walls and . . . No one knows everything that anyone is doing or they know and aren’t telling or they’re telling the wrong people. I just . . . I just want to get away from this place to somewhere else. Somewhere nothing like that.”

“My dear girl, I fear you will be hard-pressed to find such a place outside of the pages of a book. Even there, what are stories made of but secrets? Look at Lady Sylvia. If she had simply told Sir Reginald that she was the mysterious chambermaid with whom he’d spent that passionate night, the book would have been twenty pages long.”

I don’t want to think about Lady Sylvia and her sensuous secrets. I want what’s true.

Mrs. E. examines my face. “I never thought I’d see you pout, Guinevere. You don’t seem the type.” She reaches for the china cup, takes a sip of uncreamy, sugarless tea, makes a face. “I expect my job at this point is to come up with some of the wisdom one supposedly gains with age.” She taps her chin with her finger again. “This is difficult, as I seem to know less, and be far less sure of anything, in my late eighties than I was in my youth. Tea is dreadful without sugar, Gwen. Just add it from the canister, will you, never mind the silver service?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Ellington. You don’t need to advise me.”

“How about this, dear girl? It’s about the best I have to offer. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult for two people to be straightforward with each other. We get afraid, embarrassed . . . we all want others to think highly of us. I was married to the captain for five years before he confessed to me that he had never captained a boat at all. That, indeed, boats made him seasick. I’d thought he’d had a bad experience in the war and that was why he didn’t want to go out on the water. But he was never in the Navy at all . . . but I digress. Perhaps, dear Gwen, you could think, instead of what a betrayal it is to be lied to, how rare and wonderful it is when two human beings can tell each other the truth.” She pats my hand, gives me her most joyous smile and then says, “Don’t pout, though. The wind may change and your face could be stuck like that.”

“Mrs. E., your son is taking your things and selling them. That friend of his . . . he’s looked through your silver and your paintings and your chairs and I overheard them . . .”

I trail off.

I wait for her face to darken with rage—at Henry, or more likely me, the eavesdropping bearer of bad tidings. The person who tells things no one wants to know.

But instead, she laughs, deep from the belly, patting my hand again, and leaving me completely confused. “Yes, dear,” she says finally, practically wiping tears from her eyes.

“You know?”

“Yes, Henry and I had a conversation yesterday. But even before that . . . I’m not a fool, dear girl. Gavin Gage is an old friend of Henry’s, but it was hardly likely he’d be popping by for a social call. Everyone on Seashell, if not all of Connecticut, knows Gavin is the man to go to when you wish to discreetly part with a useless family heirloom for a few useful dollars.”

“But . . . But . . . he was always sneaking around and making sure you were napping and worrying about whether you’d notice something was missing.”

“I’m so grateful I’m not a man,” Mrs. Ellington says. “We women are proud, but honestly, men! Yes, Henry and I had a long discussion yesterday when I asked him to show me the balance books to see if I could give you a little something for being such a help so far this summer. I’ve never seen such hemming and hawing, and finally he had to confess that he’d made some unwise investments and that we are now, like half the families on Seashell, asset rich and cash poor. As if I’d rather he work himself into a heart attack than sell that hideous ring that belonged to my mother-in-law.”

She tosses back the last of her tea, then says cheerfully, “It’s chilly today. Too cold to go to the beach. The ladies will no doubt be wanting to hear more of Lady Sylvia’s sins. Can you make some of Ben’s sauce for them? He sent Marco to me last night with a perfectly cooked lobster.”

Nic has been gone for a whole day of work now, edging into evening. Tony and Marco haven’t even called to check on him. Manny must have said something. Mom goes to clean that office building in town. Because it’s Thursday, and that’s what she does on Thursday. Grandpa heads out to bingo night. Viv has a wedding rehearsal to cater for Almeida’s. Emory had speech and occupational therapy and he’s tired and wants to watch Pooh’s Big Adventure. So I’m sitting here with my little brother, staring blankly at the screen, remembering Nic and me always trying to figure out why on earth Pooh had a shirt but no pants. I want Nic. I want Cass. I want the things I thought were sure things. The thing I was thinking, finally believing, would be a real thing. Rewind. Redo.

“Hideout loves you,” Emory whispers, burrowing into my side, nudging his hermit crab into my armpit.

I’m crying over a stuffed crustacean.

I think this is what they call rock bottom.

“What in God’s name is Emory doing awake at this hour?” Dad asks. I jolt awake. Myrtle groans. Dad is dragging in his laundry bag and tossing it in the usual spot.

I have no sense of time at all. It’s dark. Emory’s sitting beside me, eyes like saucers, still watching Pooh. Have I been asleep for minutes? Hours?

The digital clock reads 11:20. Nic’s been gone now for more than twenty-four hours. We can report him missing, now, right? Or does it have to be forty-eight? The fact that I am even wondering about this makes my stomach hurt.

Mom and Grandpa are at the table, flicking out cards. Gin rummy? Really? We all start talking at once, including Em, who gets up, walks over, and puts his arms around Dad’s waist, wailing, “Niiiiicky!”

Dad ruffles his hair absentmindedly, looking at Mom. “Luce, don’t get yourself into one of your swivets. Gwen, I’d think you’d be smarter. Ben, he’s fine. Calm down, all of you. I’ve got him. He’s at my house. He’ll be back tomorrow.” Tomarra. Hard on the accent. Dad’s not as casual as he sounds.

Our voices are still overlapping, asking if Nic’s okay, telling Dad how worried we were, all about swim captain and “Why didn’t you call and tell us, Mike?” This last from my mother, in such a loud voice that Emory murmurs, “Be nice to Daddy.”

“It’s fine, Emmie,” Dad says. “I know all about the captain thing and the girl. He came over yesterday to Castle’s wicked messed up, but I had a busload of tourists getting ice cream, so I told him to head to my house, get ahold of himself and take this the way a man does.”

“How exactly is a man supposed to handle finding out that the girl he’s loved all his life likes somebody else, Dad?”

Mom’s and Grandpa’s mouths drop open.

“Don’t get all dramatic about this, pal. I expect better from you,” Dad says, but then he gives me a grin that makes him look unexpectedly boyish, the eighteen-year-old Mom fell for. “Like a man takes everything. By drinking a beer, watching sports on television, feeling sorry for himself. For one night only. He was doing all three when I left him. He’ll be fine. Christ, what a bunch of drama queens.”

I grab Dad’s sleeve as he’s climbing into his truck, to thank him, yes, but also to ask why he let us worry for so long. Dad doesn’t do the cell phone thing, but still . . . how hard would it have been to say it would all turn out okay?

“Don’t worry about the kid, Gwen. He’s a bit of an ass right now, but he’ll be fine. Sometimes we all need to cut loose. I told him if he didn’t knock off being such a hothead he was gonna wind up just like me.” He gives me that young-boy grin again. “That should scare him straight.”

He peers at me. “You look like you could use a drive, pal. Maybe a getaway of your own.” He pauses, still squinting. Then leans over, flicks open the passenger-side door, tips his head to welcome me.

I climb in.

He backs up, screeching, zooms forward. The electric Seashell gate is primed to lift when you get close enough. But dad always barges through that. Every time I think he’s just going to ram right through it, knock it down, but it lifts just in time.

I love that we’re sheltered in Mom’s and Grandpa’s caring hands. But sometimes—like now—Dad’s wildness is a relief too. Like jumping off a bridge. A rush.

I flick up the sound on his CD. In the Bronco, it’s always soothing music Emory likes. Elmo, low-key Disney, more Sesame Street, Raffi. Grandpa’s snappy, romantic songs from long ago.

With Dad, when it’s not talk radio, you can count on the angry rasp of the Rolling Stones, or the frustrated yell of Bruce Springsteen.

“Tramps like us, baby we were born to run . . .”

“Dad. There’s something I need to tell you about the Ellingtons,” I start. “It’s not good.”

He turns down the music only slightly. “Jeez, you and Nic, disaster-wise . . . a mile a minute. What now, Guinevere?”

I explain about Henry Ellington.

Dad gets increasingly angry. Thank God, not at me.

“He said he was counting what? His lobster forks?” Lobstah.

“But that’s what you told me to do, Dad. Keep an eye out for opportunity. That’s what you said. ‘My chance.’ But I didn’t take it. I would never. Couldn’t. Did you want me to? Really?”

He pulls over to the side of the road, halfway to the causeway. Rakes his hands through his hair. Looks anywhere but at me.

“Pal,” he says finally. “I was eighteen when your mom had you. We get to the hospital and she’s screaming and she’s crying and she’s in pain and there’s blood and there’s just . . . I only wanted to run. It all seemed a million miles away from how it started, fun on the beach, a bonfire, cute girl . . . whatever. But . . . they hand us this kid—you, with your serious eyes. This little worried crinkle thing you did with your eyebrows, like you already knew we aren’t the best, and it’s . . . like . . . like we’re supposed to know what do with all that. How to fix that. And hell if we do. Luce knew how to clean stuff up. I knew how to fry stuff up. Gulia was already a disaster—pills, booze, dumbass boys. We knew what was coming our way there, and it was Nic. Another kid. We were his only chance. There was no other way. So, you know, we took it. Nic. You. Emory, with all his . . . whatever. I just want it to be easier for you guys. Something just a little bit easier. Maybe I picked a stupid way to tell you that. I just didn’t want my way to be yours. ’Cause mine . . . well . . . I just want better for you. That’s all.”

Dad’s starts the truck up again, heading to his house on the water.

He takes a deep breath.

Pause.

Another deep breath.

I’m waiting for major Dad wisdom.

“Pal.”

“Dad . . . ?”

“So Nic’s here. And you’re here. Don’t try to make the guy spill his guts. A time for talking, sure, but Mario Kart goes a long way.”

Nic’s crashed out in front of the TV, clicker outstretched in hand. Dad throws a blanket on him, too short for his long legs, pulls out the couch bed for me. I text Mom, Viv, and Grandpa before I fall asleep at like two in the morning. Grandpa has nothing to do with cell phones and Mom always erases messages while trying to retrieve them. Viv will get it, though.

Someone is shaking my shoulder, none too gently.

I bolt upward in bed, smacking the top of my head against Nic’s chin. Both of us yelp.

Then, “C’mon, cuz,” he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.

I slope off the couch, dragging the quilt with me, following him out the door to the slatted wide boards that run from the house over the salt marsh to dry land. Nic sits down heavily, wearing a pair of Dad’s faded Red Sox boxers, dangling his feet over the edge of the small bridge, flicking his toe into the water, scattering ripples. He looks awful. Dark circles under his eyes, which are a little bloodshot, his hair rumpled. He’s wearing one of Dad’s plaid flannel shirts too, too tight on his wide shoulders, the front straining at the buttons. I wrinkle my nose. Beer and sweat. Ugh.

He clears his throat.

“Wanna hit the pier?”

“I want to hit you! I looked everywhere, Nic. I thought . . . We all thought you’d drowned yourself in the creek!”

“Seriously? I would never do that, Gwen.”

“Nic—”

“Not here,” he orders. “Come on.”

He already has Dad’s truck out in front, engine purring. So unlike Nic to premeditate. Everything is different now.

I slide into the passenger seat with the torn upholstery inadequately patched by duct tape. Nic adjusts the rearview mirror, fastens his seat belt, moves his seat back, doing all these safety checks as though he’s about to take off in a Cessna rather than a battered Chevy.

Silence as we ride down to the bridge. Nic doesn’t slow on Ocean for the speed bump, and the truck bounces hard as we go over it. Driving like Dad. He pulls in sharply, spraying sand, then turns to me.

“Did you know?” he asks, at the exact same time I blurt out the same question.

“About Vivie?” I press, because Nic doesn’t. “Had no clue. I would have . . .”

I don’t know what I would have done.

We slide out of the truck, pick our way down to the beach, the sand so cold and wet, I’m shivering. Cass would have grabbed a sweatshirt for me, offered me his. In this short time, I’ve gotten accustomed to these little things, little watchful courtesies, enough for their absence to feel strangely like a presence.

At the creek’s edge, Nic sits down heavily. I fall into place next to him. He shifts sideways, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a flat rock, balancing it in the flat of his hand as though weighing it, staring at it as though he’s never seen such a thing.

I reach for it, planning to snatch it from him, throw it into the rush of water, not to skip, just to get rid of it, wipe out the memories Nic must be leafing through, wondering what signs he missed . . . how what he thought was true turned out to be nothing like the truth at all.

But Nic curls his fingers around the rock before I can take it.

“So, I’ve been a douche lately,” he begins.

“Well, yeah. You sure have,” I say. “But that’s not why Vivie—”

He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, a little muscle jumping in his jaw. “I’m not talking about Vee.”

“Nico—” I start, but he shakes his head, stopping me.

“Last year—even this spring—you never for a moment would have thought I’d offed myself in the creek. That’s true, right?”

His brown eyes pierce mine. I nod.

“Did you know?” I ask. “About Spence?”

He shakes his head, kicks at the water. “Yes. No. Something wasn’t right. She was . . . I was . . . I just figured I’d fix it later. I mean, she’d be there. Of course. Get the captain thing squared away, then deal. But . . . I mean . . . what happened on the beach. Pretty clear that ship had sailed while I wasn’t even looking.”

I wait, quiet. Dad said not to push.

“I . . . couldn’t face you guys, after . . . Aunt Luce, Grandpa . . . you . . . You’d be all sorry for me.” He rolls his shoulders as though shrugging off our imagined sympathy. “Knew Uncle Mike wouldn’t be like that.”

“Did you get the What a Man Does lecture?”

“Hell yeah,” he says. “I knew you’d be freaking. Told him to call you. He said a man spoke for himself. If I wasn’t ready to talk to you, he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it for me.”

Again I open my mouth, but he shuts me down with the wave of a hand. Or in this case a fist, since he’s still holding the stone.

“Do you remember,” he asks, “when Old Mrs. Partridge had that skunk under her porch, cuz? When we were, like, seven? And she called your dad to handle it? He threw a towel over it and tossed it to me and it bit me through the towel?”

I do. I remember Viv holding his hand in the clinic, crying the tears Nic would never let himself cry.

Oh Nic.

“And Vivien—”

“This is not about Vivien. I had to get rabies shots, ’member? And the nurse was standing there with this wicked big needle. Aunt Luce and Vovó were crying, and Grandpa Ben was praying, and you were asking if it would work if you took it instead. I asked if it would hurt . . . Grandpa and Aunt Luce started to say no and Uncle Mike said it was gonna hurt like a motherfucker. Do you remember that?”

I do, partly because I’d never heard that particular word before.

“Thing is, he was right. It did. But it helped. Knowing how I was going to feel. Can’t deal with the truth if no one tells it, right?”

I nod.

“I’ve loved that girl all my life,” Nic says.

“I know.”

He weighs the stone in his hand, angles his wrist, flips it across the water. A double skip, not one of his best.

“And I’m more bummed about not getting the captain spot. Want to tell me what that means?”

That what you’ve always had doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll always get. That what you’ve always wanted isn’t what you’ll always want.

I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud until Nic says. “Yeah. Exactly, cuz.”

Mom’s just pulling on her sneakers as I get home, sitting on the steps. I hear the shrill of Disney coming from inside the house. Mulan. “I’ll make a maaann out of you,” Emory’s voice wobbles, sweet and high.

“Nic okay?” Mom asks.

I nod. “He’ll be fine.”

She studies my face. “For sure,” she says finally, firmly. “But if he isn’t? For a little while? It’s not your problem to solve.” Mom picks up one of her Nikes, with an inextricable knot, tries to untangle it with the fingernails she has to keep short because of cleaning houses.

“Here, let me,” I say, pulling at the shoe.

“Gwen. I can solve this.” A pull and a jerk here and there and the shoelaces untangle. She slips it on her foot, reaches for her can of Diet Coke. Shuts her eyes as she drinks it, closing out the world, the way she does with the things that take her away, her books, her sodas, her stories.

A rattle of gravel and a flash of silver. Mom and I both look up in time to see Spence’s Porsche flash by. His sunglasses pushed up into his hair, arm along the seat. He pulls into the Almeidas’ driveway, slanted, the way the car was that first summer day at Castle’s, taking up more space than it needs.

Viv runs down the short steps, climbs into the car, long hair loose and blowing.

“This is gonna take some getting used to,” Mom says. “That boy sure looks out of place.”

The paradox of Seashell. He does and he doesn’t. Precisely the sort of car that belongs on the island, pulled into exactly the driveway where it doesn’t. Not Viv in the place she’s always been, all she ever wanted, or Nic in the place he was afraid would be all he had.