“It’s about Stephanie,” she says.
Stephanie Delilah Hannaford. I look at the picture between us on the couch and think of the name carved into the headstone and the diary and all the haunted dreams for the aunt I never knew. I wonder if we would have been close; if she and I were alike. Was she like Mom, serious and controlled? Or Rachel, spirited and a little zany? If she lived, could she have bridged the gulf in our family history? Would any of this be happening now? What if? Maybe. What if? Maybe.
Mom’s voice trembles. “She was our baby, Delilah. Our little baby bird. We loved her so much. She was so young and beautiful, and when she got sick—really sick—her spark was gone. It just went out, and none of us knew how to turn it back on. The night of her funeral, her boyfriend, Casey…” Mom goes a little whiter, and though it kills me to see it, I don’t interrupt or ask questions. I make her go through it. I make her tell me exactly what happened because deep down inside, beneath all the hurt and anger and disbelief and bile, I hang on to some small shard of hope that I’m wrong about this.
“Casey was so angry,” she continues. “Angry at himself, angry at God, angry at Mom and Dad and us for not being able to see how sick she was in time to save her. He was even mad at Stephanie for leaving him before they could start their life together. He was only twenty-one—so young. We all were.
“I was sitting on the end of the dock the night we buried her, long after we watched them lower her into the ground. Trying to go back in time to fix whatever I needed to fix to prevent her death. Trying to make sense of everything. Trying not to jump in and slip away. The moon was high over the frozen lake. The light was so bright, I hated it for shining that night. Stephanie was under the ground, deep in the earth, and we’d never see her light again. How dare the moon rise? I was alone, shivering in the cold. Sobbing. Pounding my fists into the dock. Then I heard someone behind me. It was Casey. His hand squeezed my shoulder. He sat down next to me and put his head to my chest and sobbed. Both of us wept… then it happened.”
Mom reaches again for the water, taking big gulps until the glass goes dry.
“What happened?” Please, please let me be wrong.
“We went to his car to warm up. No one was around. We… it was a desperate moment between two broken souls, Delilah. It was over almost as soon as it started, and we vowed never to speak of it again.”
“Are you saying… did you… with your dead sister’s boyfriend?”
“Delilah, I’m saying that Casey Conroy is your father.”
Echoes of overheard arguments flash through my head, all the blanks filling in now.
Why don’t you just talk to her about it?
Casey.
It’s way too complicated.
Casey.
She’s not an eight-year-old kid anymore, Claire.
Casey.
My mind is a tie-dye swirl of too many things—blurred images of Mom and some faceless guy on the dock, Aunt Stephanie filling her mouth with pills, Aunt Rachel and her tarot cards, Thomas Devlin tacked on my bulletin board at home, Patrick and Finn and Emily and funerals and fights and everything in between. It’s all upside down and inside out, mismatched and chipped and forgotten like Nana’s old dishes, and it’s coming at me too fast to make any sense. In their rush to attack, all the words get jumbled up and stuck in the back of my throat. I can’t speak.
“The day of your grandfather’s funeral,” Mom continues, “I confided in Aunt Rachel. You were eight. Until that moment, she believed that your father was Thomas Devlin. But my mother overheard, and—”
“That’s what caused the fight?” I ask, finding my voice again. “That’s why we left Red Falls that day?”
“That’s part of it, Delilah, but it’s complicated. There’s a lot more to it.”
For so long, she poured her energy into creating a home for this deceit, to tending and nurturing it. She kept it to the detriment of all else—her relationship with her mother. With Rachel. With me. And now, all I want to do is crush her heart.
“No, there really isn’t, Mom. It’s pretty simple. You slept with your dead sister’s boyfriend on the night of her funeral and your family found out. No wonder Nana stopped speaking to you. No wonder she never tried to find me—she must’ve hated me when she found out. All because of you.”
“Please, Delilah. Please try to understand. I was only a few years older than you are now. I didn’t—”
“I can’t believe I’m related to you. I can’t believe my own mother would do something so low. You’re repulsive!”
It stings her, but I don’t care. She is repulsive. Everything about her disgusts me. Her stupid bathrobe and her wavy hair and her hands-free earpiece and her voice and her small hands and her hazel eyes with the brown triangle. For the woman who calls me daughter, there is nothing left but hate and revulsion.
“I deserve that,” she says softly, looking at her hands. “I kept this from you. I know it’s hard to hear the truth after so many years. I know you—”
“You don’t know anything about me!” I shout across the living room. In three steps, I’m at the front entrance, flinging myself out into the rain as the wind sucks the door shut behind me.
Chapter twenty-six
Patrick is outside in a heartbeat, his phone still glowing from my frantic text.
“Put this on,” he says, handing me a jacket and pulling a sweatshirt over his head. I don’t have shoes and I can’t even feel how cold I am, but I do as he asks, no strength in me to resist.
We back down the driveway and onto Maple Terrace in the Reese & Son Contracting truck, heading toward the desolate south side of the lake. Patrick doesn’t ask any questions, but I feel his eyes on me, alternating from the road to my face and back again to the road as his hand brushes my cheek.
“We’ll go to Heron Point, okay?” he asks. “We can talk there.”
I don’t feel like talking. I take his hand from my face but keep it pressed in mine, resting on the top of my thigh. He rubs my palm with his thumb, his other hand tight on the wheel.
The rain comes down harder, forcing Patrick to squint to find the turnoff for Heron Point. He follows a paved path into the grass at the edge of the sand and cuts the engine. Together, we face out against the all-encompassing blackness of the lake, each waiting for the other to break the silence.
Without the windshield wipers, the rain washes over the windows like waves, blurring everything until it feels like we’re submerged. He shifts from beneath the steering wheel, closer to me in the front seat. His arms are around me tight, one hand warm across my shoulders, the other holding my head against his chest.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” He rubs my back, reassuring, kissing the top of my head and smoothing the hair from my face. My heart expands and contracts, banging against my ribs like the cardinal trapped in the sunroom, looking for a way out. I don’t know if it’s the blood racing too fast or the late hour or the rain pounding furiously against the roof of the truck, but something inside me switches off. I don’t want to tell him what happened. I don’t want him to know about my cheating father and my weak mother and all of the lies. I dug up the past and sifted through the rubble and counted all the bones, and now I want to throw them all back in the hole under a hundred shovels full of earth. To forget. To erase it all, just like before, lying in the woods with my shoulders pressed into the dirt and the old Seven Mile Creek rushing past, sweeping it all away.
I wrap my fingers around his wrists and pull his hands from my face, pinning them down as I climb on top of him. I press my body against his like it’s all that will keep us from being carried off in the storm. I feel him shift beneath me, his breath going shallow as I release his wrists. His hands find their way up my back, resting on my neck and pulling my face to his.
He takes a breath and opens his mouth as if to speak, but I don’t let him. I kiss him and I want only to get close to him, closer, as close as possible, pulling his sweatshirt over his head so I can feel
the heat of his chest through my clothes. The wind howls against the truck, pounding us with rain louder than his quickening breath in my ear, but in here, we’re sharing the same air, and that’s enough. It has to be. That’s all there is.
I slip out of my jacket and T-shirt. His hands move over the skin on my back and I reach down to the waist of his shorts, fingers brushing lightly against his hip bone.
“Delilah,” he says, hot and breathless on my neck. “Del, wait.”
I ignore him. I kiss away his words. He stops protesting for a moment, but something holds him back.
“What is it?” I ask, barely breathing. “What’s wrong?”
“We can’t.” His hand is flat on my chest now, holding my heart together, keeping everything from exploding out. His fingertips reach my collarbone and push me gently, a whisper-thin force that stands in the way of the inevitable end of things between us. The grand finale. The fireworks, exploding in a bright weeping willow star across the sky, falling down in a rain of smoke and ash.
Poof…
“This isn’t what you want?” I ask.
“We can’t do this, Delilah.”
“Yes we can. No one is out here but us.”
“It’s not that. It’s just—”
“I thought you wanted to be with me.”
“Delilah,” he whispers. “You’re killing me, you know that?” His eyes are sad and deep and full of fire even in the dark of the storm, holding mine just inches away. “I haven’t had one innocent thought since you came back to Red Falls.”
“Then why are we still talking about this?” I kiss his face along the firm line of his jaw, but the mood is already shifting, my lips going cool in the absence of his.
“No. Not like this. I’ll probably kill myself for this tomorrow,” he says, his eyes closed, “but I can’t let you do this when you’re all freaked out.”
“Patrick, I’m not freaked out.”
“You don’t remember that text you just sent? The look on your face when I came outside? Now? Come on.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll regret it. And so will I. Something happened at the house tonight, and maybe you can’t tell me about it right now, but I’m not going to let you self-destruct.”
“So now you’re a fucking shrink? Please. Maybe you should stick to fixing houses and guitar strings.”
“Oh, Delilah,” he whispers, honey eyes and stupid, stupid dimples fighting against a frown. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”
I see the hurt filling him like water in a broken glass, but I can’t stop. “Forget it. All of it.”
“Del—”
I grab my shirt and pull it back on over my head, untangling my arms and legs and throwing myself out of the truck.
“Wait!” Patrick comes after me, shirtless, following me to the shore. The rain flies at us sideways in a million cold little needles, but I’m going numb.
He shouts over the noise of the wind. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry! Get back in the truck so we can talk!”
“I don’t want to talk! Talking is what keeps messing me up!”
He tries to grab my hands, but I snatch them away. Seeing him shivering and dripping with rain and rage and fear and something else I can’t name because it hurts too much to imagine—I can’t breathe. I almost don’t want to.
“I thought you wanted to be with me, Patrick.”
“I do,” he says. “More than anything.”
I shout at him on the shore. “How can I believe you? You can’t even tell your father about the career you want most in this whole world. Your life is a lie. So go hide behind your bullshit music and just pretend I never came back here this summer.”
It hurts him. I know, because it hurts me to say it, words slapped against faces like an open palm, raw on sensitive skin.
“Oh, so you’re untouchable, huh, Delilah? You and your fucked-up relationship with your mother and everyone else in your life? Great. Does getting pissed at me make it better? Does it fix anything?”
“You! Can’t! Fix! Me!” I’m screaming now, howling over the lake and the rain and the wind. “You can’t just be my best friend all summer and make me feel all these amazing things and then turn around like none of it means anything! You’re making me crazy!”
“Delilah Hannaford, you are making me crazy! Don’t you get it?”
“What’s to get? You’re just—”
“I’m in love with you!”
Patrick stands there in the rain, illuminated by intermittent flashes of lightning. For a second, I forget everything. I forget the rain and all the words we’ve hurled and I think about him onstage, colored lights flashing around him, smiling and laughing like everything in the world is just our thing, his and mine.
But when the lightning stops, I can only see the sadness in his face, wet hair hanging on him like it was flung there, rain running into his eyes and mouth.
I turn my back and run away on bare feet, cutting through the storm and following the shore to the docks and bleachers at the bottom of what I hope is Nana’s hill.
Patrick doesn’t come after me, but when I finally get back to the house, he’s waiting near the porch in the shadow of the maple trees. The rain and the long jog home tamped out my anger, leaving only a deep gash in my heart and one on my shin from crashing into the docks in the dark. He walks toward me when he sees me trudging up the hill, his hands suddenly on my arms. I want to collapse into him. I want to tell him how I fell in love with him under the bleachers the moment he turned his hat around and smiled and his honey eyes lit up brighter than the sun, even though it took me this long to let myself believe it.
But I can’t. I don’t.
“Are you all right?” he asks, hands tightening on me as he looks down at my shin.
“It’s just a cut.”
“Good. Go inside.” His hands unclamp from my arms.
“Patrick, wait.” I lunge for him, grasping at nothing in the place where he used to be as he turns back toward his house. I run to catch up, trying unsuccessfully to lace my fingers in his. He stops, but he won’t look at me, not even when I put my hands on his face.
“Patrick… I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t.” He finally looks at me when he says it, his eyes black and icy as he pulls my hands from his face. I watch him leave. I watch him walk away. And I wait forever for him to turn around, to come back, to forgive me, to kiss me again in the rain like nothing else matters.
But he doesn’t. He fades into the shadows and never looks back, leaving me exposed by the soft yellow light of the porch, rain falling all around me.
Chapter twenty-seven
“Delilah!” Mom is in the kitchen in that awful bathrobe, rocking on her feet like she’s trying to decide whether to run over and hug me or launch into another lecture about my poor decisions.
It’s late, I don’t know what time, and seeing Mom with her twisted-up face and her arms folded and the coffeepot sputtering reminds me of that night in early June, a thousand years ago after Finn dropped me off and I crawled through my bedroom window to find out about Nana’s death and our unplanned trip back to Red Falls.
“Are you okay?” Mom crosses the room in two giant steps. When she puts her arms around me, I move to shake free, but she only holds me tighter. I almost give in to the smell of her perfume and the softness of the robe against my cheek. My chest aches, my head is throbbing, my shin is bleeding, my body is shivering, and I just want her to promise me. To hold on to me and mean it and make it all disappear.
But I can’t pretend anymore, and neither can she. I can’t even look at her face when I push her arms away.
Upstairs, I shed my wet clothes and try to lose myself in a searing shower, inhaling big gulps of steam with my eyes closed, hot water pruning my skin. All I can see is Patrick’s face, pleading at the beach, the chill between us at the end. The weight of my own heavy heart drags me down; I want to carve it out and leave it in the basement in one of
the old canning jars, shelved right between the colored Christmas tree lights and the Ouija board. To go on without a care, without fear and doubt and regret. For everything in my life to be like that trip to Connecticut when just watching a hermit crab scurry through the sand was enough to amaze and elate me for an entire year.
Back in the bedroom, I look through the window for a sign from Patrick, a light, a movement from his bedroom to give me even the tiniest sliver of hope. But all along the stretch of space between my room and his, there is nothing, nothing but blackness, nothing but emptiness seeping into the night like blood.
I’m pacing, pacing the small box of this bedroom as words and pictures whir and crash together in my head. My mother telling me about my real father. Aunt Rachel, still out with Megan and unaware of the storm exploding at the lake house. The town of Red Falls and every single person who knows more about my family history than I do. And me, charging out. Stomping away. Spitting venom at the one person in all of Vermont who least deserves it.
I call Patrick’s cell. He doesn’t answer. The light in his room doesn’t click on. I call again. Again and again and again and oh my God I’m going out of my mind as I walk the planks of the room from one end to the other, wishing. Wondering. Hoping. What if? Maybe. What if? Maybe.
The mason jar of Nana’s mismatched buttons shines from the top of the dresser, undaunted as my hand lunges forward. Fingers curl around it, the veins beneath my skin pulled into small blue ropes as I heft the glass above my shoulder. The buttons click clack, click clack inside, huddling together as I arch back and throw it, as hard as I can, all of them at once sling-shotted and shattered against the wall, broken glass and buttons like a billion brilliant rain-stones plink-plink-plinkering to the floor.
“Delilah?!” Mom’s voice arrives first, her body a split-second later in the doorway, mouth and eyes wide over everything shiny and broken and me in my bare feet, watching the light reflect in the glass.
“Are you hurt?” She tiptoes her way around it to reach me. She whispers. Her hands hover over me like the seagulls over the lake, gliding and floating and skirting.