For Lucy

“Then why are you getting married? Why now? What’s the rush?”

Her face wrinkles. “He asked me. I said yes. We’re in love. I’m not asking you to sacrifice anything, Lucy.”

“Are you sacrificing anything?”

She narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Do you love Josh like you loved Dad?”

“Lucy, where is the coming from? Do you not like Josh?”

“I like Josh, but I’m not the one who’s marrying him.”

“I just told you we’re in love.”

I nod. “But I asked you if you love him like you loved Dad?”

“It’s …” She shakes her head, gathering the skirt of her dress and taking a seat in the chair adjacent to mine—her Champagne glass and my sparkling juice glass on the table between us. “It’s a different kind of love. Your dad and I had this young, passionate kind of love, like together we could conquer the world. We made bad decisions and learned only by making mistakes over and over again. We figured out how to be parents by just jumping in and doing it, no matter how inept we felt at the time. But with Josh, it’s a mature love. We became friends first. We both came into the relationship with so much more life experience and realistic goals—not only for our lives separately but for our future together. When I’m with Josh, I don’t feel so impulsive. He grounds me.”

“Sounds boring.”

She chuckles. “Lucy, I’ve had enough happen in my life to make boring seem like a dream come true.”

I fight with the words in my head. There’s just no easy way to say them. I keep hoping she’ll say something that will make it easier to just blurt it out. But she’s too protective of something … Josh? Her heart? Me? I don’t know.

“What’s really on your mind, Lucy? I can see it on your face. What aren’t you telling me?”

This is it. This is as good as it will get. She’s asking me. It’s time to tell her.

“Dad wasn’t home when Austin drowned.”

Her head inches back, confusion distorting every inch of her face. “What? What are you talking about?”

“He wasn’t. I was the only one home. I was the one who was supposed to be watching him.” Tears sting my eyes. “It was only for a minute or two. I told him to stay in the living room watching his show so I could FaceTime with my friend in the bedroom. It was only minutes—it felt like seconds. And I heard Dad’s voice. I heard him screaming. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. I ran out onto the deck, and he was soaked, kneeling beside Austin, doing CPR. He told me to call 9-1-1.”

Mom blinks and a river of tears rush down her face.

“He told you it was him because he was afraid you might say something to me that you wouldn’t mean, that might have been hard to forget—hard to forgive. But he didn’t tell me that at the time. He made me believe it. He made me believe it was his fault, that he was supposed to be there to watch Austin. And … I believed him because he’s my dad. And I trusted him. And I think…” I wipe the tears from my face “…I needed to believe him. I didn’t want it to be my fault.”

Mom’s hand covers her mouth as she squeezes her eyes shut and cries. I didn’t tell her this to make her cry. I told her this because it’s the truth. And I don’t want any of us living a lie any longer.

“If you need to blame me, I can take it. I’ve talked a lot with Dr. Kane. And I’m ready to take responsibility. I know you love me, and nothing will change that. But I also understand that you might feel angry right now. And that’s okay. I’d be angry too.”

I move the glasses aside and scoot my way from the chair to the table so I can wrap my arms around her the way she’s done to me so many times in the past. She says nothing … she just cries.

EMMETT

I glance at my phone as I head toward my truck at the end of the day. There’s a message from Lucy that halts my steps.

Lucy: She knows.

Before I have time to generate feelings about her announcement, I glance up, and I’m transported nearly two decades earlier, to a time when Tatum was sitting on my tailgate, waiting for me. Sometimes she was there to read me the riot act. Sometimes she was there because she couldn’t wait to see me.

Today, seeing her on my tailgate, I don’t know what to expect. After a few seconds of staring at each other from twenty yards apart, I force my boots to move toward her.

She’s wearing sunglasses which tells me her eyes are red and swollen behind them. Lucy ripped open some old wounds and poured salt onto them.