Samms to drive her to Rosecroft one last time, even though it was in ruins, having burned down two months before. At noon, she returned to her bed, her feet already cold. The coldness spread up and throughout her body. Hours later, she was dead. The autopsy would uncover cancer, but if she had ever been diagnosed, Claudine never let on.
I think about the knowing. Of Claudine waking up knowing she would die—what it would be like to wake up in the morning and know the end was coming. Of Tillie Donaldson Blackwood thinking her whole life was ahead of her on her wedding day. Is it better to be prepared? To have to wait for it, knowing there’s nothing you can do? Or is it better to have the world change in an instant—like mine did, like Claudine’s did—without warning?
I fish the blue notebook out of my bag and write these things down, my eyes adjusting to the dark and the moonlight. I’m so deep in thought that I don’t notice Jeremiah Crew until he’s standing over me.
“Captain.”
I blink up at him. For a second, I think he’s a ghost too.
He says, “Miss me?”
“No.”
Yes. And it’s not just my heart that starts pulsing faster. My entire body begins throbbing at the sight of him.
“I’m pretty sure you did.”
He hands me something and it takes me a second to recognize it. My sweater.
“Thanks for marking the nest.”
He sits down next to me. I drape the sweater over my knees like a blanket even though I’m the opposite of cold.
“So,” he says.
“So.”
He runs his hand over the sand. Scoops some up. Scatters it. Rubs his hands together to brush them off.
“Look,” he says. “I’m sorry. Once a shit-heel, always a shit-heel to some degree. You didn’t have to tell me, but you did anyway. A little after the fact, but you told me.”
“You’re right. I didn’t have to tell you. It’s my body. I decide what happens to it. And you weren’t mad when you thought I was just some easy summer girl that you could hook up with.”
“I never thought you were some easy summer girl. Nothing is easy about you, Captain. But okay. And you’re right. And I missed you too.”
“I didn’t say I missed you.”
“But you did.”
I’m thinking of Wednesday and Terri and the warnings they’ve given me about him. But then I think, Maybe they don’t know him like I know him. Which is why that part of me says, “I did.” Because what do I have to lose?
I look at him and he looks at me and neither of us looks away. And I can see it in there. He still likes me. And I can’t help it: I like him.
He says, “So I had some time to think, and here’s what I came up with. You be honest with me; I’ll be honest with you. I’m talking this is you; this is me. We got off to a pretty good start, so let’s keep it going. Take it or leave it.”
I dig my feet into the sand as I try to formulate thoughts and words and organize them sensibly, intelligently, articulately. I’ve never done this before—spilled my soul to a person I’ve just met. Even with Saz, back when we were ten, it took some time. What if I can’t do this? What if I’ve done all the spilling I can do? I open my mouth and say the first thing that comes out.
“You and Wednesday. What was that, exactly? And do you still like her? And are you planning to hook up with her again this summer while you’re also hanging out with me? Because I don’t know that I’m that evolved. I’m actually certain I’m not that evolved. Not that I love you or need you to love me, but I’m pretty sure I can only sleep with someone who sleeps with one person at a time.”
He laughs. “Wow. Way to embrace the honesty. So you’re saying we’re going to sleep together again?”
“I’m talking theoretically. Hypothetically.”
“That’s not how it sounded.”
I hold up my hands like, Who’s to say?
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” He rubs his face. Looks out at the ocean, and I can see him arranging his own thoughts. “So Wednesday and I hung out for a couple weeks last summer. It was basically just sex, and every now and then we’d, like, go to the beach or hang out around the Dip, which is mostly