Always the Last to Know by Kristan Higgins Page 0,83

“messy” (Pollock) or “those weird stick figures where the person only has one eye” (Picasso). My favorite was “little bitty brushstrokes so up close you can’t tell what it is but from far away, you can, like those Magic Eye puzzles” (Monet. So sorry, Claude).

The only time I felt like my old self was when I was with my dad. He’d made some real progress from those terrifying first days in January. He wasn’t talking or otherwise communicating yet . . . I’d been trying some sign language with him, since I knew a little from St. Catherine’s, where it was taught one day a week. LeVon was trying that, too, but we’d yet to have an Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller breakthrough. Not yet. He was right on the cusp, it seemed. I could sense it.

He smelled different, my father. It was one of those things you didn’t know would affect you until you were crying in the bathroom.

Mom and Juliet were there, and I was sure they missed him, too, but they hid it well. I had the feeling Mom wished he had just died.

But he was getting better. “It’s tempting to read into every little thing,” LeVon had warned me. “If he’s having a breakthrough, we’ll know, but it’ll be harder if you attribute every reflex to meaningful interaction.” He put a big hand on my shoulder. “But I agree with you. He’s making progress.”

We all fricking loved LeVon.

Meanwhile, something was happening to me.

It was the view. My house might be a decrepit pile of mold and decaying wood, but damn, that view. Because my house was on a little hill, I could watch both the sunrise and the sunset. Every morning, I woke up to the sun streaming in my room at the literal crack of dawn. I’d take Pepper out and let her romp and chase the dead leaves, and we’d watch the sun come out from behind the clouds, beams of light stretching out their arms. I’d sit on the porch with my coffee, listening to the birds. Each week they got more vocal—the chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, blue jays, ducks and geese. A blue heron hung out at the bend of the river, just past the bridge.

At night, if I was home from my parents’ house in time, I’d watch the sun set over the water, and it was even more startling in its beauty than the sunrise. Sometimes, the sun would glitter over the ocean, not a cloud in the sky, and after it sank below the horizon, a band of yellow and gold would linger for an hour as the stars came out. Other times, the clouds would catch and throw the light in all the shades of color I knew and then some—dianthus pink, iridescent pale gold, French blue, Montserrat orange. This past week had been milder, and Pepper and I stayed out till the last bird sang, and the smell of earth was strong as the sky deepened bit by bit.

I’d sit there and watch and listen, and all the yoga classes in all the world didn’t make me feel this way. Still. Awed. I hadn’t come back to Stoningham for Noah—I couldn’t, not the way he’d demanded it of me, not under the weight of his expectations. But even though it was temporary, I was glad I was here now. The town was less insipid than I’d painted it as a teenager; the people were more layered than I’d imagined them to be. Maybe it had been a necessary exercise to prepare for the New York phase of my life. Maybe I’d had to minimize what home meant to me so I could leave it behind.

I loved my New York life. But I loved this, too. I was . . . happy.

Happy. Even though I was here for a terrible reason, the happiness, the peace, snuck in. Right now, there was nowhere else I should be, could be or wanted to be.

* * *

— —

The dinner party did not get off to a great start.

For one, Alexander was running late. “Babe. I’m so sorry, but this traffic is horrible.”

“Well, what time did you leave?” I asked.

“At four.”

“That’s way too late! I told you to get out of the city by two thirty!” I groaned. “Honey. We haven’t seen each other in weeks. I wanted to get you in bed before this party. Now you’ll have to come straight to my mother’s.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I had all this paperwork to