A Lily in the Light(90)
There was still dirt on her hands as they walked to the subway and waited for the 7. The sun came up behind the platform, red orange through the smog. They took the train to Long Island City, where Gloria was buried with her family. Esme waited under a pine tree while Lily knelt in the freshly turned soil, tucking flowers against the marker where a new stone would be but wasn’t yet. Esme wondered who Lily was praying to behind her mess of dark curls, if she was saying goodbye to Gloria or Liz, the person she’d thought she was for eight years.
Lily was quiet on the ride home, her shoulder touching Esme’s when the train jolted forward.
“Look.” Lily pointed.
An old advertisement for Swan Lake hung above them on the subway. Esme looked for Adam, but he wasn’t in it, or he was too small to see. She never did understand how Prince Siegfried could confuse Odette with Odile, the black swan for the white. Liz for Lily. How easy it is, Esme mused, to be enchanted by what we want to see.
“Have you seen that one?” Esme asked, and Lily nodded.
The doors opened. It was unseasonably warm, the last few days of an Indian summer rebelling against the start of fall. In a few hours, Esme would be on a bus back to Boston, where she’d roll the past few hours around in her head. She wouldn’t tell her parents where they’d been unless Lily wanted them to know. Esme pulled out the tiny pinecone she’d taken from the cemetery and tucked it into Lily’s palm. If they’d been kids, she would’ve told Lily to hold it in her hand until it sprouted into a tree and grew and grew until Lily could climb it like in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” but Lily wasn’t that little girl anymore, and neither was Esme. Lily’s hand closed around the pinecone as sunlight splintered through the windows.
Different, Esme thought, remembering what Amelia had told her that day at her house. Life would be different—not necessarily better, but different. The skyline was a maze of glass and concrete. The sun rose above the tallest buildings. Home. She put her arm around Lily’s shoulders and let it rest there as the train carried them home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my amazing agent, Rachel Eckstrom: for a writer with a ninety-thousand-word novel, I don’t have enough words to thank you, not least for introducing me to the fantastic Alicia Clancy and the Lake Union team. Thank you, Alicia, for loving this book so much, rolling the dice on a new author, and advocating for this book through and through.
Thank you to Heather, Sophie, Julia, and the many talented Sackett Street Writers who coddled this story in its early infancy and steered it into a manuscript. To Natalia and Robyn, my friends and beta readers, whose brutal honesty made this thing real.
To Martha McPhee, who took me under her wing and taught me that writing is rewriting. And for Barbara, who came to the first reading I gave as a nervous new writer and offered endless encouragement.
To Mom and Dad, Michael, Jenna, and Emma: these pages are full of our story too. When we were throwing LEGO houses down the stairs to see whose house was strongest, we did not know what we’d grow up to be or how we’d inspire each other.
And Rob, for not only coming without protest to Lincoln Center and the Palais Garnier and reading countless drafts of this book but for understanding the need behind all those nights and weekends alone in another world. Your belief in me pushed me through both the doubt and inspiration to bring this idea to a book. I couldn’t have done this without you, truly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristin Fields grew up in Queens, which she likes to think of as a small town next to a big city. Fields studied writing at Hofstra University, where she received the Eugene Schneider Fiction Award. After college, Fields found herself working on a historic farm, teaching high school English, and designing museum education programs. She is currently leading an initiative to bring gardens to New York City public schools. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.