Everything I Never Told You(71)

Kick your legs. I’ve got you. Kick.

It had been the same ever since. Don’t let me sink, she had thought as she reached for his hand, and he had promised not to when he took it. This moment, Lydia thought. This is where it all went wrong.

It was not too late. There on the dock, Lydia made a new set of promises, this time to herself. She will begin again. She will tell her mother: enough. She will take down the posters and put away the books. If she fails physics, if she never becomes a doctor, it will be all right. She will tell her mother that. And she will tell her mother, too: it’s not too late. For anything. She will give her father back his necklace and his book. She will stop holding the silent phone to her ear; she will stop pretending to be someone she is not. From now on, she will do what she wants. Feet planted firmly on nothing, Lydia—so long enthralled by the dreams of others—could not yet imagine what that might be, but suddenly the universe glittered with possibilities. She will change everything. She will tell Jack she’s sorry, that she’ll never tell his secret. If he can be brave, so sure of who he is and what he wants, perhaps she can, too. She’ll tell him that she understands.

And Nath. She will tell him that it’s all right for him to leave. That she will be fine. That he’s not responsible for her anymore, that he doesn’t need to worry. And then she will let him go.

And as she made this last promise, Lydia understood what to do. How to start everything over again, from the beginning, so she would never again be afraid to be alone. What she must do to seal her promises, to make them real. Gently she lowered herself into the rowboat and loosed the rope. As she pushed away from the dock, she expected a surge of panic. It didn’t come. Even once she had rowed, stroke by clumsy stroke, out onto the lake—far enough that the lamppost was just a dot, too small to contaminate the darkness around her—she felt strangely calm and confident. Above her the moon was coin-round, sharp and perfect. Beneath her the boat rocked so gently that she could hardly feel its motion. Looking up at the sky, she felt as if she were floating in space, completely untethered. She could not believe that anything was impossible.

In the distance, the light from the dock shone like a star. If she squinted, she could just make out the dim shape of the dock itself, the pale line of boards against the darker night. When she got a little closer, she thought, she would be able to see it perfectly: the boards worn smooth by generations of bare feet, the posts that held them up just above the surface of the water. Carefully, she got to her feet, spreading her arms as the boat swayed. It was not so far. She could do this, she was certain. All she had to do was kick. She would kick her way to the dock and reach up to the planks and pull herself up out of the water. Tomorrow morning, she would ask Nath about Harvard. What it was like there. She would ask him about the people he met, the classes he would take. She would tell him he’d have a wonderful time.

She looked down at the lake, which in the dark looked like nothing, just blackness, a great void spreading beneath her. It will be all right, she told herself, and she stepped out of the boat into the water.





twelve



All the way home, James thinks to himself: It is not too late. It is not too late. With each mile marker, he repeats it until he is back in Middlewood, the college and then the lake whipping by. When at last he pulls into their driveway, the garage door is open, and Marilyn’s car nowhere in sight. Each breath sways him, no matter how hard he tries to keep upright. All these years he has remembered only: She ran away. He has taken this for granted: She came back. And: She stayed. As he reaches for the front doorknob, his legs wobble. It is not too late, he assures himself, but inside, he quavers. He cannot blame her if she has gone away again, this time for good.

In the front hall, a heavy silence greets him, like that of a funeral. Then he steps into the living room and sees a small figure huddled on the floor. Hannah. Curled in a ball, hugging herself with both arms. Eyes a watery red. He remembers suddenly a long-ago afternoon, two motherless children on a cold doorstep.

“Hannah?” he whispers, even as he feels himself collapsing, like an old building grown too weak to stand. His bag drops from his fingers to the floor. It’s as if he’s breathing through a straw. “Where’s your mother?”

Hannah looks up. “Upstairs. Sleeping.” Then—and this is what gives James his breath again—“I told her you would come home.” Not smugly, not triumphantly. Just a fact, round and simple as a bead.

James sinks to the carpet beside his small daughter, silenced by gratitude, and Hannah considers whether to say more. For there is more, much more: how she and her mother had curled up together on Lydia’s bed and cried and cried all afternoon, holding each other so close that their tears mixed, until her mother had fallen asleep. And how, half an hour ago, her brother had arrived home in a police car, rumpled and groggy and stinking to high heaven but strangely serene, and had gone straight up to his room and into bed. Hannah, peeking from behind the curtain, had seen Officer Fiske at the wheel, and late that night, Marilyn’s car will quietly reappear in the driveway, washed, keys set neatly on the driver’s seat. It can wait, she decides. She is used to keeping people’s secrets, and there is something more pressing to tell her father.

She tugs at his arm, pointing upward, and James is surprised by how small her hands are, and how strong. “Look.”

At first, so overcome with relief, so accustomed to ignoring his youngest, he sees nothing. It is not too late, he thinks, glancing up at the ceiling, clean and bright as a new sheet of paper in the late-afternoon sun. Not yet the end.