Good for You: A Novel (10)

“I know,” he said gently.

“And the plan was to go back at the year mark.”

“I know,” he said again. “But Aly, sometimes the only way to move forward is to let go of the plan and live. That’s how the best things happen. Just look at what happened with Beckett.” Harry and Tim had hoped to adopt, but not until they were in their late thirties. But when Tim’s teenage cousin contacted him to say she was pregnant and would be pursuing adoption and couldn’t think of better parents for her child than him and Harry, they didn’t think twice before saying yes.

She frowned. “I get that. For the record, though, I’m living.” Granted, she didn’t feel particularly alive lately, but that wasn’t the point.

“I wasn’t saying you weren’t, babe. But given that you need to be out of Seth’s place ASAP, and whether you do it now or in September, you do need to put Luke’s house on the market, well—two birds and all that.”

“Hmph.”

Harry continued. “I’d invite you to come stay with us, but with Beckett being up half the night, I promise you’d have the most miserable time. Still, Saugatuck is only two and a half hours from Chicago,” he said, referring to the lakeside town where Luke had lived. “We could at least drive in for a night to see you. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

She’d rather go to them. She’d flown to Chicago soon after Beckett was born, but that was nearly half a year earlier. He was probably already an entirely different baby now.

“You’re always welcome to visit,” he added when she didn’t respond.

Now she felt guilty. “I know, and I love you for saying that—but I’m not going to crash with you when you have your hands so full. Maybe I’ll get an Airbnb or something. And you’re right; I do have to deal with Luke’s house at some point.”

“But . . . ?”

But it felt gross to her, to have inherited something of value as a direct result of her brother’s death. And she wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. “I don’t feel good about it,” she admitted. “I don’t want to go there.” Luke was four years older than her, but he’d been wise in a way that made it feel like he had decades on her. He’d gone into banking after college—not because he loved it, but because he wanted to make a bunch of money quickly, invest it, and then cash out and “go have a life,” as he put it.

Aly had assumed this would involve him traveling the world; after putting in fourteen-hour days at work for nearly a decade, what better way to have a life? Instead, he’d done the most bizarre thing she ever could’ve imagined: he sank almost everything he’d saved into a home on the shore of Lake Michigan, not twenty miles from the crappy little farm town where they’d grown up, and became a sailing instructor. It was like escaping from prison and immediately asking to have handcuffs put on.

Then, less than a year and a half after Luke bought the house, he died unexpectedly.

“You don’t have to stay long. You’ve been planning to sell, anyway,” said Harry. “And wouldn’t now be a good time to do that?” He meant because she was broke.

“Yes. You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” he said, and she smiled a little. “Besides, when’s the last time you had a vacation?”

“Never,” she said, and he laughed because it was practically true. For a long time, Aly didn’t have enough money to travel farther than New Jersey. Even when she started making a little more, her student loans still devoured the bulk of her paychecks. Seth had taken her to the Bahamas right after they moved in together, but they’d both worked through most of the trip. She’d end up working through this one, too, and she was probably the only person who didn’t think that was a problem.

“I don’t know, Har. I don’t think I’m ready.” Actually, she knew she wasn’t. But a spark of an idea was taking shape in the back of her mind. She would find an inexpensive place in southwest Michigan, or even Chicago, to rent for a week or two. Then she’d sell Luke’s house without setting foot in it. She’d have to hire someone to box up his things. And that might require taking out a small loan, or—ack—even borrowing from Harry, since a few missed student loan payments in her midtwenties meant her credit wasn’t exactly stellar. But Harry was right: the timing was good. If she could simply manage to arrange a few workarounds for the sale, it was doable. And once she sold the house, she would return to New York, find an apartment, and turn All Good into such a phoenix that it would become the model for all other magazines struggling to survive.

“Maybe not,” Harry conceded. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” she said. In spite of her excitement over her new plan, she was getting choked up again. How lucky she was to have such a true friend. “You’ve already done more than you can know. Thank you for being here for me.”

“Anytime, and I mean that in the most literal way. You’re going to be okay, Aly. I promise.”

If he’d been anyone else, she would’ve assured him she already was. But this was Harry, the only person other than Luke who’d never needed her to sugarcoat the truth.

So she said, “It’s entirely possible that I’m never going to be okay again. And somehow, that’s going to have to be okay.”