Burn Our Bodies Down(81)

I’ve been staying at Eli’s house, in his room while he sleeps on the couch. Every day Connors comes to pick me up, and he takes me to the station, and he tells me something new. Empty bank accounts one day. Piling debt the next. It is so easy to make this something Gram did.

And it’s true, and it’s what happened. Gram killed the Millers. Gram treated the earth. Gram, Gram, Gram. But the fire caught the ridicine, turned the bones to something smaller than ash, and when I told the police to look in the grove, they didn’t find a thing. Just like Katherine. Mom knew what she was doing when she told me what would save me.

It doesn’t sit right, that nobody will ever know all of it. Even the parts that were mine.

Next to me Eli clears his throat and edges closer to make room in our pew for Connors and his wife. The church is packed, all of Phalene turned out to say goodbye to its brightest family. This would’ve been the Nielsens once. Way back, before any of this. Now the police won’t release what they found of Gram’s body, and why should they? So I can mourn her? I’ll do that just fine on my own.

Tess’s coffin is between her parents’. White and shining, and next to it, what must be her school picture, blown up and encircled by a floral wreath. It doesn’t look a thing like her. But Eli’s staring at it like he can’t breathe, and so I reach over, squeeze his wrist once.

The reverend takes the pulpit and the service starts. I shut my eyes, let it look like I’m praying. But really I’m not here anymore. I’m there, in that afternoon that lives at the back of my mind.

Three more weeks until my eighteenth. Three more weeks at Eli’s house, of helping him sort through Tess’s belongings and find pieces of her to keep. They chose each other, he and Tess. Built a world between them and decided it was worth something. Whatever’s next for me, I want it to be like that.

The reverend keeps talking. This will be over soon. I will walk out the door and I will go where I want and I don’t know where that is, but I have time, now, to figure it out. Time to build my own life. Time to decide how much of Mom I want in it.

A summer afternoon, sunlight and sway, the crops growing green. Fairhaven bright with fresh paint, and two—no, three women on the porch, wearing the same face. A fire on the horizon. I could live here forever, in the memory of something I never had.

I open my eyes, a breath unfolding like wings in my chest.

Leave it there, I tell myself. Let the fire come. I’m on my way to being brand-new.





acknowledgments


I wrote this book so many times that I can’t quite remember what’s inside it, but what I do remember is the unfailing support I was so lucky to receive from the people around me. First, of course, to my patient and brilliant editor, Krista Marino, who read this book over and over again and let me take it in all the directions it wasn’t supposed to go before we found the right one. I don’t know where the book would be without you—presumably entirely in the second person and without an ounce of clarity inside.

Thank you to my agents, Daisy Parente, Kim Witherspoon, and Jessica Mileo, and to the teams at Lutyens and Rubinstein and InkWell, who are so wonderfully supportive and who know the answers to my questions before I even realize what I’m asking.

Thank you so much to Beverly Horowitz, Barbara Marcus, Monica Jean, Lydia Gregovic, and everybody at Delacorte Press for providing such a wonderful home for this book. To Emma Benshoff, thank you for being an incredible publicist and for being someone I can email about Taylor Swift albums. Thank you to the whole marketing and Underlined team—Elizabeth Ward, Kate Keating, Jenn Inzetta, Kelly McGauley, Jules Kelly, Josh Redlich, Kristin Schultz, and everyone else—for being the most incredible crew. You are so generous with your time, so kind, and so deeply fun. I’m beyond lucky to be working with you.

Thank you to Regina Flath, genius designer, Alison Reimold, the artist of my dreams, and Trish Parcell, who knocked the interior out of the park. I am forever in your debt. Thank you so much to all the talented bloggers and Instagrammers who have supported both Wilder Girls and this book. I’m in awe of the content you create and of the work and dedication you put into your posts.

Thank you to Sara Faring for listening to a hundred versions of this idea. To Diana Hurlbert, Rebecca Barrow, and Maggie Soares-Horne for reading early drafts and pretending they made any sense. To Emma Theriault for many hours of sprinting and shared misery. To Christine Lynn Herman for enduring an astonishing volume of direct messages about corn, and for your support, which I could not have done without. To a great many more friends, too, to whom I owe so much. I love you all.

To my mom, who always shows up, no matter what. Thank you for meeting me here.