I'd Give Anything(67)

Evan was short and compact and dashing, with shiny black curls and blazing black eyes. After a stony second, his expression softened, just a little.

“You know what? If I were judged exclusively by the mistakes I made when I was eighteen, I’d be in real trouble,” he said. “At least, you’re here now.”

“I’ll do better from now on,” I said. “I promise.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Evan, then he tipped his head sideways, toward the interior of the house, where I could hear Kirsten’s crazy crow-caw of a laugh burst through the fabric of conversation and music. “Come on in. And welcome.”

After we were seated and had filled our plates from the platters heaped with fragrant shredded chicken, thin ribbons of steak, glossy roasted peppers and onions, crumbled white cheese, and half-moons of sliced avocado, a paralyzing awkwardness fell upon us. We sat and applied salsas and squeezed lime wedges and forked up food and swaddled it in tortillas (folding with great concentration, as if our lives depended on it) and listened to Thelonious Monk beat out wisdom and sorrow on piano keys and tried not to chew too loudly, and just before—seconds before—we all would’ve crawled under the table or run screaming from the room, Kirsten saved us. She worked her signature brand of miracle: turning—not water into wine—but slow, dull, sucking quicksand into champagne.

She held court, launching into a long, funny, effervescent, starry-gold flood of chatter about her wedding, her dress, the buttons on her dress, the hem of her dress, the exact lowness of the neckline of her dress, her veil, her bouquet, and, at the end, slipped in what had to be the most enchanting description of canapés in the entire history of describing canapés. When we were all laughing and joining in and when the air of the dining room seemed to be filled with inaudible birdsong and invisible iridescent bubbles, she stopped short and said, “Not to be wildly insensitive, but don’t you think it’s about time we addressed the elephant in the room?”

And maybe because Avery was in a state of bewitchment after all Kirsten’s spun-gold talk and believed that anything might be possible or maybe because she was too young to be familiar with the idiom “elephant in the room,” she began to look around the dining room, presumably in search of an actual elephant. When her roaming and quizzical gaze finally settled on me, I said, “She means what was on the torn-out journal page and how it wasn’t true after all.”

“Oh, that,” said Avery. “Uncle Trev and the fire.”

Kirsten said, “That, yes. And I have a few remarks to make about it, if no one minds.”

“Oh boy,” mumbled CJ.

“Okay with me,” said Gray.

“You’ll make them anyway, even if we do mind, right?” I said.

Kirsten raised her pretty shoulders in a conciliatory shrug and said, “Still, it seemed polite to add ‘if no one minds.’”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“First, Zin, you could have told me. Back then. You could have told me what you overheard Trevor tell Adela. I wouldn’t have turned him in to the cops. I wouldn’t even have told Gray and CJ, although I would have struggled with that, struggled mightily. You know how I do.”

“I do,” I said.

“Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone. And it might have helped you to tell me. I know it would’ve helped me to know,” said Kirsten.

“Yes, you would’ve kept it a secret for sure. But it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to get Trevor in trouble. I wanted it not to have happened at all, and I had this idea that, if I never told a soul, if I tried with all my might to pretend it didn’t happen, it would go away.”

Avery said, solemnly, “She wrote it down in her journal and tore out the page and went into the woods and burned it.”

“Magical thinking,” said Gray. “I’ve done my share of that.”

“It didn’t work, though, did it, Ginny?” said CJ, caustically.

“No,” I said.

Kirsten darted a warning look at CJ. “On to my second remark, which is: this explains a lot. Obviously, it explains how you changed and checked out and retreated into yourself.”

“Not really,” muttered CJ.

“I couldn’t tell you guys,” I said. “And I was horrified at how my family, my own brother, had caused so much pain and destruction. I felt guilty that he’d done that and guilty that I had to keep it from you all, and I just ended up living inside that guilt all the time.”

“It isolated you,” said Gray.

“Yes. And it made me feel hopeless there for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kirsten, “I wish you hadn’t had to go through that alone.” She touched her fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss.

“But,” she continued, “it explains other things, too. Like Trevor leaving. I just thought he’d had another blowup with your mom about something, but then he never came back. Did she not let him? Or did he not want to?”

“Both,” I said.

“Also, it explains Harris,” said Kirsten.

I glanced at Avery, who said, “It’s okay.”

“What happened,” said Kirsten. “How everything went crazy and fell apart. I can see how that would lead you to Harris.”