I'd Give Anything(76)
CJ sat up and leaned back against the cushions of the couch.
“And, Zinny, I didn’t set out to hurt Daniel, either. But I’d seen him drinking near the shed, and I heard people who also saw him say he was a bad kid, a troublemaker. And I just went with it. I spread the rumors and lied to the police. But I knew he wouldn’t get in any real trouble because I knew they wouldn’t find any proof.”
“What can we do?” said Kirsten, bleakly. “Just what are we supposed to do now?”
“What do you think, CJ?” I said.
CJ wasn’t crying anymore; he seemed drained of tears, of nervous energy, of everything. He looked at me and said, “I think it’s time to tell.”
Epilogue
Late June
Avery
The water is too cold to swim in for long, but it’s beautiful: maple syrup–colored at the edges where the marble walls throw down their slanted shadows, shining like glass where the sun hits. Avery sits on the rim of the quarry, a sweatshirt over her swimsuit, and watches petals drift sideways across the dark rock face like snow. Behind her are long tables covered in red-and-white-checked cloth and laid with platters of sandwiches, fried chicken, and slabs of tomato pie; bowls of green salad and potato salad; and round plates bearing deviled eggs arranged in concentric circles like chrysanthemum petals and dusted with paprika. Metal buckets hold bottles of water, beer, and wine, and the grass is spread with quilts. On one of the quilts, Dobbsey and Walt sleep in identical curled-up positions like quotation marks, while Mose stands guard, his fur steeped in sunlight. At the center of it all is a small white party tent. Under the tent is a rocking chair (Gray carried it through the park upside down, with the seat resting on his head) and a bassinet for Gray and Evan’s month-old baby, Dahlia.
Technically, the party is part of Kirsten and Tex’s wedding week, a kind of pre-rehearsal-dinner picnic for their closest friends. But everyone here is paying homage to Dahlia, no one more than Kirsten herself. They rock her and coo over her and feed her bottles and dance around with her in their arms, whispering to her.
Earlier, Avery had sat in the rocker and watched Dahlia make faces—phantom frowns and smiles—in her sleep and thought how wonderful to be so loved by so many people. She’d thought about her grandmother and wondered if, as Avery had seen Gray and Evan do, she had ever sat spellbound, riveted by her baby’s—Avery’s mother’s or her uncle Trevor’s—loveliness or held one of them in her arms with an expression on her face that said, “Never, ever, in the history of the world, has anyone been so lucky.” It’s how it should be for babies, thought Avery, so much love, love every single second, everywhere they are.
Avery sits on the soft grass at the edge of the quarry and listens to the sweet tangle of voices and laughter behind her and feels the sun drying her hair, and she understands that in this instance, she is completely happy. Her life isn’t perfect (she has not seen or spoken to her father since the Truth and Reconciliation night), but this moment is. She remembers what Zinny had written: You know those times when the person you are and the person you want to be are exactly—down to your smallest fingernail moon and flimsiest eyelash and your left knee and the part in your hair—the same person?
Avery does know.
Two days after the Truth and Reconciliation night, Avery and her mother had talked for hours. Her mother had told her how, after Avery’s father had gotten fired, she had gone to Adela to ask her to do what she did best: take the story of what her father had done to Cressida and clean it up, make her father look better, kinder, more innocent and then send the new story spinning off into the world of their town. She’d gone to Adela because she had wanted to protect Avery.
“Somehow, I got used to imagining that you are fragile. I underestimated your ability to face the truth; I thought you weren’t as strong as you are. I swear I will never, if I live to be a hundred and twenty, do that again.”
Adela had wanted to go further, to twist Cressida into someone conniving and cruel, but Avery’s mother had told her no.
“Even so,” she’d said to Avery, “even though she agreed not to tarnish Cressida’s reputation, I knew, deep down, that she could be ruthless. I shouldn’t have gone to her at all.”
Then, Avery and her mother had talked about reparations; when they finished, the sun was coming up, and, sitting in Avery’s window seat, they watched its low light stream through the tree branches and gild the lawn.
Afterward, Avery texted her father: Cressida and her father have suffered because of our family, and we need to try to fix it. I want you to write a letter of apology to Cressida that makes it very clear what you did. Send it to me, and I’ll give it to her. Please do this. It’s the right thing to do.
Nearly a full day passed before her father wrote back, Okay, I will.
When the letter from her father to Cressida arrived, Avery sent another text, this one to Cressida: After track today, could you please meet me at the coffee shop near my school?
They met, and when Cressida walked across the room to Avery’s table, Avery watched people watch her. When she sat, Avery felt everyone’s eyes on the two of them, saw people—kids from her school, from other schools, even adults—whisper to one another. It was fine. It was what she’d wanted when she’d asked Cressida to meet. If Avery could’ve arranged for everyone in town to have been there seeing Avery and Cressida drinking coffee together and talking, she would have.