You would almost think someone colored the pool water pink on purpose. A few drops from some giant squeeze bottle of food coloring, mixed around with one of those long nets people use to pull out leaves and dead bugs. If only there weren’t that bullet-ridden body floating in the middle of it, facedown, long dark hair fanned out like a shroud.
And there, a few feet away, is Raine, Vaughn’s newly widowed wife, a handgun next to her, lying on the burning tile in a pool of blood with half her face gone.
What were Ivy’s final thoughts before she died? Was she still waiting for Ash? Did she still think they were going to run away together? Was she planning their escape to that other island half a world away, the place where all this began, where she believed she could go back in time and become unbroken? Did she die with her dream intact?
Or maybe that is just the story we think we know.
Maybe she finally realized Ash wasn’t coming. That she had packed her suitcase for nothing. Did she ever figure out that he was never worthy of any of this?
Maybe someone else had to figure it out for her. Maybe she was too far gone to realize it for herself.
Sometimes we need help to make us see the truth. Sometimes it has to hurt.
Maybe Ivy did figure it out in time.
Maybe someone helped her.
* * *
• • •
Did we ever really believe Ash loved Ivy? Or did he merely see someone beautiful and charming, another name to add to the long list of people who worship him? Someone warm and open, someone who would sometimes listen? Someone who made him, for the briefest of days, more complicated?
But Ash has chosen to not be complicated. He likes comfort too much. And he’s not that brave after all. At this very moment, he is somewhere above us all, unburdened by the weather or the people he left behind, in first class with the girl who doesn’t trouble him with wanting to know who he is.
And now, if Ivy didn’t figure it out, if no one could help, then Ash has this story he can tell, the story of a star who loved him so much, it killed her. He can take that trophy with him wherever he goes. That will be the extent of his depth and damage.
He’s gone, back into Tami’s arms where he came from, the privilege of his destiny untarnished, and Ivy has met the tragic ending waiting for her at the bottom of her dream.
Ivy and Ash were my dream.
Alive or dead, they’re both gone.
So what does that mean for me?
35
We are made out of our stories. We are a collection of creation myths. But this one was never really mine.
* * *
• • •
I wake up to the smell of smoke. I will never wake up to anything else. The world is on fire and I am on fire, and we are all burning.
* * *
• • •
Your house is surrounded by fire trucks, police cars, the brittle hedges belted by flapping yellow tape. Olympic Road is a parade of onlookers and paparazzi. The deer and raccoons are in hiding.
I watch the smoke rise from your house to join the smoke that has made its way down the mountains. I wonder about the glass walls. Are they still standing? Are they melting? Are they charring black? How does glass burn?
That house was never your home. It was a glass box meant to keep the shame in and the smoke out, but it failed at its job.
I float above it all. I inspect the pool. The water is still clear. You are not floating, alive or dead.
No one knows where you and Ash or Tami are. But I know. I know everything. I am omniscient.
I am the author of all these stories.
* * *
• • •
The story is over. The fire has done its damage. It has burned itself out.
* * *
• • •
In some parallel universe, there is such a thing as happily ever after. In a place where we have evolved beyond human, there is such a thing as getting what you want and having it be enough.
* * *
• • •
Maybe all of Daddy’s Buddhist philosophy is wrong. Maybe the goal is not to end the clinging and yearning. Maybe it’s exactly those things that tell us we’re alive. Maybe we’re nothing without our hunger.
All we have now are burned ruins, with glass walls still, miraculously, standing. People have found Ash’s secret deer path; they have made it onto the property; they are hiding in the bushes, getting scratched by the same branches that drew bloody cross-stitch into your skin. People are out on the water, in kayaks, on Jet Skis. They are watching. They are recording. They are waiting for the big reveal, when a firefighter will pull your lifeless, charred body from the wreckage. Your grand finale.
Your mother is in her bathrobe. She has no gin and tonics to share with paparazzi this time. This time, they’re all for herself.
“What am I going to do?” she says. To nobody. To me. “She was everything. God, she could have been something. She could have done so much.”
Everyone assumes that you’re dead. How could you not be? That is how these stories always end.
The smoke says: “You have her money now, don’t you? You’re her next of kin. You’ll be fine.”
This is the woman’s defining moment. This is her origin story. With your death, the royalties from your work would come pouring in. This is when your mother would graduate to become one of the people, like Tami and Ash, who will always be fine.
She blinks. She doesn’t know where my voice is coming from.
The smoke says: “Isn’t this what you wanted? Look around. This is everything you always wanted. This is everything you sold your daughter for.”
36
I find Ivy in the pool, just after dawn. She is floating on her back in her bra and underwear. The water is clear. The glass walls are still standing, uncharred. The fire is somewhere close, but it is not here. Not yet.
Someone has died, but it was not Ivy. We are back at the beginning.
“You shouldn’t be outside,” I tell her.
Her arms lift lazily above her head and then back down again. Her body glides through the water. She makes such small, pointless waves.
“You know about the giant redwoods?” she says.
“What about them?”
“You know how they propagate?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They need forest fires to grow. The pinecones—that’s where all the seeds are—they only open after they’ve been burned. And the seedlings can’t grow unless a fire comes and wipes everything else out, because they need lots of space, and lots of sun. Without fires, they get too crowded and they suffocate.”