PROLOGUE
It was mid-July, when the sun shined the memory of every good summer before it, and the days wandered like beach walkers, hot and indolent, catching chance breezes off the ocean. They’d stopped at the fair on a whim on their way back from Montauk, were supposed to be home hours before, but the vibrancy of live music and crowds and the feeling of a party not yet over beckoned them, so they lingered, wanting to stay inside this future memory a little longer.
The photo booth was Hannah’s idea, and now they erupted out of it into the flash and shimmer of daylight, giddy with the theater of posing. The image spat out like a lottery ticket and Hannah reached for it. But Maya, ever impatient, yanked it out of her hand. Maya squinted at it, covered the other three girls’ faces with her thumbs. “With a little cropping I think we might just have a masterpiece!”
“Oh, give me that,” Blue said, rolling her eyes.
They passed the photo around, each looking down at their leaping white smiles, their faces full with youth and colored by the sun. There was a looseness in their eyes from the peach wine coolers purchased at a local deli with the worst fake ID ten bucks could buy and a heavy dose of Maya’s winning charm.
As usual Maya was in the center of the picture, hugging the others like dolls to her chest, her three best friends who had never asked her to be anything but who she was, who never hinted that she should contain her big spilling personality in order to be loved. Beside her, Blue was wearing the sweatshirt of a boy she met earlier that weekend, the sleeves carefully rolled to the elbows, the memory of his kiss, her first, alive in her stomach as if it had been caught there, netted like a butterfly. Renee was squeezed in practically on Blue’s lap, half cut out of the photo, her head on Blue’s shoulder as it so often was, as natural as sunlight on trees. And finally, Hannah was on the other side of Maya, her arms outstretched in raucous exuberance, her red hair a wild burst, salted and wind dried after a day in the ocean, her face blurred with laughter at something Maya had said just before the camera clicked.
They’d been captured in perfect summation—four best friends celebrating their recent graduation from high school.
“I love us,” Hannah said. “Best vacation ever!”
Maya placed the photo in her purse. “Promise we’ll come back every year, no matter where we are, for the rest of our lives.”
“Yes!” everyone agreed.
“Should we make that pact in blood?” Hannah asked.
“I think we’re good with just...ya know...saying it,” Maya said.
“So...” Blue said, nodding toward the parking lot where they’d hidden the booze in the car trunk. “I feel like I’m starting to regain my balance. Round twelve, anyone?”
Hannah hit speed dial on her phone as they walked. A moment later Henry’s voice came on the line. She pictured him, hair probably slicked from a post-tennis shower, a wry smile at the corners of his mouth. He was not handsome in the classic sense, but there was a benevolence in his eyes, a kind of soft patience, that made him so. He said something Hannah couldn’t make out over the staticky sound of a local band playing through bad amps, the tinny merry-go-round music, the meandering crowd full of parents and children. But she heard the tender tone of his voice. He missed her.
She put him on speaker and held her phone out to the girls.
“Hi, Henry!” the other three shouted, sticking their faces into the phone, making kissing noises.
“Loons,” he said, and they laughed. Though he belonged to Hannah, he was theirs, too, the extra limb.
Hannah took the phone off speaker, put one finger in her ear to block out the noise.
“Are you having fun?” Henry asked.
“Yes, but I miss you.” She missed him every summer when the girls took their annual trip to stay at Blue’s nana’s beach house. But the longing itself was part of the fun, a romantic ache that reminded her how lucky she was.
He said something she couldn’t hear.
“What?” she said.
“Come home.”
Her heart whooshed. “We’re leaving soon. Can’t wait to see you!”
“Bring me a souvenir!” he said. And then, “Never mind. All I need is you.”
“Cheeseball,” Hannah teased, but her face hurt from smiling so big. “Love you so much.” She ended the call, already daydreaming of their future. She imagined the two of them renting a small summer cottage that sat watch over the ocean, a hammock lolling in the breeze, a picnic table where she could sit on pink-lit summer evenings and write. As much as she was excited to attend college together, she was more eager for what followed, for the realizing of all their plans and dreams. Henry would take over his parents’ newspaper, and Hannah would teach college classes while she worked on her book. They would have a house on an intimate East Coast campus outside Boston or perhaps in Maine, hosting potluck dinners with bright-eyed students and fellow teachers, talking poetry and literature and current events. She would catch Henry watching her from across the table—he loved when she got passionate about things—and she would smile back at him. How safe she would feel being a family with him, living in a warm, loving house just like his parents’ home, and nothing like her own, so depressive and quiet.
“Hurry, Hannah,” Maya called.
Hannah moved to catch up with the others, pausing just a moment to consider a psychic at a booth, a young woman with white-blond hair, a sharp, narrow chin and big, loopy earrings that hung like small nooses. She made a mental note to tell the girls about her. It would be fun to get their palms read before they left.
At the car, Blue dug into the trunk and retrieved the wine coolers and a water for Hannah, who was their designated driver, and passed them around.
“A toast,” Maya said. “To you three lucky bitches who get to be friends with me!”
Maya waited, arm in the air, while they stared at her. Blue coughed.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “You’re shy. I get it. To us, then.”
The girls raised their arms high and clinked, faces glowing with hope, the sun igniting in the glass bottles as if they had caught it there.
“To us,” they all said in unison, four forever friends on the cusp of their lives.
TWELVE YEARS LATER
HANNAH
Another July. Hannah sat by Henry’s bedside, her wild red hair pulled into a tight bun, her pale face underlaid with gray like winter light. She stared out the window as she so often did these days, the view familiar as a painting, inciting surprise and a sense of unreality anytime life appeared inside it, a person passing by, for instance, or a bird fluttering past.
The day was in slow retreat, the night sky drawing its navy blue blind upon it. Soon a nurse would be in to give Henry a sponge bath. Hannah closed the book of crossword puzzles she’d brought, as if they could actually do one together. On the nightstand, a picture of the two of them at senior prom, their smiles almost too big for their faces, Maya, Blue and Renee goofing in the background. She’d planned to put it in the frame she’d brought back for him from the summer fair all those years before, but then as soon as the girls got home from their trip, tragedy had struck, and she couldn’t bring herself to even look at the gift he’d been unable to receive.