Henry pressed himself into the back of the couch as if he could disappear into its cushions. His eyes were haunted as he stared, quivering, into the barrel of the revolver. He had never looked so young, so unbearably, frailly human.
“I’ll give you whatever you want!” Hannah cried. “I know where all the good stuff is.” It wasn’t true, she didn’t know what Henry’s parents had or where it was or if it would even make a difference, sate evil. But she had to say something, stand in the way of the nightmare, change the direction of its inevitable unimaginable end. And maybe, she thought, maybe that was all they wanted, just to rob them. And then they would leave. They would leave. Please, God, they would leave.
“Talk.” The man turned to her, his gun still pointed in Henry’s face.
She made quick calculations. Could Henry grab the gun? Where were the others? Could she make a run for it and distract them? But she saw that there was no other move to make. She was trapped. “I’ll show you. Please.”
He moved toward her, away from Henry, sidling up to her like a hiss. She refused to look at Henry, only at the man, willing him to put the gun away. He’s going to rape me, she thought. Something in his face made her think that. His eyes hate-black and dead. She started to whimper, but still she was grateful he was moving away from Henry, glad for that gun to be out of his face. “I’ll show you,” she heard herself say, so much braver than she felt. “Anything you want.”
“Hannah,” Henry said, and she knew by the desperate clutch of her name in his voice that he understood the sacrifice she was making, that he wanted to save her as much as she wanted to save him. There was so much in that one word, all their love, all their despair locked together in this unbearable moment. She wouldn’t look at him. To look at love in a room so suffocated with evil would break her. And then the man turned, she didn’t know why, and the shot was so loud, mixed with a scream that was at once coming from her and outside her, the sound of her scream and the shot mixed as one, slashing open the night, her whole world, and then Henry slumped on the couch and they pushed her up the staircase as if there was still life left in her, as if the bullet hadn’t ripped straight through everything that mattered.
“Henry!” she screamed, her voice annihilating all but its own sound, clawing at the air to make the nightmare stop. She saw the red stain spreading across the tan couch like an ink spill, and everything was warped, happening in some alternate universe, unreal because it had to be unreal, because she had just been at a party and now love was gone and she had failed to stop it.
The train shrieked to a stop in Amagansett. Jerked her back into the moment. She found her breath. Deep, deep. It never worked. She didn’t even mind, in a weird way, the piercing pain, the way her heart pounded. Sometimes it was purging to relive the horror, like she was sick with memory and had momentarily expelled it. Well, she was, really. Sick with it. And to look at it head-on reminded her—this is why I am the way I am. She could be gentler with herself, forgive herself her neurosis, her inability to live. Of course, of course, how could it be otherwise? Unless she had listened to the psychic. Gone the other way at the fork. It would have been otherwise then. They wouldn’t have even been at Henry’s that night if only she’d done that. Or was that magical thinking? She didn’t know, she didn’t know.
She thought of that flashback—Blue in a ripped and bloody sweatshirt...where did that fit in? Blue wasn’t in the room when Henry was shot. Unless she was remembering it wrong...
She leaned her head back. A man in tennis clothes climbed on, took the seat across from her. Why did people do this when there were other open seats on the train? He pulled out a copy of Dan’s Papers, flipped it open, made her invisible. Good. Just the way she liked it.
She wished she had something to read—remembered she left her paperback in the rental car.
She shouldn’t even be on this train. It was rash and stupid. She was missing everything. But the constant haunt of what if had forced her hand. If something happened to Henry, she would be responsible. She already was. On one side of the fork will be a boy who makes you feel safe. The other side is uncertain and unknown. Take the harder road or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Hannah had taken the safe road. And the psychic was right: she’d regretted it ever since. Oh God, so much regret.
The train restarted its loud, lulling chug.
The man across from her wetted his index finger and thumb and flipped the page. She shuddered. She braced for him to do it again, put his fingers to his mouth after touching the dirty newspaper. But something caught her eye. A jolt in her chest like her heart had been hooked and yanked upward. She leaned forward. The man lowered the page and eyed her with irritation.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, sitting back. She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded. “Would you mind if... Can I see that for one quick sec?”
He raised an eyebrow, reluctantly handed her the paper. She looked closer at the picture in the ad, checked the date. She felt her face animate with shock. It couldn’t be her. Could it? But it was. She was almost certain. She was definitely certain. It had to be a sign. Right? That she should see this now, when she was once again at a fork, uncertain if she was going in the right direction. It was the most perfectly obvious sign imaginable, really. No room for doubt. She sat with this, her body vibrating. It was energy coursing through her, unfamiliar, long lost. She recognized it now—hope. The train pulled in to East Hampton. She got up, paper clutched in one hand, bag in the other, and ran for the door.
“Hey, you can’t just take that,” the man shouted after her.
She stepped out into sunlight, warm and welcoming. Instantly she felt relief. For once she was not exhausted. She was exhilarated. She was free from worry. Because finally, finally a certainty. A sign. A direction.
She called the girls but no one was picking up—they were probably at the beach, their phones in their bags. She couldn’t bear to wait for a train. She flagged a waiting cab, threw her bag in the back seat, gave the driver the address. It was so strange to be going back the way she’d just come, like the world was a movie on rewind, only more vivid, everything sharp and immediate. What if she was being foolish? Well, of course she was! And yet. Despite the irrationality of it all—a psychic, my God—she had that rare, too-rare feeling, that gut instinct of rightness. And wasn’t it true that life sometimes did that? Just put something in front of you that was too uncanny, too coincidental, too perfect to deny. The whole way back she kept looking at the newspaper page in her hand, energy thrumming inside her as she played back the random circumstances that led her to see it just when she needed it most. These were the kinds of moments that could almost make her believe in God. Or in something anyway.
The cab pulled up to the house and she handed cash to the driver and climbed out. The girls weren’t there, just as she expected. She changed into her suit, slathered on a thick application of sunscreen, a cover-up over that, then ran to the beach, clutching her giant hat, her flip-flops nipping at her heels. She couldn’t wait to surprise her friends.