A squirrel poked its head out of the branches.
“Holy shit!” Dom swore. Mom smacked the back of his head.
Max, Gabe, and Jonah all got to their feet and the sound of all the chairs scraping back startled the squirrel, who jumped off the branch onto the floor.
Alice screamed and jumped away from the table. “It’s the racoons all over again!”
Mom stepped back too, but she had the good sense to grab the wine bottle and a glass as she went. Iris, Stella, and Garth were freaking out. Which also sent the squirrel into a tizzy, and the poor animal darted left and then right toward the fireplace.
“Don’t let it—” Max shouted, but the squirrel must have thought better of his plans and took an immediate right and jumped up onto the table.
Everyone screamed.
“Jesus,” Max said. “Someone open the front door.”
The squirrel ran right down the center of the table, over all the food, through the salad bowl, sending lettuce flying.
“Come on!” Alice cried, throwing her arms up in the air.
“I got it, Dad,” Josie said, walking backward toward the door. Without looking she opened it, hoping the cold air might lure the squirrel outside.
Max tried to scare the squirrel in the direction of the front entry, but all the squirrel did was knock over a candle. Helen, acting fast, threw her glass of water over the flame. And the squirrel, instead of heading for the front door, went running and then leaped off the end of the table toward the kitchen.
“Not my kitchen!” Alice cried and went running after it.
Dom and Max followed and from the kitchen there was the sound of glass shattering, and Alice swearing a blue streak.
The chill from the open front door behind Josie got to be too much, and she imagined other squirrels in the forest, hearing the plight of their brother, might come charging in to save the day. And Alice would have a conniption.
So she turned to shut the door.
But there was a man standing there.
Tall and wide, with a backpack over his shoulder. He looked like he’d walked himself here over a million miles, or perhaps through a bunch of years. He had a beard and a bright red hat pulled low on his head.
“Hi,” he said, and his voice sent chills down Josie’s spine. Across all her skin.
No. It can’t be.
At almost the exact same time she thought, Please. Please let it be him.
And then he smiled, his half smile hiding the crooked tooth he was embarrassed about.
“Cameron.” His name tumbled past her numb lips.
“Long time no see, Josie,” he said.
6
CAMERON
In Italy, four summers ago, before YouTube changed everything, Cameron had been broke as broke could be. So he’d agreed to work for room and board for this absolute asshole of an artist. He was a glassblower high in the hills of Tuscany. And Cameron had worked like a dog for Carlo in his sweltering hot workshop and then ended up having to cook for the guy, too. Which wasn’t such a chore—the guy pressed his own olive oil and he had chickens and goats, and lemon trees and rosemary grew wild in the yard.
One afternoon, after the ovens were turned off and the hills had cooled down, and Carlo had finished his second, or more likely third, bottle of wine, he’d grunted at Cameron to accompany him.
With another bottle of wine and the juice glasses Carlo like to drink from, they gathered up the week’s successes—the glass pieces Carlo hadn’t smashed off the blow pipe—and carried them in their arms up the crumbling stone steps to the top of the hill behind the house. Lizards scattered and grasshoppers bounced out of their way.
The air had smelled like rosemary and sunshine, and the light was syrup poured over the hills, and it was—for a moment—worth the burns and the work and the crap mattress in the guest room.
And then Carlo, taking a great swig of wine, started tossing the glass over the side of the hill onto the flat patio stones below where they shattered. Spectacularly.
“What are you doing?” Cameron had asked.
Carlo explained—in a voice that was passionate but slurred—that the glass was not perfect. And therefore worthless.
Carlo lit a smoke and reached for the pieces in Cameron’s arms. Cameron, exhausted and burned and a little drunk on the Tuscan sunlight, but just figuring out who he was as a chef and a man, tried to hold onto the lime green squiggle pieces in his arms even harder.
Because he was realizing that perfection was cold. And destructive. And he was about the imperfect. The messy and flawed. The welcoming and warm.
But the old man did not give up and there was actually a tussle. One of the pieces slipped out of Cameron’s hands and fell onto the rough stones they were standing on, and for one second it really seemed like it wasn’t going to shatter.
It held its shape despite the awful cracking noise.
Phew, he remembered thinking. I saved it.
And then it collapsed into pieces.
The scene in the Riverview was exactly like that moment.
No one said anything.
No one moved.
No one was even breathing. They were frozen.
And for a second it was like this wasn’t even happening at all.
Am I dreaming this?
Josie, standing near the door, looked like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole, and he understood that desire so well he nearly said something about it. Nearly made a joke. Like everything that had happened between them hadn’t, and they were just the kids they’d been.
But then she turned away as if looking at him was too damn hard.
And he felt the echo of the slick shame he’d spent years dealing with. Faint, sure, but there all the same.
And Helen—who, it was good to see, was actually pregnant and not just throwing that card around willy-nilly, winced and lifted her hand in a tiny wave.
And the room absolutely exploded.
“Cameron!” Everyone was talking at once, yelling, running toward the door. Of course Alice was there first. He’d counted on that. Like walking into hostile territory and seeing one familiar face.
“What…what are you doing here?” Alice asked, holding onto him so hard he could feel the knuckles of her fingers wrapped in his shirt.
“A pregnant blackmailer was involved,” he said, smiling at everyone lined up over Alice’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe it,” Alice whispered, and he could feel her tears building in the hitch of her shoulders. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Come on, Alice,” he whispered in her ear. “This is hard enough.”
She sucked in a breath and stepped away, nothing but smiles. Helen was next. Delia. Patrick and Iris. The kids, none of whom were really kids anymore. Gabe. Jonah and Daphne. Garth, a teenager, tried to help him with his backpack.
“It’s heavy,” Cameron warned him.
“It’s a backpack,” Garth said with all the assurance of a teenager. Don’t tell me what I don’t know. Cameron remembered that feeling so well.
“All right,” Cameron said and shrugged out of the bag, which immediately toppled Garth over the edge of a chair.
“Holy crap, what’s in that thing?” Garth asked, wrestling it down to the ground.
“My whole life,” Cameron answered. Which sounded dramatic and like an exaggeration, but really wasn’t.