My cousin pauses, knife held aloft. Drew raises his hands.
“I come in peace,” he says gravely. His eyes swivel to mine. “Mae. Nice to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” I say.
He glances at Nah, but she’s spinning off into some other galaxy, looking at one of the pumpkins with a frown. I wonder if she’s remembering I put a spell on you, Mom using a broom as a mic.
“Er.” Drew frowns, his hands digging deep into his pockets, like he’s going to find the origins of the universe down there. “Just … heard a lot about you.”
I grab my chai, take a sip. I thought they weren’t friends. I can’t believe how little I know about my sister’s life now.
Nate studies him, like Drew’s a plane with a problem. “You go to Saint Francis?”
He nods. “Senior.”
“Where are you applying?” Nate asks, which, admittedly, seems like an aggressive question.
Nah looks over her shoulder. “Is this a police interrogation?”
Drew’s eyes flick to Ben’s MIT sweatshirt. “Not applying anywhere, actually.”
“Military?” I ask. I’m trying. We could connect on that. He looks like maybe … army? Not intense enough to go marines, but you never know.
“Mae’s gonna be a naval aviator,” Ben says, smiling at me.
“So I hear.” Drew’s hands push deeper into his pockets. “That’s really cool.” He hesitates. “I’m afraid you’re oh-for-two on me, though. I’m probably gonna join the union, work on a crew. Like my dad. Or help out at my uncle’s bar.”
“Which bar?” Nate asks, as though this is going to determine everything.
“Nolan’s,” he says. “In Dorchester?”
From the look on Nate’s face, this must be a dodgy bar. But, really, his standards are quite high.
“Not everyone’s like you guys,” Hannah says, glaring at me.
“What? I didn’t—what?” I look at her, then at Ben.
Drew laughs. “It’s cool. I know it’s kind of…” He pulls off his beanie, runs his hand through his hair.
Hannah comes to his side and loops her arm through his. A surprised smile flits across his face.
“Let’s leave the brainiacs to the pumpkin carving,” Nah says. “It’s going to turn into this whole engineering project and—”
My phone rings, and I don’t hear the rest of what she says, because when I turn to look at the screen, I see it’s an unknown number.
Ben notices. Grins. “Think it’s Annapolis?”
“I don’t know why it would be—but I better take it, just in case.”
Nate throws me a towel and I get as much goo off my hands as I can, then grab the phone.
I turn away, into the kitchen.
“Hello?”
“Hi, yes, I’d like to speak with Mae Winters?”
“This is she,” I say.
That’s how Mom answered phones, and I always thought it sounded very professional.
“Hello, Mae.” There’s a pause. “This is Marilyn Cole from the Red Cross.”
All sound fades. There is just the pounding of blood in my ears. The ocean in my body. Surging. A wave. The wave. In me.
“Miss Winters?”
“Yes. Yes?”
Someone touches my elbow. Ben. He looks down at me, concerned. Perhaps I am not hiding the panic in my voice very well.
“I see here that you’re still a minor and that your guardian is … Nora Russo—your aunt, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Nate is there now, saying something to me, but I wave him off.
“Would it be possible for me to speak with her?”
“Anything you have to say, you can say to me.”
There’s a pause.
“I’d really prefer if there was an adult present.”
I look at Nate. “My cousin’s here. He’s an adult. Is that okay?”
“All right. Can I speak with him?”
Now Nah is in the doorway, the guy—Drew—just behind her.
I hold the phone out to Nate.
“It’s the Red Cross. They want to speak to an adult. I don’t know why they won’t just let me—”
He takes the phone. “Hello? Yes. Yes, I am. I understand.”
I watch my cousin’s face as they talk. It goes from concern to a collage of hurt.
“Hold—can you hold on a moment? Thank you.”
I grip Nate’s arm. “Did they find them? Did they?”
Nah walks farther into the kitchen. Stands on the spot she’d been lying in a few weeks ago. A pool of bourbon. Grief whiskey. “What? Who is that?”
“It’s about your mom,” Nate says.
“They found her,” Nah breathes.
Nate’s eyes flick to mine. He nods.
“Dad?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
I hold out my hand and he puts the phone in it. The woman talks to me. I hear mass grave. That’s all I hear. Nate takes the phone from me when I lower it. The woman is still talking. The word sanitation flows into the kitchen.
Hannah looks at me. Mom’s face and hair and smile. She is Mom incarnate, and it hurts so much to look at her.
“A … mass…” I take a breath. “She was in a mass grave.”
Hannah crumples, and Drew holds her up, gets her to the couch in the living room.
The only mass grave I ever saw was in a history book. Of the Shoah. Jews, in Dachau. My mom was in something like that. A body that had DNA samples collected from it by people in HAZMAT suits, maybe, then was tagged for later identification before being placed in a black or orange or white body bag.
Is she still in the bag?
I know she’s gone, but I keep thinking how hard it will be for her to breathe in there.
Ben’s arms go around me, and I hide in him. I want to stay here forever, in this place of coffee and wind.
“I don’t know why I’m feeling so…” I push my forehead into his chest. “I thought—I’d hoped she’d just floated on the sea. With him. And he’s … Where is he?”
I knew it wasn’t possible, wasn’t likely, that they would be together. But knowing they weren’t … I suppose I had engaged in magical thinking. Or a suspension of disbelief. If you don’t know for certain, you can imagine the best outcome of the worst situation.
I look up at Ben. “I didn’t let myself imagine them dying. I wouldn’t. And now—my mind won’t stop. They weren’t together, Ben. They died alone.”
He rests his forehead against mine. He doesn’t say anything, but he is like the rocks he studies, so solid and warm.
The garage door shudders, then the back door opens and Aunt Nora comes in with grocery bags. Uncle Tony is behind her. They stop talking. They stare at us.
Nate hangs up the phone. “They found Aunt Lila,” he says, so soft, so gentle.
But still, Aunt Nora drops her groceries and the eggs break.
There’s crying.
She is pulling me to her.
Later—I don’t know when; I have lost the ability to organize time or anything, but at some point, Ben materializes from a corner, says something to Nate, crosses to me.