“Yeah,” Henry said with a short, humorless laugh. “She called later that night, I guess so my dad didn’t wouldn’t call the police. But then we didn’t hear anything from her until she contacted us two years ago, when she wanted a divorce.”
This was somehow continuing to get worse. “You haven’t seen your mother in five years?” I asked, a little faintly.
“Nope,” he said, a hard edge coming into his voice. “And I don’t know if I ever will again.” He looked over at me. “You know what the worst part was? My dad and I were at a baseball game. She just left Davy alone in the house.”
I did the math and realized that Davy would have been seven then. “Was he…” I swallowed hard. “I mean, did anything…”
Henry shook his head, thankfully stopping me from having to finish the sentence. “He was fine,” he said. “But I think it’s the reason he got so into wilderness survival after that. Even though he tells us it’s because of a show he saw on Discovery.”
Slowly, things were beginning to come together. “Is this why you moved up here full-time?” I asked. It was also, of course, the reason that none of us had seen Mrs. Crosby the whole time we’d been here.
“Yeah,” he said. “My dad needed to do something else, find a job where he could be around more. He’d always liked it up here. We had to move houses, because in the old place Davy and I were sharing a room. Not that he ended up needing a room of his own,” he added, his lips curling in a small smile as he looked toward his yard, where Davy’s tent sat. Henry shrugged, and kicked at the water again. “My dad was kind of a mess for a while after she left,” he said, his voice quieter. I waited for him to say more, give me details about it, but he was already continuing. “So moving here… it just seemed like the right thing to do.”
I nodded, but was still trying to wrap my head around everything. It suddenly struck with a force that sent a chill through me, that only a week or two after I had suddenly left with no explanation, his mother had done the same. “Henry,” I said quietly, and he looked back at me. “I’m really, really sorry.” I hoped he knew that I meant it, and wasn’t just tuning out these words as I had been doing with everyone who had tried to offer them to me.
“Thanks,” he said quietly, but not meeting my eye, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. “I just wanted to let you know why I flipped out like that.”
“It didn’t look like flipping out,” I said.
“I tend to flip out very quietly,” Henry said, deadpan, and I smiled. “Sorry to tell you all this,” he said with a shrug.
“I’m glad you did,” I said. He met my eye and gave me a small smile.
I realized there was something I had to tell him in return. I took a breath, but somehow, telling him out here in the darkness didn’t seem quite as impossible. “My dad’s sick,” I said. Immediately after I said it, I could feel my eyes prick with tears, and my bottom lip start to shake. “He’s not going to get better,” I said, making myself go on, and sparing Henry having to ask. “That’s the real reason—” My voice caught in my throat and I looked down at my feet in the water, forcing myself to get through it. “The real reason we’re up here. To have a last summer.” As I finished speaking, I felt a tear spill over, and I wiped it away, fast, hoping Henry hadn’t seen, willing myself to keep it together just a little bit longer.
“I’m so sorry, Taylor,” Henry said after a moment. I looked over at him, and saw in his face something I hadn’t seen from any of the people who knew—a recognition, maybe, of what I was going through. Or someone else who, at least, had gone though something that most other people were unable to really understand.
“I probably should have told you that first day,” I said. I ran my hand over the smooth planks of the dock and thought that it was fitting, maybe, that we were here, at the place where we’d first met again—that we had come full circle like this. “But I think I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.”
“I can understand that,” he said. We sat in silence for a moment, and the breeze kicked up again, blowing Henry’s hair over his forehead. “What you said earlier,” he said. “About being friends. I think we should do it.”
“Really?” I asked. Henry, his face serious, nodded. “But what about what you said—about all the stuff that’s happened in the last five years?”
Henry shrugged and gave me a smile. “So we’ll catch up,” he said. He pulled his feet out of the water and turned to face me. “Should we start now?”
I just stared at him in the moonlight for a second, not quite able to believe that this was being offered to me so readily. It made me ashamed for thinking so little of Henry—feeling like he wouldn’t be willing to forgive me, just because that’s how I would have acted. But in that moment, it was like I’d suddenly been given a second chance. It was one I knew I didn’t deserve, but it was one I was getting anyway. I pulled my feet out of the water as well, and turned toward him. “Yes,” I said, feeling myself begin to smile, just a little. “Now sounds perfect.”