I had heard, through school, through rumors and the spin everyone put on the story, that Caleb, now officially an adult, would be granted temporary custody of Mia. That the money would still be his, but that there was a death certificate to undo, a mess of paperwork to sort through. And so Caleb is, in a sense, still a ghost. Existing neither here nor there.
But the person on my porch is real. And I remember, again, that I loved him once.
“Come in,” I say. “I have some of your things.”
I lead him upstairs, where I’ve kept the fragments that led me to him. The shoebox, with the D on it, the photos of him and his father, from years earlier. The Swiss Army knife, found in his attic, that I kept as I swam through the river. The seashell. His house key. And last, the pictures of us.
“Jessa,” he starts, and how can anyone begin to even say it? To sum it all up, in a box? In a sentence?
How can I absolve him, and myself, for all of it?
“I know,” I say.
You know you’re near when you can hear them.
The gulls.
They call loudly, from the distance, in the summer.
In the winter, there are fewer of them, and the sound is fainter, but they’re still there. Coming in from the north, to replace the ones who fly south. A permanent fixture.
I crack the car window, out of habit, like I’m waiting for them. And when I hear the first call, I know I’m there.
—
I’m at the beach, and I’m alone, because it’s still cold. It’s just me and the birds, and I don’t mind it.
I wrap my jacket tighter around myself as the wind blows up off the ocean, the sand getting caught in my hair.
In the distance, I see a single shape, running from the direction of the pink hotel. He’s not the most graceful, and he looks like he’s about to keel over, but he keeps a steady, even pace. He slows when he approaches, the sound of his steps growing louder, along with his breathing.
“I thought I broke you of beach runs,” I call over my shoulder.
He holds up his finger, bends over, rests his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. “I’m determined not to lose next time,” he says.
I laugh. “Lose to who?” Because Caleb is leaving. I know they’ve seen each other, because they live back to back. I’m sure they had their own things to work out.
“To you, Jessa,” he says. “What, you scared to race again next summer?”
“No, I’m not scared,” I say.
“Anyway,” he says, “baseball season starts soon. And I really do need to stay in shape.” He looks back down the beach. “God, that run really is the devil.”
“I know it is,” I say, “and it doesn’t really get any easier, for the record.”
“Noted, and noticed. What are you doing today?” he asks, changing the subject, but I’m not ready for it. Not for this question. Not for an answer.
“My big plan is to do this,” I say, gesturing to the beach. “Oh, and Julian’s coming home tonight. So we’ll probably have family time.”
He waits for a few minutes, then says, “I’d join you in the whole watching-the-ocean-and-thinking-about-life thing, but I’m kind of gross right now. So, I’ll see you?”
I smile over my shoulder. “See you,” I say.
I watch him walk back over the dunes, to the wooden steps.
In the next few months, he’ll be hearing from colleges. In less than a year, he’ll be gone. I don’t know how much time we have. I don’t know what will happen between then and now. I don’t know whether it’s worth the risk.
I don’t know whether I can ever trust myself with someone again, whether I’ll feel the need to hold back, pull back, always wondering if I’m getting the truth.
But I do know certain things about Max. And I know things about myself now, too.
He looks back once, and I wave, caught, not bothering to hide it. He laughs as he walks away.
It feels like the start of something here. Still, I worry we’re already too close to an end.
Except maybe it goes farther back, our beginning. Maybe it was a month ago, on the side of the river, hidden by the trees. Or maybe the start was that day over the summer in a field, looking for Saturn. Or the moment on the bridge back in the spring, when he held me, and I fell. Maybe it’s even earlier. Him in my kitchen, with my brother, when I gave him a drink.
No, my brother said, in warning.
Yes, I think.
It’s three days after Christmas, and the sky is a clear, deceptive blue. There’s no snow on the ground. It could be spring, if not for the trees missing the leaves. It could be summer, if I lie on my back, looking straight up.
Which I’m now doing.
Julian looks at me funny from the sliding glass doors to the kitchen, but he doesn’t say anything. He knocks on the window, holds up a mug of hot chocolate, offering. But I shake my head and go back to the sky.
My phone dings beside me. It’s an email from a store, no signed name. But I feel the smile growing. I can’t stop it.
It’s a gift for an app that’s less than two dollars. It’s the perfect gift.
It’s a night sky app. I download it onto my phone and hold it toward the daytime sky, scanning it across the horizon. And my screen lights up with all the things I can’t see, that are there anyway.
“What are you doing?” Julian asks.
“Look,” I say, and he tips his head to the sky. “Perseus.”
“Um,” he says.
“You can’t see it,” I say. “But it’s there. It’s still there.”
“If you say so, Jessa,” he says.
I catch Julian staring up at the sky, his eyes squinting, and I say, “Hey, Julian, was it worth it? All the years of baseball games and practices and clinics?”
He tilts his head, confused.
“I mean, are you happy?”
He grins. “Well, I do hate it when I lose. Or when I have a crappy outing. But yeah, Jessa, I love the game. Being on a team. The good days. Yes, it was worth it.” Then he laughs. “You know, no one’s ever asked me that before.”
“Huh,” I say.
“Don’t stay out too long,” he says. “It’s colder than it seems.”
Julian closes the door, but he leaves me the hot chocolate. I sigh, and I take it.
Then I sit up and send Max a message: I hear you can see Saturn tonight.
This is a lie. I don’t know whether you can see Saturn tonight. But I’ve made up my mind, and I hope this means that he has, too.
He writes back: I know just the place.
—
I don’t even wait for dusk. I know it’s coming, but I’m too early. Still, I bundle up in layers. A jacket, a scarf, a hat, gloves. “I’m taking the car,” I call to Julian, and I don’t give him a chance to complain.
I pull into the parking lot, empty except for one other car—old, broken in, familiar. I have to go through a group of trees before the field, and at first I don’t see him.
But then I do. He’s lying on his back between the goalposts, holding his phone to the sky, just as I was doing earlier.
He sits up when he hears my footsteps, and the look on his face almost kills me. The unrestrained smile, holding back nothing.
“You’re here early,” he says.
“So are you,” I say.