James grabbed my hand so suddenly that I started, but he didn’t seem to see me. He watched Wren with a kind of desperation in his expression, swallowing repeatedly, as if he might be sick at any second. Filippa trembled on my other side.
“Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I reread Twelfth Night,” Wren said. “We all know how it ends—happily, of course—but there’s sadness there, too. Olivia has lost a brother. So has Viola, but they handle it very differently. Viola changes her name, her whole identity, and almost immediately falls in love. Olivia shuts herself away from the world, and refuses to let love in at all. Viola is trying desperately to forget her brother. Olivia is maybe remembering him too much. So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?” She looked up from the sand and found us, gaze drifting from face to face. Meredith, Alexander, Filippa, me, and finally James. “You all know that Richard refuses to be ignored,” she said, speaking to us, and no one else. “But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, Absent thee from felicity awhile. But just awhile. The show’s not over. Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight. The rest of us must go on.”
She stopped, stepped back from the podium. A few hesitant, heartbroken smiles had appeared in the audience, but not for any of us. We held one another’s hands so hard we couldn’t feel them anymore. Wren walked back to her bench on unsteady legs. She sank down between her aunt and uncle, stayed upright for a second or two, and then collapsed into her uncle’s lap. He bent over her protectively, tried to shield her with his arms, and soon they were both shaking so badly I couldn’t tell which one of them was sobbing.
SCENE 7
An impromptu wake happened at the Bore’s Head. We were all in desperate need of a drink, and none of us wanted to return to isolation in Hallsworth House. Our table felt miserably empty. Richard’s usual seat was unoccupied (nobody even wanted to look at the blank space where he should have been), Wren was already en route to the airport, and most other people only came over long enough to express their condolences and raise a glass to Richard before departing again. We didn’t speak much. Alexander had paid for an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, which sat uncapped in the middle of the table, the contents slowly diminishing until there was only an inch of liquid left.
Alexander: “What time is Camilo coming to pick us up?”
Filippa: “Soon. Does anyone have a flight earlier than nine?”
We all shook our heads together.
Alexander: “James, what time do you get in?”
James: “Four in the morning.”
Filippa: “And your dad’s coming to get you at that hour?”
James: “No. I’ll take a cab.”
Meredith: “Alexander, where are you even going?”
Alexander: “Staying with my foster brother in Philly. Fuck knows where my mom is. You?”
She tilted her glass, watched the watery dregs of Scotch trickle around the melting ice cubes. “My parents are in Montreal with David and his wife,” she said. “So it’ll just be me and Caleb in the apartment, if he ever comes home from work.”
I wanted to comfort her somehow, but I didn’t dare touch her, not in front of the others. There was a tightness in my chest, as if all the shock and horror of the last few days had strained my heart.
Me: “We have the most depressing holiday plans of all time.”
James: “I think Wren’s are probably worse.”
Alexander: “God, fuck you for even saying that.”
James: “Just providing some perspective.”
Meredith: “Do you think she’ll come back after break?”
Silence came crashing down on the table.
“What?” Alexander said, loudly.
Meredith leaned back, glanced at the next table. “I mean, think about it,” she said, at a quarter of Alexander’s volume. “She’s going to go home, bury her cousin, have three days to mourn, and then come all the way back across the ocean for exams and auditions again? The stress could kill her.” She shrugged. “Maybe she won’t come back. Maybe she’ll finish next year, or not at all. I don’t know.”
“Did she say something to you?” James demanded.
“No! She just—I wouldn’t want to come back right away if I were her. Would you?”
“Christ.” Alexander dragged his hands across his face. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Besides Meredith, nobody had. We stared down into our drinks, cheeks pink with shame.
“She has to come back,” James said, looking from me to Meredith as if one of us could somehow reassure him. “She has to.”
“That might not be best for her,” Meredith said. “She may need some time away. From Dellecher, and—all of us.”
James was still for a moment, then stood and left the table without another word. Alexander watched him go, gloomily. “And then there were four,” he said.
SCENE 8
My family home in Ohio was not a place I enjoyed visiting. It was one of twelve mostly identical houses (all clapboard, painted barely different shades of beige) on a quiet suburban street. Each came complete with a black mailbox, gray driveway, and jewel-green lawn dotted with little round boxwoods, some of which had already been wrapped in white Christmas lights.