“And what truth do you hold?”
“That goodness exists here too. I choose to focus on that.”
“And what about your work? Aren’t you focusing on evil when you spend your time raising awareness of all the children who are harmed, taken, or murdered each year?”
“But not out of cynicism. Surely you can see that, Will. I do it out of a desire to bring attention to what needs to be changed. I can’t sit here and look at the world and see everyone as a potential criminal.”
“And you think that’s what I do?”
“Isn’t it?”
I had no answer.
“The work I do, Will, I guess I mean it for Lucy. Have you thought about what you could do for her, in honor of her?”
“Christ, Sophie. Don’t pull that guilt-trip bullshit on me.”
“It’s not bullshit, Will. It’s truth. She would hate this, you know.”
Again I looked out at the harbor, ignoring the group of teenagers, instead fixing my gaze on a sailboat as it tilted into the wind and curved around a buoy with ease and headed for the horizon.
“She would hate knowing she was the reason you’re drinking.” Her hand still rested on my knee, and she moved it an inch or two until it was on my thigh, spreading the warmth. “Or that you hit that reporter because of her.”
“Not because of her, Sophie. Never because of her. Because of what happened to her.”
“She would still hate it.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about that now, do we? She’ll never know.”
A spasm of pain crossed her face. “You’re a better person than this, Will. Can’t you be that person? If not for me, then for Lucy.”
“I might have been that person once, Soph, but this is the person I am now.”
She didn’t move, but I could feel her withdraw, pull into herself.
“Last month,” she said, “in Washington, I had a lot of time to think. I couldn’t stop thinking about the work Father Gervase came to see you about. The painting of the saints.”
“I told you, Soph. I’m not interested.”
“I think you should consider it, Will.”
“Why?”
“For Lucy. You could do it in honor of Lucy.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. What you’re saying is you won’t. You don’t want to.”
I didn’t bother to respond.
“Here’s the hard truth, Will. These past months have been beyond horrific. A nightmare. But we didn’t get to choose that. What we do get to choose is how we react. We get to determine how to make sense of something that’s fundamentally senseless. And we get to—and I don’t mean to sound righteous about this, Will—but we have an opportunity to make the world better. I know if Lucy had lived she would have made the world a finer place, and you know that too. She was robbed of that chance, but we can do it for her, Will. We can do it for her.”
Again, as I had in past months, I had the feeling that Sophie and I were in separate lifeboats, drifting farther and farther apart in our sea of grief.
“Lucy’s gone, and nothing we do will change that, Will. We can’t make that go away, and I don’t think the grief will ever go away. How could it? But at least we can choose to find meaning in it. I guess that’s what I was trying to say a minute ago. We can dedicate a part of our work to her. We can try to make the world a better place.”
“Yeah, well here’s a news flash for you, Sophie. The world isn’t a better place.”
On the beach, the students had begun to gather their coolers and the Frisbee and started heading toward their cars. The sailboat I saw earlier was a white speck on the horizon. I considered what it would be like to wade into the water, walk until I was waist deep and then swim, swim for that horizon, swim beyond the jetties and buoys, swim until exhaustion-weighted muscles and water claimed me. For a moment, the pull of the idea, the release it offered, the seductive possibility of it, shook me.
“Will?” Sophie shifted again on the bench. “I worry about you, Will.”
The white sail grew tinier. “No need.”
“Why not get away for a bit?” she said. “Take a break from everything. You know that Amy and Jim would love to have you visit them.”
I didn’t bother to respond.
“Or you could go somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Manhattan. You haven’t been there in a long time.”
“Ah, the geographic cure. Brilliant.”
“I’m just trying to help, Will.”
“I know.” Maybe her suggestion wasn’t such a bad idea. I tried to imagine being someplace where every day, everywhere I went and everything I saw wouldn’t hold reminders of Lucy. But even as this thought occurred, I knew the futility of it. Wherever I went, as long as I was alive, I carried it with me.
“Think about it, Will. You haven’t left since—well, since we lost Lucy.”
“We lost Lucy? You make it sound like we misplaced her. We didn’t lose her. She was taken from us.” I should have stopped there, but of course I didn’t. Looking back now I see how lost I was in my grief. “She was murdered.”
Her cheeks reddened as if I had slapped her, and she lifted her hand from my thigh. Her expression hardened, and I saw I had lost her. Again.
“Soph—”
“Forget it, Will. I can’t talk to you about this.”
“No, I’m sorry. Listen. You’re right. A change might be good. Let’s get out of here. Let’s drive up the shore, have dinner somewhere.” For one split moment, it almost seemed possible to slip back to our former selves, to a prior life that held spontaneous car rides along Route 1, exploring side roads, discovering restaurants and antique shops, stopping at small motels, checking in without luggage, driving toward a future that held more hope than despair. Hope that wouldn’t end in despair and more grief.
“I don’t think so, Will.” Her voice was flat, and her posture, when she rose, was defeated. “Not tonight.”
“Soon then?” I held on to the fleeting glimpse of that other life.
“I don’t know, Will.”
“Soph—”
“I don’t know where we are heading, Will. I just need—time.”
“Right,” I said. End of conversation.
She bent over and pressed her lips against my cheek. “I love you,” she said. “Nothing will change that.”
I watched as she walked away, her footsteps in the sand forming a parallel line to the shoreline and the incoming tide. I followed her progress back toward the harbor, past the child constructing a castle and his two little sisters, now both of them making snow angels in the sand.
CHAPTER NINETEEN