The Party
On the morning of the party, rain hit the bedroom windows in blustery waves. It had a sly quality, that rain, tapering to near silence before striking again. I lay awake, listening. Even during the storm’s quiet lulls, I was aware of it breathing, building, returning.
Will stirred beside me. “No,” he groaned. “Not rain.”
He propped himself on his elbows and looked toward the large bay window. A thick curtain of rain blocked the view of the Pacific Ocean.
When Will noticed that I was awake, he kissed my shoulder. “You haven’t been up all night worrying about the party, have you?” he asked. “This storm—”
“No.” I wrapped my arm around him and rested my head on his bare chest. I wasn’t worried about the party, and it wasn’t the rain that had roused me from sleep. I’d dreamed of swallowing a red bird whole and then awakened abruptly, heart racing. I’d had the same dream many times, but it never failed to leave me unnerved. It was soreal. I’d felt the flutterof the bird in my throat, the weight of its still-beating body in my chest.
When I was a little girl my father told me that red birds held the spirits of departed loved ones.The past never leaves us,he’d say.It only changes shape.He’d meant to comfort me, but instead the image haunted me. And how could it not? Even now, there were people from my past I would have done anything to see again—and others who the thought of seeing again left me blinking up at a dark ceiling, terrified.
Another letter had arrived that week, its envelope smudged and ragged. I did not need to open it to know that it had come from Horseshoe Cliff. I wondered how he had found my new address so quickly. I hid the letter with the others. Even the handwriting on those letters was menacing, a tangle of fishhooks glinting at the back of a dark drawer.
I know what you did, Merrow Shawe.
All that you have, I can take away.
Will eyed the rain-streaked window. Despite the heavy morning light, despite his pensive expression, his face seemed to contain a glow. Even when he was worried, Will emanated optimism. Of all his fortunes, this seemed to me the most valuable. It certainly made him charming company, beloved by many, his gaze so kind and blue, his temperament so calm and compassionate. He was also intelligent, a walking encyclopedia, a curious student of the world who loved history, art, and literature. What I liked most about Will was how much heenjoyed reading, and how serious his expression turned with a book in his hand.
I often experienced a strange longing when I looked at him, a feeling of coveting something that was already mine.
Now, I hugged him. My skin was dark against his. I swam every day, and my arms were brown and freckled from the sun. I swam even on the days when I knew I shouldn’t, when the surf teemed with rage and the undertow threatened to make every stroke my last. The ocean swept through my mind, swelling it with memories, and then cleared it, dumping me on the sand exhausted and sore. Over the years, my body had been marked countless times by wayward waves that knocked me against rocks and jagged shells. You had to know where to look for my scars, hidden as they were among freckles.
Will had the sort of smooth, creamy skin that showed every bruise. His skin was always cooler than mine, too, a perpetual comfort when I tossed and turned through the night, overheating. It was our differences, I thought, that made us such a good match.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “The rain will stop.”
Will looked at me. His smile filled his eyes first.“‘The... rain... will... stop,’”he intoned. He could no longer contain his grin. “Cancel the tent! The Oracle has spoken!”
I rolled my eyes but laughed. It was a long-standing riff of his, this idea that I was part soothsayer. Over our years together, I had come to understand that he wasn’t entirely joking; Will really did believe that my “rustic childhood” (his words) had given me a unique connection to the workings of the earth,a mystical ability that seemed to toe the line between hippie and witch. (I suspected there was some self-preservation hidden within his teasing; he also liked to claim that I’d ensnared him with a love spell when I was still a minor and he an otherwise law-abiding adult.)
“The Oracle also sees breakfast in bed in her future,” I said.
“Oh, does she?”
I nodded, but when he moved to get out of bed, I held him closer. “Not yet.”
He settled back onto the pillows. “The caterers arrive at three?”
“Four. The band will be here at five. Valets at five thirty. Guests at six.”
He shook his head. “When I suggested that we throw this party, I thought we would plan it together. I never meant for you to do it all yourself.”
“I know. I wanted to.”
I was eight years younger than Will, and I had no idea where I would be—whoI would be—if I had never met him. My thoughts moved incessantly between the past and the present, my heart beating in two worlds at once. And so when Will suggested we throw a combined engagement, housewarming, and wedding party before eloping, I had thrown myself into the planning with the hope that I would land, finally, solidly, in the present.
Will smoothed my hair from my forehead—a sweet but fruitless gesture as my hair would never be so easily tamed.Seaweed,my brother used to call it, usually punctuating the insult with a tug hard enough to make me yelp.
“Everything will be great,” Will assured me.
Wind rattled the balcony door, bringing with it a feeling of unease about the night ahead. A fervent wish that I had never agreed to the party, that Will and I were married already and enjoying our honeymoon in Morocco, shuddered through me.
I had never told Will that sometimes when I stood on our balcony and looked out at the sea, I felt sure someone watched me. I did not tell him of the red bird in my dreams. I did not tell him how guilt grasped me, yanking me back to a room that I longed to forget. I did not tell him about my feelings for a boy who had been missing for nine years but was with me every moment of my life, so real that I felt his breath on my neck in the night. And I had not told Will about the letter that had arrived that week or any of the letters before it.
How could I tell him one thing and not everything?
