THE MARTINI BARwas at one end of the living room and the band at the other, with space for dancing between the two. In the dining room, there was a shimmering display of raw oysters, which admittedly were more to my taste than to Will’s. (Earlier I had walked into the kitchen to find two of the caterers shucking those oysters with detached efficiency. The twist of the knife; the air sharp with brine; my senses immediately quivering and alert.) Our home had filled with guests, and after two glasses of champagne, my nagging worries faded and I began to enjoy myself. As a kid, if I had come across a photograph of a fancy party like this, or an illustration in a children’s book, it would have fueled hours of delighted fantasy play and feverishwriting in my journal. Now, I passed a mirror and saw a woman in a beautiful pearl-colored dress who appeared flushed with excitement and she was, of course, me.
Will was in a corner speaking to his mother, Rosalie, and the sight of them together made my heart swell in a way that frightened me. I knew how far I was willing to go for love, how capable I was of blindly clinging to it.
I stepped outside and breathed in deeply. On the patio, overlooking the ocean and, to the north, the Golden Gate Bridge and the distant hills of Marin, servers weaved through party guests with trays of champagne and perfectly round tartlets baked to a rich shade of gold. The rain had cleared, leaving in its wake wispy clouds that captured and stretched the pink glow of the gloriously setting sun.
The group outside was mostly comprised of Will’s former classmates and law firm colleagues. When I first met Will, I would never have guessed that someone so serious could have so many friends. I had thought that perhaps only I noticed his charm, or even that he turned it on only for me. But I was wrong—laughably wrong. Will’s life was crowded with friends that he had made easily at every turn.
I scanned the crowd, my gaze landing on Will’s sister.
“Emma!” I called.
She turned, her blue eyes shimmering with boozy excitement. Emma was nineteen years old, but I suspected that her ability to hold her liquor would not improve with age. There was a purity about her that simply did not mix with alcohol; two sips in, and she would tell you all of her secrets, not oneof which was any deeper or darker than a puddle of spilled milk.
On the evening of our engagement party, she had chosen to wear a shapeless brown dress, and yet she looked lovely, her blond curls soft and shining. Even in her drab attire, it was clear that she belonged among the smart crowd that surrounded her—she had, after all, been attending parties like this all her life. Emma’s low regard for fashion prompted the only moments of tension I had ever witnessed between her and her mother, Rosalie, who had a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes that I’d never seen worn twice. The first dress I ever owned was a gift from Will and Emma’s mother, selected from her own closet. (I was sixteen at the time, and Rosalie’s Doberman had recently taken a chunk of flesh from my calf.) I had not worn that dress in years, but I cherished it still and kept it wrapped in tissue paper and safely stored with my most treasured possessions.
“This weather!” Emma exclaimed, landing a light kiss on my cheek. “It’s beautiful. Where did you put the rain?”
“Will persuaded it to come back another day.”
“Lawyers!” Emma laughed. “But just look at that sunset.”
Between the sunset and the alcohol, everyone seemed to have fallen under the illusion that the evening was warmer than it actually was. Men’s cheeks were pink below their sunglasses; women’s bare shoulders glowed. The ocean was an expanse of light. Voices engulfed the air, nearly but not quite drowning out the waves that crashed against the shore.
I caught the eye of a waiter passing with a tray of champagneflutes. He stopped so quickly that the glasses wobbled, bubbles multiplying. Emma and I each took a glass.
“We haven’t seen enough of you lately,” I said. “How are the seals?”
Her eyes grew round. “Oh, Merrow, they’rewonderful. So playful and funny and smart. You have to come visit soon. The little one I told you about—the one born with the mangled flipper? She’s as strong as any other seal now.” After a sip of her champagne, she added, “Actually, she could end up being the strongest of them all.”
I felt a pang of indignation before quickly forgiving my future sister-in-law. It might have been difficult for her to imagine how a creature born at a disadvantage could manage to thrive, but Emma’s heart was in the right place. Besides, her love for the sea rivaled mine, and I found that this connected us every bit as much as the fact that I was on the cusp of marrying her brother. Emma was a sophomore at Berkeley with an internship at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. I still remembered how I’d felt when I’d heard ten-year-old Emma announce with utter confidence that she planned to be a marine mammal veterinarian. When I was ten, the idea that I might one day become a marine mammal veterinarian would have seemed as likely as someday becoming the supreme leader of a distant galaxy.
“And how areyou?” she asked. “How’s work?”
I hesitated. That week I’d worked with a nine-year-old boy named Assim whose scrawny limbs and milk chocolate eyes had made my heart contract. He’d asked, quietly, if I couldhelp with an essay he was writing about bullying, and we’d waded steadily deeper into a conversation about the ways that life might shape a person, the possibility that inside every bad person was someone good.Every action is a link in a much longer chain of events,I’d said. I knew that Assim had recently been placed with a foster family, but I didn’t ask him about that. Not yet. Over the years that I’d been working at the after-school program, I’d learned that if I asked too many questions early on, the children would not return.
It was difficult to talk about certain aspects of my job with Emma, or even with Will. The conversations I had with the children felt private.
“I’m trying to get everything in place before our trip,” I told Emma. “I don’t want the kids to lose momentum while I’m away.”
“Morocco.” She sighed. “It’s so romantic. When do you leave?”
“Three weeks.”
“And then you’ll finally be a Langford.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’ll change my name, but I’ll officially be your sister-in-law, and that’s a much greater cause for celebration.” I meant this, truly. The Langfords were a tight-knit tribe that I had longed to call my own almost from the moment, years earlier, when I’d met them.
Emma grinned. “I’m going to need to see that ring again.”
I held out my hand. Will had given me a ring with a large blue sapphire. Its color reminded him of the sea that our hotel room in Italy had overlooked five years earlier. We werefalling in love before that first trip together, but our vacation had solidified our feelings. It was as though breaking from our regular lives had allowed us to see each other, and the possibility of our future, in a new light. Since that trip, we’d traveled together as often as our jobs allowed.
“It’ssobeautiful.” Emma touched the stone lightly with her long finger. “And unique. Like you.” She tilted her head and looked at me. “And you deserve it,” she added firmly, as though I might argue with her. Even sober, Emma was prone to make sweeping, sentimental statements. I knew she meant that I deserved not only the ring, butallthe many gifts that Will had given me over our years together, and she probably meant even Will himself, really, because my parents had died when I was young, and my brother—
Enough.The past was a fast-moving current that perpetually threatened to sweep me from my feet.
Emma was effortlessly generous with her affection, just like Will. I loved this about them, but sometimes I could not help but wonder if kindness meant as much when it came from someone who had never experienced anything else. My doubt made me feel ashamed, as though something small and petty and hateful had shaken loose from where I’d hidden it and fallen to the floor for all to see.
When I tried not to think of the letters, I failed. The words haunted me, as I knew they were meant to.
