My phone is ringing when I reach it.
“Hey.”
Alex’s voice is like warm honey against the chill. “Hey. I have news.”
I hold my breath, don’t ask,can’task.
“My offer on a house has been accepted. It’s all going to happen pretty quick.”
London.I daren’t hope, but my traitorous heart quickens anyway, fluttering like a bird taking flight in my chest. “The house that you looked at upstate?”
I hear his smile, hear the weightlessness of it. “Nah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re coming to London,” I say, so quiet I’m surprised he even hears it. I’m standing at the edge of the water, shivering, clutching my phone in both hands. “Don’t get my hopes up like this.”
“Scotland.”
“I—”
What?
“You still there, Twist?”
“I … you … all of you … you’re moving?”
“Just for two years.”
My mind is a montage of family Christmases and busy dinners. Weekends visiting him, a group of people watching my swim meets.
It’s like the loneliness that burrowed itself into the marrow of my bones almost five years ago is starting to trickle into the soil at my feet.
“Alex, I …” My next breath is a shudder, a failed attempt at not crying. “I don’t believe you.”
“This isn’t sudden, baby. It’s been in the works a while, I just didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“But your mom, she …”
“There’s a great team in Edinburgh who’ll look after her. And Jack’s parents visit Sorrowsong every two months to see him. They’re going to see my mom each time.”
I’m not sure if I’m laughing or crying. “And the girls, they … Fleur. Fleur cannot be happy about this.”
“Shitbag Boyfriend is moving to London for better modeling opportunities, so Fleur is keen. Ingrid and Russell are coming, too. Mom has been their best friend for twenty years. I think we’re all ready to leave our memories here behind.”
I tip my head back against the light spatter of rain and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
I hear a short inhale, his tone hesitant. “I can finish the last two years of the architecture degree I started.”
“At Edinburgh? You spoke to them?”
His voice is rough with emotion. “Well … yeah, but …”
He trails off, but I leap in to fill the silence. “Alex! You didn’t tell me!”
“I didn’t trust myself to follow through with it. After we’ve graduated, we’ll move, Ophelia. Wherever is best for the girls. It might be London, might be Paris, but it could be back to the States.”
“That’s okay,” I whisper, holding my phone so tight it might shatter. “I’ll be right there with you.”
“Well, I better go. I have a hundred bits of paperwork to do.”
