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His eyes flood with concern and rage. “Who told you that?” He asks again, this time more urgent. “Who made you believe this?”
I close my eyes. My throat is too tight. My head hurts too much. I don’t want to say it, but I’m tired of not saying it. “My father,” I say, barely audible as I give voice to the hurt I’ve carried for years.
“What?” Finn hisses, like I can’t have just said that.
But I can and I did. I said the thing I’ve told no one. I take a huge breath and meet his intense gaze. “We were in therapy a few months afterward, and I told my parents that I’d taught her. They said it wasn’t my fault. But the next day we went to visit her grave, my dad and me, and he was a mess, but he said, ‘If you hadn’t taught her to sneak out, she’d still be here.’”
Finn’s eyes flicker with shock. For a few long seconds, he’s simply speechless. “Fucking Tate,” he mutters, then he blows out an angry breath and shakes his head vehemently. “He’s wrong. He’s just wrong. Things happen. Life happens. Your sister made a choice, and it was tragic. But you didn’t push her. You didn’t make her drink. And you shouldneverhave to carry that with you.”
Finn lets go of my shoulders so he can cup my cheeks instead as he implores me: “Promise me, just promise me you won’t carry that guilt with you anymore. I’m sorry about the loss of your sister. I’m sorry that she’s not here. I wish you had your best friend. But it’s not your fault. Not at all. Not one bit.”
Could he be right?
I replay Finn’s words, trying to hear the story through his ears, trying to see that day through a new lens.
“You’ve been telling yourself that for years?” he asks.
“Yes,” I admit.
He half looks like he wants to punch the wall like he did the night at the Albrecht Mansion when he learned who I was, and he half looks like he wants to hold me in his arms forever. “Jules. My sweet, wounded, wonderful Jules. If it had been reversed, would you have wanted Willa to punish herself like that?”
My head swims with that unexpected question. One I’ve never contemplated till today. But one I know the answer to deep inside myself. “No, I wouldn’t.”
And saying that, something in me lifts. It rises from my heart, and maybe, just maybe, floats away into the summer breeze, carried on the scent of roses.
“Then next time you write to her, write that down. Because I know that’s exactly what your sister would say to you too—it’s not your fault. You need to tell yourself until you believe it to be true. Since itistrue,” he says, then presses his fingertips to my sternum. “So you can let go of this awful, terrible guilt that isn’t yours to bear. You loved her, and she died. That is all.”
Was it this easy after all?
Did I simply need someone else to say it to me? Yes, I think I’ve always needed that. And he’s the one who did.
I wrap my arms around him, rest my face on his shirt, and take what he’s offering.
I stay in his arms on the bridge for a long time as the sun sets over Giverny. When twilight coasts into the gardens, finally I break the embrace. “I fell for you too,” I say. I said it in the room, but I want to say it again. “Take that with you.”
“I will.”
He gazes at me with such tenderness, such poignancy that I want to say screw the world. I think he does too.
Instead, we kiss until night falls and it’s time to go.
* * *
On the flight home the next day, I return the way I came—alone. But maybe that was the point of Paris.
Finn helped me to let go of something that had been hurting my heart for years. I showed him that two people can share honestly.
Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.
29
THE LAUGHING STARS
Jules
Two nights later, jet lag has left me, incomprehensibly, both wide awake and exhausted. “This sucks,” I moan to Camden, who’s camped out with me on my couch, binging a new TV show.
“It’s eight. You’re allowed to be up,” she says.
