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My legs threaten to give, and I drop onto Brandon’s bench. A plaque with his name and birthday gleams to the right of where I’ve sat. The town erected this as a tribute to the loss of one of their own. I should have come to see it earlier.
I sit back and stare at the spot of the accident, letting the memories come, letting myself remember all of it.
Brandon was wearing a blue-and-yellow-striped button-down shirt that set off the golden hues in his brown eyes. It was his favorite shirt, the one he’d been wearing when he proposed, and he’d started calling it his lucky shirt.
His lucky shirt, which was stained with his blood after the accident.
An invisible fist reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart. A familiar urge to clamp down on the memories grips me. But I don’t. I can’t. The lock keeping the memories buried broke at Maeve’s.
I let myself remember my anger. How hurt I was that Brandon had stopped seeing me. How terrified I was that I had stopped seeing Brandon. How heartbreaking it was to admit this life that we both believed was our destiny actually wasn’t.
I let myself remember how I told him I wanted a break, and the way he turned to me, looking at me as if I’d slapped him. And then that split second that changed everything.
It happened fast, but in my memory, it’s slow motion. I see the truck barreling toward us. Some part of me knew the truck wasn’t slowing down and I needed to warn Brandon. To save him. And I did. I shouted his name. It was too little, too late.
My voice was drowned out by the squeal of brakes, and then metal crunching against metal. He didn’t hear me. He didn’t know I wanted to save him. Then I woke up in the hospital.
And the world was still spinning.
It was the cruelest discovery: that life could continue to go on. That the world had not stopped, though my world had.
My world never restarted. All the ways I thought I’ve been living since Brandon died have been a lie. I have built nothing, not a home, not even a shadow of a real life. Instead, I’ve been running. Not the way Will did when he picked up and took off. But from the truth and the accident and my grief and my guilt.
I don’t know how long I’m sitting there with the contents of my dark box strewn around my consciousness before I realize I’m not alone.
“I never expected to find you here,” Tessa says.
My throat tightens. “I didn’t expect to find you here either.”
Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Tessa’s anger has softened, but it’s still there, still billowing off her in a way that makes her feel too far. Beyond reach, even.
“I’m sorry that I ditched you at the bar. I ran into Selena at her baby shower, but that’s not an excuse.” I slide a glance toward her. “I’m sorry about Maeve too.”
A muscle tenses in Tessa’s jaw, but she relaxes her shoulders, releasing a huge sigh. “I get why you did. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to go through every day without Brandon. I just—” She turns to me, eyes lined with shimmery tears. “I just miss you, Hope. I miss my sister, and I’ve been missing her for more than two years.”
Tessa’s words swirl around me as I try to make sense of them, but they remain blurry and out of reach. “What do you mean? I’m right here. I’ve always been right here.”
That’s been the problem. I’m right here, and Brandon is not. I survived, and he did not.
“No, you’re not. I didn’t just lose a brother-in-law the day Brandon died, Hope. I lost my sister too. You haven’t been the same. You’ve been a shell. You and I—we used to ... we’d go to Newport together and check out the latest hot restaurant, and we’d run 5Ks, and we’d ... we’d have fun.” Her words catch. “We don’t anymore. Becauseyoudidn’t die at this corner, but the thing that makes you, you did. It’s like a light went out. That’s why I’m here. This is where I go when I miss my sister, to this corner—the place I lost her.”
“Brandon died. My husband, my first love, died. I will never be the same. I will always be changed and different.”
The traffic light shifts to red, and a car comes to a screeching halt. The sound of brakes squealing lingers in the air long after the car has stopped, and I brace myself against the terror that comes.
Tessa touches a hand to mine. Emotion crashes over me but doesn’t drag me away. I can still breathe.
“I don’t expect you to be who you were before the accident. I know you won’t be. But you haven’t tried tobeanything. You’ve just let yourself fade, done the bare minimum to survive.” There’s no bitterness in her voice, just a sadness that molds perfectly to the edges of my grief. “If you want to get your master’s degree in nursing, apply to the program. Or don’t. If you want to go to Greece to study Greek literature. Go. Do it. Just stop not doing. Stop going through the motions, and start living.”
Tessa has said these words to me so many times, in so many ways. So has Maeve. So has Will.
Living with Logan and working endless double shifts all felt like movement. I don’t know what else to do, if not that.
I’m in the exact same spot I was in the days after Brandon died—a bit less weepy, but just as unmoored.
“I miss my sister who used to leave brochures from exotic places she wanted to visit, who quoted obscure Greek poetry, who’d show up at my house without warning for a spontaneous beach day. God, I even miss the way you made every party a theme party when you hosted.”
“I don’t know how to do any of that anymore. I don’t ... it’s not fair that I get to live and Brandon doesn’t.” My voice comes out small. “That’s why I went to Maeve. I need Brandon to forgive me. Tell me it’s okay. And he didn’t.” The admission is a dagger through the center of my heart. “Maeve told me to find my locket. She told me if I did, I’d find what I needed. Brandon didn’t come, though.”
