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“But it’s like I… like I stole her life for myself,” I said, my voice hot in my throat. “And I just wish… I could see her just one more time.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I think maybe the people who leave us are always around us. I know… if something happened to you, I’d still see you in every leaf, in every sunrise, in every little thing in this world. If Harper is right here in the wind, what do you think you’d say to her?”
It flooded me like someone had opened the gates and it all poured in at once—a torrent of grief that washed over me until I was swept away, carried back to when I’d been supposed to grieve in the first place. When I’d cut my hair short shakily with kitchen shears in the bathroom mirror, matching Harper’s. When I went to her school wearing my hood up hoping nobody noticed the difference, and struggled, swamped in lecturesbeyond my level, and teachers pulled me aside to tell me how I’d beensuch a bright student and now this.
When I got the night-shift job at a bakery that Harper had been thinking about applying for. When I used the money to get the tattoos Harper had wanted once she was older and had more money.
When I’d looked at myself in the mirror and struggled to remember what my name had been.
It wasn’t fair. To anyone. We didn’tbothneed to die.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry I didn’t help… I’m so sorry nobody helped. I wish you were still here. I wish… I wish you could see the… the life we have now. I think…” I sniffled, choking on words, and I wiped the tears off my cheek before I pushed out the words. “I think you’d like it… a lot.”
And I think you’d like Paisley.
I wanted—so, so badly—for her to meet Paisley. They’d probably have gotten along. Harper would have given me a hard time—she’d always beenreallyinto boys, so the idea of dating a woman was probably so foreign to her, she’d laugh and ask me if boys were all that bad—but she’d have pulled me aside later to tell me how much fun Paisley was and that she wouldn’t forgive me if I fumbled it.
Paisley touched a hand lightly to my shoulder. “I’m sure she’s proud of you,” she breathed. I choked, forcing myself to breathe in deeper.
She… she would be. It had always been us against the world, the two of us making it work. Argued all the time, but we had each other’s backs. I was so damn jealous of her all the time, and so often I wanted to never see her again, but I wanted her to succeed. To be happy.
And she’d have wanted the same for me. To just find what made me happy and get it.
“Do you…” I started, struggling to keep away from the thick, hot stream of tears again. “Do you think she’d forgive me?”
She smiled softly. “I think you’ll have to tell me.”
I looked back at where the wind brushed the grass, sweeping gently through the branches. So… soft. Untethered. Free.
She’d have whacked me over the head and told me to stop moping. And to quit it with the identity theft.
I think that was how she would saythere’s nothing to forgive, it wasn’t your fault.
I laughed, wiping at my eyes. “You know, I, uh,” I started, pausing for a sip of coffee. Somehow, it wasn’t too cold. “I think she’d have liked you, actually.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. She liked causing trouble. She would absolutely have helped you breed lizards.”
She laughed, leaning back against the stone wall, holding her coffee up to her nose. “Emberlynn would have gotten a kick out of me having accomplices.”
“I bet she’d have fit into Bayview well…”
She smiled softly at me. “But I’m glad you survived, Lindsay. Against all odds. And made it to Bayview.”
I thought—for the first time, honestly—and I said it out loud, too, “I am too.”
“Hey… now that you’ve achieved all these dreams for her sake. What kind of dreams do you thinkyouhave?”
“Er…” I shifted. “I think I’ve been over that Lindsay… um… I… don’t really have—”
“Didn’treally have. You’ve lived ten years since then. I’m sure you’ve found something.”
“Ah, well…” I scratched my head. It was an odd sensation settling in now that the tears were drying—a lightness I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced. Like I was the wind now. “Not sure.”
“Do you like baking enough you want to keep doing it?”
It would have been so easy to say yes. But something else inside me spoke. “I bet it’d be fun to write a book.”
