Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
LILY
Sleep comes in waves. My sheets are twisted around my legs, damp with sweat despite the cool air filtering through the window.
Every time I close my eyes, I see him standing there on Main Street, shoulders rigid, fingers clenched into fists, looking at me like he was seeing a ghost. Or maybe I was the one seeing ghosts.
The box of memories sits open on my nightstand.
I’ve arranged and rearranged the contents too many times, trying to create a pattern that might make sense of what I’m feeling.
Notes in chronological order, then by type, then by the intensity of the memory they evoke.
I reach for it again, dumping everything onto my lap.
One of the notes flutters to the ground, and I lean down to pick it up.
Books are better company than people. They don’t expect anything from you, except time and attention. They don’t care if you’re broken.
I trace the words with my fingertips. I remember finding this one tucked into my calculus textbook. It was after the incident with Dan Hartman. I didn’t see it then, but it’s clear now that he was warning me that he was already broken, even then.
His copy of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ catches my eye, and I open it. I’ve read this book twice since finding it in the factory. Once right after, when I was desperate for any connection to him. Once during my sophomore year of college, when I thought enough time had passed. I was wrong.
The margins are filled with his thoughts, handwriting smaller here, cramped by limited space. Observations about class warfare, about the way the Joads were treated as less than human because of their poverty.
Near the famous ‘I’ll be there’ speech, his writing changes.
Some people live in the spaces between. They’re there in the hunger, in the fight, in the desperate scramble to make it one more day. Nobody sees them until they become a problem.
The pen pressed hard enough to leave impressions on the next page. I can feel the indentations beneath my fingertips, the ghost of his anger made physical.
I wonder where he was when he wrote this. The factory? The library? Some corner of the school where he thought no one would find him?
I close the book and set it to one side, then pick up one of the notes. It’s the last one he ever wrote me.
Some stories don’t get happy endings, Phare. Some people aren’t meant to be saved. Don’t waste your light trying to guide this shipwreck home.
Phare. Lighthouse in French. He’d started calling me that after my first note, because of the lighthouse drawing I’d added.
Then later, he’d whisper it against my skin.
I thought it was romantic. A secret name, something just for us.
But really, it was another warning, another way of telling me that he was the danger I should be warning others about.
I’d read it a dozen times that first day, trying to decode it and find some hidden message that said he loved me, that it wasn’t really goodbye. But there was no hidden message, just the truth, plainly written. He was telling me to let him go.
I never understood what changed and made him pull away. Afterward, sitting in my bedroom with this note and nothing else, I wondered if he knew what was coming, and was pushing me away so I wouldn’t be standing too close when everything imploded.
It hadn’t worked. I was still destroyed. The only difference was I had to piece myself back together alone, without him.
My phone buzzes against the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession. I’ve been ignoring it for the past hour, watching notifications stack up on the screen. But Cassidy isn’t the type to give up, and the buzzing is relentless.
I pick it up, squinting against the sudden brightness.
Cassidy: Are you alive? Because if you’re dead, I need to know who gets your shoe collection.
Cassidy: Also your Le Creuset. I’m calling dibs on the Dutch oven.
Cassidy: LILY ELIZABETH GLADWIN answer your fucking phone.
Despite the exhaustion, the ache in my chest, and the way I feel like I’m unraveling, I smile. Cassidy has known me long enough to know when to be gentle and when to bulldoze through my defenses with her own special brand of humor.
My thumbs move across the screen.
Me: Not dead. Just processing.
The three dots appear immediately.
Cassidy: Processing what? Did something happen? Are you okay?
I stare at the message, at those three simple questions that have three very complicated answers.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I could lie, and tell her everything is fine.
But Cassidy has been my best friend since before I could write my own name.
She held me through everything. She was there when I fell in love so completely I didn’t recognize myself. And she was there when it fell apart.
She never judged. She never said ‘I told you so,’ even though she’d warned me. She just held me when I cried, brought me coffee and tissues and chocolate.
I type slowly.
Me: Him. Yes. No.
Her response comes through immediately.
Cassidy: I’m coming over.
It doesn’t matter that it’s barely 6 A.M. on a Sunday morning.
Me: Okay.
I glance around at my disaster of a bedroom, catching my reflection in the mirror above my dresser. I’m still in yesterday’s clothes, my hair is a mess, and my eyes swollen from tears I refused to acknowledge. The physical evidence of my breakdown is everywhere.
Fifteen minutes pass without me noticing. I should get up, try to pull myself together before she arrives. At the very least, I should have coffee waiting for her. But I can’t seem to move from this spot.
My phone rings, shattering the quiet. Mom’s name flashes on the screen.
Why is everyone awake at this hour?
I consider letting it go to voicemail, but that will only make things worse. She’ll show up at my door, determined to fix what’s broken. I clear my throat twice before answering, trying to sound normal. “Hi, Mom.”
“Lily.”
That’s all she says. Just my name. But there’s a note to her voice, and she doesn’t need to say anything else.
She knows.
“How are you?” I can picture her perfectly.
She’ll be standing in her kitchen with her phone pressed to her ear, dressed in her favorite tartan pajamas, and fluffy pink slippers.
If she’s up this early, then she’ll be pulling ingredients out of the refrigerator.
Stress baking is her love language, her way of feeling useful when the world spins out of control.
“I’m fine.” The words come easily, a lie I’ve said a thousand times.
There’s a pause. I hear the soft thud of something being set on her counter. My stomach twists. I’ve caused this.
“Honey …” Another pause. “I heard—”
“I know.” I cut her off before she can say his name. “I’m fine. Really.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I can hear her breathing, hear the soft sounds of her kitchen in the background. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant tick of the grandfather clock she inherited from Grandma. All familiar sounds that should be comforting.
“Are you still coming over?” The question is careful, giving me an out if I need it.
“Of course.”
Another pause. “I’m making lasagna.”
The burning in my eyes gets worse. It’s not just lasagna. It’s my comfort food. The meal she’s made after every heartbreak, every disappointment. After the hearing, she made it every Sunday for three months.
“Mom.” My throat tightens, making the word come out strangled. “I’m okay. You don’t have to—"
“I know.” Her voice softens, taking on a quality that’s only ever been directed at me. Gentle but firm. The voice that’s soothed every nightmare, every fear, and every moment I thought I couldn’t take one more step. “But I’m your mother, and it’s my job to worry about you.”
Especially when you don’t think you can, is what she doesn’t say. But I hear it anyway.
After we hang up, I find myself at the window, pulling back the curtain to stare out at the morning-gray sky.
My forehead rests against the cool glass as I stare in the direction of Cedar Street.
I can’t see it from here, my apartment faces east, toward the older part of town.
Cedar Street is west, in the part of town where houses have names instead of numbers and cars sit in attached garages.
The distance between us is less than two miles. Nothing really. A ten-minute drive or a twenty-minute walk.
It might as well be an ocean.
Is he there now? I try to picture him in one of those big houses. Does he lie awake remembering the way my hand felt in his? The nights in the factory when it was just us? Or has he moved on?
Maybe he doesn’t think about me at all, and I’m just a girl from his past.
The tattoos surprised me. Not that I could see much of them.
I keep coming back to them, replaying the moment I first saw the ink wrapping his throat, and disappearing beneath his collar.
The Ronan I knew barely let people look at him, let alone touch him.
He wore long sleeves, kept his distance, and moved through the world like someone trying to leave no trace of his existence.
But this Ronan wears his marks openly. Black ink curved up his neck, there were more on his arms, disappearing beneath rolled sleeves.
I wonder what they mean. Are they prison tattoos? Markers of time served? Or did he get them later, once he was released?
Five years in prison changes people. I know that.
I’ve read articles, and watched documentaries.
But knowing it intellectually and seeing it …
seeing him ... are different things. The boy I loved doesn’t exist anymore, if he ever really did.
Maybe he was just a story I told myself.
A version of history I needed to believe in.
And this man? I don’t know him at all.