Six Weeks Later
After Detective Hampton officially declared that Billy died from accidental drowning aided by a pretty hefty dose of Xanax and amphetamines, it only took a few days before the report was published online.
Hampton found that the kinds of wounds Billy sustained weren’t enough to knock him unconscious once he fell in the water, that everything that transpired beforehand had amounted to a standard number of cuts and bruises that come with getting beat up by one of your buddies, by knocking heads with your father by accident.
That didn’t stop the Pelican Island Police Department from going after Justin for assaulting an officer, for putting him under house arrest while his lawyer works out a plea deal.
Or the Godwins from searching far and wide for someone to blame for their child’s death.
Or Mr. Gold from keeping the Silver boys’ secret.
From never telling his wife nor his daughters, even though the girls knew every detail.
It was Lucy who urged her sisters to stop focusing on them—the world outside their home—and to focus on repairing us, the three girls who had the same chins, the same curls, the same piercing eyes.
It was Lucy who asked, on the final Friday night of the summer, if they could watch the stars blink above, just the three of them, huddled under one blanket after Shabbat dinner. And it was Millie who realized then that her sister had forgiven her for kissing Ethan.
Together, they pulled the fabric over their knees and looked up at the dark, inky sky. It was one of those perfect cool summer nights where the breeze from the ocean can make your heart beat faster, feel more powerful, and the smell of briny shellfish and long-burning charcoal lingers in the air.
Millie didn’t even miss the cards. Nor the boys next door. Though they hadn’t played games with them in weeks, not since they had learned what happened.
This Friday night, Frankie was the one to rest her head on her knees and study her sisters, try to remember tiny details she could stash away like hidden candy.
The way Millie’s mouth puckered when she thought really hard.
The well-drawn arc of Lucy’s eyeliner. The softness of their hands as they tickled her back.
She was the baby, after all, and tonight she wanted to embrace that.
To remember what it felt like to know that your sisters would keep you safe.
Lucy glanced back at the archway that connected their backyard to the Silvers’. There was no movement, no hint of life. Perhaps the boys were together, in the pool house or on their own stretch of sand, but Lucy didn’t mind not knowing. It was better this way.
For eighteen years, their families had been intertwined, and with that closeness came secrets that unfurled like leaves on a bird-of-paradise, inviting the girls to take a peek at what the boys had been hiding.
Since that night in the pool house, all the secrets had been put on display, and the girls stepped back from them, marveled at them, let them go.
They said they would move on. But that didn’t mean they could forgive.
Only that they welcomed the future because they could not reshape the past.
“I think we need a toast,” Lucy said. Her voice broke, and Millie noticed with satisfaction that she had grown more sentimental as her departure for Penn inched closer. Lucy popped a small bottle of champagne, the liquid spilling onto the sand.
“What are we celebrating?” Frankie asked, her eyes greedy as she reached for the bottle.
The tall seagrass swayed in the night, the rustling another reminder that summer was coming to a close. Soon there would be no more thwacking of tennis balls against the courts at the Club, no seagulls fighting for hot dog buns under the jagged rocks. No more melting ice cream from Scoop DeVille.
But even after the leaves changed color and the temperatures dropped and the birds flew south for winter, the three Gold girls would have this: the comfort of what it felt like to sit limb-to-limb with the people who knew you, who shared your flesh and blood and even after a summer of secrets would still say, I choose you. I love you.
“Us,” Millie said. “We’re celebrating us.”