Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Florida is as hot and humid as an Equinox steam room.
In the mornings, I lie by the pool with a paper towel wrapped around a bagel with cream cheese, happily eating carbs and drinking sugary bright orange juice my mom bought at Publix.
In the evenings, I drink inexpensive Trader Joe’s wine—out of a juice glass—and sit on the back porch with my parents while my dad grills burgers to a Crosby, Stills, Nash then one day, it became what it is now.
A nice, simple, comfy guest room with L.
L.
Bean percale sheets.
A room that doesn’t resemble the one I grew up in.
I can’t believe it took me so long to go home again.
It’s not until Friday afternoon that my mom finds me by the pool and asks if we can talk, and I can see it’s something important.
I sit up, preparing myself for bad news; if she tells me she has cancer or something, I’m going to drive the Land Rover into the swamps of Alligator Alley.
Although, it’s a Land Rover, so it would probably be fine.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Well, honey, since we didn’t know you were coming, I made plans for this weekend. I can cancel them if you want, but—”
“Oh, no, Ma, do whatever. I’m fine.”
“Tonight I have plans to do dinner with Jenny. Your dad has dinner with Joe, and I do dinner with Jenny. It’s a little routine we’ve gotten into. Sometimes we all do something together, but tonight it’s us girls.”
I nod slowly as comprehension dawns.
“Ah.”
Again, I think about how many times I tried to get my parents to move because I thought they needed some other kind of life.
Even though I didn’t have my own figured out.
Probably because I didn’t have my own figured out.
“You are welcome to join us, and in fact, I think it would mean a lot to her. To me. To you. To all of us.”
I haven’t seen or spoken to either of Aimee’s parents since the night we left for the party.
When Jenny tossed Aimee the keys and said, Drive carefully, sweetie .
Now that I remember it was raining, I remember that she actually said more after that.
I mentally squint to find the words.
Drive carefully, sweetie.
It’s supposed to rain later.
Maybe let Meg drive?
Mom!
had been Aimee’s only reply and last word to Jenny.
I stare at Dido, who is happily basking in the sun.
Then to my mom, “Okay. I’ll come.”
Three hours later, I’m showered and covered in aloe lotion after underestimating the power of the sun—for five days in a row—and wearing a borrowed matching set of what my mom calls her loungewear to go over to Aimee’s parents’ house.
“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” I say to my mom as we drive down familiar, half-forgotten roads in her years-old SUV.
“It’s natural,” she says with a shrug that puts me, strangely, at ease.
Pulling up to the house makes my heart skip several beats in a row, my nervous system well aware of the last time I was here.
Thirty-three Blue Daze Lane.
There it is.
Aimee’s house.
The house looks so similar, and yet the differences are startling.
Time has worn the place into something new.
Something more settled.
The flowers and trees around the house are bigger and older now, making it impossible to think I was only here yesterday.
It’s then I realize that the set that was built for Aimee’s play was mimicking a version of this house that hasn’t existed in a decade.
Like she didn’t truly know how much it had changed.
As if she hadn’t been home in so long.
As if her last memories were of the house when she was nineteen too.
The realization gives me chills.
It’s like she was a ghost, only knowing what she knew when she died.
And hadn’t she been, in a way?
I think of Cillian and Kiera and Maureen and have to shut my eyes hard to stop from crying.
Jenny comes out of her front door in a kaftan, looking breezy and comfortable.
My mom told her I’d be coming, so it isn’t an unpleasant trauma surprise party.
When she sees me, her face breaks into a comforting smile and I realize that I have really, really missed her.
I walk right up to her and hug her.
Having had my arms around Aimee only a few days ago, I’m vividly aware of the undeniable similarities between them.
I squeeze her once, hard, and then let go.
“Come on in, ladies,” she says, not immediately putting a spotlight on how long it’s been since I was here and under what circumstances I left.
She’s not attaching importance to every second in the way I feared, and I relax as I walk inside.
The house, of course, has the same bones that it did when I last saw it.
The counter in the kitchen that leads to the small dining room.
The living room that takes a step to get down into.
But things are different too.
I guess I’d expected…
well, a time capsule.
The same busy bulletin board with Post-it notes, an out-of-date calendar, and an irrelevant business card for Aimee’s old orthodontist.
I’d been expecting the place to match exactly with my memories, like two negatives held up one behind the other.
But it’s not the same.
I realize now that most of the furniture Jenny and Joe had back then was probably inherited or thrifted.
They didn’t have a lot of money, and they were fairly young parents, which is the kind of thing kids don’t notice.
Most people in their twenties and thirties, despite what the internet wants us to believe, are living in houses built out of the things they can find that work.
They’re not usually curating space , like influencers want us to think they are.
Now, it’s a clean, mid-century style and it’s perfect for them.
The windows have been replaced with new ones, which probably make the bills lower and the house quieter.
I remember being told to quiet down constantly when we were out back and they were trying to watch The Bachelor or whatever inside.
I have a brief fantasy of being here together, grown, with our moms, and having wine, sitting outside the thick new windows.
The dining room table is clean and white, instead of the oak one where I used to sit and eat spaghetti.
The couch is pale yellow with spindly, angled legs instead of the big, overstuffed one they used to have.
The kitchen has new, updated appliances.
The wood paneling is bright, painted clean white.
Jenny clearly kept living.
Kept growing.
Kept evolving.
She didn’t freeze in time.
I think I feared that everyone here had.
That no one else had the ability to change but me, so coming home would be a frightening step into the past.
But it isn’t.
At first, it’s small talk about what I’ve been up to .
She told me she’s watched the show and thinks I’m just marvelous on it .
When Jenny finishes making the tacos, we eat and chat about how good they are, and then—after the third margarita hits—I bring up the elephant in the room, even though I’m the only who can see it.
“So I had a crazy time in Ireland.”
That is what I lead with.
A bewilderingly blasé start to a story that neither of them are going to believe.
For the next half hour, I tell the moms what happened in Avalon.
They exchange a few looks here and there, and I push through.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I say.
“It was crazy. And I don’t know what the hell it was, or how, but I’m telling you, it happened.”
I’m very clear about the fact that the internet results changed, that my face changed, that nothing was as it is in reality.
I don’t want to raise hopes that maybe there was a mistake and Aimee is actually living in Ireland somewhere after pulling off the crime of a lifetime, faking her own death.
When I finish, I’m not sure what they’re going to say.
I’m not sure if my mom is going to apologize for what I’ve said, if Jenny is going to change character completely and slap me across the face and accuse me of terrible lies.
“You know, this is going to sound crazy,” says Jenny, stirring her drink with her straw.
“But I believe every word you said.”
My mom looks patient and kind as she nods at Jenny and says nothing.
“You do?” I ask.
“Yes. I do. There’s a ton of research on quantum science lately. I was listening to an episode of Radiolab that went into this kind of thing the other day.”
“Oh my God, Aimee said the ex act same thing when I told her. Almost verbatim! And that’s proof in itself, because God knows I don’t listen to Radiolab .”
She gives me a polite smile and says, a little cryptically, “I wonder.”
Then something occurs to me.
“Jenny, did Aimee get into Avalon?”
Her eyes are wide now, fractured with pink.
“Yes, she got in. It was awful, her lying to you like that. We tried to tell her to trust you with the truth, but she wouldn’t do it. We couldn’t make her, and it didn’t feel like our place.”
I’m relieved she knows, and it feels like the last puzzle piece truly put in its place for me to see the big picture.
“So she got in. She really did.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. I never wanted to tell you after she was gone.”
“No, no, I’m not mad. It’s sad. I wish she’d known she could trust me, and I should have been trustworthy not to blow the whole thing up because she didn’t want what I wanted. And I should have done what was right for me. If I had…”
It hangs between us all.
Jenny reaches across the table and puts a hand around my wrist.
“It’s not your fault, Meggie.”
A sudden howl of emotion races through me like a wicked wind as I look at her, see that she means it, and then burst into sobs that feel so deeply rocking that they scrape against my insides and threaten to burst me like a balloon.
But I’m there with our moms.
They’re making sympathetic sounds of understanding and my mom’s hand is on my back, moving in slow circles, and Jenny is holding my hands and not pulling back as I grip her as tightly as you might a cliff face if you were suspended a hundred yards in the air with no rope.
I cry, and I cry.
I sound like a child, I sound like an animal.
I can’t breathe, my stomach aches and cramps, my chest threatens to crack, my face swells like I’m seconds away from anaphylactic shock.
And then, eventually, like the ocean eventually does after even the worst tsunami, my waves begin to calm.
From tidal swells to soft ripples against the shore.
I have this sense of certainty that I had finally touched the bottom of the emotion.
I now know the depth of my pain and, finally, I can begin swimming toward the surface.
I never need to go that far again.
I can eventually breathe.
They even eventually make me laugh.
When all has settled again, Jenny sniffs and bites her bottom lip.
“Maybe I’m a hopeful mom who misses her daughter”—she smiles bravely through the tears—“but it makes me feel good to imagine she’s out there somewhere. Leading a different life.”
My mom says, “It’s a big, unknowable universe, isn’t it?” She gives Jenny a squeeze on the arm and says, “I think it might be time for another round of margaritas.”
On the Uber ride home that night, I say, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” asks my mom.
“For trying to get you to leave Florida. It’s none of my business to tell you where your place is. I’m sorry I tried to.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I know. Thank you for saying something. I appreciate it. I really am happy here. I have everything I need.”
“Good. I’m glad.” I look out the window for a minute.
We drive past all the low houses that seem the same as one another, but for the little windows with golden glows inside revealing different lives.
Different cars parked outside.
Grill smoke coming up behind some, teenagers in bikinis sitting out front of some, kids playing out front of others.
The song on the radio changes to Freddie Mercury’s cover of “The Great Pretender.”
We pass the place where the End of Summer Carnival is held every year.
Where the fortune teller gave Aimee and me our destinies.
The field is empty now and so much smaller than I remember.
Just off a small road near a Publix grocery store and the Tex-Mex restaurant where I spent my sixteenth birthday.
We’re only a few miles from the intersection where the accident happened.
I bet that’s also smaller than I remember.
“How did you know this was the right place for you?” I ask.
My mom laughs.
“My best friend is here.”
She doesn’t seem to think much of her comment.
She looks out the window too, in one of those cheerfully unappreciative moments we all have where we aren’t thinking about how it all might be taken away and instead we’re just living in it.
My eyes well up with tears and I nod.
“That sounds like a pretty good reason to me.”