Grace
We’re driving in Dom’s two-door BMW. It took some time to get out of the city, like always, but we’re moving now, racing across wet, open road.
Fifteen minutes ago, I wanted to be home immediately because I wanted to confirm what I suspected about Tim and Lauren Maxwell.
Now, though, I wish Dom would slow down because once a fear is confirmed it can never be unconfirmed.
We stop at a red light. I look around the inside of his car, which, like his kitchen at the Italian Embassy, is pristine, and I think about how quickly my kids would trash it.
“Dom, don’t.”
“No,” he says. “We should talk about this.”
“Why start now? You’ve been avoiding me for a year.”
“I know. And like I said, that was shitty of me.”
“Light’s green, by the way,” I say.
He hits the gas, pushing me back in my seat.
“It’s not you, Grace. It’s—”
“Are you about to tell me that it’s not me, it’s you? You shouldn’t, because if you do I’m jumping out.”
I feel bad for Dom. He thinks I’m pissed about him breaking off our kiss. When Henry told me about Meredith kissing him, he described it as nice, and then he said, “But…” Kissing Dom was nice, but it felt off, tone-deaf, anticlimactic. It just didn’t feel right.
The real reason I’m pissed is that I’m nearly certain my life is about to be flipped upside down again. Being dead made Tim perfect, the bastard. Now I’m wondering who he even was.
We speed on in this beautiful, ridiculous car, passing the little grocery store where my mom and dad shop.
“That’s not what I was gonna say,” Dom says.
The car stereo isn’t on. I wish it were, so I could turn it all the way up.
“It’s not you. But it’s not me, either. It’s him.”
A street of lit-up mansions blurs past.
“You’re amazing,” Dom tells me. “And you’re beautiful, and you’re mean, but in this sweet way that I love. And I’ve thought about what it’d be like to be with you for, like, what, ten years?”
“Eleven, I think,” I say.
“Right. Eleven.” He shifts busily through gears, because of course this silly car has a manual transmission. “But whenever I look at you now,” he says, “I just think about him. We weren’t, like, blood brothers, but he was my friend, Grace, and you were his wife.”
Dom is right, and I know it. Tim is a ghost who haunts us all.
Another red light, a few residential turns, the park where Ian and Bella play, three speed bumps that we need to drive over excruciatingly slowly or apparently this car will explode.
Then Dom pulls up to the curb outside my house.
A flood of cold invades when I open the door, but I don’t get out, not yet.
“I’m sorry I kissed you,” I say. I could hurt him and tell him that I just wanted to kiss someone—anyone. He doesn’t deserve that, though. Plus, it wouldn’t be entirely true, because I’ve thought about being with him, too, and now I know that I don’t want to be with anyone.
“In another life,” he says, “it would’ve made my night.”
He holds out his hand, and when I put mine in his, he kisses one of my chapped knuckles.
“See ya, Dom,” I say.
“Bye, Gracey.”
It’s just after eleven as I head up my front walk.
Nadine is a pro, so the kids will be in bed, I’m sure.
Nadine and I will chat, like we sometimes do when I get home late.
She’s a night owl, so maybe she’ll brew me some tea if she’s not in a hurry to get home.
When I open the door, though, I don’t see Nadine.
What I see instead is so unexpected that I have to stop and stare in case it’s not real.
Henry is asleep on the couch with my kids. Ian is slumped against his left shoulder, and Bella is curled into the crook of his right arm. Harry Styles, who’s just woken up, looks at me from Henry’s lap.
Then I remember getting a text from Henry earlier and not reading it.
I scan it now, along with some new ones from Zoe asking where the hell I went.
“Henry, you idiot,” I say, because according to his message he was with Meredith earlier, and now he’s here.
I hang the cardigan on the hook by the door.
The coffee table is a disaster. There are paint-splattered scraps of paper, a crusted-over dish of mixed paint and some brushes, and a bowl of popcorn fish.
In the middle of it all, lined up side by side, are three paintings of the Rodrigos’ lawn ornaments.
Each canvas is signed—Ian, Bella, and Henry.
Bella tried hard, which is sweet, but Ian’s is the best thing he’s ever done.
Harry Styles follows me up to my room where I grab Tim’s laptop, and then he follows me back down and into the kitchen.
I turn the kettle on, step over the mousetrap, and settle into my spot at the kitchen table.
The computer boots up quickly, and I look at the photo of Tim, Bella, Ian, and me smiling on his desktop.
He had two email accounts: one for school and one for his personal Gmail.
I go to Gmail and prepare to wrestle through passwords, but it opens right away.
Aside from bits of spam from companies that don’t know he’s dead, Tim hasn’t gotten any new emails in a long time.
I scroll, nothing interesting. The kettle calls out from the stovetop, so I pour some hot water into a mug with a mint tea bag and stand at the sink while it steeps.
Harry Styles lets out a little yelp when Henry enters the kitchen rubbing his eyes. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry, I guess we kinda fell—” He stops. “Wow. Grace. You look…you look amazing.”
I forgot about my dress. The whole thing feels silly and desperate now, but it’s okay because it’s just Henry.
“Thanks,” I say. “Want some tea?”
“Sure.”
I fill a mug for him, drop a tea bag in, sit back down.
“When did you know you were in love with Brynn?” I ask.
He’s just woken up, so I’m sure this is a surprising question. He sits at the table across from me, laughs a little. “Right away,” he says. “What about you?”
“Remember that story I told you?” I ask. “Me, a thing of grace?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t ask me out that night,” I say.
Harry Styles curls up under the table and rests his head on my foot.
“A few days later,” I say, “out of nowhere, he sent me an email. He got my address from someone who knew someone who knew me, that kind of thing. I guess that’s creepy, right? He was handsome, though, so I let it slide. The internet was less scary back then.”
“So, he asked you out over email?” asks Henry.
“Eventually,” I say. “Not right away, though. At first, we just emailed. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. You don’t know this about me, Henry, but I’m a good writer.
Tim was, too. Funny and witty and…vulnerable?
We went back and forth for weeks. Like, pen pals.
We were friendly at first, then flirty, then…
sexy. I fell in love with him over email.
Before we even went on an actual date. And he fell in love with me. ”
Henry’s hair is sticking up, and his eyes are puffy.
He smiles at my nice little love story as I type “Lauren Maxwell” into the Gmail search bar.
Henry doesn’t seem to notice that I’m holding my breath.
If Tim had feelings for Lauren Maxwell—if he had anything for her—he’d have emailed with her. And probably a lot.
In less than a second her name appears in a digital cascade, and I let that held breath out slowly. I scroll, then I scroll again, and then again. There are 4,288 emails.
“Grace, are you okay?” Henry asks.
I take a burning-hot sip of my tea then bite the inside of my cheek until it hurts. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Can I ask you a favor?” I say.
“Okay.”
“And can you just do it and not ask me any questions about it?”
“Um, all right.”
“Can you give me a hug?”
“Oh,” he says. “Okay, yeah.”
I stand, and for a second he doesn’t know what to do.
But then he opens his arms, and I slide in, and he holds me until I feel his heartbeat against my ear.
He’s warm and tall and here for me, and for a moment that’s almost enough to make me feel better.
But now I’m realizing that I really just want to be alone.
“You good?” he asks, his chin at the top of my head.
“I said no questions, Henry.”
“Oh, right,” he says. “Sorry.”
He opens his arms and lets me go, and I sit back down.
“I know it’s kinda late, but maybe we could watch Home Alone,” he says. “I missed most of it earlier. Or, actually, what am I talking about? The Holiday.”
I close Tim’s laptop. “Not tonight, Henry.”