Chapter 84
Tyler
I kicked down the door to the carriage house. My fists were on fire, and I could not breathe. Meredith, somehow, was already
standing in the entryway, entirely still. Pinot cowered at her feet.
“Who the fuck,” I said, “are you!?”
“Tyler, please. Let me explain. Let me—”
“How do you know my mom? Why were you at Mikey’s funeral? Why the fuck am I here!?”
She did not answer. Instead, she backstepped down the hall until she’d run out of room at the base of the stairwell. The house
was littered with empty bottles, and there were books everywhere.
“Why were you there, Meredith? Why do I work for you? How did you pick those tropes that day? Why were you standing at the
door just now, waiting for me?”
“Tyler,” she said.
“No!” I stole another two steps forward, forcing her up the first stair. The handrail was rotting, and the floorboards creaked.
“Tell me who you are! Tell me how you know my mother! Tell me why the fuck I’m here!”
She was halfway to the landing, flattened against the wall. Pinot leaped into her arms.
“What’s upstairs?” I said. “What am I going to find, Meredith, when I get upstairs?”
She kept her lips pressed into a thin line. I barged past her, and the last few steps gave way to a long, windowless hallway. A door creaked open at its end, and a slice of sunlight spilled onto the hardwood.
I pushed open the door.
My heart stopped.
It was the biggest plot wall I’d ever seen. My entire life—my entire story—was right there, crystallized into broad strokes
and sticky notes. There were maps of my hometown. There were pinch points, plot twists, and a meet-cute at Georgina’s Café
early in the afternoon on the final Friday in May. There were timelines and transcripts and train tickets, and, at the center
of it all, in big cursive letters and careful navy ink, two thumbtacked tropes.
Bad boy gone good.
The one who got away.
I turned around. Meredith stood at the door, breathing in and breathing out.
“Who the fuck,” I said, “are you?”
“Tyler, let me explain. Let me—”
“How do you have all this? Have you been following us? Are there cameras here? Am I hallucinating? Is this a dream? It must
be, right? I . . .”
I started touching things. The walls, the windows, my own face. It all felt so vivid—so real. But it couldn’t have been. I
was sleeping. I was sleeping in the cottage, and Katie was in my arms. Or maybe the whole summer had been make-believe. A
manifestation of my post-traumatic stress disorder. Some combination of my worst nightmare and a wet dream.
Yes, that was it. I was dreaming. I was dreaming, and Katie was still mine. Or I was dreaming, and it was still spring in New York, and I was never here at all.
But that was when my fingers found a photo on the wall. Faded and tattered but clear as day. Meredith, maybe a few years older
than Katie. A man—tall, bearded, midthirties, a watch on his wrist. A boy, no older than two, building sandcastles. A cat,
tail up, peering on.
“No,” I said.
“Tyler.”
“No!”
“Tyler, please. You have to understand—”
“Tell me this isn’t real! Tell me you’re just a crazy fucking stalker! Tell me, Meredith, that you’re just a crazy fucking
drunk. That you’re in some kind of alcohol-induced psychosis. That you’ve lost your goddamn mind!”
She exhaled.
“Your father,” she said, “was the love of my life.”
The picture crumpled under my fist. “Bullshit! My father didn’t love anything!”
Meredith walked toward a closet and pulled out a box. It teemed with photos and postcards and prizes, the kind you’d win at
Coney Island. I tore through it, hunting for something to prove her wrong. All I found were more pictures. All I found were
love letters.
“You wrote these, right? These aren’t real. These can’t be real.”
“They’re real, Tyler. They—”
“Fuck you! You’re a home-wrecker! He had a family! He—”
“Please let me talk. I can explain. I—”
“No! My dad couldn’t have loved you! He didn’t love anyone! He cheated on my mom my whole life! There was always a new woman, a new . . .”
Meredith picked a letter off the floor.
“That’s not true,” she said. “That may have been true before. It was certainly true after. But your father and I were soulmates.
We were seeing each other on and off from the night we met until when I became pregnant with Juliet. He brought you here all
the time. You took your first steps on that shore. Those handprints you found—they’re yours. You had a room right down this
hall. I was going to leave Alan. Your father and I, we were going to make it work. Your mother knew. Alan knew. We—”
“No! My father was a drunk! He was a liar! He . . .”
The puzzle pieces began to click into place. The story my mother had told me—that my father didn’t know how to love and was
always chasing somebody new—started to crumble. Wasn’t that an easier story to tell than the truth? That he could love someone,
just not her? Just not us? All summer, my mother had known I was here, and she’d said nothing. She’d been so ashamed, she
hadn’t said a single word.
“You’re a home-wrecker,” I said.
“This was your home,” she said. “This was going to be your home.”
My arms flew out wide. “You’re so fucking crazy that you believe that! If this was going to be my home, then why wasn’t it?
If my dad loved you so much, then where is he!?”
She closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“But you know everything,” I said, moving closer.
Backing her into a corner. Behind her, press clippings.
Top Pitching Prospect Shatters Arm in One-Car Accident.
No Timetable for Likely No. 1 MLB Draft Pick’s Return to Mound.
Onetime Long Island Pitching Sensation Dies at Nineteen.
“If you know everything, then where’s my father?
If you’re so rich and powerful, why can’t you find him? Answer that, Meredith.
If my father loved you so much, why the fuck isn’t he here!?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t!” I ripped the photo in two. Meredith flinched, and I was tearing things off the wall—chunks of my life,
my summer with Katie, critical lines of dialogue that were supposed to belong only to her and me. Don’t go to Montauk. You’re still here. There’s only you. “You’re just a stalker! You’re just a sad, pathetic—”
“I pushed him away, Tyler! I did what you did to Katie this morning! He’d left your mother, I was going to leave Alan, we
were going to get married, we were going to do everything right! And then we got into a little fight—it was nothing, one measly
quarrel—and I ran back to Alan to make him jealous, and I got pregnant with Juliet, and I couldn’t face the mess I’d made!
He begged for a year! Told me it didn’t matter—that he loved me all the same! But I couldn’t stand what I’d done to our fairy
tale! That I’d ruined it a second time! And so I pushed him away! I convinced myself a normal life would save me from drowning!
But it didn’t! I drowned all the same!”
“Is that why you were at the funeral? Were you hoping he’d be there? Because he disappeared when I was eight! Had you seen
him? Did you know where he was?”
Meredith took one very tentative step toward me. “I met Michael,” she said, “completely by accident.”
I threw my hands on my head. “What! You knew Mikey too? How!?”
“We met at treatment,” she said. “I had not planned that. We were fast friends. You know how things go in those places. He started talking about his hometown—it took me a few days to piece it all together. That you were Tom’s Tyler. That he was the Mikey next door.”
I put my head in my hands, pacing across the room. “This can’t be real. This isn’t real.”
Meredith exhaled. I looked up. And then, all of a sudden, on the desk right beside her, I saw it. A loaded typewriter. A few
thick stacks of paper piled next to it. I darted for the pages, and Meredith jumped out of my way.
The words were . . .
The story was . . .
It was mine. It was Katie’s and mine. Meredith had all of it. She had every word. I rifled through the pages—past Katie’s
prologue and Arthur’s warning. Past my deal with Selma. Past our first drive out east. It was all there: The sex. The secrets.
The narrative asides. Every single sentence, perfect. Exactly how I’d seen it. Exactly how I’d have written it down.
I looked up. Meredith was pale.
“How the fuck,” I said, “did you write this?”
“I read people, Tyler. I’m an author. I’m just like you. I—”
“No!” I threw the manuscript across the room. Paper flew everywhere. Meredith grimaced, and Pinot scurried under the chair.
“Don’t fucking lie to me! This isn’t possible! You can’t have this! All the surveillance in the world, all the talent in the
world, and you couldn’t have this! There’s no way!”
Meredith said nothing. Her mouth was clamped shut. I took a step closer.
“Tell me how you wrote this! Is there a microchip in my brain? Is that what happened? Did you fucking chip us? Did you spend a million dollars turning us into a science experiment, hoping that somehow, you could find my dad? Is that what you did, Meredith? Did you fucking chip us in our sleep?”
“Tyler,” she said.
“Just tell me the truth! Tell me how you wrote this! Tell me how you did it! Tell me what you are!”
Meredith gulped. The sea breeze whistled through the open window. The pages of the manuscript took flight, then settled softly
onto the hardwood.
She looked at me, and in the last of the day’s dust-swirled sunbeams, I saw it for the first time: a flicker. I reached out
to touch her, and my hand went right through her heart.
She was thin air.