Epilogue
Katie
One Summer Later
Long Island
The high afternoon sun glinted off the ocean. The sky, blue. The air, thick. The seagulls, raucous. Between Tyler and me,
as usual, was a foot of easy distance—plus a few pens and pencils and two bags of stale salt-and-vinegar chips.
I closed my notebook and, for a moment, glanced over at him. At the line of his jaw, the brim of his ball cap, the way the
tendons in his forearm tightened when he scribbled in his journal. It was still black, of course, and college-lined.
“You good?” he said. “You stuck on that chapter again?”
“No, I’m fine, I just . . .” I sifted a few fingers through the hot, grainy sand and then craned my neck east. The shoreline,
infinite and bathed in that shimmering Long Island light. “Do you think I could’ve found you? That we could’ve had this without
her? Figured out another way?”
Tyler twisted toward me just a little. “No,” he said. “I think we needed her. I think some stories, they’re just too big to
be told without a little magic. Without a little make-believe.”
I nodded. “Do you think she knows, at least?”
“Knows what? That we’re okay?”
“Yeah. That we’re happy. That we still make dinner every night. That you sold your book. That you go to Mets games with my dad. That I’m working on my own novel. That we have a favorite bagel shop. That you have a tattoo of a pink-gold window on your shoulder. That you love me all the way.”
He pressed his knee against mine. “Yeah. I think she knows.”
I smiled, then clicked my pen and got back to my notebook. Got back to writing my story. Tyler did the same. And when afternoon
had finally drifted into evening, when our hands were too tired to draft another word, Tyler called out for the cat, scooped
him into his arms, and the three of us caught the last Manhattan-bound train back home.