“Yeah, but it’s not like we can just hop on over to Rollowong,” Kyan says. “It’s about a twenty-hour drive from here.”
“But there are flights, aren’t there?” I say, thinking back to our hazy bus ride into Jagged Rock all those years ago. I distinctly remember passing an airport at some point.
Adrien’s on her phone again. “There’s an airport a few towns over from Rollowong. Looks like it’s a forty-minute drive from Nick’s address. But I don’t have any particular desire to either see Jagged Rock or talk to Nick, let alone fly halfway across the country to do it.”
Unlike Adrien, I’m convinced now. Hope glows in me at the chance of pegging Nick for this crime. Of making it all okay. Of moving on with my life.
“I think we owe it to Phoebe.” The words are out of my mouth before I can reconsider. “None of us were very good friends to her back then. And we should have been there for Hari, with everything she’s gone through the last few years. Maybe this is our chance to make up for it. Even if Nick didn’t…you know…maybe he knows something that can help us. Something we could pass on to the police.”
The others don’t say anything, the shame for how we all acted back then draping over us like the night’s thick humidity. The only one wearing an expression other than guilt is Adrien. Her gray eyes flash but she remains thankfully quiet.
“She’s right.” The support comes from the last person I’d expect. When I look over, Declan shoots me a warm smile.
“Ugh, fine,” Kyan says eventually. “But we’ll fly in and out. Make this trip as short as possible so we can be back by happy hour tomorrow. What do you guys say?”
Everyone nods, some more eagerly than others. I take a sip of my wine, but the thought clings to my throat.
We’re going back.
12
Claire
Now
I don’t sleep much that night, my sweaty limbs and disturbing memories twisting themselves up in Kyan’s soft sheets for hours. I give up at any attempt as my room begins to lighten, the day just about to break through the cracks in the blinds.
I throw on a sweatshirt and head towards the kitchen, pausing slightly at the doorway to my bedroom, breathing only once I’ve confirmed the absence of the early morning whispers from yesterday. I wait at the coffeemaker until it finally froths out enough hot liquid for the six of us, and I grab a mug and take it out with me to the balcony.
It’s been years since I’ve seen a sunrise like this one, a decade in fact. Pink crawls upwards in the sky, transforming the darkness into something beautiful. Despite the early hour and the chill in the air, the die-hard surfers are already out, black icons against asea of color. But the beach itself is empty aside from an unmanned lifeguard stand.
I think how much my mother would have loved this. She was always exclaiming over a sunrise or a sunset, insisting we catch every one.
Tomorrow’s never certain,she’d say.How could you live with yourself if you missed your last-ever sunset?
The memory of her words pulses in my chest, a painful heartbeat. While she was dying, I was wasting countless sunsets over here.
I found out that first day I got back from Australia, when she met me at O’Hare Airport. I searched for her at the arrival gate, scanning the crowd, looking for her dark, curly hair hovering several inches above everyone else’s with her five-foot-nine stature. But she wasn’t there. I almost dropped to my knees at that point. The distress of having had it all for such a fleeting time—a best friend, a boyfriend, a family—only to have it all go up in smoke was too much. I wanted my mother. Only she would understand. Only she would make it better.
But when I did spot her, it wasn’t the woman I knew. It wasn’t my mother. It was a shell. A skinny frame confined to a wheelchair, red fabric wrapped around her head, dark circles beneath her eyes accentuating the hollows of her cheeks.
Pancreatic cancer, stage four. It was inoperable when the doctors found it, and she’d pushed for me to go abroad so I could avoid the worst of it. So I wouldn’t be left with memories of the hardest weeks.
I wanted to collapse into her, but she looked so frail I realized I might break her if I did. I knew then that I would never tell her the truth. I could never tell her what I did, who I really was.
So I swallowed it for the few weeks she had left. I swallowed it as I tried to figure out what life looks like for a solitary twenty-year-old without friends, without a family. As I dropped out of college, swapping classes for a minimum wage job to support myself, selling the family home, and moving into a cramped downtown studio apartment. As I moved forward with a life I never wanted, one streaked with guilt and regret.
It formed a boulder in my throat, something I could never recover from. Until now.
“Hey.”
The word yanks me from my thoughts, and I swipe the tear from my eye before Josh can see it. As I do, I realize how far the sun has risen in the sky, the pinkish light replaced by a golden glaze drizzled over the beach.
“Good morning,” I respond as he sits down next to me. “Did you sleep well?”
I take in his mussed sandy hair and his sleepy eyes, and something throbs in my chest. There’s a familiarity with Josh, an easiness. It’s why I’ve never been able to stay away.
“Damn, that bed’s amazing,” he says, and I laugh.
