Ava missed both Jake and Jordan enormously. For nearly twenty years she had been married, and for more than seventeen years, a mother. Now she was alone. She missed the sound of Jordan’s snapping open the pages of a newspaper and Jake’s humming along to the music on his headphones-but in the sunny bungalow in Fremantle, in contrast to the dark days she’d spent living in Ernie’s nursery in the house in Nantucket, Ava didn’t feel lonely. She liked the quiet, and when she closed her eyes, she saw a bright light that she knew was her future.
If Ava could have seen the action unfolding on the football field on Nantucket just then, if she could have seen Jordan and Jake and Zoe and Claire all applauding as Hobby took a bow for the crowd, raised two fingers in a V for victory, and yelled out, “Retired at age seventeen!” she would have smiled. She would have thought, They are where they’re supposed to be. And so am I.
Ava’s cell phone chirped. She had a text message from Roger Polly that said, Good luck today! She smiled, thinking, Such a lovely man. Although God only knew what would happen there. She texted him back, Nervous!
Then she heard a car honking outside, and she checked out the front window to see her sister May idling at the curb in her minivan. God forbid any member of her family actually take thirty seconds to stop the car and come to the door.
Ava gathered her purse, her spring coat, and her documents, which were nestled in a manila folder, and she closed the door behind her. She hurried down the steps.
“Come on!” May called through her open window. “Let’s go get ourselves a baby!”
At seven o’clock in the evening on that September Friday, Al and Lynne Castle were driving to Vendever to pick up their daughter, Demeter, who had successfully completed thirty days of treatment for alcoholism. It still boggled Lynne’s mind that this had actually transpired, that Demeter had developed this disease while living under her parents’ roof, and that she and Al had had absolutely no idea. Lynne had run through the gamut of emotions herself, from denial to anger to grief. She had questioned the very core of her being. She had thought of herself as a good mother, and yet her youngest child, her only daughter, had essentially slipped through the cracks into a dark and sinister netherworld on her watch. Lynne had been too busy to notice, too smug, too self-absorbed, too self-congratulatory. On the night of the accident, where had she been? She had been at a series of graduation parties for Pumpkin Alexander, Patrick Loom, Garrick Murray, and Cole Lucas. She hadn’t considered the fact that while she and Al were “putting in appearances” at no less than four parties, Demeter was sitting home alone. Of course the girl was drinking. In merely imagining the isolation and loneliness that her daughter must have felt that night, Lynne wanted to reach for a glass of bourbon herself. Lynne wasn’t the wonderful mother she’d thought she was. She was hardly a mother at all. She was a silly woman who had put her business and her clean, orderly home and her charitable boards and her committees and her position in the community ahead of her own daughter.
As Al drove through the gathering dark, Lynne sighed.
In response, Al turned up the radio. He listened to the worst music ever made, what Lynne always thought of as A.M. Gold-Tony Orlando and Dawn, Ambrosia, Dr. Hook. Listening to the radio with Al made her feel a hundred years old. And the fact that he turned the music up when he heard her sigh instead of asking her what was on her mind simply infuriated her. She nearly asked Al to pull over right that second so she could get out. He would never do that, of course. She would have to demand that he get out, and then she would have the satisfaction of leaving him behind as she sped off with some decent music playing. Lynyrd Skynyrd or Bruce Springsteen, something she had listened to back in the Mazda RX4 with Beck Paulsen.
But she would never do that, either.
If Lynne Castle could have seen the scene unfurling at the football field-Jordan and Jake approaching the stands and, after an affirmative nod from Zoe, taking seats on the bleachers directly behind her and Hobby and Claire, and the five of them standing as the elementary school music teacher, Mrs. Yurick herself, sang the National Anthem in her warbling soprano, and Zoe reaching back and squeezing the heck out of Jordan’s hand because every atom of her at that moment yearned for her daughter-well, Lynne would have wished only that she were among them. She would have acknowledged the new, startling circumstances of their lives-that Penny was dead, that Hobby was permanently sidelined, that Jordan and Ava had split, that Jake was heartbroken, that Demeter was an alcoholic, that Claire Buckley was pregnant, that Zoe loved Jordan but didn’t know how to make that feel right, that Jordan was determined to find a way to make it feel right, that none of them were quite the people they seemed, or even the people they thought they were-and she would have said, “Okay, fine, I’ll take it all. As long as we’re together.”
Demeter stood waiting at the exit of the facility, which was a hundred and twenty feet and a world away from the entrance she’d walked through a month earlier. She was thirty-one pounds lighter and she was 80 percent clearer in the head, but the remaining 20 percent of her that struggled would, she realized, probably always struggle. She would struggle with her desire for a drink, the slow burn down the throat, the warm ball of honeyfire in her chest, the ensuing release. She would struggle with her weight. She would struggle with what she had said to Penny Alistair on the night of the accident. She would struggle with her relationship with her parents. She would struggle with unrequited love and sought-after friendships that would never come easily.
But, as her therapist here at Vendever, Sebastian, had said, only 20 percent of her was struggling, which was a lot better than most people. Sebastian had said, “You’re a good kid, Demeter. You’re going to be fine.” Sebastian was handsome and funny and immeasurably kind, and Demeter was half in love with him, as were all the other girls at Vendever, and so his words made an impact on her. If Sebastian thought she was a good kid, a kid worth rescuing, if he thought she was going to be fine, then maybe, just maybe, it was true.
Demeter’s mother had sent manila envelopes filled with Demeter’s schoolwork and assigned reading, and with each batch she had enclosed a simple note saying, I love you, Demeter. xo Mom. Demeter had kept these notes in a pile by her bed. She knew they were true, she knew her mother did, in fact, love her very much. Demeter had been a difficult child, and she meant to both change her ways and apologize. Along with her mother’s notes was a letter Demeter had received from Hobby that said a lot of things, and among them these most important lines: You aren’t responsible for Penny’s death any more than I am responsible or Jake is responsible or my mother or Jake’s mother and father or your mother and father are responsible. The only person who was responsible for Penny’s death was the person who was driving the car that night, and that was Penny herself. I don’t know why she did what she did, but when I see her again-oh, and I will see her again-I’m going to ask her why, and then pray for God’s help in understanding.
Demeter decided that she would keep this letter and her mother’s notes for the rest of her life so that when that 20 percent of her was struggling, she could pull them out and read them.
It was dark now, fully dark at seven-thirty, and whereas a part of Demeter knew that ninety miles away on the island where she had been born and raised there were lights burning brightly on a football field, the only lights Demeter cared about now were the headlights of her parents’ car. When, a few seconds later, they pulled up to the Vendever exit, which was also the entrance to the rest of her life, Demeter turned around and said to Sebastian, who was patiently manning the sign-out desk, “They’re here! They’re here! I’m going home.”