“I mean, I thought he made it pretty clear,” Imogen points out, “except for the part where apparently now he wants to embark on an international vacation with you and your new boyfriend like a giant weirdo.” She sighs. “God, I don’t even know where you all are going to sleep.”
I smile at that, knowing this is about as much of a blessing as I’m likely to get. “Thank you, lady. I can’t wait to see you. You’re the best.”
“I am, truly,” Imogen agrees, and I can hear the wry smile in her voice. “But Molly?”
I close my eyes. “I know.”
“I gotta say it anyway.”
“I know.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
I hesitate. I want to explain to her that I’m not that person anymore, that I’ve spent the year making and remaking myself until she’d hardly recognize the girl who blew through Star Lake like a category five hurricane last summer, knocking down houses and uprooting trees. What Gabe and I had was cozy and exhilarating and old-fashioned all at once somehow, a love like sitting next to a campfire wrapped in a blanket on a cool September night. But that’s over now.
It has to be.
I tilt my head back against the doorjamb, humming my quiet assent into the phone. “I know,” I promise again, a third time like a spell in a fairy tale. “But we’re friends, Imogen. Or we’re trying to be, maybe. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” Imogen tells me, in a voice that lets me know she’s not convinced, not really, but she’s going to wait until she sees me in person to press me on it any more. “Either way, you better hurry up and get here before I change my mind.”
I smile, climbing up off the tile and tucking my hair behind my ears. “I love you,” I tell her. “I’ll see you soon.”
Ian and I pack our bags and use the app on my phone to find the train to the airport, my heart thrumming in a way I’d rather not examine too closely; by the time we get to the terminal I can’t keep myself from frantically scanning the crowd for familiar faces like a secret agent in a spy movie. There’s a part of me that’s hoping Gabe woke up full of the same existential dread that I did, that somehow he’ll have managed to talk Sadie out of this whole doomed endeavor.
The other part of me can’t wait to see him again.
In any event, the two of them are already sitting at the gate when we arrive, Sadie’s sandaled feet resting on her bulging backpack; she’s wearing denim shorts and an Outward Bound hoodie, her hair in a long French braid. “Hey,” Ian calls, raising an easy hand in greeting. “You came.”
“We came!” Sadie agrees cheerily. Gabe, for his part, looks less than convinced. Still, he seems game enough, chatting with Ian about the crummy fielding the Red Sox have been doing lately and asking if we want anything when he and Sadie get up to get coffee.
“Not so bad, right?” Ian asks me as they trot across the terminal, digging a Tana French mystery out of his bag and looking at me hopefully.
“No,” I have to admit. “Not so bad.”
I page through my own book while they’re gone, losing myself a bit in the story of a fancy party full of diplomats held hostage by South American terrorists. By the time Gabe and Sadie turn up again it’s nearly time to board. As Gabe’s passing by he drops something in my lap; I startle, blinking down in surprise at a package of Red Vines. For a second I think, dumbly, that he brought them from Star Lake—that’s how strongly I associate them with home—but when I look up at him in confusion he only shrugs.
“Saw them at the newsstand,” he explains in a voice that pretty clearly communicates, I am begging you not to make a big deal about this. “Thought maybe you’d want ’em for the plane.”
“Um.” I clear my throat. “Thanks,” I say, but he’s already sitting down on the other side of Sadie, peering at something she’s showing him on her phone. I might as well be vapor.
Ian glances over curiously. “I didn’t know you liked those,” he says.
“I used to, yeah.” It’s an understatement: I basically lived on Red Vines last summer, gnawing through them by the pallet load. I kept an emergency stash of them everywhere, my work locker and my nightstand and in the glove compartment of my car. I couldn’t find them in Boston, though, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t exactly hankering for culinary reminders of Star Lake after everything that happened. I haven’t even thought about them in months.
But Gabe remembered.
“Attention, passengers,” the gate attendant calls over the loudspeaker. I exhale, grateful for the distraction, and shove the Red Vines to the very bottom of my purse.
Imogen is staying in a caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of a Sisters of the Resurrection convent on the west coast of Ireland, in County Kerry, where the hills are so green they’re almost blue. From the airport we take a bus to another bus, then drag ourselves and our backpacks two long miles up a steep, narrow lane flanked on either side by fields dotted with tiny white stucco houses. A light, chilly rain is falling, the smell of it brackish and new.
“You guys regretting coming with us yet?” Ian calls over his shoulder, his grin wide and energized underneath his Sox cap. He loves an adventure more than anyone I’ve ever met—except maybe Sadie, whose body was apparently built for mountain climbing and high ropes courses and who looks like she could hike from here to Belfast without breaking a sweat.
“Not yet!” she calls cheerfully, her braid swinging back and forth like a horse’s tail.
For his part, Gabe is quiet, one thumb hooked in the strap of the duffel slung over his shoulder; he hasn’t had a ton to say since we got off the plane, and I can’t exactly blame him.
“I do have to pee, though,” Sadie continues, slowing down a bit to wait for me, then peering over my shoulder. “We getting close?”
“I think so?” I frown, puffing a bit from the long tromp up the hill. I’m following the map on my phone, but even with the international plan I sprung for my service is spotty here, fading in and out again. I’m starting to worry we’ve passed Imogen’s turn altogether when a church finally rises up in the distance, tall and stone-clad and spired. Next door is a sprawling Tudor that must be the convent, flanked by a bright, teeming garden; beyond that is the tiny cottage that belongs to Imogen and the other fellows. In her emails she described it as her hobbit hole, and I see now she wasn’t exaggerating: it looks half collapsed, crumbling mortar and mossy roof and a distinct list to one side, like it’s one heavy rainstorm away from being absorbed back into the earth.
My heart stutters in pure anticipation: I haven’t seen Imogen since she came to visit me in Boston last fall after everything happened, the two of us cuddled in my extra-long twin bed watching movies on my laptop and eating convenience-store Pop Tarts. My pace quickens as I hurry up the leaf-slicked walkway, my roller bag bouncing awkwardly along behind me. I’m just reaching out to knock on the peeling red door—there’s no bell that I can see—when Imogen flings it open and squeals delightedly. “You made it!” she crows.
“There are goats on your lawn,” I blurt out.