Timothy arrived for dinner just as we were setting it on the table, and the reunion between him and Kelly made me feel voyeuristic. He hugged her even more tightly than I had, and it occurred to me that one of my fatal flaws had always been egoism. It had never occurred to me, at sixteen, that any of my friends were friends outside of me. Unknowingly, I had actually bought into Timothy’s concept of me as the sun, and the proof of that was in my surprise when he knelt before her and she almost cried with joy at the sight of him.

What had they been behind my back? Even in my head, the question sounded accusatory, but I was simply curious. Me and Alex had shared a secret relationship. Zane and Catherine had, as well, one that I had remained almost willfully ignorant of until they finally grabbed hands and ran off into the sunset together. Had Timothy and Kelly, the shadow children of our circle, shared some special bond over their status as sidekicks?

After dinner, the kids played a bit, and then were tucked into bed. Connie disappeared into her bedroom and Grandma slumbered, out of touch with the world but clinging to life with her aged and withered fingers. Timothy washed, Kelly dried, and I put away, and when the dishes were done, the three of us retreated to the back porch to watch the last glow of daylight fade into the distance.

“I can’t believe it,” Timothy mumbled, shaking his head as Kelly told us about her wedding. Stephen was from up north, and they had been married in the church he grew up attending in New Hampshire, but planned on moving South after she finished school. Kelly hated the cold and Stephen loved her family.

Then Timothy graciously answered the questions that had been running through my head earlier, “To think, you were my first kiss . . . and now you’re married and a doctor and—“

“I’m not a doctor yet!” she laughed while I gaped. First kiss. So then my theory was correct. I didn’t know half of what had gone on with my own friends because if it didn’t revolve around me, I had been oblivious. How embarrassingly self-centered.

“Not much longer, though, right Kel?” The three of us craned our necks to glance at the door where Alex stood, peering through the screen. I guess Kelly said something but I didn’t hear it as Alex carefully pushed open the door and stepped out. Casting a crooked smile at me, he apologized, “Sorry, I just let myself in. I didn’t know who was asleep and didn’t want to ring the bell-“

I shook my head, “No, it’s fine. This is Hideaway. We don’t believe in doors here.” He smiled again and the distance between us was ineffable. This wasn’t the first time I had seen him since being back, so why did it feel like it? It was the first time we had shared more than a single strained sentence, perhaps. Or it was the first time he had even tried to smile at me. Maybe it was the atmosphere, this surreal reunion of the survivors. I had been so angry with Alex since I’d returned and he had been so distant and yet now here we were, sitting together on the porch. I was determined to be civil. My eyes followed him as he shuffled past me and collapsed onto the swing on the other side of Timothy, whose legs stretched across the porch, his feet propped on the railing.

This felt like a moment, one of those unforgettable moments in life where the planets align weird and strange shit happens and you don’t realize until later that you should have been hanging on to every tiny detail. This was unreal. There I sat, Kelly in her chair on one side, Timothy relaxed on my other, Alex doing his best to look like he felt at home when the twitching of his fingers against his thigh showed he felt anything but.

“Why didn’t you tell me she had two?” Kelly accused, throwing an ice cube from her lemonade at Alex. Perhaps she had felt his discomfort too, and that was her way of easing the tension. It worked, and it pained me to realize she knew how to relax him while I just made him uncomfortable.

He laughed, “That was her good news to share. The bearer of bad news doesn’t share the good stuff.”

“What makes you the bearer of bad news?” I pressed, trying to reach my feet up to the railings beside Timothy’s. My legs were too short though and my bare feet slipped off, making me wince as the wood scraped against my toes.

“Aren’t I always the one that has to point out the shitty stuff?”

Timothy shrugged, “Man, it’s your own fault for paying too much attention to everyone. You were the most observant of us all, weren’t you?”

Alex didn’t seem to like that assessment, though, and argued, “If that were the truth, things would have been different.”

“What would have been different?” We were treading on dangerous territory now; how quickly and easily we had slipped onto thin ice. Suddenly someone had ripped the bandaid off and so many questions were bubbling to the surface, so many memories, that I wished I could quickly hit the rewind button and not have just asked that question. I didn’t want him to answer it. What if the things he wished were different were the same ones I did, and I broke down hearing such nightmares voiced? Maybe worse: what if they weren’t?

A chill stole across the porch that I’m sure everyone felt, but Alex didn’t take the bait. Instead, he shrugged the danger away, “You probably wouldn’t get to live in Wisconsin.”

“Get to!” I laughed while Kelly pressed, “Yeah, how are you liking it there?” Again the conversation took a sharp turn, this time intentionally. The eggshells we were all treading on made us jump each time they cracked, and we jumped onto a new train of thought to distract ourselves because no one wanted to say the dirty words: drugs, alcohol, death, sex, betrayal.

I shook my head, admitting, “It’s not so bad. The winters are miserable. And I miss the ocean. But I guess life isn’t awful, and the kids are doing really well up there, so . . .”

“So . . .” Timothy repeated, teasing me. “So have you ever thought about moving back down here?”

Another 90-degree turn in conversation that left broken eggshells digging into my heels.

“I . . . well . . .” I stared out at the yard, then turned to him and shrugged, “I guess I used to think about it a lot. I was always torn between wishing I could be back here and never wanting to set foot in Hideaway again. But now I have a job and a place to stay and I don’t want to just be uprooting the kids right before they start school . . . I always thought it was unfair that at least you guys got to stay here while I had to move to Wisconsin of all places,” I laughed.

Alex, who had been quietly watching the three of us in our row, now spoke up, asking quickly, “Why didn’t you stay?”

“Because I was knocked up and fucked up.” The question had caught me off guard and I fired off the first thing on my tongue. It was an angry retort, one that visibly made him shudder. I hated swearing – I mean, the kids picked it up and I definitely didn’t want them running around shouting the f-word at everyone. This line of conversation was making me so ridiculously uncomfortable, though, and the strings were just pulling tighter and tighter and then he plucked it and it snapped.

Why hadn’t I stayed? First of all, I hadn’t been given much of a choice. Michael was dead and I was pregnant and Grandma didn’t know what to do. I was a wreck. I had been a wreck for several weeks, hardly leaving the house after Zane and I’d had sex. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone or do anything. She had already been on the brink of asking other relatives if they would let me come stay with them for a while, and then Michael died and she couldn’t get me out of the house fast enough. She started calling around. Then I was late. Cat bought me the pregnancy test because she didn’t care if rumors started about her. When it came back positive, she and Zane were gone the next day. Just gone, before I’d even told anyone. When I finally did confess, I think pieces began to fall into place. Grandma decided I needed to be out of Hideaway before it destroyed me –as if I wasn’t already destroyed! She called Connie, begging, and was it any surprise that Connie wanted nothing to do with her messed up pregnant teen daughter? It was my dad’s sister that agreed to take me in, my aunt whom I hadn’t seen since his funeral so many years before.

Zane, Catherine, Connie, Michael, all these people I didn’t want to think about. All these memories from a period in history that I rarely thought of except in a vague sense, skipping over the gritty details. Alex had been on the porch ten minutes and already I felt sick to my stomach.

“Jem? Jem,” Alex was saying, and I realized I had fallen completely silent for some time. I glanced at his concerned frown. He was still calling me Jem, just like he always had, as if he had any right anymore to call me by a nickname. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

He laughed, his head falling back and his entire body shaking, and I realized that everything about this was too big for the porch. We were all on edge because we were afraid of saying the things we were all thinking. And that meant that every question was loaded, every word double edged. What a waste of a reunion, if we –or if I, because perhaps no one else was doing it—were going to sit around feeling so sorry for ourselves.

“For everything,” he finally answered, shaking his head and turning out to the yard. And we were all silent because finally someone had said what we were all thinking. We were all sorry, even those of us who maybe had nothing to be sorry for.

I sighed and tried to stretch my feet up to the railing again as I brushed past the apology, “Okay, so today Aiden asked me why he and Lily have different private parts. Who wants to explain it to them?”

This succeeded in stitching the atmosphere on the porch back together after Alex’s laughter had shattered it, and suddenly it was much easier to just . . . relax. Instead of asking questions of any sort, we all talked about what we were currently up to. Timothy told us some truly frightening stories about pranks he and military friends had pulled on each other. Kelly regaled us with horror stories of all-nighters and term papers. I went into graphic detail about child birth and potty training and cracked nipples from trying to breastfeed two babies.

“My life has been pretty boring compared to that,” Alex shrugged when I finished the story of Aiden yelling ‘fuck you, Mommy!’ in front of my new boss when he was two. I realized Timothy and Kelly probably both knew what he did for a living, but I didn’t, so I politely inquired. “I . . . ah . . .” He ran his hands through his hair, then rubbed the back of his neck.

It might have been five years since I had seen Alex, but his body language was still more natural to me than English.

I rolled my eyes, “Please, Alex. I’m a seamstress and a single mom. I win the loser race here between doctor and soldier.”

His gaze quickly snapped to mine as he pressed, “Please don’t say that. You’ve never been a loser—“

“With all I’ve lost . . . well, enough with the cryptic comments. What do you do for a living, and don’t even think about squirming in shame.”

“I’m a fisherman and a mechanic,” he sighed, avoiding my gaze and tracing a design in the sweat on the outside of his glass.

Kelly rolled her eyes, “You aren’t just a mechanic, Alex. He’s being modest. He’s the manager for the pier mechanic shop and he owns two fishing boats and he’s a fishing guide. That’s not boring at all, Alex; you’re always working. I can hardly ever get you on the phone anymore.”

The clench in my stomach was unjust. I had no right to be so instantly jealous that Kelly and Timothy had bought been in constant contact with Alex, it sounded like, while I had lived forgotten and abandoned in Wisconsin . . . but they hadn’t abandoned me, I had abandoned them. They hadn’t cut themselves off from me, I had done that to them. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

“That’s great,” I assured him. “I’m glad you’re doing so well here. I know you never wanted to have to leave the—“

He snorted and shook his head, “Yeah, I’m doing really fucking well here, Jem.”

“Well what would you rather be doing?” I asked calmly. His rudeness reminded me of his behavior since I had been back, and the warming effects of his pleasantness since sitting on the porch swing were wearing off. I was determined to not be the one to explode, though.

I had expected some smartass answer back, but instead he joined his hands in his lap and admitted, “I’ve been thinking about teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“Yeah. Yes. I mean, I wouldn’t want to give up the boats, but I’m . . . being a manager is shit. It’s blue collar disguised as white collar.”

I glanced between Timothy and Kelly, but they looked as surprised as I did as Kelly asked, “Well what do you want to teach?”

“Uh . . . high school history. And I could coach soccer, too. That’s what I’d like to do.” His leg was bouncing nervously again and I wanted to reach out and clamp my hand down on it like Mama Loula had done in church.

Instead I pointed out, “It sounds like you know what you want then. What’s stopping you?”

“I’ve never exactly been good at going for what I want.”

Why did we have to be so cryptic about everything?

I rolled my eyes; if he wanted to be glib about the past, I could be too, “No, you just sucked at maintaining. If you want to teach, teach. If you want to fish, fish. What’s the big deal?”

“Well what’s stopping you?” I stared hard at him, then snapped my jaw shut and crossed my arms in a childish pout. This wasn’t supposed to be about me. I’d already told them, I had my life in working order. He seemed to enjoy my reaction, though. With a laugh, he offered, “I’ll do what I want with my life when you balls up and practice what you preach.”

How could he do that? Five years of not talking, a week of being rudely evasive, and then he marches onto my back porch and rips right through every pretense about my life in Wisconsin.

I was undermining my dislike of Wisconsin when I answered their questions. I hated it. I was miserable there. The people were sugary and cheerful to your face and then gossiped behind your back. Despite the number of girls my age with fatherless children, I was an outsider and hadn’t developed any friendships with people my own age. What few friends I had were through my aunt, and even then probably more out of charity than anything. I felt like a servant when I told people I was a seamstress, even if my creations were expensive and high quality and beautiful. I had only heard bad things about the school system. I hated the winters and the summers and the lack of everything I loved: the suffocating heat and the ocean and the sunsets and even the damn seagulls. I didn’t just envy these people, my childhood friends, I almost hated them because I had lost everything. My brother, my grandparents, my home, my future, my freedom, my boyfriend, my best friends, my innocence, my hope, my everything.

But if there was anything I had learned, it was that I was not a good judge of my own wants. When I took the reigns, shit happened. I had chosen Zane over Alex as my boyfriend; I had then cheated on my boyfriend with Alex; I had not tattled on my brother’s drug use when I knew I should have; I had sequestered myself away when I was needed most and had never made Zane face any of the consequences of any of his actions. I had let myself turn into an alcoholic with small children in the house and I had let myself use them and alcoholism and self-pity as an excuse to settle for a career that I had never wanted.

I was pouting again. And I was mad at Alex again. And at myself. And at Timothy and Kelly for not being frozen and unhappy like me and Alex.

But that was the grand irony, wasn’t it? The straw that had broken the camels back, the spark that had lit the fuse that eventually set off the dynamite that blew us all to kingdom come had not been the alcohol or Old Man Tippet’s Death or Cat introducing the boys to drugs. If I really thought about the chronology of the summer, we had been stupid but sort of just typical teenagers. Until Alex and I had sex. Because Timothy was right – everyone had known when it happened, even if we had promised between us not to tell anyone. I had told Kelly anyways. Everyone else had guessed. Then Zane stewed in vengeful thoughts because he never once confronted me about it until that night with him . . . but my guess was that he and Catherine started their little thing not long after . . .

So in summary, the beginning of our great unhappiness had been when Alex and I had both admitted and pursued what we wanted. Each other. And that had been catastrophic. And now he had just point blank admitted to us that he was unhappy still, and called me out on my own obvious but denied unhappiness.

Life is cyclical. Or maybe some people are just cursed. But I had come to terms with the fact that bad things happen to me, regardless of what I do. My mom gets addicted to alcohol and abandons my family. My dad dies. My friends all do drugs and then my boyfriend knocks me up when I had already made it clear I didn’t want to have sex with him and runs off with another girl. My brother dies. Etc. Pursuing happiness was pointless because it would always elude me. It would continue to elude me. Some people are not meant to be happy, so you find what happiness you can: I had that in my children, and I was finally to a point in life where that was enough.

I’m happy. I don’t need Hideaway or revenge or closure or companionship or comfort or anything else. I have my children and that should be enough. That is enough.

Conversation took another turn. Alex and I added less, but Timothy and Kelly were more than capable of keeping things flowing on their own and to a much happier tune. It was soon late, though, and I needed to get some sleep if I was going to be up in time to watch Connie make breakfast. She had been doing so every morning she didn’t have to be at work early, but I still didn’t trust her not to catch the kitchen on fire.

The four of us walked through the house together, and Alex and Timothy grabbed either side of Kelly’s wheelchair to carry her down the front steps as she rolled her eyes and threatened their lives if they dropped her. I followed and stopped only at the sidewalk, hugging my arms to my body and feeling a sense of dread at their departure, even if I had been counting down the minutes until I could crawl into bed between my children, who were more than enough happiness for any one person.

I hugged Kelly, then let Tim pull me tightly against his chest and whisper into my ear, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Try to get some sleep. I know it’s been a good but rough evening for you.” I smiled into his shoulder and squeezed tighter. He kissed my cheek, then took hold of Kelly’s handlebars and insisted on pushing her home because he wasn’t waiting another minute to meet this husband of hers. I wondered if I shouldn’t go to, because I wanted to meet this wonderful man God had graced her with, that she most certainly deserved. But no, I was tired, I could meet him later.

I smiled and watched their backs disappear down the sidewalk into the dark, Timothy pushing too fast and Kelly shrieking for him to slow down. They were still kids. They were grown up, I guess, but they were still free and . . . . and God I envied them. And I disgusted myself with how sorry I felt for myself, because usually I didn’t let myself feel sorry for myself, but that’s all I had done all night.

I turned to go inside before realizing Alex was still standing there, one hand deep in his jeans pocket and the other rubbing the back of his neck. He was frowning and squinting as though some bright light were shining in his eyes, but only the dim glow from the porch faintly illuminated us.

“Uh . . .” he mumbled, twisting slightly. “Can I . . . Can I hug you?”

The bottom fell out of my stomach, and all the anger and self-pity and confusion and depression was shoved to the side to make room for this vast blankness. I didn’t know what to think or feel or say. So I just sighed and nodded, opening my arms for him to step into.

It was the first physical contact we had made since before Zane . . . since before my children were conceived.

I had expected to step in, touch, and pull quickly away. But I couldn’t. His arms wrapped around my waist and mine around his neck and we both just froze. We didn’t cry or rub each other’s backs in comfort or anything so sappy as that. We just . . . stood there and didn’t breathe as I pressed my face into the warm side of his neck.

My children should have been enough. If I was a good mother, they would have been enough.

B ut suddenly, they weren’t enough.

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