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couldn’t take that risk. The only way to truly be safe was if no one

knew where we were.

I stopped to get us some groceries, and then I drove home.

On the street by our house on Possession Point, I saw my father,

riding in circles on a bicycle. I rolled my window down.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“Look at this thing. I found it in the shed out back. He’s

got to be one successful bastard. You don’t leave a bike like

this out in sea air where it can rust, unless you can replace it

like nothing.”

“You taking up biking?” He looked a little wobbly on it. That

ankle, probably. “And, what, did you have some sort of miracle

cure after your fall?”

He ignored that. “I figure we could use a way for us both to

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Deb Caletti

get around.” He was smiling. He looked happier than I’d seen

him in maybe forever.

“I see,” I said. And I did. I felt both nervous and glad. Dad

had never even dated much, for all the attention he got from

women. Annabelle Aurora had said he should start living again,

but it never seemed to me that he
hadn’t
been living. He worked

and had his friends and every now and then he might go out and

come home late but it would end before I ever met anyone. I

guess I figured he was still in love with my mother.

I drove the car the rest of the way to the house and parked,

and he rode that bike and set it against the porch. I got out, locked

the car door, though there wasn’t exactly anyone around to break

into it. He looked like he was walking funny. “You okay?” I asked.

“Fucking ankle.”

“Just like the old nursery rhyme. ‘Asses, asses, we all fall

down.’ ”

“Hilarious.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be riding that bike.”

“It’s fine. I was an
athlete
.”

“One lousy season,” I said. “She said she was married.”

He turned. “What?”

“
Mrs
. Genovese.”

He thought about this.

“There’s probably an explanation,” I said. Who knew.

“I’m sure there is,” he said. “Because she agreed to go out

with me tonight.” I opened the trunk to get the groceries. He put

his hands on his hips, looked out to the sea. His shirtsleeves were

rolled up, and I could see scratches from where he had fallen.

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Stay

“At least it’s not Fiona Husted,” I said to his back. I just

hadn’t liked the sound of her name when Annabelle had said it.

Sylvie Genovese was maybe a snake my father could charm, but

Fiona Husted was a big unknown.

My father flung around and stared at me. I swear, his mouth

dropped open. He looked spooked. “Jesus,” he said.

“What?” I said. I had a plastic bag full of lettuce and bananas

and yogurt on my arm.

“You just sounded . . .”

“Sounded what?”

“Like your mother. I swear to God. Exactly.”

I didn’t know how to take this. It could have been a good

thing, couldn’t it, except for that look on his face? That look—it

was troubled. He actually took a step back from me. I wasn’t my

mother. I was me. I wanted to move past that moment, fast. What

I saw disturbed me—a flash of the complicated feelings he’d had

about her. It was the first time I’d witnessed it in such a large

way. Then again, maybe I was just at that point where you sud-

denly see your parents clearly. I held the bag out to him. “Here.”

I flung it his direction, and he caught it. I took out the other bag

and slammed the trunk. I tried to sound casual. “I’ve got a date

tonight myself,” I said.

“Really.” His face returned to normal. He even looked

pleased. He nodded. “I see.”

We walked inside. Rather, he
hobbled
inside. He went to the

bathroom, rummaged around for what I was guessing was the

aspirin bottle. “The dating thing . . . I’ll go slow,” I called to him.

“I don’t want you to worry.”

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Deb Caletti

“Clara, you learned more with all of this . . . I don’t worry.”

He came back out, two white tablets in his palm. “You learned
too

much. Your problem is going to be letting go of this experience,

not holding on to it.”

He was probably right. Everything that had happened with

Christian—it took up so much space, it was like another person

inside of me. That’s how heavy it felt. The guilt, the responsibil-

ity. The weight of memory and decisions. I wanted to be as far

away from Christian as I could, and yet I still worried about him

every day. I still thought about him endlessly. It was my fault,

what happened. I was sure. But Dad was right—nothing like this

would ever happen again. That was the only thing in all this that

gave me any rest.

He took out a glass, filled it with water, and swallowed the

pills. He turned back to face me. He was smiling again. “Look

at us,” he said. “Who would have thought?” I felt good, too. My

father’s eyes looked bright, and my heart speeded along at the

thought of Finn and me at Butch’s Harbor Bar.

“Wouldn’t it be weird? We come here when things are so

awful . . .” I said. “Can a whole lot of good come from that

much bad?”

“Phoenix rising from the ashes!” Dad twanged like a

Southern preacher.

“We are reborn,” I said, like a Southern preacher, too.

“Hal-le-lu-jah,” he said. And then, he did something very un-

Dad-like. My literary father with his writerly wild hair and black

glasses raised up his arm, slapped me a sports-father high five as

I slapped him one back.

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Stay

* * *

of his ankle, and so I took the car to Butch’s Harbor Bar.

The place was crowded, spilling people and music, but when I

got to the doorway I could see Finn at a table, waving his arm

at me.

“Nothing like someplace quiet and romantic,” he shouted.

It suited me just fine. I liked it there. Country music blared;

you could see Butch with his huge belly and gray beard behind

the bar. The waitresses wore red aprons. The food was served

in red plastic baskets with checked paper inside. It was a place

where people laughed loud.

I slid into the seat across from Finn. We joked about his

brother and sister and that seagull. I asked him about the rest of

his family. His mother owned and ran the boat and restaurant

business since his father died.

“My mother,” I shouted. “She died, too.” It was a funny thing

to shout.

He nodded. We could have said more to each other about

this, but we didn’t.20* We ate our fried clam special and passed

the napkins and sipped icy cold Cokes in red plastic cups. Every

time someone came through the door, especially if it was a guy

our age, I tried to make sure I kept my eyes on Finn’s. I watched

my words when we talked about school. I didn’t mention anyone

20 We didn’t need to. You share an experience like that, and you both know you have a

whole planet of connection and understanding between you. I knew more about Finn

right then and he knew more about me than we could have if we’d spent six months

talking nonstop.

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Deb Caletti

from my past, unless it was a girl. But when our waitress finished

her shift only to be replaced by a friend of Finn’s, he introduced

him to me. I was well-trained, you know? And so I didn’t joke

with them at first. I was aware of what I was doing, but I couldn’t

stop myself. I felt like I’d been in one of those cults where the

women wear long dresses and are forbidden to watch television.

Once out in the world, the television still was a thing to fear. Finn

did not give off the small clues that meant he would be the kind of

guy to get upset, though. He looked only relaxed and happy. And

so I joked with them, and I remembered how good it felt to do

that, and Finn’s face never changed. It seemed possible but also

impossible that he might not see threats everywhere. It seemed

possible but impossible that I might be able to relax, too.

“We done here?” Finn said. I really liked those sweet eyes.

Really liked. I would never again be attracted to anyone who

wasn’t entirely and completely kind. Down to their cells kind. The

garden variety of nice, as my dad said, not the sort that was righ-

teousness in hiding. Being attracted to anything else—to badness

or darkness or trouble—it seemed not only immature but slightly

twisted. You might as well say you were drawn to car crashes, or

burning buildings, or cancer. I was scared to see Finn’s goodness

(I’d been wrong about that before), but I
did
see it. There was

something uncomplicated about him, and I had come to know

that “complicated” was something to distrust.

We shoved our empty baskets away. Those clams had been

fantastic. You saw why the place was so crowded. Butch was tell-

ing some story and sliding beers down the bar, like you see in

Western movies. “How about some quiet?” Finn said.

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Stay

“Quiet sounds good,” I said.

I went to the bathroom and checked that I didn’t have any-

thing embarrassing in my teeth. I looked like me, but a different

me, in the mirror. It was funny, because I felt like myself, but I

also wondered where exactly I was and how I got here. In that

bathroom, with cowboy music playing outside the door and a guy

waiting for me on the sidewalk outside, I was someone I needed

to get to know.

He’d snuck a mint again, but so had I. Our mutual mint

breath meant we hoped to stand closer. The street seemed so

quiet after that restaurant. Finn took my fingers, ran with me

across the street to where the water was. His hands were rough

and callused from those ropes. He did not have Christian’s

smooth, protected hands.

“Want to go to the beach?” he asked.

“Sure.” I didn’t know where people here went on a weekend

night. At home we would have gone to a coffee place. Maybe one

of the parks by one of the lakes.

He kept hold of my fingers. I didn’t mind. We stood at the

top of the breaker wall, looked down at the stretch of sand going

in both directions. Bonfires dotted the shoreline.
This
is where

people went on weekends; I could tell. They gathered in groups,

small orange-lit parties. A guy called Finn’s name and Finn

waved, and a girl gestured for him to join them. There was laugh-

ter, beer bottles tilted for a drink in the moonlight. I felt a little

shy. I would be the tourist girl people looked at with curiosity.

“Friday night,” he apologized. “Maybe somewhere more

quiet? We can see if Jack’s hijacked
Obsession
.”

* 127 *

Deb Caletti

“Okay.”

We walked down the main street to a now familiar place, the

docks.
Obsession
was in its place. The lapping and sloshing water

sounded different and more insistent in the dark. A few of the

boats were glowing from inside, looking like snug hideaways.

Finn climbed up on the boat, held his hand out, and helped me

over. He opened the hatch below, called out Jack’s name. Finn

disappeared for a second. I imagined Jack popping out, hitching

up his pants with his shirt off, but the boat was empty. I won-

dered what it was like down there, what it would be like to be

with Finn in his own snug hideaway. A boat seemed like the best

kind of secret place—better than a treehouse or a fort tucked into

a forest. You could hide, but you could flee, too.

“Just us,” Finn said. He had some thick blankets under

his arm, which he set on the deck for us to sit on. “You warm

enough? I’d take you out, but it really takes two of us, and that

idiot never remembers to leave the keys, anyway.”

“This is great.” I sat down, looking out onto the sea, where

the moon had dipped the waves into gold light. You could hear

someone’s radio. The waves lapped and sloshed against the side

of the boat. “Hidden.”

Finn sat down next to me. He stretched out his long legs.

I wondered how that word would sound,
hidden
. Would he

think I meant something by it? That this was something I

regularly did?

“I love being hidden sometimes. Do you ever just love that?

When no one knows where you are?” He hadn’t misinterpreted.

I decided to try letting all of that go, the weighing and the mea-

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Stay

suring. I would say what I wanted, slip off the chains. It seemed

strange how at ease I felt. You could be comfortable with Finn

Bishop, and yet, the space between us still felt charged.21*

“We aren’t supposed to be on a boat after dark, remember?” I

said. “The ghosts will grab our ankles trying to save themselves?”