The Edge of Falling (25 page)

That’s real life. Things don’t always work out the way you think they will. They’re not so neat and tidy. But people come into your life with a purpose—I see that now. Claire likes to say that people cross your path for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Astor was a reason. Hayley, though? Hayley is a lifetime. I know now that to let go of her, I don’t have to forget her.

*    *    *

“Are you almost done?” The voice snaps me back to the present moment.

I shake my head. “Impatient much? You were the one who wanted me to write this article.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But I’d like to get out of here before sunup.”

Trevor and I are in the offices of the
Journal
. We’re working late—the magazine has to go to Mrs. Lancaster for approval tomorrow (she’s already extended our deadline), and in it is going to be a story. My story.

“Big plans?” I ask, running the cursor over a line.

“I need to work on Tuesday,” he says.

I turn to face him, and Trevor smiles. He’s got this
wonderful smile, the kind that feels like it’s plugged in somewhere—like one thousand volts of light.

“I’m out of here.” Trevor and I both look up as Kristen stands from her desk and slings her bag over her shoulder. “If you want me to proofread that, then you have to send it by midnight, got it?” She points to my computer screen and raises her eyebrows.

I turn to Trevor. “Someone is getting kind of bossy.”

Trevor shrugs. “Sometimes you need tough love, Caggs.”

Kristen smiles and gives us a little wave, and I watch as the door shuts behind her. We’re becoming friends, slowly. Mostly at the
Journal
. She’s very different than I thought she was—not at all the shy, insecure girl I always wrote her off to be. We talk honestly now. It started with my telling her the thing I should have said a long time ago, the thing that I could never bring myself to, not until now:
Thank you.

I lean back from the computer and stretch. “If I don’t finish writing this tonight, it’s not going to have a shot at being included.”

Trevor nods. “Okay,” he says. He brings his chair closer to mine, so they’re right up against each other. “How can I help?”

We work for another hour. Trevor formats the issue, and I finish my article. It feels nice up here with him, a new kind of normal. The panic still crops up sometimes, the pain, but
there is a calm that comes with having seen the worst and weathered the storm.

Trevor and I are going on our first official date on Tuesday. Well, our first second official date. We’re taking it slow this time. Things are different now, but I’m learning that maybe that’s okay.

After the fire I kept trying to figure out if I could ever get back to where I was with Trevor before, if we could have the kind of relationship we had when Hayley was still alive. What I didn’t realize, and what I’m still learning, is that we don’t need to get back anywhere. We just need to move forward.

It feels good to finally tell my own side of the story, and to be honest. I’m setting the record straight about Kristen. It’s time to speak up. It’s not fair for her to take the fall anymore. It never was. When I asked her why she lied for me, why she didn’t just correct people, she told me this: “You needed the secret kept for you more than I needed the truth to come out.”

When I finish the piece, I give it to Trevor. “Hand it over,” he says. “It’s going to print.”

“Do you think Mrs. Lancaster will even okay it?” I ask. “I haven’t exactly been a model representative.”

“I’m pretty sure we can work something out.” He smiles at me, and exaggerates a kissing motion with his lips.

“Are you saying you’re willing to fulfill Mrs. Lancaster’s fantasies to get her to publish this?”

Trevor picks up my hand from the keyboard. His eyes search mine, and when they find me, I feel myself melt into him. It’s warm here. Home. “Caggie,” he says. “I’d do anything for you.”

*    *    *

I should probably say, for the record, that Abigail Adams and I are no longer friends. When I got back to school, after the fire, she didn’t seem so interested anymore. “You burned Astor,” she said. I couldn’t tell whether she was mad about him not coming back or about not being the one to break the news about what happened at the beach. “We were friends—you should have told me something was wrong.” But either way, in the next breath she declared, “I’ve had enough of your drama for one lifetime,” and sauntered off with Constance and Samantha at her heels.

It goes without saying that Trevor and I haven’t been invited to her end-of-the-year party in May. Neither has Kristen, for that matter. I think the three of us are going to go see a movie instead. Something funny. I agree with Abbey: I’ve had enough drama too.

Did I ever mention that our Hamptons house was my grandfather’s? Well, it was, and when Peter cleaned it out, he kept everything. Three generations’ worth of stuff. He put it
all in a storage unit in New Jersey, across the bridge, and the next morning, after the
Journal
, we go to unload it.

I’m sitting in the town car between my mom and dad. Peter is up front with the driver. Mom has been chatting the whole way over. This running commentary about the scenery, how nice the weather is. “Do you think we should go back into the city or find somewhere around here to eat after? Or we could go home. We could make breakfast at night! Remember when we used to do that?” She keeps rambling, about whether or not we have pancake mix, when my dad reaches over and takes her hand. My mom moves her fingers between his, and they hold them that way, resting in my lap, until we get to the warehouse.

Peter runs out to get the keys, and the three of us get out of the car. We follow him back, to the farthest unit on the left.

“You think we could order Serafina from here?” Dad asks, and Mom starts laughing. It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh in months, maybe even a year. The sound rolls off the metal storage units like water on a tin roof—loud, too close, and yet somehow comforting. Dad smiles too. He’s here now, really here. I look over at my parents, both dressed in jeans and sweaters. Dad rolls his sleeves up and takes the key from Peter. He cranks the door open.

We stand in a row as we look at all the boxes. No one talks
for a moment, and then Dad says: “You did a great job, P.” He puts a hand on Peter’s back and an arm around me.

“Let’s get started,” Mom says.

Let me tell you something—change is seeing my formerly Chanel-clad mother decked out in jeans, being the first one to make her way through a dusty storage unit.

Mom steps in and pulls the string of the overhead swing light, and then we all fall in line behind.

Dad and Peter head to the back, and Mom and I stay up front. We sit down on some boxes. “Just start opening,” Dad calls. “There is no right way to do this.”

Mom opens a box and I suck in my breath. It’s full of paintings. Hayley’s paintings. Mom unrolls one, and I see her hand fly to her mouth. It’s unfinished, but it looks like it was going to be a bird. Hayley’s signature. Mom covers her face with her hands.

I go over to her and wrap my arms around her. We stay that way for a long time, my head on her shoulder, the piece of canvas pressed between us.

“I am lucky to have you,” she says finally. She wipes the back of her hand over her eyes. She doesn’t say
I’m sorry,
or
My mascara must be a mess,
or anything else. Just “I’m lucky to have you.” And for the first time, I think maybe she means it, maybe she doesn’t think that Hayley would still be here if it wasn’t for me. Maybe we’re all—me, Dad, Peter,
and Mom—finally starting to see what we have left.

We stay in that unit for nine hours, sorting boxes, laughing over some memories, crying over others. Claire stops by around lunchtime to bring us sandwiches—and to see Peter. They’re well past Claire’s six-week period at this point, and I’m getting used to it. They both seem happy, and although Peter is back at USC, he’s still in a lot of weekends, and she goes to visit him, too. “I may be a California girl after all,” she said to me when she came back last time.

They make out for a few minutes behind some boxes where they think no one can see, but she doesn’t stay long. She knows this is a family moment, and I’m grateful to her for that. That’s one thing about Claire: Where it really counts, like in a dark storage unit, or on a one-sided cell phone call, she gets it.

“Here whenever you need me,” she says on her way out. She squeezes my arm, tucks her chin on my shoulder.

“I know,” I say.

I take one thing from today. It’s a photograph of Hayley I snapped when she was eight. I’m not exactly the world’s best photographer, but I was always really proud of this picture. She’s on a bike in it, and she’s balancing with her hands, her feet off the ground. She looks a little like she’s flying, a bird ready to take flight.

She’s not looking at me, exactly, more like behind me,
and she’s squinting, the sun in her eyes. I took the picture with an ancient camera, the kind that has real film, and I remember struggling to find somewhere that would develop it, that didn’t just use digital. But this is New York. You can find anything here. I had it blown up and framed, and I gave it to Hayley on her ninth birthday. She liked it, but she didn’t really think too much of it at the time. There was something about it, though. Something that always drew me back. The way she was looking behind me, squinting. The way her arm was reaching out. It was like she saw something I didn’t.

There are moments, if I look back, that lead up to her death. Moments that could have foreshadowed what happened. That we were always going to end up there. That every decision, every choice, was going to get us out to the house, her to that pool. Does that still make it my fault? I’m not sure. Ten percent of the time I think maybe it was just an accident. That what happened to Hayley wasn’t because of anything I did or didn’t do. It was just what happened. But that’s only ten percent. The other ninety still misses her, still blames myself. But six months ago there was no ten percent, so maybe it grows. Maybe, over time, you get to fifty-fifty.

I see Peter tossing a football up to my dad, my mom sorting through linens to the right of me, and I think, I
know
, that I’m learning—that we all are. We are redefining what our story is. We are the Caulfields. We are a family. And it doesn’t
matter anymore what other people think. I understand, now, that your own identity, your past, has nothing to do with the way others see you. Being a hero isn’t about someone else’s definition. Not Abigail’s and not Constance’s. Not the
Post
’s. Not even Claire’s. Being a hero is about one thing: the way you see yourself.

So, okay, we’ve come to the end. But the truth is that stories revise themselves. There is another one here. A different version. And when I tell it now, I tell that one. It’s changed, as I have. People don’t like to say that the space between lies and truth is very, very small. It’s there, but it’s just a whisper away. One foot over a ledge. A lit match before contact. A line in a dust-covered book. A bird about to take flight. At a certain point, you have to decide the truth for yourself.

Now when I begin, it goes like this: Most great works of literature have a hero at their core. This story is no exception.

A very special thanks . . .

To Hannah Brown Gordon, my dearest friend. When I write, it is still always to you.

To Mollie Glick, my incredible agent, who continues to be a fierce advocate for my career, and more importantly, for me. You have flown this plane through every storm, and you have never let us down.

To Liesa Abrams, my editor, whose direction and vision have made this book something to be proud of. I am eternally grateful.

To Leila Sales, my writing partner, my whacky buddy
cop, my plus one, my Sophia Grace—you give me confidence. I never want to do this alone. I’m so lucky I don’t have to.

To Lexa Hillyer, my plot (life) goddess. We are awesome. Now let’s go talk more about it.

To Anica Rissi, who will always be editor of mine.

To Michael Strother, a keen editor and a man of excellent television taste. Cupcake Andy, I adore you.

To Paul Crichton, Janet Ringwood, and Lydia Davis, who support my crazy ideas, find new ones, and make the fun part, well, fun.

To everyone at Pulse and Foundry for providing the most rocking (and stylish) literary homes a girl could ask for.

To Kathleen Hamlin for helping me with anything and everything and doing it all with a smile.

To Brad and Yfat Gendell, who continue to champion Rebecca Serle in every form. What can I say? When I am seated at your dinner table, a kid on my lap, I am home.

To my beautiful, sensitive, loving parents who have never passed up an opportunity to express their pride. Thank you for seeing me just as I am, and for letting me know that was perfect, and enough.

To the city of New York that has sometimes kicked me
down, but never kicked me out—It has always been worth it.

Finally to the wonderful readers, bloggers, librarians and teens who have supported
When You Were Mine
.

Thank you, thank you.