The Last Song (46 page)

Mid-October brought three days of unseasonably chilly weather, cold enough to require a sweatshirt in the mornings. After
months of relentless heat, she enjoyed the briskness in the air, but those three days were hard on her dad. Though they still
walked the beach, he moved even more slowly, and they paused only briefly outside the church before turning and heading back
home. By the time they reached the door, her dad was shivering. Once inside, she drew him a warm bath, hoping it would help,
feeling the first twinges of panic at the new signs of sickness that signaled the disease was advancing more rapidly.

On a Friday, a week before Halloween, her father rallied enough for them to try fishing on the small dock that Will had first
taken her to. Officer Pete lent them some extra rods and a tackle box. Remarkably, her dad had never been fishing before,
so Ronnie had to bait the hook. The first two fish that took the bait got away, but they were finally able to hook a small
red drum and land it on the dock. It was the same kind of fish she’d caught with Will, and as the fish struggled while she
freed the hook, she suddenly missed Will with an intensity that felt like physical pain.

When they returned home after a peaceful afternoon at the dock, two people were waiting for them on the porch. It wasn’t until
she got out of the car that she recognized Blaze and her mom. Blaze looked astonishingly different. Her hair was pulled back
in a neat ponytail, and she was dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved aquamarine top. She wore no jewelry or makeup.

Seeing Blaze again reminded Ronnie of something she’d managed to avoid thinking about in all her concerns for her father:
that she would be returning to court before the month was out. She wondered what they wanted and why they were here.

She took her time helping her dad out of the car, offering her arm to steady him.

“Who are they?” her dad murmured.

Ronnie explained, and he nodded. As they approached, Blaze climbed down from the porch.

“Hi, Ronnie,” she said, clearing her throat. She squinted slightly in the lowering sun. “I came to talk to you.”

Ronnie sat across from Blaze in the living room, watching as Blaze studied the floor. Their parents had retreated to the kitchen
to give them some privacy.

“I’m really sorry about your dad,” Blaze began. “How is he doing?”

“He’s okay.” Ronnie shrugged. “How about you?”

Blaze touched the front of her shirt. “I’ll always have scars here,” she said, then gestured to her arms and belly, “and here.”
She gave a sad smile. “But I’m lucky to be alive, really.” She fidgeted in her seat before catching Ronnie’s eye. “I wanted
to thank you for bringing me to the hospital.”

Ronnie nodded, still unsure where the conversation was going. “You’re welcome.”

In the silence, Blaze looked around the living room, uncertain what to say next. Ronnie, learning from her dad, simply waited.

“I should have come by sooner, but I know you’ve been busy.”

“It’s okay,” Ronnie said. “I’m just glad to see you’re doing okay.”

Blaze looked up. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Ronnie said. She smiled. “Even if you do look like an Easter egg.”

Blaze pulled on her top. “Yeah, I know. Crazy, huh? My mom bought me some clothes.”

“They suit you. I guess the two of you are getting along better.”

Blaze gave her a rueful look. “I’m trying. I’m living back home again, but it’s hard. I did a lot of stupid things. To her,
to other people. To you.”

Ronnie sat motionless, her expression neutral. “Why are you really here, Blaze?”

Blaze twisted her hands together, betraying her agitation. “I came to apologize. I did a terrible thing to you. And I know
I can’t take back the stress I caused you, but I want you to know that I talked to the DA this morning. I told her that I
put the stuff in your bag because I was mad at you, and I signed an affidavit that said you had no idea what was going on.
You should be getting a call today or tomorrow, but she promised me that she would drop the charges.”

The words came out so fast that at first Ronnie wasn’t sure she’d heard her right. But Blaze’s entreating look told her everything
she needed to know. After all these months, after all the countless days and nights of worry, it was suddenly over. Ronnie
was in shock.

“I’m really sorry,” Blaze continued in a low voice. “I never should have put those things in your bag.”

Ronnie was still trying to digest the fact that this nightmarish ordeal was coming to an end. She studied Blaze, who was now
picking repeatedly at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt. “What’s going to happen to you? Are they going to charge you?”

“No,” she said. At this she looked up, her jaw squared. “I had some information they wanted about another crime. A bigger
crime.”

“You mean about what happened to you on the pier?”

“No,” she said, and Ronnie thought she saw something hard and defiant in her eyes. “I told them about the fire at the church
and the way it really started.” Blaze made sure she had Ronnie’s attention before going on. “Scott didn’t start the fire.
His bottle rocket had nothing to do with it. Oh, it landed near the church all right. But it was already out.”

Ronnie absorbed this information in growing wonderment. For a moment, they stared at each other, the charge in the air palpable.

“Then how did it start?”

Blaze leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her forearms stretched out as if in supplication. “We were out partying
on the beach—Marcus, Teddy, Lance, and me. A little later, Scott showed up, just down the beach from us. We pretended to ignore
each other, but we could see Scott lighting up bottle rockets. Will was still down the beach and Scott sort of aimed one in
his direction, but the wind caught it and it flew toward the church. Will started freaking out and came running. But Marcus
thought the whole thing was hilarious, and the minute that rocket fell behind the church, he ran over to the churchyard. I
didn’t know what was happening at first, even after I followed him and saw him torching the scrub grass next to the church
wall. The next thing I knew, the side of the building was on fire.”

“You’re saying Marcus did it?” Ronnie could barely get the words out.

She nodded. “He set other fires, too. At least I’m pretty sure he did—he always loved fire. I guess I always knew he was crazy,
but I…” She stopped herself, realizing she’d been down that road too many times already. She sat up straight. “Anyway, I’ve
agreed to testify against him.”

Ronnie leaned back in her chair, feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She remembered the things she’d said
to Will, suddenly realizing that if Will had done what she’d demanded, Scott’s life would have been ruined for nothing.

She felt almost ill as Blaze went on. “I’m really sorry for everything,” she said. “And as crazy as it sounds, I did consider
you my friend until I was an idiot and ruined it.” For the first time, Blaze’s voice cracked. “But you’re a great person,
Ronnie. You’re honest, and you were nice to me when you had no reason to be.” A tear leaked out of one eye, and she swiped
at it quickly. “I’ll never forget the day you offered to let me stay with you, even after all the terrible things I had done
to you. I felt such… shame. And yet I was grateful, you know? That someone still cared.”

Blaze paused, visibly struggling to pull herself together. When she had blinked back her tears, she took a deep breath and
fixed Ronnie with a determined look.

“So if you ever need anything—and I mean anything—let me know. I’ll drop everything, okay? I know I can’t ever make up for
what I did to you, but in a way, I feel like you saved me. What’s happened to your dad is just so unfair… and I would do anything
to help you.”

Ronnie nodded.

“And one last thing,” Blaze added. “We don’t have to be friends, but if you ever see me again, will you please call me Galadriel?
I can’t stand the name Blaze.”

Ronnie smiled. “Sure thing, Galadriel.”

As Blaze had promised, her lawyer called that afternoon, informing her that the charges in her shoplifting case had been dropped.

That night, as her dad lay sleeping in his bedroom, Ronnie turned on the local news. She wasn’t sure if the news would cover
it, but there it was, a thirty-second segment right before the weather forecast about “the arrest of a new suspect in the
ongoing arson investigation relating to a local church burning last year.” When they flashed a mug shot of Marcus with a few
details of his prior misdemeanor charges, she turned off the TV. Those cold, dead eyes still had the power to unnerve her.

She thought of Will and what he had done to protect Scott, for a crime that it turned out he hadn’t even committed. Was it
really so terrible, she wondered, that loyalty to his friend had skewed his judgment? Especially in light of the way things
had turned out? Ronnie was no longer certain of anything. She had been wrong about so many things: her dad, Blaze, her mother,
even Will. Life was so much more complicated than she ever imagined as a sullen teenager in New York.

She shook her head as she moved around the house, turning out the lights one by one. That life—a parade of parties and high
school gossip and squabbles with her mom—felt like another world, an existence she had only dreamed. Today, there was only
this: her walk on the beach with her dad, the ceaseless sound of the ocean waves, the smell of winter approaching.

And the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Halloween came and went, and her dad grew weaker with every passing day.

They gave up their walks on the beach when the effort became too great, and in the mornings, when she made his bed, she saw
dozens of strands of hair on his pillow. Knowing that the disease was accelerating, she moved her mattress into his bedroom
in case he needed her help, and also to remain close to him for as long as she could.

He was on the highest dosages of pain medicine that his body could handle, but it never seemed enough. At night, as she slept
on the floor beside him, he uttered whimpering cries that nearly broke her heart. She kept his medication right beside his
bed, and they were the first things he reached for when he woke up. She would sit beside him in the mornings, holding him,
his limbs trembling, until the medicine took effect.

But the side effects took their toll as well. He was unstable on his feet, and Ronnie had to support him whenever he moved,
even across the room. Despite his weight loss, when he stumbled it was all she could do to keep him from falling. Though he
never gave voice to his frustration, his eyes registered his disappointment, as if he were somehow failing her.

He now slept an average of seventeen hours a day, and Ronnie would spend entire days alone at home, reading and rereading
the letters he’d originally written to her. She hadn’t yet read the last letter he’d written to her—the idea still seemed
too frightening—but sometimes she liked to hold it between her fingers, trying to summon the strength to open it.

She called home more frequently, timing her calls for when Jonah got home from school or after they had finished dinner. Jonah
seemed subdued, and when he asked about their dad she sometimes felt guilty about holding back the truth. But she couldn’t
burden him that way, and she noticed that whenever her dad spoke with him, he always did his best to sound as energetic as
he could. Afterward, he often sat in the chair by the phone, spent from his exertions, too tired even to move. She would watch
him in silence, chafing at the knowledge that there was something more she could do, if only she knew what it was.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asked.

They were seated at the kitchen table, and Ronnie had a pad of paper open before her.

Steve gave her a quizzical smile. “That’s what you wanted to ask me?”

“This is just the first question. I’ve got a lot more.”

He reached for the can of Ensure she’d placed before him. He was no longer eating much solid food, and she watched as he took
a sip, knowing he was doing it to please her, not because he was hungry.

“Green,” he said.

She wrote down the answer and read the next question. “How old were you when you first kissed a girl?”

“Are you serious?” He made a face.

“Please, Dad,” she said. “It’s important.”

He answered again, and she wrote it down. They got through a quarter of the questions she’d jotted down, and over the next
week, he eventually answered them all. She wrote down the answers carefully, not necessarily verbatim, but she hoped with
enough detail to reconstruct the answers in the future. It was an engaging and sometimes surprising exercise, but by the end,
she concluded that her dad was mostly the same man she’d come to know over the summer.

Which was good and bad, of course. Good because she’d suspected he would be, and bad because it left her no closer to the
answer she’d been seeking all along.

The second week of November brought the first rains of autumn, but the construction at the church continued without pause.
If anything, the pace increased. Her dad no longer accompanied her; still, Ronnie walked down the beach to the church every
day to see how things were progressing. It had become part of her routine during the quiet hours when her dad was napping.
Though Pastor Harris always registered her arrival with a wave, he no longer joined her on the beach to chat.

In a week, the stained-glass window would be installed, and Pastor Harris would know he’d done something for her dad that
no one else could do, something she knew would mean the world to him. She was happy for him, even as she prayed for guidance
of her own.

On a gray November day, her dad suddenly insisted that they venture out to the pier. Ronnie was anxious about the distance
and the cold, but he was adamant. He wanted to see the ocean from the pier, he said.
One last time
, were the words he didn’t have to say.