Page 60 of All the Ways You Save Me
“I didn’t say we’re getting involved.”
She gives me a stare. “You didn’t say you’re not.”
Fair point. I look away.
“You’re back here on the island after years away, hanging out with a guy who looks like the love of your life, even if he isn’t. I don’t think it’s possible to think clearly in this setting.”
If that’s true, then why does it feel like my life is finally coming into focus? For the past decade, everything has been cloudy, smudged, like a rain-splattered windshield, and I’ve been squinting through it at the world flying by. But this summer, the fog has finally lifted, and the sun is shining through.
“I think maybe you ought to go back to Maple Ridge for a while,” Josie continues. “I know you don’t want to marry Jason, but end your relationship with the energy it deserves. Put Garrett on pause. And Sandy Harbor, too. Things might look really different when you go home. The nostalgia may fade when you’re back in your old life.”
Going home would be the easy thing to do. The safe thing. But I’ve chosen easy and safe my whole life. I don’t want to leave this island, or Garrett. I came here to find out the truth and put it behind me. I’m so close to doing that.
“Josie, I was working at the bar one night when a guy came in who remembered us from when we lived here.”
She bites her lip. “Was it that guy Ian?”
“What?” I remember her face when she spotted him on the beach, and how she jumped behind the lifeguard chair. “Do you know Ian?”
“No.” Her eyes widen innocently. “I mean, not really. I vaguely remember him from back then. That’s all.”
“Why did you look like you’d seen a ghost when you spotted him on the beach?”
“Everything on this island is like seeing a ghost. We left here a lifetime ago.”
“Well, this guy I met at the bar was older than Ian. Maybe in his mid-thirties now. He implied that there was something that drove our family away from here.” I look at her straight in the eye. “I always felt like there was some bigger reason Mom left, and this just confirmed it. Josie, this is my life. This was my home. I needto know the truth.”
“I can’t tell you the truth,” she blurts out, and then seems to check herself. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
“You must knowsomething.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.” Josie yawns, throwing her arms over her head in an exaggerated stretch. “I’m exhausted.” She pulls herself to her feet and leans over to give me a hug. “It’s so good to see you, Maddie. We’ll talk more in the morning, okay?”
Josie ventures toward the guest bedroom but stops in the archway and turns around. “Maybe don’t say anything about the guy at the bar to Garrett or Ian or”—she waves a casual hand—“anyone.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Why stir it up again?”
Why stirwhatup again?
But Josie yawns and disappears into her bedroom. I don’t tell her that Garrett and I have already talked about the guy at the bar or that I have no idea if he’s mentioned the encounter to Ian. It didn’t occur to me to hide it from Garrett when he was the one stepping in to make sure I was safe. But now I wonder if I should have been more discreet. I hate these secrets and suspicions creeping back in.
Garrett has pulled me from the waves and looked out for me at every turn. I’ve never had a moment where I didn’t feel safe with him. The only barrier that’s stood between us is his appearance. If he were just a regular blue-eyed, dark-haired, tattooed surfer I met on the beach, and not a doppelgänger of Adam, would any of this feel so fraught?
When I get up to set my water bottle in the sink under the window, I spot a light glowing over Garrett’s deck. He’s probably not home yet since he seemed to be settling in with the group at the bonfire. I step outside and wrap Garrett’s hoodie more tightly around me. I should have left it with him since I got a ride with Josie. But I doubt he’ll be cold on the walk; I get the feeling he only brings it to keep me warm.
Something scrapes at the edge of my consciousness again, something about the bonfire, or Garrett’s hoodie, or… It comes to me in a rush.His tattoos.The fire accentuated the texture for just a moment before the light shifted. Under the mountain laurel, his skin looked raised, like a burn.Or a scar you’d get from colliding with your best friend on your bike.
The world that I’d just begun to set right on its axis tilts precipitously, and all my careful calculations about Garrett’s identity scatter into the atmosphere. Maybe I’m wrong, and it was a brief glimpse of mottled skin in a flash of firelight. Maybe Adam is dead, and Garrett is exactly who he says he is. Or maybe I’m right. But what I know for sure is that I’ll never hold the claim on my own life unless I know for sure.
I whirl around to face the light over Garrett’s porch. He left the back door open with just the screen latched. It’s not unusual around here, crime is so low that people rarely lock their doors. There really isn’t any reason someone would break into a house around here.
Unless they were searching for the truth.
THIRTY-FOUR
PRESENT DAY
