I held her like I was falling off the face of the earth, and I couldn’t breathe – no gravity, no oxygen. ‘I’ll never forget how she sounded that night. How can I not blame myself?’ My eyes glassed with tears while hers spilled over.

Her right hand was still on my face. Pressed between us, her left hand gripped mine, grounding me. Her tears flowed into the pillow as she made me see the boy I’d been. I’d never asked my father if he blamed me; I’d assumed that he did. But Jacqueline was right about him – he was stuck in perpetual grief, blaming himself when no one else did. And I had followed his example.

‘What have you told me, over and over? It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.

She said I needed to talk to someone who’d help me forgive myself. I only wanted to talk to her – but I couldn’t ask that of her. Cindy had suggested therapy a hundred times, swearing it helped her grieve the loss of her best friend, but I’d become adept at insisting I was fine.

I’m fine. I’m good.

But I wasn’t fine. I was anything but fine. That night had shattered me. I’d walled myself in to keep from breaking further, but no defence will protect you from every possible pain. I was still just as breakable as everyone else – the girl in my arms included. But I could hope. And I could love. And maybe, I could heal.

26

Landon

I hadn’t been afraid of anything in a long time.

I was scared shitless, but I wasn’t about to show it. This was nothing. Nothing.

‘You ready, Landon?’ Heller asked, and I nodded.

Everything I owned was piled in the back of his SUV. I didn’t have any luggage beyond a duffle and a backpack, so most of my clothes had been crammed into large black plastic bags like the trash they were. I’d scrounged up a few empty boxes from the Bait & Tackle for my books and sketchpads. They stank like fish. Which meant the interior of Heller’s truck and everything I owned would smell like fish by the time we got five miles from the f**king coast.

It was worth it. Good riddance. I never wanted to come back.

Holding his chipped Fishermen Do It Hook, Line and Sinker mug, Dad stood, feet braced apart, on the front porch – every piece of timber comprising the whole sagging and weather-beaten to all f**k. It was a miracle that anything made of wood could survive here, and yet this place had endured, somehow, for decades – defying wind, rain, tropical storms and the relentless salt water that permeated the whole town with its brackish scent day in and day out.

As a kid, when this place was my grandfather’s house, I’d loved the annual summer visits that my dad had loathed, but Mom insisted on. ‘He’s your father,’ she’d tell him. ‘He’s Landon’s grandfather. Family is important, Ray.’

Now Dad was staying, and I was leaving.

Within the dilapidated house on the beach, waves from the gulf were audible at all times of the day and night. When I was little, spending time here was like living in a tree house or a backyard tent for a week – lacking most of the comforts of home, but so poles apart from my real life that it seemed incredible and otherworldly. Roughing it, desert-island style.

After a day of exploring the shoreline and baking in the sun, I’d spread one of the towels Mom always bought before our vacations and left at Grandpa’s place. The soft bath sheets were long enough to accommodate my entire childhood frame and wide enough to stockpile and sort the shells I collected during long, hot days on a beach that was anything but the white coast I let my friends back home in Alexandria imagine.

Staring at the huge expanse of dark sky and the thousands of stars winking in and out as though they were communicating with each other, I’d dream about who I’d be when I grew up. I liked to draw, but I was good at math – the kind of good that would have got me labelled a nerd if it wasn’t for my skill on the ice. I could be an artist, a scientist, a professional hockey player. Surrounded by that seeming infinity of sky and sand and ocean, I thought my choices were wide open.

What a naïve f**k I’d been.

Those bath sheets were like everything else here, now. Worn out. Used up. As close to worthless as something can be without being entirely worthless.

Dad looked older than his years. He was just under fifty – a bit younger than Heller – but he looked a good decade older.

Salt water and sun will do that.

Being a tightlipped, heartless ass**le will do that.

Too far, Landon. Too far.

Fine.

Grief will do that.

He watched me load my shit into his best friend’s vehicle, as though it was normal for a father to reassign his parental obligations – like the day his only kid left home for college – to someone else. But he’d been doing that for a while now. It had been up to me to fail, flail or claw my way out of wanting to end myself since I was thirteen. Five years of surviving from one day to the next. Of choosing to get up or not. Go to school or not. Give a flying f**k about anything or anyone or not.

Heller had given me one shot at getting out, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to apologize for taking it.

‘Hug your father goodbye, Landon,’ Heller murmured as we shut the hatchback door.

‘But he won’t – we don’t –’

‘Try. Trust me.’

I huffed a sigh before turning and walking back up the front steps.

‘Bye, Dad.’ I delivered the words dutifully – something I did for Heller’s sake, nothing more. He’d set his cup on the railing. His hands were empty.