We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(74)
“You knew I was alive, Saar. Don’t be dramatic.”
“I was worried, Matilda! I didn’t want to be prying into your business, but at the same time, I was like, how’s she gonna obliterate the boss level if she has no backup? And I thought, I’m never gonna forgive myself if she’s not okay and I didn’t go. Classified is on hiatus until September, so I just got on a plane, and now— Oh wait. Hold on.” He takes a second to talk to the rental car people and get a set of keys. Then he comes back: “I’m getting in the car. Can I come to where you are?”
I tell him where to go and Saar plugs the North Road Café address into his phone. Then he asks me about Kingsley, and Hidden Beach, everything. By the time we’re done with all the explanations, he is pulling into the parking lot.
“Who’s this guy?” asks Tatum as Saar parks his Range Rover.
“My mom’s old boyfriend that I live with.”
“Is he your stepdad?”
“No.”
“But kinda?” asks Meer.
“I didn’t know you had someone like that,” says Brock. “A dad-type person.”
I am about to say that I’ve only lived with Saar for a couple years, and there’s nothing legal or formal about our relationship; he’s basically a roommate. But then I see Saar’s familiar, wiry self, climbing out of his Range Rover, and I feel hugely happy to see him.
Saar Adler read and reread my college application essays.
He has a room for me in his house, rent-free.
It’s Saar who buys the groceries I like and texts me when he’s staying over at Serena’s so I don’t worry he got in a car accident. It’s Saar who bought me a college sweatshirt and who plans to take me shopping for a mini-fridge and extra-long sheets for my dorm room. It’s Saar who brought me to celebrate Hanukkah with his parents.
He has come three thousand miles because he’s worried.
He will be driving me to college. I’ll go home to him at Thanksgiving.
“I didn’t know I had a dad-type person, either,” I tell the boys. “But it turns out I do.”
68
At the hotel bar, I drink a lemonade and watch as Saar eats a shrimp cocktail and a mixed green salad. The woman who takes his drink order (seltzer with lime) tells him Highly Classified is her favorite show. He tells her it’s his favorite show, too, and she laughs.
I try to explain to him what it has been like here.
How badly I wanted to meet my father.
How I got sick on the way to the island and came in weakened and unsure of my welcome, and how I loved Meer the moment he told me he was my brother, and then came to love Brock, and then finally
to love Tatum, in a different, all-consuming way.
I don’t know that I can articulate the pull of the invisible web that connects me to Beechwood Island;
to the castle and its rooms of paintings, musical instruments, herbal remedies, and weavings; to the sad history of Tatum’s parents and their accident, to Kingsley’s dementia, his imprisonment; to my mother’s image escaping the underworld, to my own image on those canvases.
My father is gone.
He will never, ever come for me.
He never even meant to know me, and yet his paintings of me may well live on in museums
for years after I am dead.
Centuries from now, some kid will likely walk into some big cold space full of tourists and art students and see me
kneeling on a raft, lost and embattled with a violent ocean, or sleeping in a college sweatshirt above a horde of malevolent creatures.
The ideas spill over one another. I can’t say exactly what I mean.
When we get to Hidden Beach, I’m relieved that June is nowhere to be seen. The house feels empty. The sliding doors are all open, so the air flows through the rooms.
Upstairs, Saar and I pack my things. I didn’t bring much and I haven’t bought anything, but Meer said I could keep his indigo Shirley’s Hardware T-shirt.
Down in the breakfast room, Saar stares at Cliffside Gothic, Kingsley’s painting of Harris, Tipper, and their daughters, for a long time. “The three girls, that’s Kingsley and his brothers, yeah?” he says, finally.
“Technically they’re Harris’s daughters,” I say, understanding. “But yeah. I guess both things can be true. Kingsley was the one who was never good enough.”
“And like Cinderella, he left home and made a new life in a castle.”
69
We find Meer and Brock sitting at the dining room table. Meer is sobbing, his head down on his arms, his hair loose around his shoulders. There’s a roll of toilet paper and a lot of snotty crumples of it all over the table. I go and wrap my arms around him.
“He can’t stop crying,” says Brock.
“I can maybe stop now, I think,” says Meer, raising his head. “I feel dumb.”
“It’s not dumb,” says Brock. “I just have negative coping skills when people are crying. My parents were big on repression.”
“You got me toilet paper,” says Meer, sniffing. His cheeks are bright pink. “That was the right thing to do. And you didn’t leave.”
“Where’s June?” I ask.
“She went to sleep,” says Brock, walking toward the kitchen. “You people want ice water?”