We nailed shut my tunnel door, then we did his.
After that came the part that we needed everyone’s help with. Beth and her dad built the shelves, then carried them downstairs with the help of Mr. Pitt and Agent Ryan, who insisted he be here for this when he heard what we were up to.
Then we invited the rest of the people, everyone who’d ever met and loved Maureen and Brenda—and there were a lot of them—to bring something for the shelves. Maureen’s fourth-grade softball coach brought that year’s championship photo, a gap-toothed Maureen grinning front and center. I’d forgotten she used to have freckles. A nurse Brenda worked with brought a handwritten book plump with stories from the nursing home residents whose lives Brenda had touched, each of them sharing something wonderful about her. Jenny Anderson brought a picture she’d drawn that day Maureen had stood up for her, scaring off the playground bullies. Jenny’d folded the picture into the shape of a heart and sealed it closed with pink wax.
And so it went, first our new shelves and then Claude’s filled up with forever memories of the two best girls this town ever saw.
That summer, the summer of ’77, everything had edges.
The sharpness took my friends, but it cut away the blinders, too.
And once you understand the truth, there’s no living any other way.
After those shelves were as full as they could be, I looked around Claude’s basement. Most of the Pantowners had left, leaving those of us closest to the storm. Everyone here was crying, but there was purifying in the pain. Mr. Taft had his arms stretched around his wife, Mom, and Gloria, the four of them holding each other up. Beth’s parents hovered near her—they always seemed to be near her, and who could blame them?—but she was standing on her own, staring resolutely at the new shelves. I could tell she’d made up her mind. She’d be moving to Berkeley soon. I’d miss her, but I was fiercely happy for her, too, and for anyone who got to know her. She was going to shake some stuff up out there in the big world.
Father Adolph was a notable absence. He’d wanted to come. Claude and I’d said no.
Mr. and Mrs. Ziegler were checking on everyone, making sure they didn’t need drinks or tissues. Gulliver Ryan studied those new shelves from his perch on the Zieglers’ bottom stair, his eyes wet, fists clenched at his side.
Junie huddled in a circle of her friends in the far corner. They looked so tender, those thirteen-year-old girls, nearing the starting line of their own open-field sprint from child to woman. Junie’d caught a terrible glimpse of how that run used to be, how it had been for Brenda and Maureen, Beth and me. The people in this room would make sure it was different for Junie’s group, the girls and the boys.
No more looking away.
I leaned into Claude. He was holding one of my hands. I lifted the other. I’d planned to leave the mood ring on Brenda’s shelf but decided at the last minute I’d rather keep it close.
For the first time, it glowed a deep blue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These books could not happen without my fabulous agent, Jill Marsal, my sorceress of an editor, Jessica Tribble Wells, and the whole Thomas & Mercer team, including Charlotte, Jon, Kellie, and Sarah. You all make me feel like I’m part of something good. Thank you for your time and your genius. Thanks also to Jessica Morrell, the freelance editor who’s been nurturing my writing and deepening my toolkit for nearly twenty years.
Shannon Baker and Erica Ruth Neubauer, your love and your wisdom make me and my writing better. This is always true but is particularly potent during our retreats. Thank you for being magic. Lori Rader-Day, Susie Calkins, Catriona McPherson, and Terri Bischoff, you make the writing life feel a good choice, and there aren’t enough thank-yous for that. To my best pandemic writing buddy, Carolyn: thank you for your brilliance, your warm heart, your humor, and your integrity. Christine, thank you for exploring the world with me. May we never run out of places to visit or foreheads to photograph. Suzanna and Patrick, I am forever grateful for your guidance and humor.
I also must give a shout-out to the writers of Mare of Easttown, whom I do not know but whose talent sparked a key plot point that worked its way into this book. Specifically, and it’s crazy to think of it now, but there was no Beth in The Quarry Girls before I watched Mare of Easttown. The plotting of that show made me realize I needed her here, and I’m so glad.
When I need inspiration in not only crafting a good plot but also turning a beautiful phrase, I turn to the best of the best. While writing this book, I immersed myself in stories by Megan Abbott, S. A. Cosby, Anne Rice, Daniel Woodrell, and Rachel Howzell Hall, all five of whom can put together a sentence so unexpected and delicious that I go back to taste it again and again. I am grateful for their talent out there as a light.