Twenty minutes later Burke is asleep beside me, and I check my phone for the first time in hours. I have more notifications than usual—twenty-two messages from the group text with my bridesmaids and several emails—but one name jumps out at me, a sock in the gut. It’s him. Again.
My fingers tremble as I open the three new emails from [email protected].
5:51 P.M.: You never got back to me about that drink.
8:02 P.M.: It’s rude to ignore someone, Starling. There are consequences for that kind of behavior.
10:36 P.M.: I’m not joking, Starling. Consequences.
I stare at the words on the screen, my heart beating fast, and the fear inside me is suddenly swallowed by a force of sheer anger. I won’t let Max take this from me—not my wedding weekend. He’s already taken too much, and I refuse to give him this. I power off my phone and shove it in the back of a dresser drawer, underneath a stack of old T-shirts.
I lie down on the bed and close my eyes, listening to Burke’s breathing beside me, deep and steady, willing the sound to calm me. But my mind won’t rest. I don’t know if it’s Max or wedding nerves or just my paranoid brain, but I’m suddenly overcome by the feeling that something has to give, that my life as it stands can’t possibly go on being this close to perfect. I sense the compulsion on the horizon before it’s there, and as I make my way around the room doing my knocks on the various wooden objects—bed frame, nightstands, bookshelf, baseboards—I wish so bad my mother were here that I can barely stand it. When I’m finished knocking on all the wood, I slide into bed beside Burke and check the digital clock on the nightstand, which reads 11:11. I sigh, defeated again. I press my lips to the clock and kiss the time stamp on the screen eleven times, then touch it eleven times with my right hand, then my left. I grab Burke’s phone from the bedside table and am about to do the same thing to his screen when the time ticks to 11:12. Air escapes my lungs; the knot loosens in the pit of my stomach. I’m safe, for now.
Chapter Twenty
Burke Michaels’s Diary
APRIL 7, 2019
Dear Dr. K,
I’ve had a productive couple of days. If you can believe it, I’m currently in Langs Valley. I haven’t set foot here since I left in ’91, and now, twenty-eight years later, I’m back.
If you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing in this dumpy, drug-ridden town—yep, still dumpy and drug ridden as ever—that’s a fair question, and I’ll get to it. But first let me backtrack.
I’m engaged, Doc. I popped the question a couple of weeks ago, and it went as seamlessly as a man could hope.
Thanks to FoolzJewelz on Etsy （five-star rating, 897 glowing reviews）， I ordered a stunning moissanite and synthetic-sapphire replica of Heather’s engagement ring for $625, tax and rush shipping included. All thanks to Maggie, who replied to my text with a close-up photo of the ring and a wink-face emoji.
After the proposal and subsequent celebratory brunch I planned with Skye’s father and stepmom, Skye and I wasted no time on beginning wedding planning. Lucky for me, Skye is fully on board with a fall ceremony. It turns out her parents were married in September, and that’s the time of year she’s always envisioned for her own nuptials. It’s a tight turnaround, yes, but we both agree that waiting until the following September feels unbearably long.
When Skye found out that September 21 was a Saturday, that sealed the deal.
“‘Do you remember … the twenty-first night of September?’” she’d started singing, squeezing her fist into a pretend microphone. “It’s perfect, Burke. That can be our wedding song.”
It is rather perfect, Dr. K, because I do like that song.
Skye wants to have the wedding on Nantucket at her grandparents’ estate, the same place her parents got hitched in the eighties. I still haven’t been to Nantucket, but Skye says we can go next weekend to check it out—her grandparents have a private plane they take to and from Nantucket and Westport that she can use at her disposal. This is the kind of girl I’m marrying, Dr. K. A girl with a private fucking jet. I’m telling you, she’s not going to miss a few million if I pull this off.
That’s still a big if, Dr. K. Plenty of issues are still at hand. Like this: The other day Skye started jotting down her list of bridesmaids, and it hit me like a sock punch in the stomach—I will have to have groomsmen. I will have to have guests.
It’s not that Skye is under the impression that I’m friendless; I’ve coerced my old roommate Ethan into grabbing drinks with us a couple of times, though I’m sure Ethan wonders why I’ve bothered to stay in touch. Skye and I have also gotten dinner with Todd. Todd’s own infidelity means that he knows how to help a guy out. But I haven’t told Todd about my master plan, and doing so is out of the question. He may be sleazy at heart, but he still has a reputation and a job to uphold, not to mention alimony payments. He isn’t looking to make himself an accessory to a felony.
Skye believes me when I tell her I don’t talk to my relatives in Phoenix as much as I used to. She believes me when I tell her that many of my close friends have left New York. She agrees that it’s natural to lose touch with people as you get older. She believes me when I say that she’s my best friend, that ever since we met, my other friendships have taken a backseat. She believes me because she feels the same. Most of the time it’s just the two of us “getting drunk off each other,” and that’s the way we like it.
But this doesn’t solve the issue of my groomsmen, Dr. K. I’ll ask Skye’s brother, yes, but that’s standard protocol and doesn’t exactly help my situation. Because unless you’re a serial killer, you have friends—a handful of people who give your life meaning, whom you call up on their birthdays and think of when that song comes on the radio and ask to be in your wedding when you get married. The real Burke Michaels has plenty of friends, Dr. K. He’s got Todd and the guys from PK Adamson. He’s got Pat Larson and the other dads who coached youth soccer. He’s got Fred Pike, Maggie’s best friend’s father, whom he used to hit balls with on the driving range most Saturdays.
But the other Burke Michaels does not have friends, and right now, I am him.
I hate this whole big two-hundred-person Nantucket wedding thing. If I had it my way, we’d lock it down at city hall in a single afternoon, then grab cheeseburgers, like Heather and I did all those years ago. But when I mentioned this idea to Skye—excluding the Heather part, obviously—she looked so horrified that I quickly pretended I was joking.
So I spent a few days mulling over my options, and that’s precisely how I wound up in this crappy motel room in Langs Valley. I’m not religious, Dr. K, but Grams was a crazy Catholic, and I remembered this passage from the Bible she had taped to the window above the kitchen sink: Remember the rock from which you were hewn—Isaiah 51.
I lived with my grandma, you know? My dad was in jail and my mom was gone out West and I lived in that house as a kid, and I read that passage every day when I was rinsing the dishes or whatever, and it’s always stuck with me. And now I know why.
I’d forgotten Langs Valley, Dr. K. It was easy to forget because no part of me wanted to remember, and Heather and I were always on the same page about that. But the thing is—and this was my lightbulb moment—to remember the rock from which you were hewn is to use your past to set yourself free.