I listened as Burke lectured me on the importance of keeping up my new and improved grades, soundly oddly like Libby. He said he wanted us both to go to college.
“I’ve been an idiot, Bones.” He sighed. “Everything you said last year was true. I was fucked-up. I was drunk and high all the time, and you were right, I did bring you down. You were smart to let me go.”
“Oh, Burke—”
“No. Hear me out. I’m so proud of what you accomplished last year, Bones, and beyond that I’m inspired. I still think you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever known—I always have—and all I want is to build a life with you. But I want it to be the life you want and deserve. I want to get the fuck out of Langs Valley, together. And I know you’re in pieces right now, I know that, Bones. But we’re about to start our senior year, and you can’t let what’s happened ruin the future you’ve worked so hard for. I won’t let it happen. I swear to God, Heather, I won’t.”
Burke’s blue eyes grew brighter as he spoke, and I felt the faintest spark catch and sizzle behind my sternum. For the first time since Gus died, I could see a wedge of clear ground at my feet. I thought of something my mother used to tell me when I was little and having a bad day. She called it a gratitude practice, and she said that whenever I was feeling crummy, all I had to do was think of one thing that I was grateful for, and that doing so would instantly lift my spirits. It had worked. Ironically, my mother was often the reason behind a bad day, but I employed her gratitude practice regardless. When she was coming down from drugs and in one of her foul moods, I thought about how fun it was to play tetherball at recess, and how much I loved having Kyla as a best friend, and focusing on those things made me feel lighter. When my mother would disappear for days on end after Gus was born and I’d feel sick with anger and frustration, I’d think about how grateful I was that Gus existed, that I got to have him as my sibling.
That day at the diner, as Burke held my hand and helped me see a clear inch on the dark path ahead, I fought my way toward some semblance of gratitude. Burke was a good person, and he loved me, and I had never fallen out of love with him, not really. I’d let Libby convince me that Burke was bad news, that loving him came at the cost of my own self-destruction. But Libby had been wrong, and I’d been too enamored of her effortless sophistication and glamorous lifestyle to see that she knew nothing about love at all. The love Burke and I shared ran miles deeper than anything she had with Peter—invisible Peter, the ghost who’d led Libby to the middle of nowhere on his agenda, who’d left her to steep in her loneliness.
Burke and I were stronger together than Libby and Peter could ever dream to be, and a wave of anger rolled through me at the thought that Libby had nearly driven us apart.
I pressed my face against Burke’s shoulder, my tears staining the cotton of his shirt. “I can’t do it alone, Burke,” I whispered. “College, I mean. Senior year. Applications. The future. Getting out of Langs Valley. All of it. You’re so right about everything you said. But I can’t do it alone.”
“You won’t have to do it alone, Bones.” Burke smoothed the back of my head, following the tumble of hair down my spine. “We’re in it together. I’ll be right beside you, every step of the way.”
“Where will we go?” I lifted my head and fixed my gaze to his—clear and blue.
“Anywhere you want.”
“But what if we can’t get into the same school? No offense, but—”
“I know your grades are better than mine, smarty-pants.” Burke grinned, his dimples deepening. “We’ll make sure we end up in the same city. In a big city, there’ll be lots of options for colleges. And I’m going to stay sober and seriously start applying myself. I’m not just saying that, Bones. I don’t want to end up like my dad. I want us to have a real shot at the life we both deserve. We’re going to end up in the same place and we’re going to make this work. You and me. Okay?”
“Okay.” I pressed close to him again, inhaling his familiar scent, woodsmoke and pine. My sweet, strong, loyal Burke. “New York City,” I said, imagining the way Gus’s green eyes lit up when I’d read The Snowy Day. “Let’s go to New York.”
With those five words I had a dream again. I cradled New York in the palm of my hand; pushed its image to the front of my thoughts. The problem, Dr. K, was that I couldn’t forget about Libby Fontaine. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake her loose from the mad, obsessive corners of my mind.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Skye
OCTOBER 2019
The room spins. I wrestle for air.
One two three four five six seven eight; eight seven six five four three two one.
One two three four five six seven eight; eight seven six five four three two one.
One two three four five six seven eight; eight seven six five four three two one.
I am back in the hospital waiting room and my mother is dying. Time is running out, but I can keep breathing for both of us. I can be the person she was.
When you die, do you inhale your last breath, or is it an exhale? I wish I could have been there to see for myself. But I was trapped. I am still trapped. I will always be trapped.
I knock on the inside of Andie’s bedroom door until my knuckles are raw. I flop onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. When Andie gets back from work—she had clients she couldn’t reschedule—she curls up beside me.
The world is upside down.
It’s been twenty-four hours since I learned that Burke Michaels, my husband, is an impostor who never loved me, who married me so that he could divorce me and take my money back to his real wife and kids. It’s so preposterous that a small part of me threatens to explode with laughter, but the destroyed part of me is so much bigger, and far too debilitating.
What I wouldn’t give to go back twenty-four hours in time, to unknow all that has unraveled my world overnight. To the time when Burke and I were in love, newlyweds just back from our honeymoon—the length of our beautiful, promising marriage stretched ahead of us.
Save for a lone crack down the middle of the screen, my phone didn’t break when I hurled it across Andie’s living room. Burke continued to call. He called so many times that Andie blocked his number on my phone.
I feel untethered from reality, my consciousness a whirl of so many emotions that they all cancel each other out, leaving me static and numb. It isn’t possible to wrap my head around the reality that our entire relationship—every last speck of it—was a lie.
How is it possible? My brain replays a hundred different conversations at once. Hours and hours of discussion of the future—of our future. The sound of Burke’s voice is audible inside my mind.
I can’t describe it to you, Goose, the relief of knowing that I’ll have you in my life forever.
Maybe in a couple years we’ll get out of the city. We’ll build a house without any doors inside, just archways, somewhere on a great piece of land where we can see the stars at night.
And the most searing memory of all, from just a week before our wedding, Burke’s lips pressed against my ear in the shower, hot water dribbling down our backs.