Page 16 of The Summer I Destroyed You

Liam’s shoulders stiffen. He probably agrees with her but says nothing.

I open the door. My mother could walk the rest of the way and is supposed to be doing some walking, but I don’t want to get into it with her in front of him. “Just down the hall and into the living room,” I tell him.

“Before you go out back talking about how heavy I am,” my mother says after he’s set her on the couch, “just know how much worse it could have been. You wouldn’t have been able to carry Emerson a foot when she was in high school, much less all the way from the car.”

“Mom,” I hiss, wincing. It’s par for the course with her, but it hits a lot harder with an audience.

He glances between us. I brace for a smirk from him, a mean little laugh, but there’s none.

“I would never talk about how heavy anyone is or was,” he says, turning for the back door. “Especially not if she was my kid.”

He walks out. It takes me several seconds to realize that he just put my mother in her place—on my behalf.

He sure doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d have tormented me back in the day. Is it possible for people to change? Can you forgive them if they have?

I pick up my phone. I consider thanking him. It seems like an awkward thing to do, but if I coupled it with a complaint about his progress at the theater, it might be okay.

In the end, I do nothing.

But a part of me wishes I had.

* * *

For the next few days, aside from running Snowflake to the groomer, I’m stuck at home with my mom. When I’m downstairs, I find myself watching for Liam in the backyard. When I let Snowflake out, I’m both cringing at the memory of what my mother said and hoping he strikes up a conversation—but he’s usually not there and he ignores me if he is.

I practice my speech for the hearing on Lucas Hall, though I’ve got every base covered, and make my mother food she complains about, while she otherwise ignores me. She’s too busy calling everyone she knows to discuss her surgery anyway and seems to be going out of her way to make it sound like she and Dr. Sossaman, her surgeon, are friends…or more than friends.

“Harold said I’d be up and about any day now.”

“Harold said I’m still young enough that I’ll heal fast.”

“Harold said if I wasn’t so thin, this would have been much worse.”

I go to my room and look through Liam’s old texts.

Liam

I can’t believe you wanted me to work on the weekend. You’re like the villain in a Hallmark movie.

*I’m* working. Why shouldn’t I expect it of you?

Now you sound like the heroine of a Hallmark movie, the one who will realize the error of her ways.

And you sound like a guy who watches a lot of Hallmark movies. Only one of us should be ashamed right now. Hint: it’s not me.

Look at you bantering with me about Hallmark movies. I knew you had a soft side.

I didn’t think I was lonely before. I threw myself into work and told myself I was too busy for more, but once I started hearing from him all the time—at night, on the weekend—I felt myself opening, a flower finally exposed to light, and I miss that feeling now.

It makes me wish I’d never come here in the first place so I didn’t have to ruin things.

11

LIAM

One of my earliest memories is of walking down the street with my grandmother on the way to Lucas Hall. Every time she bought me an ice cream cone, she’d tell me the story of meeting my grandfather there during the Vietnam War. Her parents got married there during World War II. The days she described didn’t seem so far away to me, perhaps because the town itself had remained unchanged.

I feel the town’s history every time I arrive on Main Street. Generations of Dohertys graduated in Lucas Hall’s grand ballroom. My “Athlete of the Year” trophy still sits in its awards room, gathering dust. When the world feels especially crazy, I can stand here and feel as if things are still going to be okay—that even if the world changes, it will never be a place I no longer recognize.

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