Page 68 of Happiness for Beginners

I nodded. “I did invite my dad. I was less mad at him, I guess, though I’m not sure why. Maybe my expectations were lower.”

“But he didn’t give you away, did he?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t wanted him to walk me down the aisle. “I gave myself away.”

“I remember.”

I took a deep breath. “So, you see, I lost everybody.”

In a quiet voice, Jake said, “Not Duncan.”

I looked over.

“You didn’t lose Duncan. He loves you. Actually, ‘love’ is not a big enough word. Headoresyou. You barely tolerate him, but he would give you the skin off his back.”

“I don’t want the skin off his back.”

Jake gave a tiny shrug. “The point remains.”

I took a long breath and thought about everything I’d just told him. Then I said something that I must have always known, but I had never articulated until that moment: “I guess I haven’t forgiven him for not being Nathan.” It was surreal to hear myself say the words.

Jake looked over at me. “That sounds about right.” Then he went on. “But he didn’t ask to be born. He was pulled into that shit-storm the same way you were. By accident.”

It had all seemed so clear when I was ten:Duncan was the problem.I buried my guilt about Nathan’s death and blamed Duncan for everything. He arrived and my father disappeared, my mother got crazier, and I got completely ignored. He went from being a colicky baby to an exhausting toddler to a mischievous kid. Grandma GiGi loved us, but her tolerance for children was low, and so I wound up babysitting constantly from the age of thirteen until I left for college. Once I was gone, I was just so relieved to be on my own, I never rethought it. I never went back to take another look. It happened, I’d survived it all, moved away, and now I was completely fine. Except that I happened to have a particularly annoying younger brother who I couldn’t stand to be around. And that was all his fault.

But here, talking to Jake, I hovered back over the story of my life from a different angle. For the first time, I saw Duncan as a motherless child, starving for attention, even from me, and doing anything—even stealing Grandma GiGi’s car at the age of eight—to get it. I saw my mother as absolutely blinded with grief, and guilt, and regret—blaming herself for what happened, ripped apart with no idea of how to put herself back together—and my father, too, burying his sorrows in work, totally unable to help my mother, buckling under the weight of it all. I might have left, too, if I’d had the option. But I didn’t. I had to stay, and the only person in the world who could have made it better was the one person who was truly gone.

Jake was watching me as I thought about it. I met his eyes. “It’s a lot to think about,” he said. “It’ll keep your brain nice and busy during the evac tomorrow.”

The evac. Right. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Nine o’clock,” Jake said. “Hiker midnight.”

“I guess we should get to sleep.”

Jake rolled to settle on his side again, facing me. I followed suit and did the same. Lying side by side and face-to-face, we held each other’s gaze for a good while before I said, “Thank you, by the way.”

“What for?”

I didn’t know how to enumerate it all. For staying up with me when I was feeling sad. For taking care of my blisters. For having my back over and over when Beckett went after me. For taking care of Duncan and being his friend. I shook my head. “For everything.”

I was ready for that to be the last word—to end the day just like that, with gratitude. I closed my eyes.

But then Jake said, “Helen?”

I opened them again.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you.”

Oh, God. “Okay.”

“I’m genuinely sorry about—” He paused for a second. “About the kissing thing.”

I gave him a look. “What kissing thing?”

“I’d just gotten some bad news,” Jake went on. “And I was reeling from it. I’m still reeling, actually.”

I waited.

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