Page 61 of All the Ways You Save Me
Madeline
Garrett’s house is laid out just like my rental, and the door from the back deck takes me into the kitchen. From there, I venture silently into the living room, where a small lamp in the corner casts a muted glow across a pale gray couch draped in a beachy throw, a coffee table littered with a small stack of novels, and two side chairs in a complementary cream. There are several paintings on the wall, beach scenes that I’d bet were painted by local artists, and a couple of childish drawings in frames that were probably gifted from Ellery.
My gaze slides past the art to the photographs on the mantel. The one on the left shows younger versions of Garrett and Ian standing in front of a newly constructed house, huge grins on their faces. Their first project together, maybe. Another photo shows Garrett, Chloe, and Ellery making a sandcastle on the beach, and a third showcases Garrett and friends holding their surfboards.
There are no photos of parents or other family members. He said they died years ago, but is it strange he doesn’t displaymemories of them? I’m not sure what to think so I roam past the mantel to a shelf lined with an eclectic array of books. I slide out a novel by Andy Weir and another by Sally Rooney. Would Adam have turned out to be a Sally Rooney fan? I don’t have an answer to that, so I shove them back and do a slow circle of the living room. There’s nothing interesting in the wicker basket on the shelf or the drawers on the side table next to the couch. I doubt Garrett would keep important papers in the kitchen, so I tiptoe down the hall toward the bedrooms. The first one—the guest room in my rental—is set up like an office.
I take a deep breath. Am I really doing this? Snooping on the man I’m really growing to care for—all to satisfy my suspicion that he might be my dead ex-boyfriend? But then I think of that scar in the light of the campfire. I think of the reason I came to Sandy Harbor in the first place. I think of the creepy guy in the bar. I’m falling for Garrett, and as much as I’ve convinced myself he’s not Adam, will I ever be able to trust him if I don’t find out the truth for sure?
Before I cross the threshold, I check the time on my phone. It’s been a little less than an hour since I left Garrett at the bonfire. He could be on his way home, or he might stay late into the night. I have no way of knowing, and I should hurry just in case. I yank open the bottom drawer of the desk and find rows of neatly labeled file folders. A quick glance tells me this is mostly paperwork about Garrett’s carpentry work: contracts and copies of invoices and receipts for purchases of wood, nails, a new sander. I try another drawer, flipping through a pile of sketchbooks with line drawings of kitchen and bathroom layouts. Nothing to see here.
I search the other drawers and then the closet, but I don’t find anything personal. No birth certificate or social security information. Nothing that would show that Garrett’s real name is Adam.
Or that it’s not.
Is he hiding his personal paperwork? Maybe he keeps them in a safety deposit box at a bank off the island. There wouldn’t be anything suspicious about that with the humidity and recent hurricanes. I bet lots of people don’t keep important papers in random drawers.
But it does make me wonder what happened to Adam’s government paperwork after he died. Where is his birth certificate? Or his social security card? Adam didn’t have next of kin, and everything he’d owned was at Jason’s house in a couple of drawers in the basement. Jason and I went through it after he died, and I still remember the trauma of finding Adam’s favorite sweatshirt and a small gold cross necklace that belonged to his mother. I kept those things, but we didn’t find any paperwork.
Of course, we weren’t really looking for something like that. We were seventeen, mourning someone we loved. Jason and I didn’t know to worry about details like birth and death records, and I’d been too stricken with grief to think beyond the fact that Adam’s sweatshirt still smelled like him.
Looking back as an adult, I wonder if Adam even had a copy of his birth certificate when he moved in with Jason. His parents might have lost it, or it’s possible it’s still in that old rusted-out trailer where he grew up. Or maybe Jason’s parents had it tucked safely into their own files, and they were the ones who handled the death records. At the time, it never occurred to me to ask. I could call Jason’s parents, but I don’t know how to do that without inviting a million questions or involving Jason.
Across the boulevard, the bells on the tiny Protestant church next to the library chime ten times, alerting me that more than an hour has gone by since I left Garrett at the bonfire. I tidy the office, slip into the second bedroom, and yank open a drawer on the dresser.
Pausing with my hand hovering over a pile of neatly folded T-shirts, more guilt over invading Garrett’s privacy seeps in. If I truly care about him, shouldn’t I trust him? He hasn’t done asingle thing to arouse my suspicions that he’s Adam except showing up with the face he was born with. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in his house at all. So, maybe he was telling the truth all along. Maybe Adam is dead, and Garrett only looks like him, and I need to stop telling myself I’ll move on and get to the work of actually doing it.
I close the drawer with an extra-hard shove and something metallic shifts inside. I don’t want to leave anything out of place, so I quickly yank the drawer open and find a picture frame leaning face down on top of the T-shirts. It must have been propped upright against the side of the drawer and toppled over when I slammed it. Maybe this is the photo of Garrett’s parents that I was looking for. He might have left it here if it makes him sad to display it.
I flip the frame over and freeze, my body going hot and then cold. On the left side of the frame stands a blond-haired teenage boy, his grin mirrored on the right side of the frame by a dark-haired boy with aquamarine eyes. In between, a girl with reddish-blond hair stretches her arms wide to pull both boys into an embrace.
I lean on the dresser to hold myself upright because if I don’t steady myself, I might fall. I’m holding the only photo of me, Jason, and Adam in existence. It’s the one I have on my desk at school and Jason has on the mantel at his house. The one that proves without a shadow of a doubt that Garrett is Adam.
THIRTY-FIVE
PRESENT DAY
Garrett
I walk home from the bonfire with Madeline on my mind, and as I approach her house, I spot a light on in the front window. It’s amazing how I’ve gotten used to her presence next door and the comfort it brings me to know she’s there safe. She’s with her sister, so I won’t knock tonight, but tomorrow I’m going to have to tell her the truth, and then I’m going to have to convince her to go home to Maple Ridge and never come back.
With a heavy heart, I open my front door and step into the darkness. I usually leave a light on in the corner, but in my hurry to get to the bonfire with Madeline, I must have forgotten. My hand is reaching for the switch on the wall when I sense movement across the room.
I freeze, holding my breath.
Is this it? Is this the moment it all comes crashing down?For years, I looked over my shoulder, double-checked the locks, slept with a baseball bat next to the bed. For years, I waited for them to come for Adam.
And then slowly, I began to relax. I took the bat to the beach to play baseball with Ellery and put it away in the garage when I got home. I started walking home alone at night. I left the doors to my Jeep unlocked. Slowly, Adam faded and then disappeared, and I became Garrett. I moved on and believed that everyone else had, too. I stopped worrying, stopped searching for faces in the crowd, stopped fretting about whether or not they’d find me.
I stare at the dark figure on the couch.
What if they found me?
And then an even worse scenario slams into me. Madeline and her sister are next door.What if they stopped there first?I curl my hands into fists and charge into the room as the figure on the couch reaches for the lamp on the side table and flips it on.
I bend over and clutch my chest, gasping.
It’s Madeline.
