never said it wasn’t good enough, but I could tell. Because nothing I ever did could make it over your insecurity. And I finally had to face the fact that the relationship wasn’t working for me. Which was not fun, believe me. If it makes you feel any better, I feel like shit.” Faced with Lucy’s uncomprehending stare, Kevin let out a short sigh. “Look, there’s something you need to hear from me before you find out from someone else. When I realized our relationship was in crisis, I had to talk about it with someone. I turned to … a friend. And the more time we spent together, the closer we got. Neither of us had any control over it. It just happened.”
“You started going out with someone else? Before you broke up with me?”
“I’d already broken up with you emotionally. I just hadn’t talked to you about it yet. I know, I should have handled it differently. The thing is, I have to go in this new direction. It’s the best thing for both of us. But the part that makes it tough for everyone, including me, is that the person I’m with now is … close to you.”
“Close to me? You mean one of my friends?”
“Actually … it’s Alice.”
All her skin tightened, the way it did when you had just saved yourself from a fall but still felt the sting of adrenaline. Lucy couldn’t say a word.
“She didn’t mean for it to happen any more than I did,” Kevin said.
Lucy blinked and swallowed. “For what to happen? You … you’re going out with my sister? You’re in love with her?”
“I didn’t plan on it.”
“Have you slept with her?”
His shamed silence was her answer.
“Get out,” she said.
“Okay. But I don’t want you to blame her for—”
“Get out, get
He went to the doorway of the studio. “We’ll talk more later when you’ve had a chance to think about this, okay? Because I want us to stay friends. But the thing is, Luce … Alice is going to be moving in pretty soon. So you’ll need to find a place.”
Lucy was silent. She waited in shattered stillness for minutes after he left.
Bitterly she wondered why she was surprised. The pattern had never changed. Alice had always gotten what she wanted, took whatever she needed, without ever sparing a thought as to the consequences. Every member of the Marinn family put Alice first, including Alice. It would have been easy to hate her, except that at certain times Alice possessed a mixture of vulnerability and melancholy that had seemed like an echo of their mother’s quiet sadness. Lucy had always found herself in the position of taking care of Alice; paying for dinner when they went out, loaning her money that was never repaid, letting her borrow clothes and shoes that were never returned.
Alice was smart and articulate, but it had always been difficult for her to finish anything she started. She changed jobs frequently, left projects unfinished, broke off relationships before they went anywhere. She made a dazzling first impression—charismatic and sexy and fun—but she ran through people quickly, apparently unable to last through the mundane day-to-day interactions that cemented a relationship.
For the past year and half, Alice had been a junior scriptwriter for a long-running daytime soap. It was the longest time she had ever stayed in a job. She lived in Seattle, occasionally traveling to New York to meet with the head writers about overall story arcs. Lucy had introduced her to Kevin, and they had hung out on a few occasions, but Alice had never shown any interest in him. Foolishly Lucy had never suspected that the borrowing of her possessions would extend to stealing her boyfriend.
How had Alice and Kevin’s relationship started? Who had made the first move? Had Lucy been so needy that she had driven Kevin away? If it wasn’t his fault, as he had claimed, then it had to be her fault, didn’t it? It had to be someone’s fault.
She crinkled her eyes shut against the hot pressure of tears.
How did you think about something that hurt this much? What did you do with memories, feelings, needs, that didn’t belong anywhere?
Lurching to her feet, Lucy went to her vintage three-speed bike, which was propped near the doorway. It was a turquoise vintage Schwinn, with a flowered basket on the handlebars. She reached for the helmet that hung on a hook beside the door and took the bike outside.
Mist had settled on the cool spring afternoon, stands of Douglas fir puncturing a layer of clouds as light as soap foam. Gooseflesh rose on her bare arms as a breeze pressed a damp chill into her T-shirt. Lucy rode with no direction or destination, until her legs burned and her chest ached. She stopped at a roadside turnout, recognizing a trail that led to a bay on the west side of the island. Walking the bike along the rough trail, she came to a line of steep cliffs made of weathered red basalt and pods of pure limestone. Ravens and seagulls picked over the leavings of low tide on the beach below.
The island’s native population, a tribe of the Coast Salish, had once harvested clams, oysters, and salmon in their reef nets. They had believed that the abundance of food in the strait had been a gift from a woman who had long ago married the sea. She had gone swimming one day, and the sea had assumed the form of a handsome young man who had fallen in love with her. After her father had reluctantly given his permission for them to marry, the woman had disappeared with her lover into the sea. Ever since then the sea had offered, in gratitude, rich harvests for the islanders.
Lucy had always liked the story, intrigued by the idea of such encompassing love that you didn’t mind losing yourself in it. Giving up everything for it. But it was a romantic notion that existed only in art, literature, or music. It had nothing to do with real life.
At least not hers.
After lowering the kickstand on her bike, Lucy took off her helmet and made her way down to the underslung beach. The terrain was pebbled and rough, patches of gray sand bristling with driftwood. She walked slowly, trying to figure out what to do. Kevin wanted her to leave the house. She had lost her home, her boyfriend, and her sister in one afternoon.
The clouds lowered, smothering the vestigial layer of daylight. In the distance a thunderhead sent rain to the ocean in showers that moved like gauze veils over a window. A raven gained loft over the water, its black wing tips separated into feathery fingers as it rode an updraft and headed inland. The storm was heading this way—she should leave and take shelter. Except that she couldn’t seem to think of anywhere to go.
Through a salty blur, she saw a green glimmer among the pebbles. She bent to pick it up. Bottles thrown into the ocean from offshore boats were sometimes churned up and washed to the shoreline, tumbled by waves and sand into frosted pebbles.
Closing her hand around the piece of sea glass, she looked out at the water lapping against the shore in rough blankets. The ocean was a bruised gray, the color of regret and resentment and the deepest kind of loneliness. The worst part about having been deceived the way she had been was it made you lose faith in yourself. When your judgment was that wrong about something, you could never be fully certain of anything ever again.
Her fist was burning, a knot of fire. Feeling an odd squirming tickle against her palm, she opened her fingers reflexively. The sea glass was gone. In its place a butterfly rested on her palm, unfolding iridescent blue wings. It stayed only a moment before shivering into flight, an unearthly blue gleam as it flew away to seek shelter.
A grim smile tugged at Lucy’s mouth.
She had never let anyone know what she could do with glass. Sometimes when she experienced powerful emotions, a piece of glass she had touched would change into living creatures, or at least remarkably convincing illusions, always small, always transitory. Lucy had struggled to understand how and why it happened, until she had read a quote by Einstein—that one had to live as though everything was a miracle, or as if nothing was a miracle. And then she had understood that whether she called her gift a phenomenon of molecular physics, or magic, both definitions were true, and the words didn’t matter anyway.
Lucy’s mirthless smile faded as she watched the butterfly disappear.
