“Lucas!” Mary wraps her hand around his arm and tugs. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here? I would have come said hello.”
“I’ve been standin’ right here for ten minutes. What do I need to do, grab a bullhorn?”
“Har har har.” She looks over at me and Wes. “Is your fella this funny, Lyd?”
I smile. “He’s not one for jokes.”
“Don’t I know it.” Mary lets go of Lucas to poke Wes in the shoulder. “He’s been moping around for months, waiting on you to get back from Boston. I think he cried himself to sleep every night.”
Lucas laughs, but Wes just shakes his head. “You see what I’ve had to put up with while you were gone?”
“So how about it, Lydia, are you gonna settle down here now?” Lucas asks.
“I don’t know what our plans are yet,” I answer vaguely.
“Oh stay!” Mary hops up and down once. “The paper in East Hampton just fired one of their reporters. Ma was telling me about it earlier. You’d be perfect for it, Lydia! You can get a spiffy little car to drive around in; I’ll help you pick it out and everything. It should be blue. No!” She points her finger at me. “Red. A convertible, and we can go get sundaes when it’s warm and Pricilla Harold—her daddy owns the ice-cream shop and she thinks she’s the cat’s meow—will just die of jealousy. What do you think, Wes; shouldn’t Lydia take the job? Make her take it. Don’t let her go back to Boston, not yet.”
Wes hesitates a second before he says, “That sounds good to me.”
Lucas’s blue eyes are bright as he stares down at her, though his shoulders tense slightly. If Mary is so excited about Wes and me staying in Montauk, what happens when Lucas tries to take her back to Georgia?
If I succeed in destroying the TM, it means Wes and I will stay here forever. I would always miss my family in 2012, but I wouldn’t be alone here. I’d have the Bentleys. I’d have Wes. I don’t want to lose Mary again.
But that’s assuming I succeed. I still have to figure out a way to sneak into the Facility, to get to the documents, to get rid of Faust, and to destroy the TM. I can feel the anxiety building and I rub my hands together. I shouldn’t even be here right now. I should be planning and plotting, making sure I will not fail.
Wes must feel me tense; his hand settles on my lower back. “It’s okay,” he whispers into my hair, and I start to relax. I might not make it out of the Facility again alive. I can spare one night to spend time with the Bentleys, with Mary and my grandfather as a little boy.
“Oh, look, Peter found the sparklers.” Mary points to the side of the lawn.
As soon as her face is turned away, Lucas raises his eyebrows at me and jerks his head toward her.
I look up at Wes. “Weren’t you guys going to help Dr. Bentley set up the fireworks?”
“Right.” Wes steps away from me and clasps Lucas on the shoulder. “Let’s go do manly stuff, Sergeant.”
“Get off me, Private.” Lucas pushes his arm away, and they both laugh.
I watch them walk across the lawn, shoving each other back and forth. It’s clear they’ve spent a lot of time together, and I remember how hostile they were when Lucas showed interest in me. But now they are friends. Wes, the boy who was so closed off, who pushed away even Tag, has made a friend.
“Boys are such goofs.” Mary shakes her head, smiling after them. Her eyes linger on Lucas’s back.
“He’s worried about you.” I move closer to her. “He thinks you might not want to marry him.”
“That’s not true.” Her smile fades, and I almost regret bringing the subject up, wishing I could hold on to the giddy Mary from just a moment ago. “Lucas has been such a rock through this whole thing, but . . .”
I follow her gaze to Elizabeth, still sitting near the house in her stiff-backed chair. She hasn’t moved at all, not even to speak, since she got here.
“Everything is so different now,” Mary whispers. “Sometimes I think we’ll never recover from this.”
I reach over and touch her hand. “You will. It just takes time.”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
“Lucas reminds me of Dean. That’s why I panic about our future sometimes.”
Wes and Lucas are in the center of the lawn, holding long, cardboard tubes of Roman candles and skyrockets while Dr. Bentley points at the ground. Lucas doesn’t look anything like Dean—he is light where Dean is dark, from hair color to personality. But I see what she means. Both of them are loyal, always trying to do the right thing. They were best friends, and the only reason Mary even met Lucas was because Dean brought him around so often.
“But they’re not the same person,” I say. “And Dean wouldn’t want you to put your life on hold because of him. He wasn’t like that.”
“I know he wasn’t. That’s what makes it harder. But how can I leave now? We’ve barely pieced ourselves back together.”
My eyes wander over to Wes again. “There’s something I’ve realized recently. You have to choose to be happy, and sometimes that means letting go of the past.” I turn to face her. “If you want to go to Georgia, you should.”
“That’s the problem! I honestly don’t want to go to Georgia! I want to stay here with you and Suze and my family. But I don’t want to lose Lucas either.” She buries her face in her hands, then spreads her fingers, peeking at me through the open spaces. “Do you think Lucas would stay here?”
“You won’t know unless you ask him.”
Before she can respond, Peter runs up carrying
