Wes puts the fish he’ll sell to Mr. Moriglioni in a deep metal bucket. I stare at their unseeing eyes, and I think of Tim and Wes catching the fish together in that small stream. Already it feels like so long ago, a different lifetime.
We are headed back to shore when I see a figure jumping up and down on the sand, her skirt flying up, her arms waving over her head. “That’ll be Mary.” Wes jerks his chin toward the beach. He is rowing the boat through the rough waves with quick, efficient movements. “She asked me when you were coming back every single day. Kept trying to get me to take her to Boston to visit you. I’m glad you showed up. I don’t think I could have lied to her for much longer.”
“That’s why you’re glad I showed up?” I ask.
He just grins at me, and I stare at his teeth, so white against his tan cheeks, his hair windswept and damp. Behind him I see that Mary is not alone on the shore—Lucas is leaning back against his jeep, and Peter is running along the water, kicking his legs into the surf and bending down to examine rocks and seashells.
I have no idea if we will succeed in stopping the Project. But on this boat, next to Wes, the waves rocking us from side to side, I feel something finally click into place. The Project spent months creating the jagged edges inside of me, chiseling and chiseling away at them until I was only broken pieces. It was just in the last week that I have started to put them back together. It began with Tim, who would not let me turn away from him, who knew that the only way we would survive was if we leaned on each other. But it was forgiving Wes that has made those edges soft again, and I feel like a piece of sea glass, battered on the shore, letting the steady rhythm of the water turn me smooth.
“What’s with that look on your face?” Wes does not stop rowing, his arms laced with muscle, his breath even despite the weight he’s pulling.
“Nothing.” I smile at him through the spray from the crashing waves that sends mist up over my hair, my bare arms. “I’m just happy.”
On the beach, Mary has spread out a picnic blanket. We reach the shore and Lucas wades into the cold springtime water, grabs the thick rope that Wes uses to tether the boat, and pulls us in. Wes hops out and holds his arms up, lifting me onto the dry sand.
Peter is standing on the beach, trying to reach the rope to help Lucas and Wes pull the boat in.
“Whoa.” I grab his shoulders and bring him back a few feet. “The waves are strong today. Let them do it.”
He twists away from me. “I’m not a little kid, you know. I can help.”
I look down into his face. His cheeks are nothing like my grandfather’s. He’s still a little boy, his face round and soft where my grandfather’s was angular. But the direct, stubborn way Peter speaks is startlingly familiar.
The grandfather I remember might be gone, but, in a way, he’s still here. I’ll have a different role in his life—caretaker instead of charge—but he’ll always be someone I love. And now I’ll be able to watch him grow up, instead of knowing he would probably pass away during my lifetime.
I lean down close to Peter.
“I know you can,” I say softly. “But Wes will tell you when he needs help.”
“I help Wes a lot. Sometimes he takes me fishing.”
“I just helped him too.”
“And she wasn’t very good at it. Not nearly as good of a helper as you are, Peter.” Wes walks toward us in the sand, wiping his hand across his face. The boat is now several feet up the shore, well out of the high-tide line. “She kept dropping the fish back in the water.”
“Hey.” I put my hands on my hips. “I was a great helper.”
“You’re a girl,” Peter says. “Girls don’t know how to fish.”
“That is so sexist. Girls can do anything boys can do.”
He cocks his dark head at me and scowls. “What’s sexist mean?”
I open my mouth, then shut it. Wes starts laughing. “Oh shut up,” I mumble, pushing his stomach as I walk past. He clutches his middle and gives an exaggerated groan, which makes Peter start to laugh.
I shake my head, sitting down next to Mary on the blanket.
“Lydia.” She waves her hand in the air. “You reek of fish.”
“Wes made me throw back the little ones. My hands are all gooey.” I hold them in her direction and she shrieks.
The boys join us, and Wes lies down on his side, tucking my back against his front, his arm around my waist. Lucas sits near Mary, resting his hand behind her. She scoots back a little so his forearm is pressed to her side. Despite Lucas’s fears, they look comfortable with each other.
“I have hard-boiled eggs,” Mary says. “Ma packed breakfast for us, and there’s eggs and apples and root beer and brown bread and butter, I think, maybe a little and—”
“Mary!” I interrupt. “We got it, there’s food.”
I feel Wes’s body shake behind me as he laughs and I lean into him.
“I’m just trying to tell you what there is.” She huffs.
“I’m starving.” Wes pushes up until he’s sitting beside me, keeping his left arm wrapped around my waist. “What’s in there, Clarke?”
“Well, there’s eggs and apples and root beer and brown bread and butter . . .”
We all laugh, even Mary. I watch the way she looks up at Lucas from under
