“It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if I stayed,” he replied. “I would have liked to see you again. But I think I needed to go. I think that summer was all we could have.”

Whether or not it was psychotic, whether it meant that I had deep-seated issues and had fixated so heavily on a single summer that my whole life was wrapped around it, I didn’t care. I needed it. I would never disown it. It was mine.

I looked at Zeke, that beautiful boy. And I realized that this was Ben. This was Ben and he wasn’t a kid. And I remembered that, before that one summer, he was also Ben. And he’d made a whole life without me. That thing we’d created together. I guess it was mine alone now.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll say I did all of it.”

“Thank you,” Zeke said.

It was not how I had expected it to go, or maybe it was not how I had dreamed it might go. I don’t know exactly what I had hoped. You hold on to something for twenty years, the expectations and possibilities bend and twist alongside your actual life. I knew I didn’t want him to be in love with me. I didn’t want to run away with him, to completely undo the life I’d spent so long making, the life that I truly loved. I guess I’d hoped that we’d say the phrase together, maybe a hundred times? Maybe a thousand? I feel like if we’d sat on the porch swing and repeated the line a thousand times, it would have satisfied me, but who knows? Maybe after all that, hours later, I would have said, “Maybe another thousand times?” But I could see now that if I even asked him to say it one time, to even say the edge, he might turn into smoke. But here’s the thing. I was going to do just what he asked. So I needed something. And because I hadn’t anticipated this, I didn’t know what to ask for.

Zeke went to get us a muffin, and then he sat on the sofa with me while we ate. We talked about what came after that summer, the immediate aftermath. I told him about the car crash, about Randolph Avery (and how his letters had given it all away), and my broken arm and that year after. I told him about Hobart and my mom falling in love and then him dying. I told him about the school where I ended up going, about leaving Coalfield for the first time really. And falling in love with Aaron, and writing my books, and having Junie.