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Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Also by Silas House
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Part One
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. Part Two
  27. 1
  28. 2
  29. 3
  30. 4
  31. 5
  32. 6
  33. 7
  34. 8
  35. 9
  36. 10
  37. Part Three
  38. 1
  39. 2
  40. 3
  41. 4
  42. 5
  43. 6
  44. 7
  45. 8
  46. 9
  47. 10
  48. 11
  49. 12
  50. 13
  51. 14
  52. 15
  53. 16
  54. 17
  55. 18
  56. 19
  57. 20
  58. 21
  59. 22
  60. 23
  61. 24
  62. 25
  63. 26
  64. 27
  65. 28
  66. 29
  67. 30
  68. 31
  69. Part Four
  70. 1
  71. 2
  72. 3
  73. Epilogue: The Everything
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. About Algonquin
  77. Copyright

“I can’t,” he says. He won’t look at Asher and his eyes are hidden behind the big, cheap sunglasses Asher bought at the café to hide his face from anyone who might take note of them. “I can’t just sit here and eat while she’s laying there, dead.”

“We have to keep living, buddy,” Asher says.

“She was so good to me,” Justin says, his voice breaking. “And to Shady. She always made a little extra bacon just for him.”

“I know it. We were lucky to know her.”

“We should be there with Evona,” he says, turning to his father. Asher finds only himself reflected in the lenses of the sunglasses. “It’s not right.”

“Just a little while longer,” Asher says.

Justin dabs one of the plantains into the sour cream and chews it without any kind of enjoyment. “I can’t,” he whispers, and spits the food out. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

After a while Justin falls asleep on his side with his hands folded beneath his cheek, his mouth open in mournful exhaustion.

Asher watches him. What a failure of a father he has become. He has reduced his child to hiding all day on a beach, sleeping in a plastic chair by the ocean, on the run. He has turned him into someone who can’t even mourn a person he loves without being whisked away into hiding.

He is a coward for leaving Evona. He shouldn’t have, even if she did insist. He has been a coward his entire life, always afraid to do the right thing. He will never forgive himself for leaving her, the same way he will never really get over knocking Zelda down, the way he can’t get over not being brave enough to marry Jimmy and Stephen, the same way he’ll never be able to take back the day he turned away Luke for being himself. Some things we can’t take back, no matter how hard we wish.

23

23

The low growl of thunder wakes him and when his eyes come open he sees that Justin is curled up in his beach towel resting peacefully. All down the beach people are snatching up their towels and coolers and chairs while the wind plucks them back, carrying some of these things tumbling down the sand and into the water. The boy who rented the chairs and umbrella to them is trying to wrangle everything off the beach before the wind takes it all.

Greenish-black clouds hover low over the ocean, grumbling toward land. Lightning kicks around in the bottoms of the clouds.

“Hurry!” a woman cries out to her little boy, who is still in the water. She’s holding a white safari hat to her head so it won’t blow away and Asher is thinking Let that go.