Brothers of Paradise Series

“She is,” I say. “Her middle name is Lily, actually.”

Beside me, Lily falls quiet. Our walk slows from brisk to ambling. Her limp from the car accident is less pronounced than when I’d seen her last. Better with every passing year, it seems, and that warms my heart.

Lily takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know. Not about Emma’s name, not about… her. That she existed.”

I look at the ground, at the stone worn by decades of regular walking and running along the ocean. “That’s on me. I chose not to share.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Lily says, like she’s commenting on the weather. She’s never one for dancing around a topic, but here we are, the both of us cautious like two people on a first date. “Is her father out of the picture?”

“Yes,” I say. And then, my gaze on the horizon, I add the rest. “At least I want him to be.”

She makes a small humming sound. “Is he why you stayed away for so long?”

“A part of it, yes.”

“I can understand that,” Lily says. But the other part is evident in her voice. But I can’t understand the rest. Why you didn’t answer my messages. Why you stopped answering my calls.

I wonder if I even understand that part myself.

“You married Hayden,” I say. It’s a cheap change of conversation, but she doesn’t comment, shining up in a smile instead.

“Yes, we got our happily-ever-after in the end.”

I nudge her with my elbow. “You were always hoping for that.”

“Can’t deny that,” she says and looks down at the ring on her finger. “Even if I’ll admit it took me a while to let him in again after he returned.”

“Where had he been?” Last I’d seen Lily, Hayden had been gone for a few years, having left Paradise shortly after the car accident. They hadn’t remained in contact.

“Making a name for himself,” she says with an eye roll. “That’s the way he likes to put it. I think he was running away from the accident, and from my parents, and from his own misguided guilt.”

“I can understand.” I glance down at her leg. Her hip had been crushed, and I remember those fraught days right after, visiting her in the hospital. And then the entire long summer after, with all the physical therapy she had to do. I’d done a lot of the moves with her, in her childhood bedroom, while I tried to make her laugh with increasingly outlandish stories. “That was scary, Lily.”

“It was,” she says. “But we found our way back to one another.”

“And to little Jamie.”

She chuckles. “And to little Jamie. His actual name is James, you know.”

Parker must like that. “He’s very cute.”

“Yes, he is, and he knows it. Uses those big eyes to get out of all kinds of trouble.”

I play with the hem of my sleeve. “You sent me a picture after he was born. I hung it on my fridge, next to Emma’s baby picture.”

Lily’s breath catches. “You saw that email?”

“Yes.”

“But, then… Jamie, why did you never answer me? Why did you pull away?”

We curve around the benches by Paradise Point and reach the rock with the golden plaque. It’s the furthest eastward point in Paradise.

“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s not an escape, it’s the truth. My words feel inadequate and dry and I have none to offer her.

Lily sits down on the bench next to the rock and gestures for me to join her. So I do. I watch the waves beat against the rocks and she watches me.

My words come out haltingly. “It was cool, not knowing what to do, you know. When I was twenty. Skipping out on college and working odd jobs in the city.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “I remember.”

“I was living with artists, and everyone was living this life of true rebellion, you know? Against their backgrounds, their families, society. I loved it. But… what’s nice at twenty isn’t so nice at twenty-four. When no one in your shared apartment bothers buying soap for the shared bathroom. Impromptu parties lose their charm pretty fast.” I look down at my nails, pushing down a cuticle. “You’d just graduated college, I remember, with your master’s degree in art history.”

Lily sits very still next to me. “Yes.”

“And I started falling behind. That’s what it felt like, anyway. I’d see you and our other classmates getting jobs you’d worked for years to earn. Starting to build a future, a life, all of it. And I was still running and rebelling. Still trying to figure out who I was. It worked for a bit, but not forever. And then I met Lee.”

I have to take a deep breath, and I focus on the horizon. The spot where the ocean meets the sky. Compared to that infinite distance, my mistakes are minor. “He took up so much space that for a long time I was him. I couldn’t see or think about anything that wasn’t him. I was in love, stupidly so. The kind that won’t let you breathe.”

“Infatuated,” Lily murmurs.

I nod. “Oh yes. And he knew it.”

“I never met him.”

“I wanted you to, in the beginning. Spoke to him about visiting Paradise, but he made enough comments about this town, about my mother’s job, my grandfather’s company, to hint that I should leave my privileged past behind. It wasn’t edgy enough.”

Lily’s hands are tightly knotted in her lap, and I look away from them, back out toward the horizon. “He was a few years older, right?”

I nod. “He got a job out of state and we moved. And then I had Emma. She wasn’t planned but that never mattered to me. From the moment I knew I was pregnant, I wanted her.”

“Did he?” she whispers.

“He said he did. In the beginning. And it was good for a while, Lily, I swear it was. But it didn’t last, and my one solace became Emma, making sure she was happy and healthy and doing well.”

“Lee?” she asks. “What did he… do?”

I shake my head. “He was never violent. But he was very good at breaking you down regardless. And I knew our one-bedroom rental in-the-middle-of-nowhere wasn’t anything to write home about. I knew what people would think, the people in town, our high school friends. They’d think I failed. And you? You’d think the same thing I did when Lee wasn’t around. That I’d betrayed myself, that I’d become smaller than the person I was born to be. Smaller than the person you’d called a friend. You wouldn’t let me hide from that fact… And I’d become very good at hiding.”

I blink at the horizon to stop it from becoming blurry. I don’t know how much more I’ve got in me, how many more words until I break.

I’ve never said any of these things out loud.

“Jamie,” Lily says, “I have loved you since we were seven years old and you stood up to Billy T after he ripped my drawing in half during recess. You could become the size of a flea and I’d still consider you my best friend.”

Something wet runs down my cheek and I wipe at it. Once, twice, and then my shoulders are shaking.

Lily grabs my left hand with hers. “Did you leave him?”Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.