Page 46 of The Last Thing You Said

My face burned, and I scrubbed at my mouth with a napkin.

“Come on.” Trixie pulled on my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ben slid the door of the van open. Trixie climbed in and I started to follow her.

“Wait,” Ben said. He tugged me back behind the van and pressed something into my hand.

I looked at the object in my palm. It was the most beautiful thing—an odd-shaped agate, not quite an oval, not even an inch wide. The stone was polished to a bright shine, a deep rusty red with bands of ivory and pink and gray that together formed an L.

“Oh,” I gulped. “Is this for me?”

What a stupid thing to say.

“Well, yeah.” Ben smiled.

“It’s perfect,” I said, and I meant it. Everything about the agate was perfect—the irregular shape, the coloring, the fact that Ben had chosen it just for me. My heart pounded. “Thank you.”

Thank you. That’s all I could say. I should have said more, but not there, not in front of Trixie and his parents.

Something was happening between us.

“Are you getting in or what?” Trixie called from inside the van and I turned, slipping the most perfect thing in the world into my pocket.

I didn’t want Trixie to see. I didn’t want her to know. This was special, between Ben and me. It was the only secret I had from her, ever.

For a long time, as we drove along the shore of Lake Superior, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I gazed out over the vast blue water and thought about Ben, who sat beside me, silent. I was in agony, not knowing what he was thinking. Wanting to say more, to ask him if he happened to see this agate and thought of me, or if he set out to find me the perfect agate and this, the one with the L, was it? A tiny miracle in a bin of small, polished stones.

I never asked.

I wonder how many hundreds of agates Ben has collected. I wonder if he thinks about my agate, the agate with the L. L for Lulu, L for love. I wonder if he thinks about me, what we almost had.

I wonder what he was about to say to me the day that Trixie died, just as Clayton yelled for us that he couldn’t find her.

I’ll never know.

Now, in the tree house with Emily, I take the agate out of the pocket of my jeans. I roll it over and over between my index finger and thumb.

25 · Ben

Tami catches me as I’m getting into the car to go home after a long day out on the lake. I was with a couple of guys who complained the whole time about how subpar the experience was compared to some isolated, fly-in-only lodge up in Saskatchewan. I’m hot, I stink, and I’m crabby.

“Ben, wait a minute,” she says. She’s barefoot and drying her hands on a dish towel. “Can you tell your mom that we need to pick up Lucy on Friday, so we’ll just plan on meeting them at the rehearsal dinner?”

Why do they need to pick up Lucy? What does she have to do with the wedding?

“Lucy?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you? She’s coming along to help with Emily.”

Lucy’s going to the wedding. Shit.

“Oh. Yeah, I’ll tell Mum.”

“Thanks, Ben. I’ve got to get back inside before the spaghetti boils over. See you tomorrow.”

I get in the hot car and slam the door.

I haven’t been back to Duluth since that last trip before Trixie died. Trixie begged to have Lucy come along, and I’m glad she did. I was sixteen and girl crazy, although last summer, it was more than girl crazy. Right before that trip, it hit me. I knew Lulu liked me. I’d known for a long time, since before she’d started leaving fudge on my desk. I knew then that I liked her, too. It was so natural, so right.