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After everyone’s gone, I heat up the lasagna someone brought. Danny blinks back tears when his mother asks him to say a prayer in the pastor’s place. His hand slides over my own as the prayer ends, and Luke watches, swallowing hard.

That life I imagined with him feels like it’s further away than ever.

Donna asks me to cut up one of the pies that was delivered once the lasagna is cleared, though I doubt anyone will eat it. I put on coffee and cut up the pie. I’m playing the role I always played and it’s never felt more fake than it does now.

When we’re all sitting, Danny lifts his fork and puts it down. “During our last conversation, I told Dad something.” He turns to face me, his eyes bright. “I told him I was going to ask you to marry me.”

My fork freezes in mid-air. I want him to stop talking, but it’s already out there, this thing he assumes I want.

“He was glad. He said he’d prayed for that since the day I brought you home.” He smiles at me, blinking back tears. “So I want to do it, Juliet. I know he won’t be there to see it, but it’s the last thing I promised him I’d do. Mom?”

I watch, astonished, as Donna crosses the kitchen and grabs an envelope tucked between the flour and sugar. She hands it to Danny, smiling at me through her tears and he shakes a tiny, tarnished silver ring out of it. It belonged to his grandmother—Donna’s shown it to me before.

He reaches for my hand. “Juliet, will you marry me?”

My heart is thundering in my ears, and I feel like that bird Luke once told me about. Too large for its cage, its wings unable to stretch—flapping frantically until it finally stopped trying. Except I’m wiser than that bird in one way. I know without even trying that I’m never getting out of the cage.

Luke watches, all expression drained from his face, as I tell Danny, “Yes.”

31

NOW

It’s coming to an end. I have six days until the gala, and once I leave here, it’s all behind me. I’ve let down my guard a bit, though I shouldn’t. I just want one last chance to pretend these things are mine.

I go to the store with him. I follow him around the house like the lovesick girl I’ve always been. He’s folding laundry—I offer to help.

“I still have your sweatshirt,” I admit as we fold. “That UCSD one you loaned me the night I ran from the sorority house. I guess I should give it back.”

“No,” he replies, “you shouldn’t. It’s yours.”

Luke and I work together on the kids’ rooms without being asked. We hang pictures and fill dressers. We make breakfast and dinner, side by side. And when we’re sitting across from each other at the table, I can almost believe this is our life. I allow myself to go for long stretches of the day forgetting it’s going to end, filled with a lazy, delighted sort of contentment. Cash texts to ask when I’m coming and I don’t bother to reply.

It’s the feeling of hopefulness, and it’s not real, but I let it happen anyway because I know I won’t feel it again.

Donna and I hear him hammering in the backyard one morning and follow the sound. He’s hanging a hammock between two of the trees.

“Do kids even like hammocks?” Donna asks.

His eyes hold mine and I smile. “Everyone likes hammocks.”

In the afternoons, Luke surfs, and I play guitar in the backyard. I’m trying something new, music that’s more real and honest than anything I’ve created since that first album. I’ve been hiding for a long time, submerged. I’ve been singing about life seen from the bottom of the ocean, but here, now, I’m singing about the world as it is when you’ve just come up gasping for air.

At night, I slide into Luke’s bed when it’s late enough, when the street is silent and the house is pitch black, and he’s always waiting for me. I press my nose to his skin and just inhale. I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Jules,” he begins one night as I climb over him, and I know, just from his tone, that he’s about to ask some question I don’t want to answer.

We aren’t anything. It’s not going anywhere and it won’t continue.

“Don’t ruin it,” I say, cutting him off.

He tenses. I know him. I can feel his desire to argue in the tightness of his muscles, in his sudden silence. My mouth moves to his neck, hoping to distract him, but he remains rigid beneath me.

“Get on the floor,” he finally replies.

I still. “What?”