One Last Thing Before I Go

he sees this version of her, the one that stayed in love with him.
    “I know where they are,” she says.
    “Casey?”
    “And Rich.”
    “You think they’re together?”
    “Yes. At the lake house.”
    “What lake house?”
    “Rich has a lake house. Up in Essex. Casey loves it up there. I’m sure that’s where they would both end up.”
    “Are you going to go up there?”
    “No.” She takes a long, final swig of her soda and gets to her feet. “We are.”

CHAPTER 38
    T helake house is a haphazard mix of wood and stone that could be kindly designated as postmodern in that it doesn’t seem to adhere to any traditional school of architecture or design. But the skylights, the massive bay windows, and high wooden deck facing Lake Kearney render all sins against design forgiven. It’s a spacious house, bright, well kept, engineered to let the sunlight in and hold on to it. A narrow dock, stained the same color as the house, extends into the lake like a broken finger directly below, and tethered to the end is Rich’s rowboat, retrofitted with a small outboard motor.
    Casey has always loved how quiet it is here, how you can step out onto the deck in the morning and feel embraced by the air and kissed by the sun. Being out here, away from the suburban sprawl, surrounded by trees and facing the glistening lake, always calms her and gives her hope for the world. As long as there are still unspoiled places like this, there is the sense that it’s never too late for things to turn around.
    She sits on the deck, in the porch swing Rich had built for her when she and Denise started coming out here with him. He loved having her here, and she’d intuited, even back then, that it was a little sad to own a house like this by yourself, and that Rich had been lonely here before he’d found them.
    She can hear him inside, moving around mugs and spoons, operating the coffee grinder, trying to find some measure of peace in the routine. She’d driven up here alone, after finally managing to elude Jeremy, who was still reeling from the shock of it all, and kept saying over and over again, “What do you want to do?” which was only a slight improvement over the first half hour of “Why didn’t you tell me?” Like telling him last week would have made all the fucking difference.
    “Go to Europe,” she said.
    “I can’t,” he’d said, though he clearly wanted to.
    “You can,” she said. “I’ll let you know how it turns out.”
    And when he took her hands and said to her, “We’re in this together,” it took every ounce of her will to not kick him and run away screaming. Because they weren’t. Jeremy would go to Europe, and even if he didn’t, she knew enough to know that he was as much a kid as she was, that there was nothing sustainable between them. He was saying all the right things, but the right things didn’t matter. No one was in anything together. Not her, not Silver, not her mother, not Rich. Everyone was fucked and everyone was in it alone. She didn’t want that to be true, but she was pretty confident that it was.
    Rich steps out onto the deck carrying two mugs. He hands one to Casey, and she’s touched by his thoughtfulness. She would think he’d want nothing to do with her. After all, she was the one who pulled Silver back into their lives. If she hadn’t done that, Silver and her mother never would have hooked up last night, and no one would be in this mess.
    For some reason, she hadn’t anticipated his being here when she drove up last night. She figured he and Denise would be at their house, saying horrible things to each other. She’d come up here, in part, to avoid that whole drama. She fell asleep on the couch and woke up after noon to the sound of him scrambling eggs. When she came downstairs after showering, there was a plate waiting for her under the heat lamp, but no sign of Rich. Until now.
    “I’m sorry,” she tells him.
    He nods, attempts a weak smile, and then looks away. “It’s not your fault,” he says.
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Can we not talk about this?”
    He holds his coffee mug up to his face, inhaling its aroma.
    “What’s going to happen?” she says.
    “I don’t know,” he says.
    “Please don’t hate her.”
    He looks out at the lake for a long moment, standing absolutely still. Then he turns to head back inside. “I’m doing my best, honey.”

CHAPTER 39
    D enise drives them in her BMW. Silver inhales the scent of high-end leather as the