Page 54 of Escape to Lighthouse Cove

Noah nodded. “Allthe things. The grief, mainly.” He swallowed hard, his narrowed gaze on the horizon, the sunlit sea sparkling under an azure sky. “I thought I was grieving these last eighteen months. I felt like I was grieving. You saw me in the throes of a nightmare—didn’t that look like grief to you?”

“I… I would have thought so,” Grace replied helplessly.

“But Isaiah helped me to realize I was just avoiding it all. Focusing on feeling guilty because amazingly, that felt easier than feeling the grief. And Ididfeel guilty,” he confessed, a new bleakness in his voice, underneath his determinedly wry tone. “Horrendously so, and frankly I still do, but I’m working on it.”

Grace stopped to lay a hand on his arm. Up ahead of them Jacob was jumping on and off a fallen log. “Noah…whydo you feel so guilty? Jem died?—”

“Jem killed himself.” His voice was flat, bleak. “He hanged himself with his own necktie. A tie I bought him, by the way, for our first TV interview, after Grob had gone big. I think he chose it intentionally.” He sighed. “Knowing Jem, I’m sure he did.”

“Noah, I’m so sorry.” Grace was reeling from the news, and yet at the same time she realized she wasn’t surprised. All along she’d sensed there was more to his brother’s death than anyone—Noah, Isaiah, Becca or Bab or even Ned—had ever said. Now she knew. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, “and I can’t imagine how difficult that must be, but… how could that make it your fault?”

Noah sighed, casting his gaze upward in a way Grace suspected was to keep tears at bay. “The short answer is because he asked me to do something and I refused to do it. The long answer involves a lot more about who we’d been to each other—I always looked out for Jem. I was in charge. He was the sensitive one, the deep thinker. From the time I was tiny, my parents were always telling me to protect him. That’s how it was, how it was meant to be, and I… failed.”

“But…” Grace shook her head instinctively. “Noah, you can’t be responsible for another person.”

He nodded. “That’s what Isaiah said, and maybe it’s true, somewhere. But it never felt very true to me, when it came to Jem. Ilikedlooking out for him. At least, I did for a long time. But then we moved to New York, and you know what I liked?” His mouth twisted. “I liked parties and bars and living it up. I liked feeling famous and like I was all that andnotthe obnoxious twin of the one everybodyreallyliked.” He let out a short huff of breath. “Because growing up, everyone liked Jem better than me. I don’t blame them for it. He was so gentle, so kind. He was the kind of kid who would crouch down to move an ant off the sidewalk and frankly I was the kind of kid who would just go ahead and step on it.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t cruel… just oblivious, I guess. Indifferent, maybe.”

“A normal boy,” Grace said quietly.

He sighed, an acknowledgment. “Maybe. But the funny thing is, I wasn’t who I thought I was in New York. That cool kid. I told you before, everyone actually thought I was a jerk.” He laughed, the sound without humor. “Which I was. And right around that time, when I realized I wasn’t who I thought I was, Jem started to have… trouble. He got depressed. And he’d gotten depressed before sometimes, he had a tendency to low moods, and I’d always helped him ride through it. After that girl—Eleanor—died, and when we were at MIT, same thing. But he always got through it. Always, with my help.” He paused, his gaze still on the sky. “This time he didn’t.”

Grace took a careful breath and released it slowly. She knew she had to be cautious here, that rushing in with pithy platitudes wasn’t helpful to anyone. “Is that what you think makes it your fault?” she asked. “That you didn’t help him ride through it this time?”

“I ignored him,” Noah said flatly. “I was just…tired. Tired of always watching over him while working so hard to keep us going. And I was angry, because I felt like I didn’t like myself, and I could never be Jem, but I couldn’t be me, either.” He gave a hollow laugh. “I had no idea just how much more I was going to dislike myself after Jem died.”

He lowered his head to face her, a world of bleakness in his eyes. “He asked me several times to leave New York. Close up Grob or at least run it remotely. He hated the crowds, the pressure of investing, all of it. He just wanted to live somewhere quiet and play chess, probably. And I refused.” He drew a shuddering breath. “The night he died, he begged me.Beggedme, Grace.” His voice caught. “He said he couldn’t hack it anymore. That he needed to get away from all the pressure. I was mad—mad at myself, at him, at life, I don’t even know what. I just wanted things to be different in so many ways. I walked out without saying anything. When I came back at two in the morning, I found him hanging from a steel beam in the living room. He’d left a note—it had five words on it.I told you I couldn’t.” Briefly Noah closed his eyes, his face drawn in stark lines of utter recrimination.

“Oh, Noah.” Grace’s voice choked. She couldn’t imagine how heavy the burden he bore was. No words could possibly be enough, and so instead she stepped forward and put her arms around him. Noah stiffened for no more than a second, and then he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Finally, easing away a little, Noah resumed the story. “Just in case you think this is just my survivor’s guilt, it’s not. At the funeral, my mom blamed me. She said it was my fault he’d died, and she hadn’t evenseenthat note. Jem spoke to her beforehand, I don’t know what he said, but it was enough for her to convict me, just as I convicted myself. And it would have been my fault anyway… because it was my job to keep Jem safe.”

“You weren’t his parent, Noah,” Grace said quietly. “That wasn’t your responsibility, even if your parents said it was.”

He nodded, brushing at his eyes. “I know that, intellectually at least. But I still should have listened to him. I should have said something instead of walking out. You can’t know how many times I’ve wondered if I’d justsaidsomething, told him we could talk about it later, that maybe he would have waited?” He shook his head. “I’ll never know.”

“I’m so sorry,” Grace whispered. She’d been saying that a lot, but she didn’t know what other words there were.

“Me, too.” Noah sighed. Ahead of them, Jacob had turned around and was watching them curiously, no doubt wondering why they weren’t keeping up. “But this wasn’t meant to be a self-pile-on. I just wanted to explain what I’d been dealing with. Badly and unproductively, but still.” He managed a small, wry smile that made Grace feel a tumbling sensation inside, a rush of affection and pride, sorrow and sympathy.

“Anyway, I told you all this, so you’d understand where I’ve been coming from, not that that was a good place. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I’ve got to give. I feel like I’ve taken some steps toward healing, but they’re baby steps and I’m still wrung out inside.” He squinted at the horizon. “But what I have to give… Iwantto give it. And that’s new.” He gestured to the picnic basket. “I went to Eastport for this picnic, you know.”

Grace goggled at him. “You did?”

Noah nodded solemnly. “Took the ferry and everything. Went into stores. Spoke to people, actual words. I’m serious, you know.”

A smile curved her mouth. “I know you are.”

Noah gazed down at her somberly. “Since you’ve come into my life, Grace, I’ve changed. I’ve fought it every step of the way, which was stupid and wrong, but I guess I’m stubborn that way. But you’ve shown me that I can be different. That life can. And… I’m terrified of hurting you, and being hurt, and falling into old patterns of stupidity but… I also know that I don’t want to self-sabotage myself by not trying for this. Us. If, that is, you think there could be an us of some description one day.”

He looked so resolute and yet so vulnerable, and incredibly appealing and frankly sexy. “I think,” Grace said, smiling, “there’s an us right now.” And then she stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek while Noah started to grin.

30

Was it possible to feel emotionally exhausted and utterly ebullient at the same time? Apparently it was, because that was how Noah felt as he and Grace walked hand in hand down the path, toward Jacob.

He felt positively limp from telling her everything about Jem, but at the same time he felt incredulous with hope, even something resembling joy, and it didn’t feel wrong to feel it. It felt good. It felt right.

“I meant to tell you,” he told her as they neared the clearing where the guest cottages stood, “when we were playing hide and seek, Jacob laughed.”