“Um. Sure?”

“Because,” I said, “your voice sounds so familiar to me.” Then I said, “The more you talk, the more I keep thinking I recognize it.”

“Oh,” Jake said, stamping sand off his shoes now. “Then you probably want me to say something like, ‘Hey, friends and neighbors—and welcome to yet another hour of the Everything’s Invisible podcast.’”

Oh, my God.

I felt a thrill of recognition like a flutter. I did recognize that voice.

I turned and stared at him. “Shut up!” I shouted, and just as Duncan and Helen and the girls came jogging back, now much slower, I said, “You’re Jake Archer?”

Jake just smiled, so I turned to Duncan, who had collapsed on his knees in the sand nearby, and I pointed at Jake. “Is this Jake Archer from Everything’s Invisible?”

Duncan frowned at me like I was funny. “Yes,” he said.

“Wait—you’re friends with Jake Archer?”

Duncan gave Helen a little smile. “I can hardly believe it, myself.”

“Hardly friends,” Jake said. “He’s more like an obsessive and troubled fan.”

Duncan kept his eyes on me, but called over to Jake. “Don’t make me hurt you.” Then, to me, he said, “I named that podcast, in fact.”

“You named it?”

Duncan nodded. “Jake over there wanted to call it, ‘What’s Essential Is Invisible to the Eye’—you know, that line from The Little Prince about how ‘it is only with the heart that one can see rightly.’ But that was way too long. So I shortened it.”

I turned to Jake. I was freaking out. I was fangirling.

“I knew I knew that voice! I’ve heard every episode—multiple times. I’m in the library all the time, stamping books and cataloging and restocking and doing inventory. I listen to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks—and yours is in my top three. It’s actually my favorite. Sometimes I get to the end of a show, and just go back and start it again. But I’m not going to say that out loud for fear of sounding like a…”

“An obsessive and troubled fan?” Duncan suggested.

I shrugged. “Too late?”

“Let’s treat that like a rhetorical question,” Jake said, but now he was teasing me, too.

I turned to Duncan, and said, almost like I was giving him some great news: “Your brother-in-law is Jake Archer!”

“Does that make you like me better?”

“It doesn’t make me like you less, that’s for sure.”

“This is why you pay me the big bucks,” Jake said to Duncan.

Then I turned back to Jake, and as I did, I remembered an article in Variety, or Vanity Fair, or Vogue—something with a V—about America’s new favorite podcast host, and how he always insisted he was so good at interviewing people, at reading their voices and asking the perfect questions, because he was blind.

Duncan saw me looking at Jake and seemed to know what I was thinking. He took a few steps closer to Jake and wrapped him up in a bear hug. “Love ya, buddy,” I heard Duncan say, just as Helen, who had been brushing sand off of Jake this whole time, said to the guys, “I’m calling a moratorium on wrestling.”

Then she turned to the girls. “I think it’s time for hot chocolate.”

The girls cheered and jumped around, but Duncan charged toward them. “Ugh! Hot chocolate is the worst!” He swooped down, scooped them up, and spun around, one in each arm, until centrifugal force pulled their feet out sideways.

I had never—not once, in all the days since he’d come to Kempner—seen him goof around with kids like that. Mostly, he ignored all children. But here he was, playing. Here he was, looking and acting so much like Old Duncan that it made me sad. I felt my smile fade, even as the girls kept squealing and giggling in palpable delight.

* * *

After they’d gone, I regretted not getting Jake’s autograph. Maybe I should have gotten all their autographs, for good measure.

I couldn’t stop thinking about them as I walked back up the beach. Thinking how radically different Duncan was in their presence. Was he faking? Or did they open up some part of his psyche that he normally kept bolted shut?

It was so thrilling—and heartbreaking—to see Duncan happy, given how rarely that ever happened. It was like this glimpse into a parallel universe where he was okay. Maybe not exactly as exuberant as he had been all those years ago at Andrews … but close.

Where was that Duncan when we were at school?

When they’d left in search of hot chocolate, I’d wanted to go with them so badly—and they had tried to convince me to go. I don’t know why I said no. Maybe I didn’t want to interrupt their family time together. Maybe their easy camaraderie was intimidating in a way.

But as I walked home, I had to admit: The more glimpses of the old Duncan I got, the more I wanted. I hadn’t gone with them, in part, because I’d wanted to go with them so badly. The version of him on the beach today was so close to the version I’d always found so irresistible—the mischievous, playful version. Seeing it made me long for more of it so intensely, it was physical, like an ache.

I didn’t want to want him. Or long for him. Or yearn.

Since my epilepsy had come back, I’d tried very hard not to want things I couldn’t have.

And I feared now that Duncan fit easily into that category—in part because of how he’d changed, and in part because of how I had.

Deep down I knew that even if the old Duncan resurrected himself tomorrow, I shouldn’t let myself want to be with him. Because I wasn’t the same person now. I was better in so many ways—but I was also worse.

I’d gone a whole semester without having a seizure—without collapsing in the library in front of the kids, or in the cafeteria line, or on the playground at recess. I was passing as a person who was perfectly fine.

But I wasn’t fine. I had this … condition. One I couldn’t hide forever. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but over and over in my life, people I cared about had acted as if it were. The more time I spent with Duncan, the more desperately I wanted him—and the more I wanted him to want me back.

And also: the more I feared that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—once he knew the truth about me. Or, more specifically: once he’d seen it.

That was the crux of it, just like I’d feared all along. He was making me want something I couldn’t have. Him.

Better to stay away. Better not to go to a cozy diner and spend a whole afternoon laughing and joking with them in a big semicircular booth with my thigh grazing against Duncan’s. Better not to feed the addiction.

Better to shut it all down, and fast—before it got worse.

thirteen

I didn’t wind up going with Babette to Austin for Christmas.

In fact, I wound up spending Christmas alone. Mostly because just as we were packing up Babette’s SUV, Tina showed up—with Clay. And two suitcases.

Tina parked right behind me as I was loading my bag into the back.

For a minute, I thought maybe Tina had left Kent Buckley.

Tina’s face went sour when she saw me, but Clay dropped his suitcase and hugged me around the waist.

I worked very hard to make my voice pleasant. “Hey, buddy. Are you here for Christmas?”

“Yes,” Tina answered for him, and then she turned to Clay. “Go find Baba and tell her we’re spending the night.”

After he ran off, I turned to Tina, glanced at the suitcases one more time, and said, “Did you leave him?”

Tina frowned. “Leave who?”

“Kent Buckley,” I said, like Who else?

She looked affronted. “Of course not. He went on a last-minute work trip to Japan.”

Oh. Oops. “Japan,” I said, nodding. “Wow.”

Just then, Babette and Clay came clomping down the porch steps and out to the car, rolling Babette’s suitcase behind them.

“You’re coming for Christmas!” Babette cheered when she reached Tina, holding out her arms and pulling her into a big hug. It was the happiest I’d seen Babette since summer.

“We’re coming for Christmas!” Clay echoed, and they pulled him in, too.

This was what it must be like to belong. You could utterly ignore people, and not be there for them, and let them down, and forget about them—but then, when you finally showed up, they were happy.

I didn’t have anyone in my life like that.

And if I did, I thought, I wouldn’t abuse the privilege. If I had anybody anywhere who loved me like that, I would be grateful every day. I would meet all that love with the same amount in return. It made me wish I didn’t have to try so hard with everybody all the damn time. It made me miss my mom—again, as always. It made me wish I had somebody—anybody—in my life who would love me no matter what.

Did this mean our weekend in Austin was off?

I stood by awkwardly, watching how unreasonably happy it made Babette to see Tina. And then it hit me: Tina showing up here meant my trip to Austin was off.

I turned and pulled my suitcase back out of the car.

Babette noticed. “What are you doing?”

I threw Clay’s suitcase in the back. “These two should go with you,” I said.