“One of my team members took him out. I later learned the boy’s name was Hamza. He was fourteen years old.”

Caroline exhaled slowly and softly. She came around the side of the cutting table and stood in front of him, briefly touching his forearm and then taking her hand away. “I’m sorry that happened. What a horrible choice to have to make—to shoot a child or be shot. I understand why you hesitated.”

He’d faced a board of inquiry over the incident. His team had vouched for him, thank God. He realized that other than responding to the inquiry, he’d never told anyone the details of the incident. Not his dad or his grandparents or even Sierra. Only Caroline, whom he’d met when they were kids, no older than Hamza, perched on a rocky outcropping above Cape Disappointment.

“Thanks. I’m . . . I guess it’ll always be with me,” he said.

“Now you’re a teacher,” she said. “I’m connecting the dots.”

He went back to work. “Not sure about connecting the dots. I’m not that deep. My life changed in a split second. I just did the next logical thing.”

“You know how the saying goes—life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.”

The silence between them was a companionable one. Every now and then, Will would glance over at her and catch her looking at him. They’d immediately look away from each other. It was a tentative dance, reestablishing a friendship that had been dormant for years.

Although he tried to deny it, he felt drawn to her in a way that was absolutely and completely forbidden. It was impossible to lie to himself about this. But he could lie to everyone else. And he fully intended to do so.

“I wasn’t sure what to do with these storage boxes,” she said, startling him away from thoughts he shouldn’t be having.

“What’s that?”

“These boxes over here.” She indicated a few by the door. “I wasn’t sure what to do with them.”

“Let’s have a look.” There were bankers boxes crammed with receipts and records. Another box contained college textbooks. “I’ll ask Sierra about these,” he said. “During my last deployment, she was working on getting an MBA.” The box at the bottom was oblong and unexpectedly heavy, its once-glossy white surface covered in cobwebs and dust. He lifted the lid to reveal a cellophane window in an oval shape. “Damn. Haven’t seen that in a while.”

Caroline leaned forward to have a look. “Is this . . . ?”

“Sierra’s wedding dress. The one you made for her.”

“Wow. Never thought I’d see that again.”

He set the box with the others on a hand truck. He studied her with heightened awareness. She stood close enough for him to catch the herbal smell of her hair. The not-unpleasant scent of her sweat. He fixated on the damp bow of her lips. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

“Will—”

“I mean that, Caroline. We broke apart and here we are again. Sierra and I . . .”

“Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”

Part Five

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

―Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

Chapter 21

“I have news,” Caroline said to Sierra, ambushing her in the school parking lot after seventh period. “I’m freaking out.”

“Did Zane Hardy finally ask you to senior prom?” Sierra asked. “You shouldn’t have worried. I knew he would.”

“Screw the prom,” Caroline said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. We’ve got to go to my house. My mom said I got an important-looking envelope in the mail.”

“Ooh.” They hurried to Sierra’s car, a shiny daffodil-yellow Volkswagen bug. “Let’s go.”

College letters had been rolling in, and Sierra already had her options—UW in Seattle, Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, and UC San Diego. Her decision to go to San Diego was no coincidence. That was where Will Jensen had fast-tracked to his junior year. Her crush on him, dating back to the first summer they’d met, had continued unabated. Each subsequent summer, their romance had burned like a bonfire on the beach. Caroline had watched from the sidelines, trying not to remember that, for one crazy, magic, irretrievable, impossible moment, he’d been hers.

By now she knew it was silly. When you were fourteen, no one belonged to you, not even yourself. You were like a lump of unformed clay, still trying to figure out who you were or what you would become.

Through each summer, the three of them had been inseparable, coming of age in the golden sunshine. Will got his license first, being a year older, and he drove around in his granddad’s old Grand Marquis, sometimes getting the unwieldy sedan stuck in the soft sand at the entrance to the beach, other times making it to the hard-packed tidal flats for illicit drag racing. He usually won the races, not because the car was so awesome, but because he knew how to handle it. Together they had won and lost kite-flying competitions, dominated at Ultimate Frisbee, tried their first weed, and gotten drunk for the first time.

Caroline was always the sidekick, the funny friend, tagging along on their summer adventures, sometimes with a boy who liked her, sometimes not. Sierra and Will were nuts for each other, the golden couple, the kind that gave teenagers a good name. When people saw them in church together, looking deceptively clean-cut and well-behaved, they nodded approval, never knowing the pair had probably been humping in the deserted parsonage the night before. Caroline made her peace with the situation. Will Jensen had never been hers, not even for a moment. Well, maybe just for a moment—a vanished slice of time. That first kiss. The only kiss. He’d never mentioned it. He’d probably forgotten.

Sierra parked at the Shelby house and they raced inside, finding the stack of mail her mom had left on the kitchen counter. She grabbed a business-size envelope with the return address she’d been waiting for ever since sending in her portfolio and samples last winter. She was picturing a fat packet of information, like the one she’d received from the Art Institute of Seattle, her backup school. A simple letter was a bad sign.

“Wait,” said Sierra before Caroline ripped into it. “We need to do the laying on of hands.” It was a ritual they went through for good luck. Sierra’s dad would probably scold their pagan ways, but the girls did it anyway, just in case it worked. They pressed their hands on the envelope and closed their eyes.

“I wish I may, I wish I might,” Caroline murmured. Then she opened the envelope and slid the pages out. “I can’t look,” she said, shrinking away as a feeling of dread knotted her stomach. “This letter is going to make me or break me, and I’m scared to know. I can’t look,” she repeated.

“Yes, you can. Caroline, you have to. You have to.”

She made herself look. And there it was, on FIT letterhead, in black and white: Dear Caroline, Congratulations! You’ve been . . . She let out a scream. “I’m in!”

“You’re in!” Sierra grabbed her hands and they danced around the room.

Caroline’s heart nearly burst with happiness. This was it. The dream. The goal. The start of the life she’d always wanted—New York City, studying design at one of the best schools in the country. When she stopped hyperventilating, she read the rest of the letter and discovered that she had been accepted early, a privilege extended only to students who showed exceptional promise. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

“I can.” Sierra beamed at her. “When it comes to making clothes, you’re amazing. You totally deserve this, Caroline. You totally earned it. Let’s go find your mom.”

The school year dragged on, and among Caroline and her friends, rampant senioritis took over. No one wanted to sit through class, no one wanted to study for exams. Everyone was eager for their lives beyond high school to begin.

As Sierra had predicted, Zane asked Caroline to prom. Sierra’s date was Bucky O’Malley, who was gay and easily the best dancer in the senior class. Caroline designed and made their dresses, and they were the envy of the school.

Summer came at last, and so did Will Jensen, all big shoulders, blond hair, and blue eyes. Sometimes when Caroline looked at him, she could still see that skinny kid, dripping wet with his mask and snorkel. His flashing grin never changed. When the three of them met up at their favorite beach spot, he gave her and Sierra each a friendly hug, though he kept hold of Sierra longer—as expected.

“Hey, strangers,” he said to them.

“Hey, yourself,” Caroline said.

“I’ve missed you like crazy,” Sierra told him. “How long can you stay?”