The Last Song

  When they returned home after a peaceful afternoon at the dock, two people were waiting for them on the porch. It wasn't until she got out of the car that she recognized Blaze and her mom. Blaze looked astonishingly different. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she was dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved aquamarine top. She wore no jewelry or makeup.

  Seeing Blaze again reminded Ronnie of something she'd managed to avoid thinking about in all her concerns for her father: that she would be returning to court before the month was out. She wondered what they wanted and why they were here.

  She took her time helping her dad out of the car, offering her arm to steady him.

  "Who are they?" her dad murmured.

  Ronnie explained, and he nodded. As they approached, Blaze climbed down from the porch.

  "Hi, Ronnie," she said, clearing her throat. She squinted slightly in the lowering sun. "I came to talk to you."

  Ronnie sat across from Blaze in the living room, watching as Blaze studied the floor. Their parents had retreated to the kitchen to give them some privacy.

  "I'm really sorry about your dad," Blaze began. "How is he doing?"

  "He's okay." Ronnie shrugged. "How about you?"

  Blaze touched the front of her shirt. "I'll always have scars here," she said, then gestured to her arms and belly, "and here." She gave a sad smile. "But I'm lucky to be alive, really." She fidgeted in her seat before catching Ronnie's eye. "I wanted to thank you for bringing me to the hospital."

  Ronnie nodded, still unsure where the conversation was going. "You're welcome."

  In the silence, Blaze looked around the living room, uncertain what to say next. Ronnie, learning from her dad, simply waited.

  "I should have come by sooner, but I know you've been busy."

  "It's okay," Ronnie said. "I'm just glad to see you're doing okay."

  Blaze looked up. "Really?"

  "Yeah," Ronnie said. She smiled. "Even if you do look like an Easter egg."

  Blaze pulled on her top. "Yeah, I know. Crazy, huh? My mom bought me some clothes."

  "They suit you. I guess the two of you are getting along better."

  Blaze gave her a rueful look. "I'm trying. I'm living back home again, but it's hard. I did a lot of stupid things. To her, to other people. To you."

  Ronnie sat motionless, her expression neutral. "Why are you really here, Blaze?"

  Blaze twisted her hands together, betraying her agitation. "I came to apologize. I did a terrible thing to you. And I know I can't take back the stress I caused you, but I want you to know that I talked to the DA this morning. I told her that I put the stuff in your bag because I was mad at you, and I signed an affidavit that said you had no idea what was going on. You should be getting a call today or tomorrow, but she promised me that she would drop the charges."

  The words came out so fast that at first Ronnie wasn't sure she'd heard her right. But Blaze's entreating look told her everything she needed to know. After all these months, after all the countless days and nights of worry, it was suddenly over. Ronnie was in shock.

  "I'm really sorry," Blaze continued in a low voice. "I never should have put those things in your bag."

  Ronnie was still trying to digest the fact that this nightmarish ordeal was coming to an end. She studied Blaze, who was now picking repeatedly at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt. "What's going to happen to you? Are they going to charge you?"

  "No," she said. At this she looked up, her jaw squared. "I had some information they wanted about another crime. A bigger crime."

  "You mean about what happened to you on the pier?"

  "No," she said, and Ronnie thought she saw something hard and defiant in her eyes. "I told them about the fire at the church and the way it really started." Blaze made sure she had Ronnie's attention before going on. "Scott didn't start the fire. His bottle rocket had nothing to do with it. Oh, it landed near the church all right. But it was already out."

  Ronnie absorbed this information in growing wonderment. For a moment, they stared at each other, the charge in the air palpable.

  "Then how did it start?"

  Blaze leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her forearms stretched out as if in supplication. "We were out partying on the beach--Marcus, Teddy, Lance, and me. A little later, Scott showed up, just down the beach from us. We pretended to ignore each other, but we could see Scott lighting up bottle rockets. Will was still down the beach and Scott sort of aimed one in his direction, but the wind caught it and it flew toward the church. Will started freaking out and came running. But Marcus thought the whole thing was hilarious, and the minute that rocket fell behind the church, he ran over to the churchyard. I didn't know what was happening at first, even after I followed him and saw him torching the scrub grass next to the church wall. The next thing I knew, the side of the building was on fire."

  "You're saying Marcus did it?" Ronnie could barely get the words out.

  She nodded. "He set other fires, too. At least I'm pretty sure he did--he always loved fire. I guess I always knew he was crazy, but I..." She stopped herself, realizing she'd been down that road too many times already. She sat up straight. "Anyway, I've agreed to testify against him."

  Ronnie leaned back in her chair, feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She remembered the things she'd said to Will, suddenly realizing that if Will had done what she'd demanded, Scott's life would have been ruined for nothing.

  She felt almost ill as Blaze went on. "I'm really sorry for everything," she said. "And as crazy as it sounds, I did consider you my friend until I was an idiot and ruined it." For the first time, Blaze's voice cracked. "But you're a great person, Ronnie. You're honest, and you were nice to me when you had no reason to be." A tear leaked out of one eye, and she swiped at it quickly. "I'll never forget the day you offered to let me stay with you, even after all the terrible things I had done to you. I felt such... shame. And yet I was grateful, you know? That someone still cared."

  Blaze paused, visibly struggling to pull herself together. When she had blinked back her tears, she took a deep breath and fixed Ronnie with a determined look.

  "So if you ever need anything--and I mean anything--let me know. I'll drop everything, okay? I know I can't ever make up for what I did to you, but in a way, I feel like you saved me. What's happened to your dad is just so unfair... and I would do anything to help you."

  Ronnie nodded.

  "And one last thing," Blaze added. "We don't have to be friends, but if you ever see me again, will you please call me Galadriel? I can't stand the name Blaze."

  Ronnie smiled. "Sure thing, Galadriel."

  As Blaze had promised, her lawyer called that afternoon, informing her that the charges in her shoplifting case had been dropped.

  That night, as her dad lay sleeping in his bedroom, Ronnie turned on the local news. She wasn't sure if the news would cover it, but there it was, a thirty-second segment right before the weather forecast about "the arrest of a new suspect in the ongoing arson investigation relating to a local church burning last year." When they flashed a mug shot of Marcus with a few details of his prior misdemeanor charges, she turned off the TV. Those cold, dead eyes still had the power to unnerve her.

  She thought of Will and what he had done to protect Scott, for a crime that it turned out he hadn't even committed. Was it really so terrible, she wondered, that loyalty to his friend had skewed his judgment? Especially in light of the way things had turned out? Ronnie was no longer certain of anything. She had been wrong about so many things: her dad, Blaze, her mother, even Will. Life was so much more complicated than she ever imagined as a sullen teenager in New York.

  She shook her head as she moved around the house, turning out the lights one by one. That life--a parade of parties and high school gossip and squabbles with her mom--felt like another world, an existence she had only dreamed. Today, there was only this: her walk on the beach with her dad, the ceaseless sound of the oce
an waves, the smell of winter approaching.

  And the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

  Halloween came and went, and her dad grew weaker with every passing day.

  They gave up their walks on the beach when the effort became too great, and in the mornings, when she made his bed, she saw dozens of strands of hair on his pillow. Knowing that the disease was accelerating, she moved her mattress into his bedroom in case he needed her help, and also to remain close to him for as long as she could.

  He was on the highest dosages of pain medicine that his body could handle, but it never seemed enough. At night, as she slept on the floor beside him, he uttered whimpering cries that nearly broke her heart. She kept his medication right beside his bed, and they were the first things he reached for when he woke up. She would sit beside him in the mornings, holding him, his limbs trembling, until the medicine took effect.

  But the side effects took their toll as well. He was unstable on his feet, and Ronnie had to support him whenever he moved, even across the room. Despite his weight loss, when he stumbled it was all she could do to keep him from falling. Though he never gave voice to his frustration, his eyes registered his disappointment, as if he were somehow failing her.

  He now slept an average of seventeen hours a day, and Ronnie would spend entire days alone at home, reading and rereading the letters he'd originally written to her. She hadn't yet read the last letter he'd written to her--the idea still seemed too frightening--but sometimes she liked to hold it between her fingers, trying to summon the strength to open it.

  She called home more frequently, timing her calls for when Jonah got home from school or after they had finished dinner. Jonah seemed subdued, and when he asked about their dad she sometimes felt guilty about holding back the truth. But she couldn't burden him that way, and she noticed that whenever her dad spoke with him, he always did his best to sound as energetic as he could. Afterward, he often sat in the chair by the phone, spent from his exertions, too tired even to move. She would watch him in silence, chafing at the knowledge that there was something more she could do, if only she knew what it was.

  "What's your favorite color?" she asked.

  They were seated at the kitchen table, and Ronnie had a pad of paper open before her.

  Steve gave her a quizzical smile. "That's what you wanted to ask me?"

  "This is just the first question. I've got a lot more."

  He reached for the can of Ensure she'd placed before him. He was no longer eating much solid food, and she watched as he took a sip, knowing he was doing it to please her, not because he was hungry.

  "Green," he said.

  She wrote down the answer and read the next question. "How old were you when you first kissed a girl?"

  "Are you serious?" He made a face.

  "Please, Dad," she said. "It's important."

  He answered again, and she wrote it down. They got through a quarter of the questions she'd jotted down, and over the next week, he eventually answered them all. She wrote down the answers carefully, not necessarily verbatim, but she hoped with enough detail to reconstruct the answers in the future. It was an engaging and sometimes surprising exercise, but by the end, she concluded that her dad was mostly the same man she'd come to know over the summer.

  Which was good and bad, of course. Good because she'd suspected he would be, and bad because it left her no closer to the answer she'd been seeking all along.

  The second week of November brought the first rains of autumn, but the construction at the church continued without pause. If anything, the pace increased. Her dad no longer accompanied her; still, Ronnie walked down the beach to the church every day to see how things were progressing. It had become part of her routine during the quiet hours when her dad was napping. Though Pastor Harris always registered her arrival with a wave, he no longer joined her on the beach to chat.

  In a week, the stained-glass window would be installed, and Pastor Harris would know he'd done something for her dad that no one else could do, something she knew would mean the world to him. She was happy for him, even as she prayed for guidance of her own.

  On a gray November day, her dad suddenly insisted that they venture out to the pier. Ronnie was anxious about the distance and the cold, but he was adamant. He wanted to see the ocean from the pier, he said. One last time, were the words he didn't have to say.

  They dressed in overcoats, and Ronnie even wrapped a wool scarf around her father's neck. The wind carried in it the first sharp taste of winter, making it feel colder than the thermometer suggested. She insisted on driving to the pier and parked Pastor Harris's car in the deserted boardwalk lot.

  It took a long time to reach the end of the pier. They were alone beneath a cloud-swept sky, the iron gray waves visible between the concrete planks. As they shuffled forward, her father kept his arm looped through hers, clinging to her as the wind tugged at their overcoats.

  When they finally made it, her dad reached out for the railing and almost lost his balance. In the silvery light, the planes of his sunken cheeks stood out in sharp relief and his eyes looked a little glassy, but she could tell he was satisfied.

  The steady movement of the waves stretching out before him to the horizon seemed to bring him a feeling of serenity. There was nothing to see--no boats, no porpoises, no surfers--but his expression seemed peaceful and free of pain for the first time in weeks. Near the waterline, the clouds seemed almost alive, roiling and shifting as the wintry sun attempted to pierce their veiled masses. She found herself watching the play of clouds with the same wonder her father did, wondering where his thoughts lay.

  The wind was picking up, and she saw him shiver. She could tell he wanted to stay, his gaze locked on the horizon. She tugged gently on his arm, but he only tightened his grip on the railing.

  She relented then, standing next to him until he was shuddering with cold, finally ready to go. He released the railing and let her turn him around, starting their slow march back to the car. From the corner of her eye, she noticed he was smiling.

  "It was beautiful, wasn't it?" she remarked.

  Her dad took a few steps before answering.

  "Yes," he said. "But mostly I enjoyed sharing that moment with you."

  Two days later, she resolved to read his final letter. She would do it soon, before he was gone. Not tonight, but soon, she promised herself. It was late at night, and the day with her dad had been the hardest yet. The medicine didn't seem to be helping him at all. Tears leaked out of his eyes as spasms of pain racked his body; she begged him to let her bring him to the hospital, but still he refused.

  "No," he gasped. "Not yet."

  "When?" she asked desperately, close to tears herself. He didn't answer, only held his breath, waiting for the pain to pass. When it did, he seemed suddenly weaker, as if it had sheared away a sliver of the little life he had left.

  "I want you to do something for me," he said. His voice was a ragged whisper.

  She kissed the back of his hand. "Anything," she said.

  "When I first received my diagnosis, I signed a DNR. Do you know what that is?" He searched her face. "It means I don't want any extraordinary measures that might keep me alive. If I go to the hospital, I mean."

  She felt her stomach twist in fear. "What are you trying to say?"

  "When the time comes, you have to let me go."

  "No," she said, beginning to shake her head, "don't talk like that."

  His gaze was gentle but insistent. "Please," he whispered. "It's what I want. When I go to the hospital, bring the papers. They're in my top desk drawer, in a manila envelope."

  "No... Dad, please," she cried. "Don't make me do that. I can't do that."

  He held her gaze. "Even for me?"

  That night, his whimpers were broken by a labored, rapid breathing that terrified her. Though she had promised she would do what he asked, she wasn't sure she could.


  How could she tell the doctors not to do anything? How could she let him die?

  On Monday, Pastor Harris picked them both up and drove them to the church to watch the window being installed. Because he was too weak to stand, they brought a lawn chair with them. Pastor Harris helped her support him as they slowly made their way to the beach. A crowd had gathered in anticipation of the event, and for the next few hours, they watched as workers carefully set the window in place. It was as spectacular as she'd imagined it would be, and when the final brace was bolted into place, a cheer went up. She turned to see her father's reaction and noticed that he'd fallen asleep, cocooned in the heavy blankets she'd draped over him.

  With Pastor Harris's help, she brought him home and put him in bed. On his way out, the pastor turned to her.

  "He was happy," he said, as much to convince himself as her.

  "I know he was," she assured him, reaching out to squeeze his arm. "It's exactly what he wanted."

  Her dad slept for the rest of the day, and as the world went black outside her window, she knew it was time to read the letter. If she didn't do it now, she might never find the courage.

  The light in the kitchen was dim. After tearing open the envelope, she slowly unfolded the page. The handwriting was different from his previous letters; gone was the flowing, open style she'd expected. In its place was something like a scrawl. She didn't want to imagine what a struggle it must have been to write the words or how long it had taken him. She took a deep breath and began to read.

  Hi, sweetheart,

  I'm proud of you.

  I haven't said those words to you as often as I should have. I say them now, not because you chose to stay with me through this incredibly difficult time, but because I wanted you to know that you're the remarkable person I've always dreamed you could be.