Chapter 3

I tried to fight it.

I threatened my father, told him I would take the forged statement to the police.

He did not get angry.

He simply had his lawyer sit down across from me and explain, point by point, what Jack was facing.

Aggravated assault. Prison. A felony record for life. Disqualification from military service.

"Even if the charges are eventually thrown out," the lawyer said, "the investigation alone is enough to make him miss this year's enlistment window."

My father offered me another option.

If I cut Jack out of my life completely, the three witnesses would change their story and name the person who had actually done it.

"And if I tell him all of this?"

My father smiled a little.

"You know that boy. Is he or is he not going to come charging into this house and try to break my nose?"

He was.

Jack was not afraid of prison. What he was afraid of was being unable to protect the people he cared about.

If he knew I was being threatened, he would come.

My father was counting on him coming.

The night of prom, Jack parked the old Ford at the hotel's back door.

He had sprayed the body dark blue, and one headlight was bright while the other flickered. He was wearing a black suit that did not fit and he had combed his hair flat.

When he saw me, his eyes lit up.

I came down the steps on Alexander Harrison's arm. Alexander was the son of one of my father's friends, and the fiance they had picked out for me.

The smile faded off Jack's face.

"Eve."

I did not answer him.

Our classmates were standing all around us. My father's lawyer was parked in a car across the street, there to remind me that this performance had to be convincing.

Jack walked up to me.

"It's eleven."

"So?"

"You promised me."

I could see the oil on his cuff. He had probably gone two days without sleep to get that car running.

I tightened my grip on Alexander's arm.

"Jack, you didn't actually believe it, did you?"

"Believe what?"

"That I was going to leave with you."

He looked at me like the words had not registered.

So I kept going.

I said I had only gotten close to him because I was bored. I said life in the harbor district was a novelty to me. I said a Whitmore daughter could never really fall in love with a car thief.

With every sentence I felt something tearing open.

Jack did not lose his temper.

He just took a car key out of his pocket.

"So everything you said up on that lighthouse was fake too?"

I wanted to tell him no.

I wanted to tell him my bags were already packed and hidden by the back door. That I had drawn out the whole route to California.

Across the street, my father's lawyer was watching me.

"Of course it was fake," I said. "I never once thought about going with you."

Jack lowered his head and let out a short laugh.

It was the saddest sound I have heard in my life.

He threw the key down at my feet.

"I hope you get the life you deserve."

Only after the old Ford disappeared at the end of the street did I crouch down and pick the key up.

The rain came down hard a minute later.

I stood where I was, holding the future we never got to have.

The next day, Jack signed his enlistment papers.

The three witnesses against him changed their story that same day.

My father kept his word.

And from that day on, I never forgave him.

After Jack left, I started writing to him.

The first letter had one line in it.

"Every word I said last night was a lie."

I dropped it in the mailbox on the corner.

A month later there was no answer.

So I wrote a second, and a third.

I only found out later that my father had the secretary monitoring the household mail. Every letter Jack sent me was returned unopened, and every letter I sent was intercepted before it left.

Jack thought I had never explained.

I thought he refused to believe me.

Two equally proud eighteen-year-olds, standing on opposite ends of a lie, waiting years for each other.

Neither of us ever came.