I didn’t know what to say.
“I mean, he’s not himself,” Sam continued. “He can’t move one whole side of his body. And sometimes I feel like he doesn’t even remember me. But he’s still my dad.”
I swallowed hard. I thought of all the things I’d said to Sam, all the selfish, warring emotions I’d felt over his father coming out of his coma. I thought about how I’d never see my dad again and about how lucky I was to not have lost my brother, too. I thought about what Tanner had said about how you couldn’t live in the past and how you had to do things differently in the future.
Finally, I smiled. “I’d like that,” I said.
“Good,” Sam said, smiling back at me. Then he kissed me goodnight.
? ? ?
My cell phone rang early the next morning, jolting me awake. I glanced at the clock as I dove for the phone: 6:55. My blood ran cold. Was it my mom, calling with bad news about Logan?
“Hello?” I answered breathlessly.
“Lacey?” It was Sam, and he sounded concerned.
I let out a huge sigh of relief. “I was afraid it was my mom and something was wrong with Logan.”
“Oh jeez, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
I smiled. “I’m fine.”
“Can you go to the window?”
I sat up in bed. “What?”
“I just want you to look outside.”
A warm feeling spread through me. I wondered if he’d raked the leaves again. I got out of bed, pulled open the curtain, and looked down. But the leaf pile had dispersed in yesterday’s rain, and no one had put it back together again. Early-morning sunlight beamed down on a front lawn that looked absolutely ordinary.
“I don’t see anything,” I said to Sam.
“Are you looking down?”
“Yes,” I said, puzzled.
“Try looking up,” he said mysteriously.
I did as he said, and right away, I saw why he’d called. I gasped.
Stretching across the sky and dipping down again in the distance was the prettiest, brightest rainbow I’d ever seen. It was just like the one in Sam’s painting under the bridge.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. I blinked a few times. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Lacey,” Sam said, “it’s not even raining. Look. It’s all sunshine.”
I looked around. He was right. A few wispy white clouds floated by, but there wasn’t a rain cloud, nor a drop of rain, in sight. There was no logical reason for there to be a rainbow.
“You can’t tell me you don’t believe now,” Sam said. “Your dad’s up there, Lacey.”
I gazed at the rainbow. Then I craned my neck as far as it would go and strained to look up, my chin pointing heavenward. I smiled at my dad.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Sam. “Can I call you later?”
We hung up and I stared at the rainbow for a long time. “Thanks, Dad,” I said.
Then I sent Jennica a text. No way could I call her this early.
LACEYLOO321: call me when u wake up. miss u.
Then I dialed Mom’s cell number.
She answered on the first ring. “Hi, honey. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath, realized that it was the first time in a year I’d meant it. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that everything’s going to be okay from now on.”
epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
The second anniversary of Dad’s accident fell on a Monday, so we couldn’t go to the cemetery until the evening, when we were through with school and Mom was home from work.
Sam had bowed out of the visit. He had gone with me to the cemetery over the past year, but today, he said, was for my family. He didn’t want to intrude. And that was just one of the many reasons I loved him. He was always thinking about things like that.
His dad was doing a lot better. He liked to play board games, so Sam and I would get out Monopoly or Battleship and sit with him for hours. It sounded crazy, but it was one of my favorite things to do now. Tanner even visited sometimes, and he entertained all of us with his new jokes—he’d decided he might want to be a stand-up comic. He and Mr. Stone really liked each other.
Logan’s car accident had been the wake-up call he needed. Because it was a first offense, he wasn’t sent to jail, but he had to enroll in a program for teen alcohol abusers, which met twice a week. He had stopped partying, and he had started hanging out with his old friends Josh and Will again. He and Sydney broke up, and she had a brand-new BMW and a brand-new boyfriend.
Mom was finally closer to being her old self again. I still heard her sobbing at night sometimes. But those nights were a lot fewer and farther between. And her smiles at the dinner table were real.