“That night I dreamed of Conrad. I was the same age I was now, but he was younger, ten or eleven maybe. I think he might even have been wearingoveralls. We played outside my house until it got dark, just running around the yard.I said, “Susannah will be wondering where you are. You should go home.” He said, “I can’t. I don’t know how.Will you help me?” And then I was sad, because I didn’t know how either. We weren’t at my house anymore, and it was so dark. We were in thewoods. We were lost.When I woke up, I was crying and Jeremiah was asleep next to me. I sat up in the bed. It was dark, the only light in the room was my alarm clock. Itread 4:57. I lay back down.”

“Do you remember infinity?”Slowly, I turned around. “What about it?”Tossing something toward me, he said, “Catch.”I reached out and caught it in the air. A silver necklace. I held it up and examined it. The infinity necklace.It didn’t shine the way it used to; it looked a bit coppery now. But I recognized it. Of course I recognized it.“What is this?” I asked.“You know what it is,” he said.I shrugged. “Nope, sorry.”I could see that he was both hurt and angry. “Okay, then. You don’t remember it. I’ll remind you. I boughtyou that necklace for your birthday.”My birthday.It had to have been for my sixteenth birthday. It was the only year he ever forgot to buy me a birthdaypresent—the last summer we’d all been together at the beach house, when Susannah was still alive.”

“The thing was, Jeremiah was right. I did love him. I knew the exact moment it became real too. Conrad got up early to make a special belatedFather's Day breakfast, only Mr. Fisher hadn't been able to come down the night before. He wasn't there the next morning the way he wassupposed to be. Conrad cooked anyway, and he was thirteen and a terrible cook, but we all ate it. Watching him serving rubbery eggs andpretending not to be sad, I thought to myself, I will love this boy forever.”

“He acted like he didn't hear me. "He will let you down, because that's what he does. That's who he is." For the rest of my life, I was going to remember those words. Everything Jeremiah said to me that day, our wedding day, I would remember. I would remember the words Jeremiah said and the way he looked at me with them. With pity, and with bitterness. I hated myself for being the one who made him bitter, because that was one thing he'd never been. I reached up and laid my palm on his cheek. He could have pushed my hand away, he could have recoiled at my touch. He didn't. Just that one tiny thing told me what I needed to know - that Jere was still Jere and nothing could ever change that.”

“And then there was Jeremiah. When I looked at Jeremiah, I saw past, present, and future. He didn’t just know the girl I used to be. He knew the right-now me, and he loved me anyway.”

“And after, when it was bedtime, I would sing, “We love you, Conrad, oh yes we do. We love you, Conrad, and we’ll be true” into the bathroom mirror with a mouthful of toothpaste. I would sing my eight-nine-ten-year-old heart out. But I wasn’t singing to Conrad Birdie. I was singing to my Conrad. Conrad Beck Fisher, the boy of my preteen dreams.”

“You were gullible," he said. And then, "When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn't eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you'd get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You believed everything I said." I did. I really did. I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he'd never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn't know what to believe. I just knew I didn't believe in him anymore.”