The Light We Lost Read online

  Praise for The Light We Lost

  “As The Light We Lost enchanted and compelled me, I found myself reconsidering my own choices, and wondering at the choices of my friends and the people around me—how did their dreams match their realities? And what if that dream can’t include the person you love the most?”

  —DELIA EPHRON, AUTHOR OF Siracusa

  “A beautiful, moving meditation on the choices we make in pursuit of love and a meaningful life.”

  —BETHANY CHASE, AUTHOR OF The One That Got Away

  “We couldn’t stop turning the pages. . . . Santopolo took us on a journey of missed chances, regret, and uncertainty that left us pondering our own choices. The love story of Lucy and Gabe is one that will stay with you long after you finish.”

  —LIZ FENTON AND LISA STEINKE, AUTHORS OF The Status of All Things

  “The arc of this book gracefully and tragically charts the course not only of a genuine and deep love, but also of our country and of our collective identities. It is memorable and haunting, because it is authentic and so close to home.”

  —NICK SCHIFRIN, PBS NewsHour SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, NPR CORRESPONDENT

  “A heartfelt story about both the bliss and torment of love . . . Santopolo has an amazingly sharp eye, zooming in on emotions and the small ways in which they change while also pulling back for a wide-angle view of Lucy and Gabe’s relationship during the course of a tumultuous decade. I am not a weeper but dammit if I wasn’t crying at the end.”

  —JANE O’CONNOR, AUTHOR OF Almost True Confessions

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Jill Santopolo

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Santopolo, Jill, author.

  Title: The light we lost / Jill Santopolo.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016043192 (print) | LCCN 2016050261 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735212756 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735212770 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.A586 L54 2017 (print) | LCC PS3619.A586 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043192

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for The Light We Lost

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter i

  Chapter ii

  Chapter iii

  Chapter iv

  Chapter v

  Chapter vi

  Chapter vii

  Chapter viii

  Chapter ix

  Chapter x

  Chapter xi

  Chapter xii

  Chapter xiii

  Chapter xiv

  Chapter xv

  Chapter xvi

  Chapter xvii

  Chapter xviii

  Chapter xix

  Chapter xx

  Chapter xxi

  Chapter xxii

  Chapter xxiii

  Chapter xxiv

  Chapter xxv

  Chapter xxvi

  Chapter xxvii

  Chapter xxviii

  Chapter xxix

  Chapter xxx

  Chapter xxxi

  Chapter xxxii

  Chapter xxxiii

  Chapter xxxiv

  Chapter xxxv

  Chapter xxxvi

  Chapter xxxvii

  Chapter xxxviii

  Chapter xxxix

  Chapter xl

  Chapter xli

  Chapter xlii

  Chapter xliii

  Chapter xliv

  Chapter xlv

  Chapter xlvi

  Chapter xlvii

  Chapter xlviii

  Chapter xlix

  Chapter l

  Chapter li

  Chapter lii

  Chapter liii

  Chapter liv

  Chapter lv

  Chapter lvi

  Chapter lvii

  Chapter lviii

  Chapter lix

  Chapter lx

  Chapter lxi

  Chapter lxii

  Chapter lxiii

  Chapter lxiv

  Chapter lxv

  Chapter lxvi

  Chapter lxvii

  Chapter lxviii

  Chapter lxix

  Chapter lxx

  Chapter lxxi

  Chapter lxxii

  Chapter lxxiii

  Chapter lxxiv

  Chapter lxxv

  Chapter lxxvi

  Chapter lxxvii

  Chapter lxxviii

  Chapter lxxix

  Chapter lxxx

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter Lucy and Gabe’s Reading List

  About the Author

  For New York City

  prologue

  We’ve known each other for almost half our lives.

  I’ve seen you smiling, confident, blissfully happy.

  I’ve seen you broken, wounded, lost.

  But I’ve never seen you like this.

  You taught me to look for beauty. In darkness, in destruction, you always found light.

  I don’t know what beauty I’ll find here, what light. But I’ll try. I’ll do it for you. Because I know you would do it for me.

  There was so much beauty in our life together.

  Maybe that’s where I should start.

  i

  Sometimes objects seem like they’ve witnessed history. I used to imagine that the wooden table we sat around during Kramer’s Shakespeare seminar our senior year was as old as Columbia—that it had been in that room since 1754, edges worn smooth by centuries of students like us, which of course couldn’t be true. But that’s how I pictured it. Students sitting there through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf.

  It’s funny, if you asked me who else was with us that day, I don’t think I could tell you. I used to be able to see all their faces so clearly, but thirteen years later I remember only you and Professor Kramer. I can’t even recall the name of the TA who came running, late, into the classroom. Later, even, than you.

  Kramer had just finished calling roll when you pushed open the door. You smiled at me, your dimple making a brief appearance as you slipped off your Diamondbacks cap and stuck it into your back pocket. Your eyes landed quickly on the empty seat next to mine, and then you did too.

  “And you are?” Kramer asked, as you reached into your bac
kpack for a notebook and a pen.

  “Gabe,” you said. “Gabriel Samson.”

  Kramer checked the paper in front of him. “Let’s aim for ‘on time’ for the rest of the semester, Mr. Samson,” he said. “Class starts at nine. In fact, let’s aim for ‘early.’”

  You nodded, and Kramer started talking about themes in Julius Caesar.

  “‘We at the height are ready to decline,’” he read. “‘There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries. / On such a full sea are we now afloat, / And we must take the current when it serves, / Or lose our ventures.’ I trust you all did the reading. Who can tell me what Brutus is saying about fate and free will here?”

  I’ll always remember that passage because I’ve wondered so many times since that day whether you and I were fated to meet in Kramer’s Shakespeare seminar. Whether it’s destiny or decision that has kept us connected all these years. Or a combination of both, taking the current when it serves.

  After Kramer spoke, a few people flipped through the text in front of them. You ran your fingers through your curls, and they sprang back into place.

  “Well,” you said, and the rest of the class joined me in looking at you.

  But you didn’t get to finish.

  The TA whose name I can’t remember came racing into the room. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “A plane hit one of the twin towers. It came on TV just as I was leaving for class.”

  No one knew the significance of her words; not even she did.

  “Was the pilot drunk?” Kramer asked.

  “I don’t know,” the TA said, taking a seat at the table. “I waited, but the newscasters had no idea what was going on. They said it was some kind of prop plane.”

  If it had happened now, all of our phones would’ve been blowing up with news. Pings from Twitter and Facebook and push notifications from the New York Times. But communication then wasn’t yet instant and Shakespeare wouldn’t be interrupted. We all shrugged it off and Kramer kept talking about Caesar. As I took notes, I watched the fingers of your right hand unconsciously rub against the wood grain of the table. I doodled an image of your thumb with its ragged nail and torn cuticle. I still have the notebook somewhere—in a box filled with Lit Hum and Contemporary Civilizations. I’m sure it’s there.

  ii

  I’ll never forget what we said when we left Philosophy Hall; even though the words were nothing special, the conversation is burned into my memory as part of that day. We’d started down the steps together. Not exactly together, but next to each other. The air was clear, the sky was blue—and everything had changed. We just didn’t know it yet.

  People all around us were talking over one another:

  “The twin towers collapsed!”

  “School’s canceled!”

  “I want to donate blood. Do you know where I can donate blood?”

  I turned to you. “What’s going on?”

  “I live in East Campus,” you said, pointing toward the dorm. “Let’s go find out. You’re Lucy, right? Where do you live?”

  “Hogan,” I said. “And yeah, Lucy.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lucy, I’m Gabriel.” You held out your hand. Amid everything, I shook it, and looked up at you as I did. Your dimple came back. Your eyes shone blue. I thought then, for the first time: He’s beautiful.

  We went to your suite and watched TV with your roommates, with Adam and Scott and Justin. On the screen bodies dove out of buildings, blackened mounds of rubble sent smoke signals into the sky, and the towers fell in a loop. The devastation numbed us. We stared at the images, unable to reconcile the stories with our reality. The fact that this was happening in our city, seven miles from where we sat, that those were people—actual human beings—hadn’t set in yet. At least not for me. It felt so far away.

  Our cell phones didn’t work. You used your dorm phone to call your mom in Arizona to tell her you were fine. I called my parents in Connecticut, who wanted me to come home. They knew someone whose daughter worked at the World Trade Center and no one had heard from her yet. Someone else whose cousin had a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World.

  “It’s safer outside Manhattan,” my father said. “What if there’s anthrax? Or some other biological warfare. Nerve gas.”

  I told my dad the subways weren’t running. Probably not the trains either.

  “I’ll come get you,” he said. “I’ll jump in the car now.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I told him. “I’m with some friends. We’re fine. I’ll call you again later.” It still didn’t feel real.

  “You know,” Scott said, after I hung up. “If I were a terrorist organization, I’d drop a bomb on us.”

  “What the fuck?” Adam said. He was waiting to hear from his uncle, who was part of the NYPD.

  “I mean, if you think about it academically . . .” Scott said, but he didn’t get any further.

  “Shut up,” Justin said. “Seriously, Scott. Not the time.”

  “Maybe I should leave,” I said to you then. I didn’t really know you. I had just met your friends. “My roommates are probably wondering where I am.”

  “Call them,” you said, handing the phone back to me. “And tell them you’re going to the roof of the Wien dorm. Tell them they can meet you there if you want.”

  “I’m going where?”

  “With me,” you said, and you ran your fingers absently along my braid. It was an intimate gesture, the kind of thing that happens after all barriers of personal space have been breached. Like eating off someone else’s plate without asking. And all of a sudden, I felt connected to you, like your hand on my hair meant something more than idle, nervous fingers.

  I thought of that moment, years later, when I decided to donate my hair and the stylist handed me my braid, wrapped in plastic, looking even darker brown than usual. Even though you were a world away then, I felt like I was betraying you, like I was cutting our tie.

  But then, that day, right after you touched my hair you realized what you’d done and let your hand drop into your lap. You smiled at me again, but it didn’t go to your eyes this time.

  I shrugged. “Okay,” I said.

  The world felt like it was cracking in pieces, like we’d gone through a shattered mirror into the fractured place inside, where nothing made sense, where our shields were down, our walls broken. In that place, there wasn’t any reason to say no.

  iii

  We took the elevator up to Wien 11, and then you pulled open a window at the end of the hallway. “Someone showed me this sophomore year,” you said. “It’s the most incredible view of New York City you’ll ever see.”

  We climbed out the window, onto the roof, and I gasped. Smoke billowed up from the southern tip of Manhattan. The whole sky was turning gray, the city shrouded in ash.

  “Oh my God,” I said. Tears filled my eyes. I pictured what used to be there. Saw the negative space where the towers had stood. It finally hit me. “There were people in those buildings.”

  Your hand found mine and held it.

  We stood there, staring at the aftermath of destruction, tears dripping down both our cheeks, for how long I don’t know. There must have been other people up there with us, but I can’t recall them. Just you. And the image of that smoke. It’s seared into my brain.

  “What happens now?” I finally whispered. Seeing it made me understand the magnitude of the attack. “What’s next?”

  You looked at me, and our eyes, still wet with tears, locked with the kind of magnetism that ignores the world around it. Your hand slid to my waist, and I rose up onto my toes to meet your lips halfway. We pressed our bodies together, as if that would protect us from whatever came after. As if the only way to stay safe was to keep my lips on yours. The moment your body enveloped mine,
that’s how I felt—safe, enfolded in the strength and warmth of your arms. Your muscles fluttered against my hands and I buried my fingers in your hair. You wrapped my braid around your palm, tugging it and tipping my head back. And I forgot the world. In that moment, there was only you.

  For years I felt guilty about it. Guilty that we kissed for the first time while the city burned, guilty that I was able to lose myself in you in that moment. But later I learned that we weren’t alone. People told me in whispers that they’d had sex that day. That they’d conceived a child. They’d gotten engaged. Said I love you for the first time. There’s something about death that makes people want to live. We wanted to live that day, and I don’t blame us for it. Not anymore.

  When we broke for breath, I leaned my head against your chest. I listened to your heart and was comforted by its steady beating.

  Did my heartbeat comfort you? Does it still?

  iv

  We went back to your dorm room because you promised me lunch. You wanted to go onto the roof with your camera after we ate, you told me, and take some pictures.

  “For the Spectator?” I asked.

  “The paper?” you said. “Nah. For me.”

  In the kitchen I got distracted by a stack of your photos—black-and-white prints taken all over campus. They were beautiful, bizarre, bathed in light. Images zoomed so far in that an everyday object looked like modern art.

  “Where’s this one?” I asked. After looking for a while, I realized it was a close-up of a bird’s nest, lined with what looked like newspapers and magazines and someone’s essay for a French literature class.

  “Oh, that was incredible,” you told me. “Jessica Cho—Do you know her? She sings a cappella? David Blum’s girlfriend?—she told me about this nest that she could see out her window that someone’s homework got worked into. So I went to check it out. I had to hang out the window to get this shot. Jess made Dave hold my ankles because she was afraid I would fall. But I got it.”

  After that story I saw you differently. You were daring, brave, committed to capturing art. Looking back, I’m guessing that’s what you wanted me to think. You were trying to impress me, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I just thought: Wow. I thought: He’s wonderful. But what was true then, and has been true as long as I’ve known you, is that you find beauty everywhere. You notice things other people don’t. It’s something I’ve always admired about you.