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At least not everything looks the same. It was the springtime then, but we’re past Thanksgiving now, so there’s plenty of snow on the ground and a cold wind whips against my cheeks.

I force myself to push the doorbell, allowing the ring to take me back to that night. And when Collins opens the door, her tentative smile says she might be thinking the same thing I am. That I’ll never be able to come over to her house, ring her doorbell, without reliving her worst memory.

Our faces are etched with the same pain.

TWO

Collins

I’m in the kitchen, pouring myself a tea, when the doorbell rings. My heartbeat picks up and my breath draws short, but I force myself to relax, drawing in a slow breath, holding it, and exhaling.

For almost a year after Caleb died, every time that damn doorbell rang, it would send me into a panic attack. These days, I just find it jarring. I really should uninstall it or get one of those fancy ones that plays a song.

I set the kettle down and walk from the kitchen to the entryway, steeling myself to see Ansel on the other side of that door.

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve learned what things might set me off. I no longer spend every day vacillating between crying jags and quiet depression, but some circumstances are harder than others. And I know swinging this door open to find Ansel on the other side will bring me back to the night Caleb died.

Even though I try to prepare myself, seeing him standing on my porch in the dark, just as he was that night, is a blow to the chest, stealing the air from my lungs. Rather than letting myself sink into that feeling, I force myself to catalog what’s different about now versus then.

It’s not spring. My porch isn’t littered with potted plants and flowers. It’s not warm air that hits my face, but rather the cold, bitter wind of winter. Ansel’s not in his firefighter equipment, but he’s dressed in jeans and his jacket like he used to be when he’d come over to watch a game or just hang out with us.

I struggle the most with looking into his eyes that—though still pained—aren’t as desolate and despairing.

“Hey, thanks for coming.” I force a smile and dodge any real eye contact.

The fire alarm in the family room chirps, welcoming him.

I tried about everything to get that thing to turn off. Every chair in the house, a broomstick, but I just wasn’t tall enough, and I have no idea where Caleb left our ladder.

I wouldn’t have called Ansel except for the fact that he’s my last resort. Not because I don’t like him. He was always Caleb’s best friend, along with Fowler—and he was a good friend to me when Caleb brought me back here as his fiancée. But Ansel reminds me too much of the night that I lost my future. So I avoid him as best I can. I’m not sure he’s so keen on seeing me either, since I’m the same reminder to him as he is to me.

My family lives across the country, and Caleb’s parents moved out of Echo Lake two months after he died. My best friend, Nina, is a single mom who is probably busy with bedtime baths and routines on a weekday night. Besides, she’s no taller than I am, and I doubt she has a ladder that can reach the alarm.

“Happy to help.” Ansel shifts to the side of the doorway and grabs a ladder.

I hold the door open as he carries it inside. The fire alarm chirps again.

“How long has it been doing that?” he asks.

“Since I got home from work. Must’ve started sometime today.”

He nods. “Do you know which one it is?”

I motion toward the family room. “I’m pretty sure it’s the one in here.”

He follows me into the room.

It took me about twenty minutes to isolate the one making the annoying chirp. Every time I thought I’d figured out where the sound was coming from, it went off again, and I’d second-guess myself.

Ansel positions the ladder under the smoke detector, and I hand him the battery to replace it with.

“Yeah, you were never reaching this one,” he says, stepping on the first rung. He opens up the smoke alarm and takes out the battery. “How often are you changing the batteries in the smoke alarms?” He glances over his shoulder.

I look away. “Not often enough.”

Caleb was responsible for this, and it’s not something that’s been on my radar. Another thing to add to the list of what’s all on me.

Ansel turns around, ripping open the battery package. “Mind throwing this out for me?”