Catch the Light

by Kate Sweeney

Genres: Young Adult; YA Family

Synopsis

A love story perfect for fans of Nina LaCour and Jandy Nelson about a girl who moves cross country and finds herself falling for someone new who throws her whole life out of order.
 
"Beautifully captured, like a photograph of a stolen moment. I ached for Marigold in her journey to move forward while not forgetting her past. Kate Sweeney's Catch the Light overflows with grief, love, and growing up."--Amy Spalding, bestselling author of We Used to Be Friends

Nine months after the death of her father, Marigold is forced to pick up and move from sunny Los Angeles all the way across the country to rural upstate New York. According to her mom, living with her aunt in a big old house in the woods is the fresh start Marigold and her little sister need. But Mary aches for the things she’s leaving behind—her best friend, her older sister, her now-long-distance boyfriend, and the senior year that felt like her only chance at making things feel normal again.
 
On top of everything, Mary has a troubling secret: she’s starting to forget her dad. The void he’s left in her memory is quickly getting filled with bonfires, house parties, and hours in the darkroom with Jesse, a fellow photographer and kindred spirit whom she can’t stop thinking about. As the beauty of Mary’s new world begins to sink in and her connection with Jesse grows stronger, she feels caught between her old life and her new one. Mary might just be losing her grip on the pieces of her life that she's tried so hard to hold together.
 
When the two finally come crashing together, Mary will have to decide what she really wants and come to terms with the ways that the loss of her dad has changed who she is. Even if she can't hold on to her past forever, maybe she can choose what to keep.
 

 

Read more

Release date: November 9, 2021

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

We drive into Cumberland, New York, late on a Wednesday afternoon and—

Oh my god.

It’s beautiful.

It’s the time of day when the light is just starting to turn gold and we’re driving through thick forest and the sun is dappling down through the leaves everywhere. There are layers and layers of shifting light. Hundreds of shades of green. Magic.

It’s almost enough to make me forget why we’re here. It’s almost enough to make me forget my grandparents in the front seat and the tedious, awkward, ten-day road trip and the hours of NPR and the slow driving and the musty motel rooms and the subtle humiliation of my grandmother herding us together at every single state park and viewing station, wielding her ancient iPad like a Leica M10 and chirping, “Smile like you mean it.”

It’s almost enough to make me forget. Almost.

My sister Bea is sitting on the other side of the back seat with her earbuds in, staring out the window. She looks lost in thought and the leafy sunlight is moving across her pale, freckled face in little flickers and flashes. She’s fourteen, old enough to be pissed about the whole thing, but young enough that it’s not ruining her entire life.

To be clear: this whole thing is ruining my life. Not that it really matters. The grand scheme of things is much bigger than that. I get it.

But in California, I had friends. I had a boyfriend, sort of. I had a job at the photography store downtown. I had parties, hanging under the giant palm tree on the lawn after school, laying out in the hot sand at the beach on the weekends. A whole senior year shimmering off in the distance. Some days it was still hard to do anything—grief pressing down like a weighted blanket—but things were getting better.

And then, six weeks ago, a month before my older sister Hannah left for her freshman year of college in Connecticut, I overheard Mom on the phone.

I’m drowning, El. I don’t think I can do this.

---

•   •   •

My dad died nine months ago. If I try, I can say it now without really feeling anything. But my mom still disappears every time it comes up. She’ll be standing right there in front of you, but the self inside of her is gone.

When I heard her say this, I’m drowning, in a voice that crackled with sadness, I was surprised. The first few weeks after Dad died, she was blown wide open, leveled by a hurricane, splinters of her former self littering the front lawn. But then about three weeks in, she just got dressed and went to work. And that was the end of it.

I take out my camera, adjusting the shutter speed and focusing in on the tiny pieces of dust glowing gold on my window. I twist the lens and the dust blurs; leaves and sunlight emerge and sharpen.

Then the world in my viewfinder lurches and we pull into a long, bumpy driveway that winds through a tunnel of overgrown shrubs and briars. It’s darker in here, too dark for photographs, the heavy greenery making it feel as though the sun’s already gone down.

The car lumbers along, branches scratching across the windshield.

“Jesus,” my grandpa whispers.

“Don’t curse, Jack,” Grandma whispers back.

“Are we really leaving them here?”

He must think that my music is on because I’m wearing my earbuds, but I turned it off a while ago. Sometimes I like to listen without anyone knowing.

If it was up to my grandfather, we would all be moving to Ohio. He’s my dad’s dad, not my mom’s, so all of this is really hard for him. He’s also been ingrained with generations of Irish Catholic stoicism, which makes emoting difficult. He likes college football and church and reading the newspaper quietly in his chair. He doesn’t like New York or California, preferring the flat expanse of the Midwest, where he’s lived his entire life. The thought of us moving here, with our mother and recently divorced aunt, seems like it might be more than he can handle.

He shakes his head and adjusts his glasses, swiping at his sweaty forehead and smoothing the thin piece of white hair that stretches across his bald spot.

“This place is like a tropical rainforest,” he says. As if he or any of us have ever seen one.

Eight months ago, when Grandpa was in LA for the funeral, he spent half an hour wandering around Whole Foods looking for Keebler sandwich crackers. He circled the store twice, his black dress shoes squeaking as he wove through the aisles squinting at the artfully packaged items and fuming silently. I finally convinced him to ask for help, and a bewildered teen employee led us to the organic snack aisle he’d already searched four times.

Grandpa stood there, shaking his head and holding a box of Late July mini peanut butter sandwich crackers in his hands, muttering, $6.59 a box, again and again like he was trying to make himself believe that any of it—the organic snack aisle; the ridiculous, fancy grocery store with the landscaped parking lot; the fact that his oldest son was dead and gone—was real. I thought he might be broken, for good, but then he just sighed and put the box back onto the shelf.

“C’mon, Mary,” he’d said. “We’re going to 7-Eleven.”

---

•   •   •

Now in the stuffy front seat of our old Toyota, Grandma lays her small, knobby hand on Grandpa’s arm. “It’s going to be fine, Jack,” she says. I can tell it’s hard for her too, but she does a better job of hiding it. She’s raised ten kids and grandmothered twenty-nine grandchildren. She’s basically an emotional fortress.

Finally, the driveway ends in a clearing so big I’m shocked that there could be so much open space in the middle of this forest. The house itself is medium sized and covered in gray-brown shingles. It has two and a half stories, the kind where the bottom floor is dug into a slope in the ground. On one side an outrageous garden bursts with a jumble of vegetables and late-summer flowers. On the other side a sea of green grass stretches all the way to the distant tree line, fresh cut close to the house and long and wild farther off.

A heavy wooden front door stands in the middle of the house, facing the afternoon sun. It’s framed on either side by rows of deep red dahlias, all bowing under the weight of their heavy heads.

“I guess this is it,” Grandma says, adjusting her butterscotch-colored polyester skirt. It sounds like she’s trying to force extra cheer into her voice to compensate for everyone else in the car.

Bea just sighs heavily and shoves her phone into her backpack.

As soon as we park in the gravel out front, the door opens and three dogs burst out: one giant and shaggy, one stocky and short haired, and one tiny and fierce and loud. All three are mutts; El found them in parking lots and walking down the road, and now, despite never having set out to be a pet owner, she dotes on them like they are her children.

Behind the dogs are Aunt El and Mom. El looks cool as ever, in ripped jeans and Birkenstocks, her face glowing in a wide-lipped smile. Mom is wearing casual clothes, no computer in sight. Her hair is curling in the humidity and her skin is pink from the sun. She almost looks like she used to before the great comet of Pancreatic Cancer ripped the roof off our life.

I open the car door, feeling like I’m inside a mirage. I’m trying to get myself to believe that this is the place I’m going to be living now and this very alive person waiting for me on the porch is my mother.

After Dad died, when Mom went back to work, it was like she stepped off a pier and ended up in another person’s life. Her hours doubled, tripled, stretched out into nights and rolled over weekends. She encased herself in clients and paperwork, building a thick, opaque shell between herself and the rest of us. She said she was fine but not even her eyes peeked through.

Now she’s here. Right in front of me. She pulls me into her and I can feel her heart beating where my cheek is pressed into her neck. Bea slinks up to us and El reaches for her and we’re all in one giant hug: Mom, El, Bea, and me.

It’s a while before we let go and look over to where my grandparents are standing stiff next to the car, the dogs sniffing all around them. They look small and out of place in this great big clearing.

El holds her arms out, as if to hug them from all the way across the yard. “Jack! Nancy! You must be exhausted. Come on in and get settled.”

My mom adds, “The girls can get the bags.”

Normally, as in one year ago, I would have rolled my eyes and protested. Because I’ve been in the car for a thousand hours. All I want to do is go inside and shut myself in a room and not talk to anyone. But things are different now, so I jump off the porch and head over to the car.

“Come on, Bea.”

Of course my little sister balks.

“This is stupid,” she says under her breath.

But she drags herself down the steps and follows me over.

I open the trunk and start pulling bags out and piling them onto the grass. Bea grabs her backpack and pillow out of the back seat and starts walking off toward the house.

“Seriously?” I say.

She shrugs.

“If she wants the bags inside she can do it herself,” Bea says.

I turn back to the trunk, sweating as I empty the whole thing by myself and haul the bags inside. I tell myself it’s good exercise. I tell myself that I’m not exhausted, that I’m not freaking out, that I’m not getting a sunburn and bug bites and possible heatstroke. I tell myself that I’m not really moving into this house in the middle of the woods of upstate New York. Everything, even this, is temporary. I’m fine.

---

•   •   •

An hour later, I’m sitting on a bench seat at a giant slab table, watching El bring out big wooden bowls of salad and ceramic plates of grilled steaks and tomatoes from the garden. I feel a little dizzy. This past year we’ve been living on takeout, buttered noodles, and grilled cheese sandwiches. After the sympathy casseroles ran out, we all forgot how to cook.

El nestles the dishes amid a sprawling arrangement of candlesticks and flower jars like each one is something precious. Until about two years ago, El lived in a cramped bungalow in Atlanta, Georgia, with my uncle Mac. They only had one dog then, Bernie, and big pots of kitchen herbs that surrounded a cement slab backyard. Everything of El’s felt contained, tiny pieces of ephemera sprinkled in among Mac’s towering bookshelves, offerings hidden among the classics.

Then they split up and El took a summer residency in upstate New York. She got a position at a community college after that, adopted Katharine Hepburn and RBG, and bought this place. In this great big house, El is everywhere, from the giant man-eating flowers to the wild paintings that jam the walls.

We hold hands as Grandpa says grace, Bea loudly sighing through the whole thing like she’s the actual devil and the prayer is causing her physical pain. My mom shoots her a look across the table as Grandpa tacks on a toast with his water glass to thank El for opening up her home.

“And that garden!” Grandma adds. “How do you do it, Elizabeth?”

“It’s the soil here,” El says. “You can literally grow anything.”

“Well,” says Grandpa, “it’s certainly very nice.”

The whole time I’m thinking to myself, Can we just hurry this along? Because I want to eat everything, all at once.

Finally he’s done, returning the glass to the table with a shaky, liver-spotted hand. I take a bite of salad and it’s like the crunchy butter lettuce is breathing little puffs of life back into my spirit. The permanent impression of the back seat upholstery slowly starts to lift from my soul.

I look over at my mom and see it again, that color in her cheeks. I can’t remember the last time I saw her sitting at a table, eating food, but here she is, chewing, swallowing, smiling, talking.

I can tell Grandpa’s tired and out of sorts, but he makes a real effort, complimenting El on the food and giving a full rundown of the trip while we eat. Still, the way he talks about it, it sounds just like a list: Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, etc., etc.

I sneak a glance at Bea and she’s slumped in her chair, spearing pieces of lettuce like she’s hunting them. It looks like she hasn’t eaten a thing.

You okay? I mouth.

She just sighs like I’ll never understand and pushes back from the table.

“I’m full,” she says as she stalks off toward the stairs.

My mom watches her, visibly deflating. For a second her eyes are completely blank. Then she straightens up, turns to me, and says, “Mary, what did you think of the trip?”

“It was good,” I lie, recognizing the fragility of this moment. “The Grand Canyon was really cool.”

I don’t tell her about the crowded, old bathrooms or the creepy motel or how numb I felt as I stood at the edge of the vast expanse of empty air.

It wasn’t that the Grand Canyon wasn’t beautiful or that it wasn’t amazing to get to see the country. It was more that it felt like the four of us were just drifting from California to New York on an iceberg: quiet, cold, alone. Just radio show after radio show of calm, soothing, boring voices or long stretches of silence, Grandma snoring softly in the front seat. Bea on her side, me on mine.

“What did you think of the Badlands?” Grandma asks. “All those sunflowers!”

“Oh,” I say. “That was cool too. I really liked all of it.”

“Cool,” Grandma repeats, shaking her head. “The internet is ruining the vocabulary of an entire generation.”

Her fake pearls glow a little in the candlelight, the same white as her short, straight hair.

“If you want to get into Columbia you can’t spend all of your time surfing the internet,” Grandpa says. His eyes are small and tired behind his glasses.

“Jane, you should be helping the girls to cut back,” Grandma says, turning to my mom. “Did you get that article I sent you?”

My mom’s smile tightens. “I did,” she says. “Thank you, Nancy. And I don’t know if Columbia is on Mary’s list, but I’m sure she’ll get in wherever she wants to go.”

It makes me a little lightheaded, everyone talking about my life like I’m not even here.

Grandma sets down her fork. “I hope she’s at least looking at some of the Ivies. We want Mary to aim high, even if James isn’t here to push her.”

My dad’s name, spoken aloud, is like an airhorn. There’s a long pause as we absorb it. Mom aggressively saws the stripe of fat from her steak. Grandma takes a long sip of water. My stomach turns.

El looks at me from across the table and shrugs.

“Nancy,” she says. “Jane tells me that you’ve been growing roses this year. It’s the one thing I haven’t had much luck with.”

“Sheer willpower,” Grandma replies, and El laughs, big and loose.

With that, the forks go back to clinking against plates, the conversation moves on to other things. I look down at my own food, trying to regain my enthusiasm, but the moment is gone.

---

•   •   •

After the dishes are done I excuse myself, anxious to be alone for the first time in days. Aunt El walks me up the stairs to my room and gives me a big, hard squeeze, whispering, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Then she releases me and says, “You don’t have to take that kind of shit from your grandparents.”

“I know,” I say, my cheeks burning.

We both look over at Bea’s closed door.

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“It is,” she agrees.

Then she kisses my cheek and disappears back down the stairs.

---

•   •   •

My new room is on the third floor, at the back of the house—a tiny space with huge windows that overlook the field and the forest beyond El’s yard. I feel like I could spend days just sitting by the open window watching these woods. I do for a minute and see the dusky pink sky deepen, then I flop onto the twin bed with its colorful quilt and stare up at the ceiling.

I breathe. The air feels good. Thick and clean and humid—completely different from Los Angeles. It’s noisy, but instead of cars and people I can hear hundreds of crickets and frogs, all out there trying to find each other. I focus on that for a while—the sound of the night and the feeling of the air in my lungs. I try not to think about anything else.

But of course the thoughts come, one after another. I think about Bea closed up in her room. I think about Hannah, somewhere in the middle of Connecticut, laughing her weird, cackling laugh. I think about our old house with the beige carpet and the stucco walls. I wonder who’s going to be living there now, living our old life.

There’s a knock on my door. It’s my mom. She leans up against the frame, arms crossed, face wide open, eyes so deep I could fall right in. It’s jarring.

“Hey, babe,” she says. “Just want to check in and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m good,” I say, not having words to describe what I really am.

“Good,” she says. “I missed you.”

The words feel bigger than the space they take up in the hallway. I want to say, When? For how long? But the questions get stuck in my mouth like saltine crackers.

I’m not used to seeing her like this, so still, just standing right in front of me wanting to know how I am. I’ve gotten used to catching glimpses of my mother, distractedly reaching into the fridge for a handful of grapes and then floating back up to her desk like a ghost.

“Do you need anything?” she asks.

I want to need something. Because it looks like that’s what she wants.

I wish I could take a photograph of this Mom—the light of the bare bulb on the hallway ceiling illuminating the single, affectionate dimple in her cheek—to create some evidence that she was here before she disappears again. But that would be weird, so instead I just say, “I’m good,” again, and watch as she nods and walks back down the stairs.

I close my door, trying to shake off the weirdness of the moment, of every moment since we’ve arrived, and open my laptop. I haven’t spoken to Nora in days and I promised I would FaceTime as soon as I secured reliable Wi-Fi and my own room.

In the train wreck that was our last day in Los Angeles, when Hannah was already off getting wasted at freshman orientation; when my grandparents arrived in perfectly creased khakis and Notre Dame paraphernalia, dropping a steady string of subtle judgments about Los Angeles, our house, our packing progress, and our manners; when the movers arrived late and broke my favorite mug with the middle finger on it; when it took us three hours to finish packing the car to Grandpa’s standards after dinner and everyone screamed at each other in the driveway and I snuck off in Nora’s car—at the peak of the whole fiasco I dropped my phone into the sea. Nora had taken me to the beach for one last talk in the sand. It was well after dark by then, and as I pretended to run into the ocean in a silly, melodramatic gesture, my phone, along with all of my contacts and photos and notes and memories, somehow slipped from my pocket.

It felt like a sign. The worst kind. And the next morning I drove away with my mom’s old iPhone 5c, which was not compatible with most apps and stopped getting any kind of cell service halfway between Albuquerque and Denver. After that, I bribed, begged, and wrestled with Bea for turns on her phone and took a deep dive into the Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair albums in my mom’s iTunes library. Missing Nora has become a headache that’s always at the back of my mind.

I hover the cursor over the little circle of face next to her name, and for a second the missing grows. But then she answers on the second ring and everything’s a little loud and blurry. Her face materializes and I see that she’s at the beach, but it’s still sunny. And then I remember the time difference.

“Mary!” she yells. Her voice sounds like she’s using a hundred exclamation points.

“Nora!” I whisper-yell back. Suddenly I’m flooded with a mixture of feelings—affection and loneliness and jealousy and longing.

“Where the hell are you?” She’s almost yelling over the roar of the waves.

Nora’s mom is Korean American and her dad is white. She has a heart-shaped freckle on her cheek and long black hair that is caught in the neck of her wet suit. She’s been my best friend since the first day of kindergarten, when she walked up to me on the playground and, without saying a word, took hold of my hand.

“My aunt’s,” I say. “We just got here a couple of hours ago. I can’t believe this is real.”

She shakes her head.

“Me either. How is it?”

I sigh. “Weird? Different. I’m basically in the middle of a gigantic forest. No ocean in sight.”

“Here,” she says, turning the camera around so I can see the waves.

“I can’t tell if that makes it better or worse,” I say.

She flips the camera back around.

“Come back,” she says.

“I wish.”

Then she smiles. “I bet I know something that can cheer you up.”

“Oh yeah?”

She disappears from the screen for a second and I can see the slanted horizon and a strip of ocean that glints sharply and obscures the rest of the view.

“Guess who’s here?” She sings out the question, stretching out the last word. ...