“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
“For wearing your shoes in the house? Or for not telling me that you and Nolan were responsible for Daniel’s death?” I shout.
“God. Don’t say that,” Josie says, her eyes filled with horror, her lower lip trembling. “Please don’t say that.”
“Well,” I say. “Let’s look on the bright side. At least this makes my decision to divorce him a little easier.”
“Meredith, don’t….Don’t let that happen to you….You love each other,” she says, then launches into a rambling monologue about how this has affected her relationships. That she’s been punishing herself for years. Something about Will and their breakup. Something about Gabe.
I cut her off. “Once again,” I say. “This is all about you, Josie. All about how Daniel’s death affected you.”
“No,” she says. “I just don’t want this to have an impact on your marriage, too.”
“Too late,” I say.
“I’m so sorry. He’s so sorry, too. Can’t you forgive us?”
“Talk to Daniel about forgiveness, Josie. Talk to God about that.”
“I have,” she says—which is a neat trick since I’m pretty sure she’s an atheist.
“How about Mom and Dad?” I say. “Do they know?”
She shakes her head.
“Think they’ll forgive you?” I say. “Think Mom will be okay with this twist in the story?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpers, her face red and blotchy and streaked with mascara. “I hope she can forgive me. I hope Mom and Dad both can.”
“Well, they just might,” I say, my voice quivering as I hold back my own tears, determined not to cry until I’m alone. “But I will never forgive you, Josie….Not for as long as I live.”
chapter twenty-nine
JOSIE
I stay on Ellen’s sofa for a long time, nursing then refilling my whiskey, reeling, as I formulate a further plea for forgiveness. I know there is nothing that I can say or do that will change her mind about what I’ve done—and what I’ve left undone—for so long. She will only think me more selfish. It crosses my mind that maybe she is right, that this whole trip has been completely self-serving. But then I feel a flash of anger, realizing that there is so often a catch-22 with Meredith; damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
I consider calling Nolan, if only to warn him, but worry that might make things worse—that we’ll look even more conspiratorial. In fact, I have the feeling Meredith is more upset by the fact that we kept this secret than by what actually happened on that night. I try to imagine how I would feel if I suddenly learned that she and Gabe had been keeping a big secret from me. I can’t deny how much it would hurt—and Gabe and I aren’t even married.
Then again, what if they were only trying to protect me? Would I give them a pass if that were the case? I tell myself I absolutely would, and nearly awaken Meredith to make this point. After all, wasn’t she the one who suggested we not share details of our Sophie dinner with Mom? And wasn’t that because she believes the information would only upset her? Isn’t that what you do when you love someone? I start to work up some righteous indignation, but can’t fully sell myself on the idea. Deep down, I know there’s a difference between withholding information about our time with Sophie tonight and lying, even by omission, about the night Daniel died. There is simply no denying that I’m in the wrong.
At some point I doze off. When I awaken, it’s still dark outside, just after four o’clock. I decide I have to leave—that I can’t face my sister in the morning. So I slip into Ellen’s darkened bedroom, where Meredith is softly snoring, and I gather my things, shoving them haphazardly into my suitcase. As I turn to go, I remember the gift I brought for Meredith. Using the flashlight on my phone, I rifle through my bag and find the brand-new, bright-eyed Rabby replacement, its fur still pristine and fluffy. I put it next to her pillow, then whisper goodbye to my sister, somehow understanding that this fight is different from all the others we’ve had. Although I hope I’m wrong, this one feels final.
A few minutes later, I am in the back of a cab on the way to La Guardia. There is no traffic, and we get there in record time. I pay my fare, then walk into the empty airport. A friendly lady at the Delta check-in counter reassures me that there are plenty of open seats on the 6:00 A.M. flight to Atlanta, and she feels sure I’ll get one on standby. “Good luck, dear,” she says, giving me a look of pity, probably assuming that anyone who shows up at the airport hours before their scheduled flight is leaving under less than stellar circumstances.
After I make it through security, I head for the restroom, where I brush my teeth and wash my face. Calculating that I have over an hour until they start boarding that first flight to Atlanta, I head to the gate and curl up in a corner. My last thought as I pass out from exhaustion is how disgusting Meredith would think it to sit, let alone sleep, on the airport floor.
I wake up with a whiskey headache, burning eyes, and a stiff neck, but feel a rush of relief when my name is called for the very last standby seat. I take it as an omen, a sign that things can only get better from here.
chapter thirty
MEREDITH
They say you should never go to bed mad, but when it came to my fights with Josie, Mom always enforced the opposite. She’d send us to our respective rooms, insisting that we “get some sleep” because “things always look better in the morning.” It was actually pretty sound advice, as we usually woke up and simply pretended that nothing had happened (before finding something new to argue about, of course). Occasionally, we’d even laugh it all off, aligning ourselves against Mom and painting her as an overreactor.
But around four-thirty in the morning, when I awaken and find that sad stuffed rabbit perched on my pillow, I do not feel even a tiny bit better. Instead, I feel considerably worse—just as angry and hurt, but also racked with guilt and worry, certain that my sister will be gone. Sure enough, I get up and look around the apartment, finding no trace of her other than her shampoo on the edge of the bathtub and one of her retro striped tube socks peeking out from under the bed. I search the place one more time, hoping to find a note, if only to get the last word, but there is nothing. I pick up the rabbit and begin to panic, wondering where she could have gone in the middle of the night, whether she could be lying in a ditch somewhere. And although I can’t imagine Josie ever harming herself, Lewis’s sister does flit through my mind.
So, despite my resolution never to speak to her again, I call her cell. It goes straight to voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message, then get back in bed, still clutching the rabbit. I fall asleep for another couple of hours, then wake up, sweaty and weepy, piecing together a dream about Daniel—the first I’ve had in a long time, at least the first I can recall. The two of us were waiting on a subway platform together, talking and laughing, and then suddenly he vanished. Poof. Gone. For days, Josie, Mom, Dad, and I hung placards, plastering his face all over the city, like the ones posted after September 11. But Daniel never turned up. Of course, it doesn’t take an expert to decipher the nightmare, and I can clearly see that it stems from some combination of Josie leaving and Daniel dying, along with the grim thought of Lewis’s sister plunging to her death on the subway tracks. I know it was just a dream, but I still start to worry that it is closer to a premonition than a nightmare—and ask myself what I would do if I never saw Josie again. Would I tell my mother about our fight, or would I keep it a secret, history repeating itself?
I get up, pacing frantically all over the apartment, searching for clues that don’t exist, before calling Josie a second time. Straight to voicemail again. I then call Delta, thinking and hoping that she simply got on an earlier flight—but they refuse to give out her information. I hang up and call them back, this time pretending to be Josie. I get flustered, then busted, then reprimanded about confidentiality. I really start to lose it, then decide to call Gabe—what feels like a last resort.
“Hi
,” I say, bracing myself when he answers.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, either clueless or in cahoots, both scenarios equally plausible.
I answer the question with a question, asking if he’s heard from Josie, determined not to be outwitted by someone I’ve always viewed as a worthy adversary.
“No,” he says. “I thought she was with you this weekend?”
“She was,” I say, my hands turning clammy. “We had a fight last night. She left….I thought maybe she got on an earlier flight….”
“Not that I know of,” he says, his voice completely flat. “I haven’t heard from her.”
“Okay,” I say. “Will you let me know if—when you do?”
He hesitates, and it only takes three seconds for me to be pissed. “So I guess that’s a no,” I snap. “Never mind.”
“Jesus, Mere. Chill out,” he says.
“Chill out?” I yell into the phone. “She disappeared in the middle of the night, Gabe.”
“She’s a big girl.”
“Yeah. Well, she told me about her big secret,” I say, feeling sure Gabe knows everything.
Silence.
“About the night Daniel died?” I press.
“Okay,” he says.
“O-kay? That’s it? That’s all you have to say about my sister’s role in my brother’s death?”
“I think that’s a bullshit characterization, Meredith.”
“You think it was okay to keep that secret from me?”
“No,” he says. “And I’m glad she finally told you.”
“Fifteen years late, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think it’s ever too late, actually,” Gabe says, sounding all sanctimonious and superior and infuriatingly calm. “But that’s just me.”
“Easy for you to say,” I scoff. “Maybe you’d feel differently if it were your brother who was killed. And your sister had kept a secret from you about the night he died.”
“Maybe I would,” he says.
For one second, I’m nearly appeased, until he snidely adds, “Then again, Josie didn’t keep the secret from me, now did she?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I shout into the phone.
“It means exactly what I said, Meredith….She told me everything, years ago. She confided in me. Not you. And I think there’s a pretty good reason for that.”
My mind races for a retort as he continues, “So maybe you should take a closer look at yourself and stop blaming Josie for everything.”
“You’re a real asshole,” I say, my face on fire. “You know that?”
“Yeah,” he says. “But I’m the asshole who’s always been there for Josie. Which is more than I can say for you.”
I hang up on him and throw the phone down, my hands shaking as I collapse onto the sofa and burst into tears. I cry as long and hard as I did when Daniel died, although the grief is obviously a different strain, more layered and complex. At some point, there are no more tears, but I stay put on the sofa, contemplating my life, how I got here. I think of Daniel’s accident, of course. And my marriage to Nolan. And those years in between. I think of acting and law school and parental expectations and the home that has always been my home. I think of Josie, how fucked up our relationship is, and consider that maybe Gabe is right. Maybe it is my fault. Maybe I resent her because of my own choices. I think of Josie’s theory that it’s all interrelated, that it all goes back to that night in December, all of our decisions and dreams and mistakes from the past inextricably linked. I consider calling Nolan, then my mother, then Ellen, then Amy, even my father. But I really don’t want to talk to any of them, for different reasons, and it strikes me that I’ve never been so alone.
And it is in this despondent, desperate moment that I think of the one person in the world whom I love without condition. The one part of this tragic story that is beautiful and perfect and untouched by regret or what-ifs.
“I am Harper’s mother,” I say aloud, feeling an incredible sense of peace wash over me. Then I stand and start to pack my things, finally ready to go home.
chapter thirty-one
JOSIE
A few hours later, I’ve landed in Atlanta and collected my bag and car. I drive home on a virtually empty highway, then pull up to my house, relieved not to see Leslie’s car in the driveway.
“Hey!” Gabe says, greeting me at the front door in flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt. He looks happy to see me, though not nearly as excited as Revis, who is planting his paws on my shoulders and licking my face.
“Hey, you two,” I say, laughing as I hug Revis back.
“I’ve been calling you,” Gabe says, pulling my bag off the porch and rolling it into the foyer.
“Yeah. My phone’s dead,” I say. “I left my charger in New York….”
“Kiss it goodbye,” he says, crossing his arms. “She’ll never give that back to you.”
I raise my brows. “Meredith told you about our fight?” I ask, thinking that you can’t really call it a fight; it was more of a one-sided falling-out.
“Yep. She called this morning, looking for you.”
I sigh and tell him that I left when she was still sleeping and got on an earlier flight. “So what did Meredith say?” I ask, sitting cross-legged on the floor with Revis as Gabe takes a kitchen stool.
“She’s worried,” he says.
I roll my eyes and mutter, “Yeah, right.”
“I promised to let her know when you turned up…so one of us should probably do that….”
I shrug and tell him to feel free to text her, but that she made it very clear she doesn’t want to hear from me ever again.
“Well, she’s pretty pissed at me, too. But I’ll shoot her a text….” Gabe says, picking his phone up off the counter and starting to thumb-type.
“What’s her beef with you?” I ask, rubbing the top of Revis’s head, then his throat and belly.
“I kind of went off on her,” he says, still typing. “Put her on a little guilt trip of her own…”
I perk up a bit, feeling soothed by his loyalty. “And how did you manage to guilt Saint Meredith?”
“I flipped the script on her sanctimony….” he says. “I told her that if she weren’t so judgmental, maybe you would have confided in her years ago.”
“And?” I ask. “What did she say?”
“Oh, she heard me….”
“But did she back down?”
“A little, maybe.” He puts his phone down. “Besides, I’m sure she’s way more upset at Nolan….I take it you told her that part of the story, too?”
“Yeah,” I say, still feeling guilty about including Nolan in my confession, though there was really no other way to tell the truth. “I had to.”
“Is he going to be angry with you?”
I shrug, thinking that’s the least of our concerns. “I hope not. I’m going to text him what happened….Just give him a heads-up…I’m sure he’ll understand—and maybe even feel relieved….In any event, I know I did the right thing by telling her.”
“You did,” Gabe says, nodding. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I say with a big sigh. Then I tell him about our dinner with Sophie, sticking to the facts (that she married, had a son, then got a divorce, and is now in a relationship with a woman). I do not editorialize, wanting to hear his true reaction first.
“Was it cathartic?” he asks, missing the mark—which is rare for him.
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “The opposite…Meredith and I both expected to see more grief…more longing….I think part of us, on some level, went into the night actually wanting to see a broken woman…wanting to hear that his death destroyed her life….” My voice trails off as I silently finish my sentence: just as it did ours.
Gabe stares at me for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “Nah. You wouldn’t want that,” he says. “You just wanted to hear what he meant to her. That he affected her in some profound and lasting way.”
I
nod, thinking that this time he is right—that that really would have been enough. “Yeah. True,” I say, drawing a deep breath as I stand and take the stool next to his. “So it wasn’t cathartic. But I do feel a sense of closure.”
“On the Sophie front?”
“Yeah. And also with Meredith…I hope she comes around…but if she doesn’t…”
“She will. She always does.”
“She might not this time. But either way…I did what I had to do….And I feel that I can now move on with my life. I’m ready to have a baby. Right now.”
Gabe turns ninety degrees on his stool, as I do the same, our shoulders now squared. “Right now, huh?”
“Yeah.” I nod, feeling a rush of adrenaline as I hold his gaze. “Right now. And with you, Gabe. I want to have this baby with you.”
“You do?” he says. His smile is faint, but his eyes are unmistakably happy.
“Yes. I do,” I say, overwhelmed with a sense of calm certainty. “If the offer’s still good?”
“Yeah.” Gabe grins. “I think we’re both a little nuts here…but yeah, the offer’s still good.”
“Can you picture it?” I ask him—because I’m finally really starting to. Not just motherhood, which I’ve been imagining in one way or another since I was a little girl playing with dolls, but a permanent partnership with Gabe—and the dark-haired, brown-eyed, brilliant child his genes will likely give me.
“Yes. I can, actually,” he says without any hesitation.
“Really?” I say, feeling a little choked up.
He nods. “Yes. You’re my best friend, Josie. You’re more than a best friend. I told you—you’re my family.”
“You’re my family, too,” I say. “I just want you to be sure.”
“I’m sure,” he says. “I’m sure that you’re going to drive me crazy. And I’m sure this baby is going to kill my lifestyle….But I’ve given this a lot of thought—really since the first time you brought it up—and I’m also sure—very sure—that this will be the best thing I ever do with my life. That this baby will be everything to me. To both of us.”