“I don’t remember.”
“I know,” he says sadly. “I wish you did. Maybe then you would’ve loved her, too. Maybe you’d understand.”
I can’t fathom loving our mother or our father. Except for James and Sam, love is a foreign concept to me. When I think of braids and army men, the emptiness in my chest expands exponentially and I hate myself for wondering what if now that it’s too late. I almost hate James for forcing me to relive something secondhand I’d give anything to remember.
“I’m so afraid you’re going to leave me,” he continues in a broken voice. “With Dad gone, you don’t need me anymore. I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t want to. I need you more than Sam does, but you don’t need me. God, it hurts.”
Holding him, I’m struck by how childlike he is. How childlike he’s always been. I’m holding him to my chest exactly like he always holds me when I’m scared and no one can protect me but him. This isn’t about sex or any of the disgusting things my mind is trying to make it into. This is James. My brother. The one who has thrown away everything to save me.
Save James.
It’s time to repay my debt.
“I’ll always need you,” I tell him. The truth.
“Promise you won’t leave?”
There is no hope in his voice. He’s already given up.
“Promise.” Even if I have to give up Sam. My heart shatters at the thought, but I refuse to back down. I owe James this. “I’ll never leave you.”
“Mom said that, too.”
The dream I’ve tried so hard to forget tries to break out of where I’ve buried it and nearly succeeds. Her fingers on my cheek. My name on her lips, urging me to save my brother. From my father or from me, I’m not sure anymore. Eyes watering, terrified to believe what he’s about to say, I ask, “She did?”
He nods. “Until Dad made her stay away.”
I kiss his temple and keep my lips there so I can’t speak. Anything I say will open the floodgates I refuse to open. We stay that way for a long time until he drags one of his legs up on the seat and pulls me onto his lap.
“I was going to kill him,” he whispers. “When we went camping, I was going to sneak back home and kill him when you were asleep. That’s why I bought the gun. But then I couldn’t because everyone was there and they might’ve seen me leave.”
I pull away and search his shadowed face. “But you would’ve gone to jail.”
“I had to,” he whispers. “She made me promise.”
“To kill Dad?”
No answer. I suspect the alcohol and whatever drugs he took are catching up to him because his swollen eyes are half-mast, his minced mouth slack. I have to know what he means. Knowing what he means might change everything. I lightly smack his cheek. “James? She made you promise to kill Dad?”
“To save you,” he mumbles. “And her.”
I gape at my brother in the darkness, but he droops forward against my chest, eyes closed. Is that why he snapped? Because he couldn’t save her from our father? There are so many things I want to ask him. So many things I need to say.
But all I can do is hold him while he sleeps and wait until morning. While he snores against my neck, I stroke his hair and stare out into the dark forest.
This changes everything.
Forty-six
The house is silent when I wake up the next morning. My eyes fly first to the clock—12:48 p.m.—then to James’s empty bed. I have no idea how I got here and no recollection of putting on the pajamas I’m wearing, which is very scary. I refuse to consider the possibility he undressed me and put me to bed last night.
I roll out of bed, feeling like I’ve been drugged and then run over by a bus, and strip off my pajamas. They don’t feel out of place like they should if someone other than me put them on. The few times Sam has helped me put my clothes back on, I’ve had to totally redo everything. It just felt…wrong.
By the time I find my bra in the laundry basket--cringing at the pain it’ll take to fasten--slip on a long-sleeved shirt, and put on my last pair of clean jeans, the reality of what I’m about to do sinks in. I’d hoped for answers this morning, but James isn’t here and I can’t put off the inevitable. Won’t.
Our linoleum is scuffed up pretty badly where James scraped off the hardened noodles and where the chair my father threw crashed to the floor. More alarming are the fist-sized holes peppering the dining room wall. I imagine my head with a same-sized hole, with my brains a shattered mess on the floor like the phone before James swept it up.
I walk over to the stove and run my finger through the black soot from the fire. It comes off pretty easily. I trip over something, the wooden spoon, when I grab the paper towels from the counter. The knife is in the sink. James or the paramedics or someone must’ve picked it up. It sits blade-down in the pot I’d been cooking in, drowning in murky water. Beside it, the blackened pan with bits of meat dried to one of the edges waits to be cleaned.
My stomach churns violently. I’m determined, though. I need to clean up the blackness marring the stove. I have to. My mother would’ve wanted it this way, I think. It’s a stain that reminds me of my father and what he’s done to my family.
Blackness. The story of my life.
No, the story of her life.
It takes me ten minutes to clean up the soot. Dropping the wad of dirty paper towels in the garbage can, I head for the door.
Meadowview Cemetery sits at the base of the hills and is the only cemetery in town. After a ten-minute trek through neighborhoods, the gravity of my situation so heavy I feel like I’m carrying a backpack full of stones, I turn up the long, winding drive that leads to the mausoleum.
The lawn stretches out like white, speckled football fields in either direction, which seems oddly enormous for a town as small and unimportant as Granite Falls. I guess the picturesque foothills were attractive to whomever decides where to put memorial cemeteries. More than half of these markers, identical flat rectangles on the ground, belong to veterans of one war or another.
Maybe Sam’s dad is buried here.
No, I won’t think about Sam. This isn’t about him.
Halfway up the hill, I reach the normal graves. Some have nondescript stone markers like the military graves, others have tall marble statues shaped like saints and angels. Most fall somewhere in between with their waist-high granite gravestones. Though I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about death—mine, my mothers, wishing for my father’s—cemeteries freak me out. Specifically, gravestones freak me out. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine anyone having anything good to say about me. I’d rather not have one when I die.
My mother was cremated and interred—that’s all James would tell me, which had been more than I wanted to know at the time. Easier to imagine her ashes scattered in the forest or dumped in the stream. Now I wish I’d asked for details because the enormous mausoleum is daunting with its exterior walls covered in what looks like hundreds of metal post office boxes. I’ll never find her in the sea of names and numbers.
I almost turn back. The closer I get to the walls, the less sure of myself I become. Right as I convince myself of the stupidity of coming here, a stooped man who looks like an older, thinner version of Santa Claus steps into my path. “Can I help you?”
“Uh…” I turn away to hide my face, but my gaze lands on a grave marker. Here lies Reyes Markham, beloved son… I force myself to look at the man. “I’m trying to find where my mother is buried. Or stored. Whatever you do with the ashes after someone is cremated.”
We start walking toward the mausoleum and he gives me a sympathetic look that, for once, isn’t patronizing. “Recent interment?”
“A couple weeks ago, yes.”
“Name?”
“Amanda O’Brien.” I’ve never said her name aloud before. It hurts more than I expect.
He studies my battered face. “She wasn’t cremated.”
The ground drops out from beneath my feet, but somehow, I find a way to follow
the man when he turns back around and heads out into the maze of grass, marble, and granite. There’s no way we could’ve afforded a full burial. How did James pull this off?
And then it hits me. He only has two thousand dollars in the bank. The money we’ve been saving to get out of our house paid for this.
Anger hits me first, but then guilt like the clumpy, wet dirt beneath my feet chokes it off. No wonder he didn’t tell me—he probably thought I’d get mad at him. And I would have. But after last night, after realizing how much he must have loved her to do this, picturing him doing all of it alone hurts almost as much as watching him fall apart.
All the more reason I have to do what I’m planning to do.
I know which grave is hers before we reach it. The grass growing on the fresh mound of dirt is sparse and young. When I see the two wilted bouquets of roses he bought at Enchanted Garden, tears prick at my eyes. I assumed he’d given them to Leslie.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the stooped old man says when we reach the grave. He gives me a slight nod and heads back toward the road and the mausoleum.
I stand there for what feels like an hour, looking everywhere except at the fresh dirt, the wilted roses, and the pretty granite my brother picked for her gravestone. Swallows swoop from tree to tree farther up the hill. A lazy breeze sifts through the gravestones and caresses my cheeks with its warm fingers.
Being out with Sam as much as I have been, my face isn’t as pale as it used to be. My tan ends there, though. Healthy face, ghostly body. Maybe I should stop wearing jeans and long-sleeved shirts. Maybe my scars will fade if I gave them a little sunshine. With my father in jail, there won’t be any more bruises to hide once the newest ones fade.
I’ll start small—maybe I’ll put a folding lawn chair in the backyard where no one can see me and sit in a tank top and shorts. I’ll drag James out there, too. If anyone needs sun and a little relaxation, it’s my brother…
No matter how hard I try to distract myself, the beauty and peacefulness of where I’m standing forces me to remember how ugly my mother’s life was. I picture the wonder I saw in her glassy eyes that night in my bedroom. If everything James has told me about her is true, if she didn’t willingly give up on me and him, maybe she deserves this. Maybe, in killing her, my father did her a favor.
Slowly, I let my gaze trail from the bright green shoots of grass peeking out from the dark brown dirt to the thicker grass at the base of the gravestone. The stone itself is gray with white flecks, pink swirls, and baby blue veins running through it. Maybe he’d meant the pink and blue to be me and him, and the white to be her. The gray overwhelming all three colors has to be our father.
Amanda O’Brien
November 22, 1972 – June 20, 2010
Gifted with death
You were my sunshine
The words blur. I should have been here to hold James’s hand instead of wallowing in selfishness and hatred. My chest aches when I picture him standing in front of a glossy casket, staring down at her lifeless body alone. I picture his big shoulders shaking and his strong arms wrapped around himself because there was no one there to hold.
It’s more than I can handle.
“I’ll come back,” I say to the gravestone and immediately feel stupid. My mother can’t hear me. She’s never been able to hear me.
My hands shake and sweat trickles down the back of my neck. I need to calm down. If I’m this tense already, there’s no way I’ll make it through what I have to do at Sam’s. Slow, deep breaths, Sarah.
As I weave my way back toward the road, I notice hundreds of calla lilies are growing in brilliant clumps of fiery oranges, pinks, and yellows under every tree I pass. I hesitate. My mother’s grave looks drab compared to the ones with fresh bouquets and flags and shiny metallic pinwheels sticking up from the ground. I pick two of the pink ones and march back to the mound of dirt above her, setting the lilies in the center. One for me, one for her. They match her gravestone perfectly.
“I’m sorry for believing the worst,” I say, “and for not saving him like you wanted. I’m going to fix everything, though, so don’t worry.”
It’s not an I love you and I’m not ready to forgive all the years I screamed for her and she never came, but I think I understand my mother a little better now. She gave my brother and me up to protect us, just like I’m about to give up Sam to protect him and James.
It always comes back to James.
Forty-seven
By the time I reach the main road at the base of the hill, I’m exhausted physically and mentally. It’s in the upper nineties already. My shirt clings to my sweaty skin. My jeans feel even thicker than normal. Desperate, I roll up my sleeves to the elbow. There. Something I haven’t done since Mrs. Baxter’s white dress.
A mile later, I stop and roll up the bottoms of my jeans. I look like I’m wearing a three-quarter t-shirt and capris—the first almost-summery outfit I’ve worn in public in God knows how long. The warm breeze tickling my arms and calves is exhilarating, second only to the first time Sam touched my skin. I wish I had flip-flops on to get the full effect. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair tomorrow.
I lose the wisp of conviction I’ve been clinging to when I get to Sam’s house and see Liz loading boxes of tall glass vases into the back of her car. Before I can run away, she looks up and shields her eyes. “Sarah?”
For such a small woman, Liz is incredibly loud. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Maybe it’s weird to me because she’s a mother and mothers have always been silent in my world. Whatever the case, I can’t turn back now because Sam—and everyone else on the street—probably heard her.
She drops the box into her trunk, breaking at least one of the vases judging by the crash, and dashes across the lawn. Before either of us can say anything else, I throw my arms around her waist and bury my face in her neck.
Home.
“Oh, honey. What happened? Who did this?”
Sam didn’t tell her. The realization is just as relieving as it is painful.
I will not cry—I won’t—but the tidal wave of emotions I’m too exhausted to shut down breaks through my resistance anyway. How easy it would be to tell Liz everything. To let someone else shoulder some of the darkness I’m carrying around for a change. To give up fighting for things that’ll never happen and let everything go.
But I keep seeing the little pink and blue lines running through the granite headstone above my mother’s grave, tangling with the threads of white, drowning in all that gray stone. Me and James. James and our mother. James protecting us both from our father…
She deserved better. Even if I don’t, she did.
Save James.
Sniffling and wiping at my eyes, I try to come up with a convincing lie. If I tell her the truth, there’s no way I’ll be able to do what I came here to do. I can’t risk it. She’ll insist on comforting me and giving me everything I never got from my mother and it’ll be wrong, all of it. I won’t destroy James’s life more than I already have because I’m weak. I won’t let him hurt Sam.
“I fell,” I tell her. “Down the stairs at the library. That’s all.”
She releases her death grip of a hug and cups my cheek in her palm. “You don’t have to lie anymore. I’ll help you. Just tell me the truth.”
“I’m not lying,” I say a little too forcefully and back away. “I was carrying a bunch of books and didn’t see the first step. That’s all.”
She looks hurt. “Oh. Well, I have a wedding consultation in half an hour. You can come along if you’d like. Help me with the sample arrangements, maybe?”
“Um, actually, I can’t work at Enchanted Garden anymore.” Coming here was a mistake. The guilt and regret and wishful thinking are eating me alive. “Is Sam home?”
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning, but I’m pretty sure I heard the shower start up a few minutes ago.” The strange look on her face worries me, but I can’t hold eye contact long enough to figure out what
she’s thinking. “He’s pretty serious about you, Sarah.”
My cheeks, already overheated from the sun and long walk, get even hotter. It’s as if she read my mind and plucked out the worst possible thing she could have said. All morning, I’d been clinging to the hope that Sam and I might be able to stay friends so I could beg him to take me back if James ever lets me go.
“I’m just going to go inside and wait,” I say to her and turn toward the door.
“Sarah, when I get home this evening, I hope you’ll consider talking to me. We can go to the police together, if it helps. I love you just as much as Sam does.”
Which is the last thing I want to hear, because all of a sudden, I’m not sure I’m making the right decision. No, I am. I have to be. My brother needs me more than Sam does.
I can’t get to the front door and out of the far-too-cheerful sunshine fast enough.
The water shuts off as I hurry down the hallway to his bedroom. I pause at the bathroom door and knock softly. “Sam? I’ll be waiting in your room, okay?”
“Hey, wait!”
He throws open the door, still trying to get his towel wrapped around his waist. I ignore the dark bruise around his eye and his scabbed over lip and let myself soak in the sight of his chest and stomach and the water droplets in his hair one last time. Knowing I’ll probably never see this again rams the jagged knife in my heart even deeper.
I think he mistakes my staring for longing—it is, but not the kind he’s thinking—because he gives me the crooked smile I remember from that night on the log. “I was just on my way over to check on you. Is my mom outside?”
I nod. “She’s leaving.”
Towel still in place, he drags me toward his bedroom. I’m in his arms and the door is locked behind us before I can blink. “I missed you,” he murmurs into my hair. “And I’m so sorry about yesterday. When I saw what your dad did to you, I lost it. I’ve never been so pissed off and freaked out in my life. And James…I should have told you he was fighting weeks ago.”
I close my eyes and silently savor his pinecone-and-spice scent and how smooth his skin feels against my cheek. If I talk, I’ll start crying, so I don’t dare open my mouth other than to kiss his chest. Why I ever thought I’d be able to do this is beyond me.