Complicit (23 page)

“I have something to show you before I go.” She reaches and pulls an item from her purse. Holds it in front of me.

It's a photograph. I lean forward to see it better, but it's a portrait of a young woman. She's almost a child, really. And she's beaming like the sun. Her blond hair falls into her face. She's gazing down at a baby swathed in blue.

“Cate,” I whimper. “Is that—”

“It is,” she says. “And you.”

My chest knots up, shortening my breath. “She's beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was. She really was. I had another photo, too, but the goddamn rain ruined it.”

“Don't go,” I say quickly. “Danny still loves you.”

“I know he does. I was with him the night of the fire, the night I saw you sneak in. He never believed In it and he waited all this time. But…”

“But what?”

Cate pushes her lips into one of her enigmatic smiles. “But I have what I need right now and it's not love.”

My heart aches. Like that night in her room all those years ago, before she walked herself into a courtroom to be sentenced for something she was innocent of, something I'd done, I am losing my sister. Again.

She touches my cheek. “Promise me you'll get help, Jamie. You'll be an asshole if you don't.”

I give a hoarse laugh. “You think they'll help me in jail when I get arrested for that pet store fire?”

“You won't get arrested. I already called back and gave the cops about twenty other license plates. They know I'm a hoax. They don't have any evidence.”

“But I did it.”

She blinks. “Oh.” Then:
“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Get help,” Cate repeats firmly. Then she leans forward, reaching for the photograph resting on my lap.

“Don't take that,” I say. “Please.”

“This is the one thing I can't give up. It's all I have of her. I'm sorry.” With a rueful look, Cate plucks the faded picture from me and slips it into her purse. Then she uncrosses her legs and reaches for her shoes, which sit beside her. My heart beats very fast. My hands tingle. Faintly. Like an omen. Or a warning.

I want that photograph.

Pressure builds inside me, volcanic strength. Only what's growing inside me might be hotter. More powerful. More explosive.

I want that photograph.

Cate uses the tip of her finger to wedge one of her shoes over her heel. She reaches for her purse and goes to stand up. In a moment she'll be gone.

Forever.

It happens. My hands come back to life and I lunge for Cate. She cries out when I grab for her, and twists her body. The movement catches me off guard. Wrapped together, we writhe and stumble out of the cave, into the night. We crash against the stone retaining wall. Cate's legs press against it, then her hips and her back. I'm pushing her. She starts to slip over, but won't let go. She fights back, clawing at me, kicking, punching, shouting, anything.

I fight harder.

I think

this is madness

I think

this is sick

I think

I won't let her beat me.

FIFTY-FIVE

There are some dreams you can't wake up from.

Ever.

These are called nightmares.

FIFTY-SIX

When I open my eyes, I don't know where I am.

I'm outside. Alone. Walking down an empty road. Trees surround me and everything is black. It's night and the air swirls with a howling wind and thick rolls of low-lying ground fog. I've got a jacket on, but it's not enough. My teeth chatter. I tremble with each step. My body feels bruised and stiff.

How did I get here?

My head spins. I feel dizzy, so I stop walking. I look around. I don't see the Jeep anywhere. There are houses on the hillside above me, resting on stilts and pressing into the earth. Their lights are all off.

It must be late.

Very late.

I don't know where I am.

Or why I'm here.

I'm scared.

I pull my phone out of my jacket pocket. It's 12:38
A.M.
There are a bunch of text messages, all from Jenny. Seeing these gives me a burst of excitement, of brilliant anticipation, but there are other feelings mixed in there, too. Like sorrow.

Like shame.

I feel heavy with shame, but I don't know why.

I scroll to the phone log, searching for more clues. For more evidence. I've got a lot of missed calls and voice mails, but a few from earlier in the day are from a blocked number. And that's when I remember.

Cate.

I close my eyes very tightly. Something is wrong with my memory, it feels scattered, elusive, but I know the pieces are there, inside of me, so I force myself to focus.

You went to see her. She had something to tell you about your mother. About you.

My mother.

It comes back to me then, the whole evening, like a shuttle coming down from space, landing hard and fast, on the edge of burning up. Remembering hurts. The images are hazy, this eclipse of the past and the truth, but in my mind's eye I see myself driving up to the mountain. Walking around the campground and finding my sister by fire scent. It's like watching a movie or Plato's allegory come to life, seeing myself sit across from Cate, shadows flickering on the cave wall. Her mouth moves and she talks and talks.

I know what she's telling me.

I killed my own mother.

Cate's telling me other things, too. Like how there's something sick and broken about my brain. How it can make me forget things that I do when I'm angry. Very bad things.

I am a bad person.

There's more inside of me even my sister doesn't know about, I think. Like how I set a fire at the church in the hope she'd get blamed for it. Like how I broke into neighborhood houses and stole stuff as a way to set her up. I
did
do those things, right? What other explanation is there? Even worse, Cate gave me credit for burying the messenger bag in the woods in an effort to save her. But when I think about it more, I realize that if I was the one who hid evidence of the fire inside the bag with her belongings in the first place, then I'm probably the one who did other things, too, like calling in the anonymous tip to the cops or setting her up online. So although my conscious mind may have tried to save my sister, my subconscious wanted to frame her. Meaning the person I was
really
saving all along was … myself. This makes me calculating.

Manipulative.

Cowardly.

Cate, where are you?

I need your help.

Please.

Only Cate doesn't answer and I don't know where she is. My last memory is of her showing me a photograph of our mother. Of me wanting to keep it.

And of her telling me no.

What happens after that is black. I don't and can't remember.

My stomach twists. A wave of sickness threatens to overwhelm me, but I don't give in to it. I can't. I'm not helpless. I have choices still, don't I? I have ways to right my wrongs. Or at least
try.
I owe it to everyone I've hurt to do that. So I should call Dr. Waverly. That would be a start. I could explain to her what happened and what I know. I could ask her to please, please help me. She understands about the amnesia, that something might be wrong with my brain and how I remember things. She wrote about it in the margins of her book. Plus she genuinely cares about me. I know she does. Even Cate trusted her, in her own way. Giving her the store owl that hurt Angie too much to have around. Cate knew Dr. Waverly would set it somewhere I was guaranteed to see it. It's like my sister wanted a little piece of our mother watching over me.

Like she wanted me to
remember.

My heart, it hurts.

So much.

I want to die. I don't know what else to do.

I cannot stand the pain.

Cate, wherever you are, whatever I've done. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You've been the strong one all this time. The one with courage. You don't deserve a brother like me. You deserve better.

You gave and I took.

I lift my head and that's when I see it—a mule deer is in the road, not ten feet away from where I am.

I stare at the animal and she stares back. Time ticks by. Moonglow lights her coat, which is bright and gold and fills me with the sort of warmth and love I want so badly to believe is real.

Mom,
I think madly.
I love you.

I take one step forward and the animal comes to life, a doe in flight.

She bounds swiftly into the darkness.

Heart pounding, I do what I have to—I follow her. The doe's path leads me into the black night that has swallowed her up. The ominous creak of the trees above sets my nerves on edge as I pick my way across the ground littered with wind-felled branches. I stumble but keep going. Soon, I find myself looking over the edge of a steep canyon.

Vast. Gaping.

An endless abyss.

I can't imagine the doe leaped this way knowingly. It'd be a death sentence, for sure. Maybe it was just an illusion. Maybe she simply left my line of vision before bolting down the side of the road, small white tail flipping behind her.

My mind swirls with maybes.

A strong gust of wind comes up from behind, shoving me closer to the edge. I grind my heels into the dirt as the groan of branches overhead intensifies. I squeeze my eyes shut, and still,
still,
I can't remember my own mother. All I have that's real inside of me is Angie. Eternally grieving Angie. Some pair we've made, all these years: the mother who can't let go of the past.

And me, who can't seem to hold on.

When I open my eyes again, I'm staring into the yawning descent, the sheer drop down, the utter blackness. I wonder what it would feel like to fly. I think of Richard Wright, his grit, his passion, his hunger.

His strength.

I have none of it. I have nothing but self-loathing. Losing memories to trauma is one thing. But doing it willfully and making up new ones. That's
aberrant.
Dangerously so.

I'm sorry, Jenny.

I bend my legs.

I protest this fraud.

FIFTY-SEVEN

There are some dreams you
do
wake up from, only to find you can't remember them at all.

But that doesn't mean the dreams don't matter. That their epistrophic wisdom isn't playing inside of you, over and over and over and again. Somewhere. Somehow. Charting your course in ways you aren't even aware of. Marching you straight toward suffering or glory.

These are the dreams that can make you feel sad when you should be happy.

These are the dreams that hold our most private of truths.

These are the dreams that destinies are made of.

FIFTY-EIGHT

When I open my eyes I am sitting at a piano in the dark with Jenny by my side.

My awareness surfaces slowly, like emerging from the cool depths of the most serene mountain lake. We are in her living room, alone, with a fire crackling in the fireplace. Candles illuminate the large family portrait hanging on the wall above me. The portrait includes a young man who must be Jenny's brother, the one who got himself locked up for good. I'm intrigued, but don't stare for too long because my neck hurts. In fact, my whole body feels bone-tired, like maybe I've just walked a hundred miles or even a hundred more. There's music in the air, something dark and twisted, and when I look down, I see that I'm playing a song for Jenny. It's Monk, of course, but not “Evidence,” which I'm kind of sick of.

No, it's “Misterioso.”

My mind follows where my hands go. I lean into the music. I hit the off beats at all the right times. I stretch my fingers and reach for the keys, pounding out the melody, the chords, the haunting dissonance, and for the first time in a long while, the muscles in my hands feel strong. Trustworthy. Sure of themselves. Jenny, who's dressed in nothing but a nightgown and robe, has both her arms wrapped around my waist, and when I'm done playing she wipes tears I didn't even know were there from my eyes.

“That was beautiful,” she whispers, and I want to ask her things like:

what am I doing?

how did I get here?

where have I been?

But these things are embarrassing to ask and so I say nothing because I'm shy and I like Jenny, and I don't want her to stop liking me.

“Thank you,” I whisper back, and then she's leaning her head against my chest and holding me tighter. I understand that she's comforting me. That she wants me not to cry or be sad anymore, only I don't know what I might be sad about. I mean, I'm here. With her.

It's all that I want.

“Thank you,” I murmur again. “For everything.”

“I had no idea your sister was so sick. I hope the cops find her. Get her help, you know? Real help.”

I nod.

“Has she been suicidal before?”

“Yes,” I say, but is this true? I don't know. The word just pops out of my mouth, like it's got a mind of its own.

Jenny's rubbing my shoulders now. It feels good. “You're brave for trying to find her on your own. After what she did.”

Brave. That's a funny way to describe me. I am not brave. I'm nice. Right now I'm other things, too, because I want more of that good feeling I get when Jenny touches me.

“Thank you for coming over, anyway,” she says. “For keeping your promise.”

“Of course,” I say, and I kiss her.

That's when the rest of the world vanishes. Jenny and I come together, our bodies, our minds, and I lose myself in her, in who she is and what she means. Soon all I know of myself, my surroundings, is warm girl, soft skin, the sweet rub and burn of desire. My nerves are tingling, only not in a bad way, and I don't feel it in my hands now. This is a tingling that comes from within, moving through my stomach, my gut, down even farther. I breathe faster. Harder. Everything else but this moment melts from my mind like snowpack.