Nowhere Girl (40 page)

Without speaking, he handed me the box. I knew what was in it. I didn't want to open it. I was afraid that if I did, it would be the end of this journey that my sister had been leading me on for half my life. “I can't,” I said, feeling a tightness in my chest that was making it hard to breathe. “I don't want it. You keep it.”

“No.” He opened my fingers and placed the box in my palm. “I kept it all these years with the intent of mailing it back to you. But when I saw you at the pen and we became friends, I knew that one day … one day I'd have to give it to you in person.” He opened the small black box and removed Savannah's necklace. A piece of her hair was caught in the clasp. It was as though I were seeing something from a time capsule, and when I picked it up, I felt fifteen again. I could hear my sister's laugh, the warmth of her hand on my arm when she whispered a secret to me.

Brady looked so sad, so terribly, awfully, horribly heartbroken, that I didn't expect him to be able to talk, and yet, he did. He started talking and for a long time, he didn't stop.

They used to go to the Wolfe Mansion to be alone. They'd make love on the old queen mattress in the third floor widow's tower, Savannah pretending to be his princess bride, the sun shining in.

“You could see the whole town from that room. It was our secret place,” he told me, explaining that lots of kids went there to party on the weekends, but he and Savannah used it after school or late at night in the middle of the week. It was their secret. He'd dragged the mattress up there at Savannah's request, when they first started dating. She had been so persistent, and I knew this was true of Savannah, impossible to say no to. He recounted how it went, the chocolate-covered strawberries they ate, INXS on the boom box. Savannah liked to pretend she was much older, that they were married. Brady blushed as if telling me something far too personal and private to ever be said aloud. He spoke so quietly, I had to strain to hear him. “She wanted me to squeeze her throat. I'd been saying no for months, that she was crazy and it was dangerous. And you know what she did? She laughed at me. She told me to grow up and live a little.” I could see the disdain on Savannah's face, the disappointment in her voice when she didn't get something she wanted. “I swear I didn't want to. I had a bad feeling about it, but I did it for Savannah. I would have done anything for her.”

“It's okay.” I spoke softly, soothingly. “None of us could say no to her. She had this magnetic force that pulled the rest of the world into her orbit. Of course you did what she wanted. We all did.” I thought of all the times I'd done her laundry so she could go out or signed her into study hall so she could sneak out back to smoke. I took a shaking breath. I had to know how it happened. But I wasn't sure I could stand to hear the words spoken aloud. “Keep going,” I urged. “Tell me the rest.”

“She was so fucking beautiful, and I never meant to hurt her. I tried to do it very gently, but she put her hands on the outside of my hands and told me to squeeze harder. She said it felt like she was high on cocaine, like the orgasm might never end.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did. “You squeezed a little too hard. You didn't know what you were doing.”

“No!” The panic on his face was raw. “After that one time, she said that was the only way she wanted to do it. She said it was like flying without wings. But it scared the shit out of me. I kept thinking that if I did it wrong she could get really hurt. So I refused to do it again.”

“I don't understand. If you wouldn't choke her, how'd she die?”

“She was so pissed that she threatened to break up with me if I didn't do it again, but I refused. I told her having her alive and mad was better than the alternative. She didn't speak to me for three days, but then she pulled me outside in between classes and told me she had a new plan. She said she'd talked to you and you were going to cover for her with your parents. I was working that day, delivering pizzas, but the afternoons were always so slow that no one would miss me if I was gone for a while. So we'd planned to meet at the Wolfe Mansion.” He wiped tears out of his eyes and I felt like I was watching the saddest movie ever made. “I was so happy because I thought she'd forgotten about the whole choking thing. But when I got to the third floor, she explained that she'd researched it and she could make it so she could choke herself and I wouldn't have to do anything.”

“What?” This sounded too crazy. Even for Savannah. “So she had made like a torture device or a dog collar or something?”

Brady covered his face with his hands for a moment and didn't speak. Finally, he picked up his head and continued. “I didn't know what it was or even if she had it with her. I don't know, Cady. It was like I just snapped. All of a sudden, I realized that there was something wrong with your sister. She'd told me about the other boys she'd been with and the older girls she smoked pot with and the drugs she'd tried. She talked about it in a way that made me think she was trying to be sophisticated. But that day, I knew it was so much more than that. And I couldn't handle it. I couldn't fucking handle it, so I left.”

“What do you mean so much more? I don't understand what you're saying.”

“God, even now, I can't explain it. It wasn't about experimenting and pushing the limits. It was like she was daring the universe to make something go wrong. Like each time she did something stupid and walked away from it, she felt like she'd won.”

That was so Savannah. Every time she climbed out her window and met Chapman Sharp or Dylan Freeman and didn't get caught, she thought it made her powerful, invincible. “I understand,” I said quietly. I reached for Brady's hand and held it. We sat quietly for a moment, feeling each other's warmth before I spoke again. “Tell me the rest.”

“I yelled at her that she'd gone too far and I didn't want to be around her anymore.” He'd kept his eyes down while he was talking, but now he was staring at me. “The last thing I ever said to Savannah was that she was crazy and we were done.”

At that moment, I had a pang so severe in my chest I thought I was having a heart attack, but then I realized I was feeling what Savannah had when Brady yelled at her.

“I stormed out of the house and headed down that rocky slope to my car. I went back to work, but it was slow, so my boss told me I could leave. I clocked out and started to go home. But I was worried about Savannah and felt terrible about yelling at her, so I went back. But by the time I got there—”

“She was already dead.”

“Yes,” he said. “She had brought the contraption with her. I swear to God I didn't know she was planning on using it that day. I thought she just wanted to talk. It was like a dog collar attached to a leash tied to the bar where you put hangers in the closet.” He stopped speaking and shuddered, as if reliving the memory. “I tried to save her. She must have struggled with the collar and made it tighter instead of looser. I got her out of it as fast as I could, but she wasn't breathing. I'd left my cell phone in my car, and I couldn't find hers.”

“I had it. She asked me to take her backpack home, and it had her phone in it.”

But he kept talking as if he hadn't heard me. “I tried CPR, but she was already gone. And I don't know, I had this crazy thought that it'd be better if it looked like she hadn't done it to herself. So I took the collar and everything with me and ran to my car to call 911.”

“You left her there?” I could feel my throat closing. I gripped the necklace harder, digging my nails into the palm of my hand.

“I didn't. I wasn't going to. By the time I got to my car, I could see cops in the woods coming toward the mansion. I thought they could save her.” He was trying to wipe his face of all the tears, the snot, but he couldn't. “And then it was too late. I didn't think anyone would believe what really happened.”

“But you had an alibi. You were at work. All these years, you let us think that someone had murdered Savannah. The cops never considered anything but homicide, because there was nothing left at the scene. And you knew. You knew all along that it was an accident and she did it to herself.”

“I know. I'm so sorry. So, so sorry.” He sounded pitiful. “I felt responsible. If I had stayed there, she'd still be alive, so I thought it was my fault. It
was
my fault. I guess I panicked and never told the police or anyone, because I thought that they'd think I was responsible because I could have stopped her.”

“Did the police interview you?” I remembered Patrick coming to the house months after it had happened and telling us the cops had interviewed almost everyone at Kingswood.

“Yes, but I told them I was working, and they checked out my alibi with my boss. I guess the time line proved I was at work while—”

“My sister was accidentally strangling herself.”

He dropped his head. “Yes.”

“What about your fingerprints? They must have found them in the Wolfe Mansion.”

“They found everyone's prints in that house. Remember how many kids used to go there to party? The whole thing was a cluster.”

I held Savannah's necklace in my hand. “You took a necklace off a dead girl. Why?”

“I didn't. That was the strangest part. When I got there, before we fought, she took it off and gave it to me.”

My skin went cold. “I don't believe you. The only time we ever took those necklaces off was to change out the chains.”

He put his hands to his heart. “I know. I'd asked her about the pendant once. And she told me it meant you two would always be connected, like you had superpowers. I should have known then”—his voice was broken—“that she was going to do something terrible. But I didn't understand. So I put it in my pocket and thought I'd give it back to her later. But then we had that awful fight and I left and…” But he didn't finish.

He collapsed into my arms, and there was nothing left to do but hold him. We cried together until the sun went down and it became almost too dark to see.

“I'm ready,” he finally said.

I sat up, wiping my eyes. “For what?”

“For my punishment. To take responsibility for what I did.”

All my life, I'd waited for this moment. I told Gabby and Greg and most of all myself that I wouldn't be okay until the man who murdered my sister went to prison for the rest of his life. But here I was sitting a foot away from Brady Irons, and all I wanted to do was protect him. “No,” I said. “You didn't hurt her. Savannah did that to herself. Besides, what about Colette? She needs you.”

“Colette's parents flew over from France and took her home. She wasn't getting better here, and they thought she needed to be with her family. I tried.” He got up, turned on a standing lamp, and then sat next to me again. “I tried to take care of her for five years, but her parents were right to take her home. She's where she needs to be now.”

“So you're going to throw away the rest of your life because of something that wasn't your fault?”

He held both my hands in his. “My going to jail won't bring Savannah back, but it's my fault she's gone. If I hadn't walked out on her, I could have stopped her. I deserve to go to prison for that.”

“That's bullshit,” I said, my voice too loud. “You've already given up your life.”

“What do you mean?” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers.

“Look at what you've done the last sixteen years. You left town after high school and drifted around the country. You told me once that your dad never forgave you for not joining the army, but you didn't tell me why you didn't go.” In all the times that Brady and I had told each other about our lives, I'd never realized that everything he'd done since Savannah's death was with the intent of punishing himself. “And when you came back, you chose to work in a maximum-security prison, spending your days with murderers, rapists, people who have no hope, nothing to live for.”

“It was the right thing to do,” he said quietly. “It was the only thing. I belonged in prison, and if I was too much of a coward to turn myself in, then at least I could live that life through my inmates.”

“That's the thing”—my voice was thick with pleading—“you don't belong there. You didn't do anything wrong. Savannah made the mistake, not you.”

“It doesn't matter. I should have gone to the police when it first happened.”

“True,” I said sadly. “But what matters is that you gave Savannah something that none of the rest of us could.”

“What's that?” I could hear my sister's voice so clearly at that moment. How she used to tell me she was bigger than our small town, that she never belonged here. I used to beg her to be happy, I was so afraid she'd leave me, leave our family. I couldn't make her see that everyone loved her. That she was the light that illuminated our paths.

“You made her want to stay. We were twins. Identical. And from the moment I was old enough to understand, I knew that I'd never be enough for her. She was so much more than the rest of us. But you quieted whatever made her so restless. I could see the difference in her those last months. I never knew why she seemed so…” I couldn't think of the word. “Settled.”

He got up and went into another room that I couldn't see and then came back with a box of tissues. “Thank you for saying that, but it's time.”

Suddenly, I couldn't breathe. “For what?”

“I have to turn myself in.”

I jumped up. “No! You can't.”

“I have to be held accountable.”

“You've been accountable every day that you've volunteered at the shelter and tutored inmates and did the best you could for Colette. What's the world going to gain by locking you up?” A few hours before, I'd been in Charlotte Reid's living room, and now I was trying to talk the man who held the secret of my sister's death out of turning himself in. “Go,” I said to Brady. He cocked his head at me. “Colette is with her family. Savannah finally made me hear what she's been trying to tell me all these years. And I'm okay. Really. I am.”