One Moment (22 page)

“Ry,” I said. “How are you?”

Rylan shrugged and licked the top of his ice cream, moving a few steps closer. “Pretty sucky.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

“We had people in town for the Fourth last weekend, relatives all up in my face. People crying, and sniffling, and snotting. They try to hide it. Take me out to do some random thing, but that only helps for a little while.”

“Yeah.” I moved my ice-cream cone from one hand to the other, feeling like one taste would make me sick. “Nothing helps for very long, does it?”

Rylan looked at me, his eyes creasing. “You’re probably one of the only people who really gets it.”

I sighed. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

Rylan’s mouth twitched. “I heard about what happened at Shannon’s. I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to say.” Rylan’s eyes flicked to Pete and Tanna, then back to me.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can say.”

“No. Probably not.” Rylan shook his head. “He could be a real ass sometimes, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But the hard part is that he could also be pretty perfect.”

Rylan moved closer, his eyes glinting in the sunlight, so much like Joey’s that it hurt me in a deep place I hadn’t even known existed. “My mom knows, too. She wants to talk to you, Maggie.”

I closed my eyes, thinking of Shannon’s accusations and how Mrs. Walther would have so many more questions now. “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”

“But you’ll call her? When you are ready?”

“Sure,” I forced out. “I’ll call soon.”

“Good,” Rylan said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

I watched as Rylan ran toward his friends and the tractor, taking a giant leap and scrambling up to the top of the right front tire. I looked down, realizing both my hands were empty. My ice-cream cone lay splattered at my feet, a soupy mess. The wind tossed all the napkins I’d yanked from the dispenser, twirling them around in lazy circles.

“Maggie, are you okay?” Tanna asked.

“No,” I said, thinking of facing Joey’s mother. “What if she has the same questions Shannon does? What if she blames me for something? I don’t know if I can—”

“Maggie, stop. Mrs. Walther wouldn’t think that way. And Shannon, she doesn’t, either. Not really.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Shan’s just trying to cope, like we all are, and doing a pretty shitty job at it.”

Tanna grabbed my hand then and pulled me away from the crowd, across the field of grazing cows, their crooning twining around the rays of sunlight that pierced the air. Through the back gate with the crooked door that only latched if you made it. Into the woods that stretched for miles and miles and miles, eventually dumping you out on the cliff top where everything had begun.

Or was that where it had ended?

I was no longer sure.

“You have to ignore it,” Pete said, his fingers dancing across the guitar resting in his lap.

“Which
it
?” I asked, leaning back against the rough bark of a tree, staring through the clearing and toward the narrow trail nearby. I wanted to run to the end of the world. Jump off. And free-fall for the rest of time.

“The stuff with Joey and Shannon. All the lies. Focusing so much on all that is going to make everything worse.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I said with a snort.

“I don’t mean to be like that,” Pete said. “But you have to figure out a way to deal.”

“I keep thinking that it couldn’t have gone on for too much longer,” Tanna said. “With everything you’re finding out, I think it was about to all blow up in his face. But he died and left it all behind for you to untangle.”

“I have to do this right.” I clawed at my chest, wanting to rip away the anger. “If I don’t, I might never get rid of this feeling.”

“It’s gonna hurt,” Tanna said. “There’s no way around it. You gotta find a way to go straight through the pain and get yourself to the other side.”

“You sound like my shrink,” I said with a chuckle. “She’d totally agree. The thing is, I was starting to handle Joey’s death okay. I mean, as okay as I could. But this is way worse, because this kills him in a different way. The Joey I thought I knew, that Joey never existed, did he?”

Pete shrugged. “The Joey you loved, he was
real
, Mags. Don’t let his thing with Shannon take that away. You have to figure out how to separate everything if you’re gonna make it through this.”

“How the hell am I supposed to separate anything at this point?”

“Maybe spend some time remembering special stuff you did, just the two of you.” Pete strummed the guitar, spilling a chord out into the rays of sunlight trickling down through the leaves.

“Don’t let this new person take his place in your mind, Maggie,” Tanna said. “Joey would hate that.”

“I keep wondering how he would feel,” I said. “Wondering what he would say. You know, if he were here and he could.”

“Me, too,” Pete said. “And every time I think about him and you, and the whole thing with Shannon, this one song pops into my head.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked.

“Yup. It’s kinda cheesy, but I feel like he’s sending it to me. Just for you.” Another chord poured from the guitar and tripped through the trees. “I can play it if you want.”

“Yeah,” I said, scooting away from the tree and lying on the grass, looking through the leaves at the too blue sky. “That would be nice.”

As soon as Pete started, I knew the song—Nickelback’s “Far Away.” My eyes filled with tears as the lyrics streamed into my mind, and I wanted to tell Pete how perfect the song was. But I wasn’t so sure I could get the words out. Tears slipped down the sides of my face, and I tried to swipe them away, but they kept coming, so I let them fall.

I felt so sad and alone, even with Tanna lying close by, even as Pete started humming the tune. I wondered if Joey had really loved me, if he missed me from wherever he was. He felt so far away, I held my breath and tried to remember something that would bring him back. Something that would make me feel all the right things instead of everything that was so very wrong.

As Pete hit the chorus and Tanna started singing the words, a ribbon of wind flowed through the treetops, pulling a leaf from its hold on a high branch. The waxy green teardrop tumbled and flipped toward me in slow motion. And that’s all it took to bring him back.

My Joey.

We were almost two years in the past, lying on a blanket in the gorge, looking up at the trees, which were dressed in fancy reds, yellows, oranges, and browns. We didn’t talk or laugh or even kiss. We just lay there, my head on his chest, looking up-up-up the bodies of all those towering trees. They were almost silent, but when I listened really closely, I could hear them whispering reassurances into the air around us, speaking of trust and daring, of just letting go.

The amazing thing was when they did it, when those leaves simply freed themselves. Joey and I, we just watched as the reds, the yellows, the oranges, and the browns released their grips from the tangled arms of those trees. We watched, and they took flight in a spiraling, swooping ride that left me breathless.

20

Surprises in the Strangest Moments

“Maggie, we called you in today because we’d like to know if you’ve remembered anything else from the day Joey died.” Detective Wallace’s mustache twitched around his words. His slender hands were perched on top of the same conference table from that terrible Saturday when I’d lost Joey forever. I wondered how many questions had been hurled across its faux wood surface over the years.

“My client is still in therapy,” Mr. Fontane said from his seat beside my father, who had insisted that I sit between him and my mother when we took our places around the table. “She is working with Dr. Guest to recall those lost memories. We have already told you that we’ll offer anything of significance as soon as we can.”

“Dr. Guest’s original reports suggest that Maggie may be suffering from either post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative amnesia, both of which may leave her unable to access her lost memories. With all due respect, our investigation can’t just sit idle, waiting to discover the outcome of her therapy.” Detective Meyer pressed his thick lips together.

“We have some new information,” Detective Wallace said. “And we’d like to hear Maggie’s side of the story.”

Not ready to face whatever they were about to throw my way, I tried to sink back into my chair without being obvious. Detective Meyer, however, caught me and stared into my eyes. I tried to hold my head up, but the shaking in my hands had traveled up my arms and taken over most of my body. I felt like I had the shivers, but I was hot and a little sweaty. I looked to my lawyer, trying to focus everything on him, trying to drown out the detectives.

Mr. Fontane clicked his tongue on the top of his mouth. His hair was combed back tightly, stiffened by some kind of product. It looked exactly the same as it had the day Joey died, when I’d met with him for the first time. He’d sat on the recliner in our living room, asking all kinds of questions. Questions that I could not even think about answering, not even now that I did remember.

“What type of new information?” my mother asked from her seat beside me.

“Apparently, there was a party on the Fourth of July during which Maggie and another young woman had a confrontation.” The words spilled out of Detective Meyer’s mouth in a way that made me sure he had rehearsed them.

“Shannon,” I said with a sigh. “She talked to you?” But then I wondered if it had been someone else. Like Joey’s parents. That thought brought some of the old panic back, the nervous feeling of guilt that had taken over the day Joey died.

“We can’t divulge that information.” Detective Meyer sat back in his chair, placing both of his hands on his large belly. “What we can share is that while we had been ready to close the investigation, our final interviews raised some new questions.”

I wanted to stand up and scream at the detectives. Scream so loud I melted the skin right off their smug faces, so hard I’d blast Shannon right off of this miserable earth, so long I might be able to bring Joey back so that he would have to face what he’d done.

“We’ve learned that there may have been some kind of altercation between you and Joey before the accident. The individual we spoke with thinks something may have happened on top of the cliff that caused Joey to fall to his death.” Detective Meyer stared at me, waiting for any reaction. “Something between the two of you.”

“Did this person tell you anything about that supposed altercation?” Mr. Fontane asked.

Detective Meyer clasped his hands. “We’d like to hear Maggie’s side of this story.”

I looked at Mr. Fontane, wondering if it was time for me to speak. He stared down at the papers in front of him. “I’ve advised Maggie not to say anything today. I think it’s best to have her therapist’s approval before we proceed.”

Detective Wallace cleared his throat. “We’d really love to settle this matter.”

“So would we,” Mr. Fontane replied. “But not at any risk to Maggie’s well-being. She has been struggling to deal with the events that occurred on Memorial Day weekend, and Dr. Guest has advised her parents and me that we should not push her for answers.”

That part made me feel the most guilty. I hadn’t told anyone about the memories that had flooded me on the Fourth of July. As backward as it seemed, Adam was the only person I wanted to talk to about the cliff top. Since he’d been up there with me after everything happened, I felt like he would understand. But I couldn’t get past my anger. All I could think was that he’d known everything and kept it from me, and I didn’t know if I could ever face him again. So I’d held on to Joey’s last moments for an entire week, keeping the secret my own, wondering how, and when, and if I would ever share it with anyone else.

The air-conditioning kicked on with a
whir
, covering my arms in goose bumps.

“You were about to close the investigation?” my father asked. “Does that mean you have the results from the autopsy?”

Detective Meyer nodded his head. “We do.”

“And if you were going to close the investigation, that means that you didn’t find anything to indicate foul play.” Mr. Fontane looked from one detective to the other.