Everything We Didn't Say(38)

“You have to come back to us,” Juniper said. “Mandy needs you. The boys need you. I need you.”

Was she doing it right? Juniper had no idea, but suddenly there were a thousand things she wanted to tell her brother. Important things she should have said, and frivolous nothings that didn’t matter at all. She wanted to ask him if he had any idea who was harassing him, and what had happened all those years ago. She wanted to apologize.

“Juniper and Jonathan.” She smiled faintly. “When we were little it sounded like one word: juniperandjonathan. As if one couldn’t exist without the other.”

Something shifted. It was a quickening, a blip on the monitors that cataloged everything from Jonathan’s kidney output to his brain activity. But before she could truly start to worry about it, the nurse with the silver glasses was back, her face a professional mask, her pace disclosing concern.

“Someone likes you,” she said, catching Juniper’s eye as she leaned over Jonathan. Then she turned her full attention to her patient. “Good morning, Mr. Baker. Are you thinking you might join us today?”

Juniper’s heart stopped and then started back up painfully. She reached for her brother’s hand, but caught herself at the last moment.

“Jonathan,” the nurse called again, a bit more forcefully this time. “Are you with us?”

His eyelids twitched; Juniper saw it happen. But it was over in less than a second and she was left wondering if she had dreamed it or if Jonathan had flickered to the surface, if only for a single heartbeat. The nurse called his name a few more times, adjusted a dial that meant nothing to Juniper, and then straightened up with a small sigh.

“Keep talking,” the nurse said. “Pull up a chair and tell him a story. Maybe today will be the day.”

Her smile was reassuring, the hope she dished up carefully measured. Juniper accepted it gratefully, but somehow she knew that Jonathan wasn’t going to wake up today.

After seeing what she saw in Everett’s makeshift incident room, she was afraid that Jonathan didn’t want to wake up at all.





CHAPTER 10


SUMMER 14 AND A HALF YEARS AGO



My mother’s garden is an institution—and a ridiculous amount of work. Law tills the ground in the spring, then covers it in manure. Jonathan and I are set the very unsexy task of turning the soil by hand, layering in the natural fertilizer with metal rakes and sharp-cornered hoes. By the time the job is complete, we reek of dirt and sweet manure, and our fingernails are rimmed black.

After planting, the long, narrow rows seem to pop up overnight. Sugar snap peas climb bamboo teepees, and radishes sprout white stems with pretty, round leaves. When I was a little girl, I used to hide beneath the arching vines, popping cherry tomatoes like they were candy. I liked the purple ones the best. Still do.

But I don’t like the hot hours it requires to weed and thin. It’s humid where the earth exhales, and I’m sweating even though the sun is still low in the east. It doesn’t help that Mom recruited Jonathan, too, and he’s complaining down the row beside me.

“I should be at work,” he mutters, adjusting the old towel he’s kneeling on. The bark mulch Mom spreads between the rows is chopped from our own felled trees and promises splinters. Jonathan and I are both in impractical shorts and making use of Mom’s extensive stash of gardening supplies with little success. I peel off the pink nitrile-coated gloves I’m wearing and throw one at him.

“Why aren’t you?” I ask as it bounces off his shoulder.

“We’re between jobs. Nothing to do today.” He tosses the glove back at me, but I don’t want it. My hands are slick, and the rubber is stinky and damp. I’ll take the dirty fingernails, the invisible cuts that won’t hurt until I wash my hands later.

When I offered to help Mom with the garden, I thought we’d have some time alone together. My mother is a woman of few words, but they seem to flow a bit more freely when she gardens. With her hands in the ground she thinks less about the careful formation of each sentence, the way that others might perceive her opinions. I’m not sure what makes my mom so timid to express her own thoughts and ideas, so I love the times she lets loose even a little. But instead of joining me this morning, she conscripted Jonathan and then left with Law for town. I was not planning on a morning alone with my brother. I’ve avoided him for over an hour, working a row over and intentionally going in the opposite direction, but he’s on to me.

After we finish up with the feathery carrots, Jonathan circles back around the garden to take a swig from the jug of ice water I’m currently drinking from. I hand it over when I’m done and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. He drinks, says, “Let’s stick together. I’ll follow you.”

Small talk. It’s my only defense, and I prattle on about work and Ashley’s mom’s unreasonable expectations, and the fact that I think Reb is writing new music. Our mother doesn’t compose often, but when she does start scribbling notes on staff paper, it usually means something. I secretly believe she’s writing now because she doesn’t quite know what to do with the fact that I’m leaving home. I wonder if she’ll play it for me. Maybe it’s a gift.

“Mom hasn’t played the Braga in months,” Jonathan says. He’s huffy, but I don’t know why. “If you’d listen, you’d know, too.”