Everything You Are(90)

Phee looks up at the stars, wondering which ones got crossed to put her at odds with the one man in the world who has ever held her heart. If he doesn’t hate her, at the very least he must resent her intrusion and meddling.

“What will you do now?” she asks.

He shrugs. “We’re all here now. Might as well press on.”

“I thought it might help you remember.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for not remembering, did you think of that? Generally when people block out memories, they aren’t happy ones.”

“If it heals your hands—”

“It won’t! You need to let that hope go, Phee. It’s too late.”

“Well, maybe you could at least let go of some guilt. Jo says you blame yourself for her husband’s death, but he had a heart attack. That can’t be your fault.”

“I hit him.” Braden turns to face her. “I keep having this flashback. The two of us are outside by the lake. He’s sitting by a fire in the firepit, and out of nowhere, I punch him in the jaw. I keep seeing that one moment on repeat, like one of those obnoxious internet GIF things. Over and over and over. And every time, I feel so sick I want to puke.”

“It’s not like you were beating up on a woman or a child—”

“I’ve never been in a fight, Phee. Not before or since, on account of my hands. I’d never thrown a punch in my life. It doesn’t take much of a detective to put together the evidence. Me, pissed off enough to punch him. And then, mysteriously, he winds up dead. Whatever memory you’re dragging me back to isn’t going to make Allie’s life better. Or mine, or Jo’s.”

“But you’re coming to the cabin, anyway?”

He answers with another question. “You know what Allie said? She said she changed her mind about dying and tried to call for help because she didn’t want her death to be a lie. I guess I don’t want the rest of my life to be a lie. And if there’s the tiniest chance that there is some impossible curse, and that remembering will give me back my hands and that will help my daughter, then that’s what I need to do.”

“You’re a good man, Braden.”

“And you’re a manipulative wench, you and your Angels.”

“None of them know. The plan was to take you and Allie to a cabin in the woods somewhere. They all thought it would be a pleasant escape. I didn’t tell them which cabin, or why. So don’t blame them, whatever you do.”

The door of the house opens, and Jo emerges onto the porch. Celestine bounds over to sniff her, tail wagging up a windstorm. “Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” Braden says, the relief in his voice a knife thrust in Phee’s heart.

Jo crosses the yard to join them. “The old man loves you, you know.”

“Clearly,” Braden says.

“He’s worse since Mom died.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for that. And grateful that you take care of him.”

“We’re all each other has, with Jimmy gone off to college.”

“God,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Jo. About Mitch—”

“Maybe if you’d let that go, I wouldn’t have to lose you both.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know, honey,” she says. She crosses to him and puts her arms around him. Phee goes back to the house and starts organizing everybody for the next stage of the journey.





Chapter Thirty-Four

BRADEN

Exhausted as he is, there is no sleep for Braden. A sense of heavy dread keeps his eyes open while his brain churns endlessly through the disconnected pieces of his memory. He lies on the lumpy foldout couch in the common area of the cabin, trying not to disturb the girls in the loft above with his restlessness. Phee and Jean share one of the bedrooms, Len and Dennis the other. Jo has promised—or threatened, he’s not entirely sure which—to come out in the morning.

Despite the uncomfortable couch, Braden is relieved to be alone. Besides, here at the foot of the ladder that leads to the loft, he’s closer to Allie. His ears are tuned for signs of restlessness. Twice already, he’s climbed the ladder to check on the girls, Allie sandwiched between Steph and Katie, their version of suicide watch.

All three of them are sound asleep. He keeps hoping he’ll drift into the solace of sleep, but the longer he lies here, the further away it seems. If he gets up and turns on a light, he fears it will wake Allie, who needs her rest, so there’s nothing he can do to distract himself from his thinking.

The cello isn’t helping. She’s right here in the room with him, still in the case, invisible in the dark but vivid in his mind. He can call up in exquisite detail the sensation of her weight resting against him, the strings pressing into the pads of his fingers, the easy glide of the bow, how the music seemed as natural and necessary as breathing.

“Remember?” she whispers, and the lines of now and then blur as he drops into the memory of the last time the two of them made music, right here, in this room.

He’s supposed to be practicing the Bach, but he can’t focus. What’s the point in mastering a piece if he’s not going to play again? Letting his heart speak in the music, he moves through a series of laments and nameless melodies born from the union of his soul with the cello’s.