Love Letters to the Dead(65)

“Where do you want to go?”

“The old highway.” Right then, I knew I had to.

“Are you sure?” Sky asked.

I nodded yes.

So we turned onto the road, which I hadn’t been on since, except in my mind. I was breathing way too fast.

When we got by the bridge, I said, “Stop here.” I forced the door handle open and stepped out. I walked toward the edge of the bridge. I kept walking forward. I put one foot on the ledge. I held my arms out. The night was still. No wind. Nothing to push me one way or the other.

I could feel my one foot on the slim line of metal. The balance beams of our childhood. And the other foot still back on the earth.

I saw May walking out, her slender arms reaching out through the air on either side. I saw her fairy wings come out. I saw them trying to flutter to keep her up. To take her back. But I’d broken them. I saw the wings like tissue paper break off and float into the sky as she fell. I saw them falling after her, slowly like leaves. But her body. Her body had density. It was gone before I could hear it splash. Her body that I used to sleep next to. Her body that would steal the covers and roll like a burrito so that I would shiver and then give up and scoot closer, just to get a little warmer. I remembered how she smelled like apples and mint and earth in the summer. I wanted to go with her.

And then I heard Sky. “What the f*ck are you doing?”

I pulled my foot off of the ledge. I could feel him grab me.

“Don’t get that close,” he said. “You’re scaring me.”

I heard the sound of the river moving on, as if it hadn’t stolen my sister’s body. I turned to him. And I just talked. Because everything was already lost. “She left me. She’d leave me alone at the movies with this guy who used to do stuff to me. I know she didn’t mean to—but I was so—I’m so mad at her.” I’d said it. I’d said it out loud.

“Laurel,” Sky said, and reached out to me again. “Of course you are. What guy? Who did that?”

“It doesn’t matter now. A friend of Paul’s. And I tried to tell her what happened, and then—she was so upset, and I’m afraid, I’m afraid it killed her.”

“Why would you think that? What happened?” Sky asked.

I told him the whole story. When I was finished, he looked at me and said, “Laurel, it wasn’t your fault.”

“But maybe if I never let it happen in the first place, or maybe if I never said anything, maybe she’d still be here.”

“Stop it,” he said. “You can’t blame yourself. Maybe she’d still be here if she hadn’t been drinking. Or if the wind were blowing a different direction that night. Or if she’d leaned another way. You’ll go crazy thinking like that. She made her own choices. You have to look out for yourself now. That’s the best thing you can do for her. That’s what she’d want for you.”

I looked at his eyes, and it started to sink in. I’d told Sky, and nothing bad was happening. Nothing worse. He was still right there. Just standing in front of me.

“You don’t hate me?”

“No.”

“You’re not scared of me?”

“No. I just want you to know that you don’t have to let that stuff happen to you anymore.”

He put his arms around me, and something burst open. I started to cry. “How could she just leave me here to live without her? I miss her so much. I love her. I want her to grow up and become who she was meant to be. I wanted her to grow up with me.”

Sky let me cry, and when I finished, he led me away from the bridge and opened the door to his truck. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

We got in together, driving the other way on the road. He drove fast but never too fast. Just right the whole time, the way he always had.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Amelia,

Sometimes it feels strange that the sun just goes on rising, as if nothing happened. When I woke up today, the birds were chirping their oblivious chirping, and cars were starting down the block. I’d hardly slept last night after I got home from the bridge, and my eyes would only open into little slits. As I tried to pull myself out of bed, I thought of you for some reason. I thought of you on the tiny island where you might have landed and lived as a castaway.

I imagine what it would have been like, waiting and waiting for someone to come and rescue you. Building fires, making smoke signals that disappeared into the clouds. How long could you have lived there, you with your navigator? Which one of you died first and had to mourn the other?

They’ve found artifacts on Gardner Island, which lies near Howland—the place you meant to land that morning, in the middle of the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii. They found pieces of Plexiglas that matched the kind on the windows of your plane, the heel of a shoe that could have belonged to you, bird bones and turtle bones, the remains of a fire, shards of Coke bottles that seemed as if someone had used them to boil water to drink. And then, most recently, they found four broken pieces of a jar, the shape and size of one used for a cream made to fade freckles in the era when you were alive. Everyone knew that you had freckles you wished you could erase. As I got dressed, I carried the thought of that little jar, left behind as evidence. It seems so vulnerable, compared to your brave face meeting the world.