Rapid Falls(25)

Despite the circumstances, I feel proud to be the responsible one, the one who takes care of it all. It’s moments like this when I realize how much my mother loves me. It seems easier for her to do so now that she doesn’t have to choose. There is no possible way that Anna could be anyone’s favorite.

“Thank you, Mom.” I take a step backward and bang my hip against the edge of the patio table. I pick up Rick’s glass and swallow the last half as my mom begins to sob.

“Cara, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Mom.” I realize I have forgotten to ask an important question. “What has Anna been charged with?” The line fills with silence. When my mother answers, her voice is full of humiliation.

“Prostitution.” Despite her toneless delivery, the word packs a punch. I clumsily half fall back onto the deck chair. Neither of us speaks. I feel the shame hanging in the air.

“Okay,” I say finally. Then the line goes dead between us.





CHAPTER TEN

July 1997

Divers from Nicola searched for Jesse’s body for a week before the operation was called off. Jesse’s mom, Cindy, didn’t wait to schedule the funeral. I felt relief when I heard that Jesse’s dead body wouldn’t be in the room. Until Jesse, I had never been to a funeral before. Dustin was the only person I had ever known who had died―besides my grandparents, who I didn’t remember.

Rapid Falls didn’t have a clothing store, unless you counted Stedman’s, which stocked sturdy white underwear that was nearly unisex in its stiff, full-coverage design and garish polyester pajamas made of itchy material that smelled like chemicals and felt flammable. Stedman’s didn’t sell funeral dresses, so I dug out a black crushed-velvet dress that I had worn for a Christmas concert in ninth grade. It still fit and seemed formal enough with the pearls my grandma had given me. My mom’s eyes were shining when I walked down the stairs, like they had ten days ago when I came down in my prom dress. This time, though, there was no light dancing behind the tears.

“You look perfect,” she said, wiping her eyes quickly. I wonder if she realized that she had said the same thing to Jesse that night. And to Anna.

“Thanks,” I answered dully. She reached out for my hand and squeezed it. I wished I had a dress on that didn’t make me feel like I was fourteen, but I tried not to think about that. It probably didn’t matter much what you looked like at a funeral.

We walked to the car. It would have been easier if my dad was with us, but he had left for Nicola early that morning. Anna was being discharged from the hospital. I had heard my mom and dad whispering heatedly the night before. I couldn’t quite tell what they were saying, but I knew Sergeant Murphy had gone to see Anna to take her statement several days before. He had called last night just as I was heading to bed. It didn’t sound like it had gone well.

“Mom?” I said as she turned the key in the ignition. She squinted in the jarringly bright sunshine. The layers of makeup were beginning to settle into the lines around her eyes.

“Yes, sweetheart?” she said.

“What’s going to happen next?” To Anna, I thought, but completing the sentence felt too much like an accusation. My mother let out a long sigh.

“I honestly don’t know, Cara. At this point, I’m just trying to get through each day. And when that feels like too much, I start trying to get through each hour.” She smiled ruefully, voice trembling with tears. “Right now, I’m taking it minute by minute.”

I nodded and looked out the window. “Yeah.”

We drove in silence to the church, which was across from the police station and our old elementary school. Anna, Jesse, and I had always passed the church on the walk home to the other side of the river. Even though we did it every day, I always had to will myself not to freak out as the three of us made our way across the big bridge. The rushing current below turned my stomach; it reminded me of the powerful waterfall upstream that could batter a log to pieces in seconds. Even though the river was calmer here, just a few curls of whitewater over rocks, every time my feet touched the road on the other side, I felt like I had narrowly escaped something. Years later, my high school biology teacher explained vertigo as a sensation caused by an inner-ear vibration, but my ears never felt strange when I walked across the bridge. I didn’t think I was going to fall. I was worried I was going to jump.

I looked fixedly at the dashboard as we drove over the bridge on our way to the funeral, willing myself not to imagine Jesse’s body scraping against the rocks at the bottom of the river. The churning water looked restless and menacing. I tried to keep my eyes averted but couldn’t avoid a glimpse of the police tape over the huge hole in the railing.

The church’s parking lot was packed, so my mom pulled over on the road about two hundred yards past it.

“Can you walk a little?” she asked, unbuckling her seat belt. I nodded. I felt stiff, but my bruises had faded to a milky yellow. Soon I would look normal again. My mom opened her black purse; the smell of mint gum and leather was a combination that always reminded me of her. She offered me a piece and I took it.

“I can do it,” I said, releasing my seat belt. We both sat immobile for a moment.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said, moving suddenly, like a diver jumping into a freezing lake. Our hands reached for the door handles simultaneously, like we had rehearsed it. As we walked down the road, familiar faces surrounded us. When we got close to the church, I saw Jesse’s best friend, Wade, in the doorway with his parents, greeting people and passing out programs. I wondered who had asked him to do that. I hadn’t spoken with anyone since my interview with Sergeant Murphy. My mom had fielded the few phone calls that had come in and brought me food at regular intervals while I sat in front of the TV for hours, endless music videos flickering in front of me.