The Elizas: A Novel(94)

But I always wake up, and I always tell Albert about it, and he always tells me that I did feel love for her, and that’s okay, and maybe I always will, but I also have to recognize that she is the bad person, and it was all her fault, not mine.

“You were talking about Eleanor when I found you in the bar,” Gabby says on a day when she and Leonidas visit. Well, when I finally let them visit. “God, you were so freaked out. She just left, you said. Jesus, Gabby, she’s still alive, how is that possible? I was heartbroken. You were supposed to forget her, but it was like you remembered everything, and it was killing you. So I had to stop you. I had to try to . . . set you right, I guess. I said you couldn’t talk about her anymore. And you said, but I have talked about her. She’s in my book. It’s why I made Mom and Dad get your book. I was in a panic.”

“And then what? After you found me in the bar at the Tranquility?”

“You got up and just ran out of there. I didn’t know where you were going. You stopped at the pool, but you were still raving, and it seemed like you . . . saw someone. You were so scared. You said Eleanor wasn’t going to stop until you made it right. You said this was why you’d come to the Tranquility—something had led you here. It was so you could remember, and so she could find you. You remembered everything in that instant. It was like everything we worked so hard to suppress broke through.”

“Though I guess I forgot it all when I woke up the next day,” I grumbled. “I bet that made you happy, huh?”

“Oh, Eliza,” Gabby says, lowering her eyes.

But I feel so bitter, tricked, betrayed, duped, obfuscated. Complex lies upon lies have been spun, all by people I’m supposed to love. I’m not sure if I can ever really trust them again.

“Look, I made a promise not to ever mention Eleanor, and I took that promise seriously,” Gabby admits. “Remembering her would be a huge trigger for you. It was why we erased so much of your life that would remind you of her, too. We went through your room and removed all your mementos. And later, we even took down your Facebook page—there were a few spots where you made a reference to the book Eleanor was writing. We didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

“Hmmph,” I grumble, though at least this explains what cuckoo Eliza Facebook page Kiki was talking about looking at when she first met me.

“And anyway.” She smiles wryly. “Anyway, it’s not like you really saw Eleanor at the bar. It’s impossible.”

I tap my teeth together. Was it? Then I look at Leonidas, who, so far, has stood there numbly, like a post. He’s no longer a stranger, all the feelings I had for him rushing back like a beloved book I’ve just reread, but I’m angry with him, too.

“So why were you involved in keeping all this a secret?” I snap, feeling embarrassed to be talking to him with my stringy hair and unwashed armpits.

He shrugs. “Because I knew everything. You told me you were going to kill her before you did, and then I was the one who rescued you the night it happened.”

“And were you at Palm Springs, too?”

“No. Gabby just called me to talk about it later. She was frantic.”

I stare at the ceiling and let out a breath. “How did you find me that night it all went down, anyway?”

“You were gone when I got to the dorm. So I drove to M&F—I had a horrible feeling. I saw you running into the pizza place, and then you just blurted it all out.”

“And then you yelled at me for not doing what I was told and dumped me at my parents’, is that it?”

Leonidas looks tormented. “I should have stayed by you that day. I worried all through class—I knew you were going to go to dinner with her. But maybe if I’d stayed, you wouldn’t have seen her.”

“Or it might not have mattered. She was out to get me. It would have happened another day. The story would have ended in the same way.” Well, in sort of the same way. Except that maybe I would have heard a thump when Eleanor hit the concrete on the highway. And a horn honk. A crunch and pop as a car hit her.

Instead, I’d heard nothing. The only evidence I had she was gone was the cops showing up at my parents’ later that night, saying they had her body at the morgue.

“And as for breaking up with you.” Leonidas clears his throat. “I was told by the doctors your parents hired that I had to. They said that ties to the past, especially to her”—he makes a face, so I’m assuming he’s talking about Eleanor—“would be detrimental. Your doctor wanted your mom to cut ties with you, even, but she said absolutely not.” He walks to the window. “I hated dropping you like that, though. Not that you care, but I went through a lot of pain. I missed you terribly.”

Someday, perhaps, I will care about Leonidas’s feelings in all this. But now, front and center, is the How Eliza Was Duped show. Everything else is on another network, one I’m not watching.

But then, after they leave, I am given another memory, one that hasn’t come back yet. A few days after the singular evening we went out with Eleanor together, Leonidas and I were on a drive somewhere. I still felt like shit—whatever Eliza gave me created a hangover that went on for days. I waited for Leonidas to tell me I told you that you shouldn’t have drunk—I would have, had the roles been reversed. But instead, he drove silently until we reached Santa Monica. He parked near the amusement park and unlocked the doors.