Left Drowning(112)

“It does. It means everything.” I reach behind him and take something from the dresser. I hold up the torn remnants of my red shirt up and rest it again my chest.

“Why do you have that?” He is momentarily angry. “I don’t want you touching that.”

I step out of his reach. “I know. Because this shirt means something to you, doesn’t it?”

He pauses. “Yes. It does. Put it down.”

“You don’t see it yet. Think, Chris. Remember. Do you remember me?”

His face drains of color, and he starts to shake his head.

“This is my shirt. This is my Matthews shirt.”

“No, Blythe. It’s not. It belonged to … someone else.”

“No. I remember that day now,” I say gently. “You were the boy on the beach. With the buckets. And I was the girl on the dock. I gave you this.”

“No. No, there’s some kind of mistake.”

I drop the shirt. There is fear in his eyes that I have to get rid of somehow. “I know that this is a lot, but you have to listen to me. Just listen. I saw you, I talked to you. I am the girl who gave you the shirt and water.”

He is near tears. “What?”

“You know this. Some part of you remembers. It’s why you gave me a piece of my shirt back with my Christmas present. I didn’t find it until today. Until it was time.”

He sits on the bed. I give him a few minutes to let the memories take over. I’ve had the entire drive home and time in my room, and I still can’t process this. He’s in the thick of it.

He looks to my dresser, at the sea urchin. “I must have known. It’s why I gave you that. That day on the shore, when my father made me stay out and fill bucket after bucket with water and I thought I would collapse. The day you were there, with me, I found a sea urchin in one of the buckets—”

“And you stopped what he was making you do, and you gently set it back into the water.”

“Yes. I did.”

“There’s more, Chris.”

He looks at me and waits.

“That night? Later that night was the fire. And also later that night, your father tried to drown you.”

“The same night?”

“Yes. The same night. Our worlds exploded on the same night. Your father almost killed you, but he didn’t. Tell me why again.”

“What? Because … because his f*cking pager went off.” Chris puts his hands in his hair. Then he freezes. “No way, Blythe. Don’t say it. That is not possible.” He is starting to piece it together.

“It is possible. Your father was a volunteer firefighter, wasn’t he? His pager went off because of the fire at my house. He is the man who saved my life.”

“Oh Jesus, no.” Chris walks to the window and keeps his back to me. “Stop this, Blythe. Stop it. This cannot be right.”

“There are reasons that we have never talked about certain parts of our life. Neither of us mentioned Maine, and you never told me what your father’s volunteer work was … Some part of us sensed this. But we weren’t ready. We’re ready now. We’re strong enough.”

“It’s too much.”

“I saw him today. Your father. Zach and I went to see him. Don’t worry, he didn’t see us. When I saw him, it took me back to the night of the fire. I know your father, Christopher. He is the person who pulled me off the ladder.”

I let silence take over for a while. Chris has to figure out how to accept this. If he can.

“My father tried to kill me. And then he saved you.”

“Yes.”

“There is no way that this happened.” He can’t stop shaking his head. “This means that your fire saved my life. That your parents’ death saved my life. That your depression, your guilt, those years you lost? Everything you suffered through gave me life.”

I stand behind Chris,but don’t touch him yet. “We can’t begin to piece this all together in any kind of logical way, but no, that’s not what it means. It means that there was a fire that was going to happen no matter what, and my parents were going to die no matter what. But don’t you see what else? That night had a purpose. A very good one. To keep us both alive. Maybe it’s our connection that protected us. We both could have died that night, but we didn’t because of each other. Your father was close to the house, and he got there in time so that I didn’t die, and that saved you. I know the irony is incomprehensible. I do. But it’s what happened. God, my parents would never have wanted children to go through what you all did. If the fire ended it for you? I know them. I know them so well, and they would be grateful to know that something good came from the fire. Our lives and the love we share are the saving graces of that night.”

He drops his head, crying now. “That shirt? That really was you. You were on the dock.”

“Yes.”

“You stayed with me. For hours. You stayed all day.”

“Of course.”

“I was so amazed that you didn’t leave.”

“I would never leave you, Chris. Even then, when I didn’t know you.”

“You kept me from falling apart. Not just on the shore. But that night. When I thought … when I thought that I was going to drown, I thought about you. How I would never get to meet the girl who stayed with me. The girl who gave me strength. Who helped me plan a future and who got me to Matthews. I think that I must have gone to school there to … to find you. I didn’t think about it like that until now, but I was looking for you. Focusing on you that night made me hold on longer than I might have. When I couldn’t breathe, and I was choking, and dying in the f*cking toilet … I fought to stay alive because of you. His pager went off, and I felt so guilty being grateful for that because it meant that someone else was in trouble. I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt, but … I also didn’t want to die. When I woke up in glass and covered in my own blood, I thought about you. You were all I had. I’ve kept your shirt with me since that day because it was all that I had of you. Or so I thought.”