See You at Harry's(33)

Holden finds me in the living room and asks what I’m doing, but I don’t know how to answer. I just know that every time I see one of Charlie’s toys, it’s as if it’s waiting for him to come back. And every time I hold one, the ache in my chest hurts even more.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s just too hard to —”

“Let me help you,” he says.

Together, we quietly finish gathering Charlie’s things, then sit on the couch. The water is running upstairs, so I guess Sara got my mom out of bed and into the shower. When the doorbell rings, neither of us moves to answer. It rings again.

“We should see who it is,” Holden says. But neither of us gets up.

A minute later, the door creaks open and Ran walks in.





“I TRIED TO CALL,” Ran says. “But no one answered.”

For the first time, I can’t read his face. I’ve never seen this Ran before. Usually his face matches his T-shirt motto. But today his coat is zipped up, just like his expression. And I don’t know what to say.

“There was a story on the news last night,” Ran says. “I didn’t want to believe it. When you didn’t answer the phone, I went to the restaurant this morning and saw your dad, and he . . . he told me what happened. I just . . . can’t believe it.”

When he looks at me, I wonder what he must see, because suddenly his blank expression changes and he looks exactly like how I feel. And when I see him, tears start to slip down my cheeks again, stinging the raw skin there. And then he starts to cry, too. Holden moves over on the couch so Ran can sit down. Then he pulls us both to him and we cry into his chest, our foreheads touching. I can feel Holden’s heartbeat against my cheek, and I close my eyes, concentrating on the sureness of it. Grateful for it. But then the stairs creak, and we sit up and quickly wipe our faces as my mom’s feet appear at the top step. We wait quietly as she starts to come down, my sister following. I realize, when I see her feet, how much I really need her. How much I want her to hold me. To tell me — I’m not sure what. Maybe just to let me know she’s here. That she always will be. But when she reaches the landing, she stops and turns. “I just can’t,” she says. “Oh, God. Oh, God.” She starts to sob. Then her feet slowly climb back up the stairs and disappear.

Holden takes a deep breath and stands up. “I need to take a walk. You guys wanna come?”

We nod.

Outside, it’s chilly but sunny. We stand at the end of the driveway and look around. Everything feels quieter. Holden kicks a stone across the road. I realize it’s a school day and Ran has skipped. He shoots a stone across the road perfectly. The dog across the street comes bounding over and starts yipping at us hopefully, but he’s trapped as usual.

Holden’s cell rings, and he pulls it out of his pocket, turning his back to us.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “Yeah. . . . Really? Yeah. I’m here. I’m at the end of the driveway, actually. . . . OK. OK, thanks.”

He puts his phone back in his pocket.

“Gray’s coming to get me,” he says.

The three of us continue to quietly kick at stones until Gray’s car pulls up and Holden climbs in and they drive away.

Ran looks cold and uncomfortable with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Come on,” I say.

He follows me to the neighbors’ yard and what’s left of the pine-tree cave. We climb under and sit up against the tree, our arms pressed against each other.

For a long time, we don’t talk. I can feel our thoughts swirling together. Our memories. Our emptiness.

“When my mom was sick, I used to imagine what it would be like if she died,” he says after a while. “I used to ask my dad what would happen to us. But he would just shake his head and not answer. He’d already lost his job because he kept staying home to take care of her. I kind of had to take care of myself, even though I didn’t really know how.”

I picture Ran when I first knew him. With his too-small clothes and always-runny nose.

“Anyway, one weekend, I went and stayed with my grandma, and she took me to her church. The minister told a story about this mystic who believed that even when there was all this horrible stuff going on, like the plague, that all would be well. She had this chant, and no matter how horrible things got, she would keep saying it. All will be well, she’d say. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. The minister had everyone in church say the chant, too. And I remember sitting there, hearing everyone around me say those words, and I started to believe them. So after church, I started saying them to myself. Muttering them every time I got scared about my mom. And pretty soon she got better. And I really believed it was because of my chanting. So I kept doing it. And life just kept getting better. My parents started the T-shirt company together. Business boomed. I really thought if you said the words and believed them, they would be true.”

He stops for a minute and takes a sad, deep breath. I do the same and smell the piney Christmas smell and realize that Christmas will never be the same again.

“But the whole thing was a scam,” Ran says. “It was just some stupid thing to say to make me believe life isn’t unfair. And just when I thought life was perfect, it became unbearable again.”


I think of all the times Ran has said those words to me. He said them like they were a fact. I always secretly loved when he said them because I thought if anyone knew how things were going to turn out, it would be Ran.