The Secrets We Keep(38)

“It’s not your fault, Maddy.” Mom quickly dried her eyes, the stoic mask she’d worn for weeks sliding back into place. I couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been doing that, how many nights these past weeks she’d handed me a bowl of soup and promised me it was going to be okay, then retreated to her room to silently lose it.

She reached out to touch me, to wipe the tears I didn’t know were falling from my cheeks. I backed away, deserving no part of her comfort. “I miss her and I don’t know how to bring her back. I’m trying, I am, but it’s not working. I’m constantly screwing up.”

“No, you’re not.” I turned around at my father’s voice. I watched as his eyes drifted past me to my mom, then to the stack of baby pictures she had balanced on one of my journals. His next words drifted out on a sigh, and I didn’t know if they were meant for me or Mom. “You’re doing fine, better than anyone expected.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

His briefcase was still in his hand, his tie loosened but still on. He’d gone to work the Monday after the burial service and went in early and worked late each night.

“The school called and said you skipped most of your classes. I called Alex, he couldn’t find you either. I tried your cell, but you didn’t pick up.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at it. Nine missed calls. Four from Dad. Four from Alex. And one from Josh. I hadn’t heard it ring. Ignoring the rest, I clicked on Josh’s number. No message. No nothing.

Dad’s hand wrapped around mine, squeezing gently to get my attention. “We need to talk about this, Maddy. The three of us need to work our way through this.”

I yanked my hand free and started to walk away. “Maddy, wait,” Dad called after me. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t pretend everything is fine.”

“Do you ever wish Ella had lived?” It was an unfair question to ask, as there was no right answer. If they said yes, if they said they wished Ella was alive, it’s not like I was going to come clean and reveal who I was. And if they said no, if they said they were happy it was Maddy who had survived—either way their answer would crush me, leave me feeling more guilty, more trapped than before. But I asked it anyway. “Do you ever wonder what it would’ve been like if I had died and not her?”

Mom paled, and Dad took a step back. Neither of them spoke. They stared at me as if calculating what the proper response was supposed to be. That silence, that pause in time and the look of dread on their faces had me wondering if they’d thought about it, if I’d asked the one question that they secretly agonized over.

“Never,” Dad replied. “I wouldn’t trade you, either of you, for the other.”

“Maddy, please.” I heard the plea in Mom’s voice, knew that if I looked up, I’d see tears to match. “I’ve lost your sister. I can’t lose you, too.”

I don’t know what possessed me to say it. Perhaps I was looking for a way to tell them the truth without having to admit it, without the risk of them actually understanding what I was saying. Without giving a second thought to my words, I raised my eyes to meet my mother’s and said, “I’m already gone. I died that night on the side of that road with my sister.”





24

I walked the two miles to the cemetery. To my sister’s grave. To my grave. It was cold and starting to rain. I’d left my coat at home on the kitchen chair, but none of that mattered. I didn’t feel it—not the sting of the rain as it turned to ice or my hands shaking as they hung limply by my side. I kept walking, oblivious to everything.

I knew where the marker was. It was buried five rows deep amid a couple hundred other stones. They laid it yesterday. My parents asked if I wanted to go with them to see it last night, but I didn’t. There was something about seeing my name carved into granite that I didn’t think I was quite ready to handle.

But I hadn’t come here today for visual proof of what I had done, of the finality of the lie I had spun. I’d come to talk to the sister whose life I was trying desperately to figure out.

“Hey.” I ran my hand across the smooth stone, taking with it a puddle of water. I studied it for a second, watched the drops roll off my fingers and onto the ground. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was cold and wet, if she had been cold and wet the night the paramedics pulled her from the heated car and into the dark night.

I looked at the ground, my eyes following the line of the grass. They’d put it back in place, like a carpet they’d unrolled, but it was dying, brown and brittle. The lines where they’d peeled back the original sod gaped, as if it was retreating into itself, as if the grass had tried and failed miserably at reseeding itself.

Kind of like me.

“It’s raining again,” I said as I sank to the ground. The wet grass soaked the legs of my jeans. I watched, mesmerized as the light blue faded to dark, the edges inching out until I could feel the cold settling into my bones. Only then, when a violent chill had me moving to my heels, did I speak again. “It seems like it’s always raining when I see you. Always cold.”

I hadn’t been here since the day of her burial. I had refused each morning when Mom asked me if I wanted to go. She thought it might make things easier, that perhaps it would bring me some closure. Closure wasn’t what I needed. Advice was.