The Secrets We Keep(43)

“Ella?” Josh said when I didn’t respond. “Look at me. Look at me and tell me what you were thinking.”

I blinked long and hard, then did as he asked, steeling myself for his anger before opening my eyes. It wasn’t there. No anger, no hatred staring back at me, not even a bit of annoyance. What I saw was forgiveness and unwavering faith.

“I did ask for you.”

“What? Wait, what are you saying?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I woke up and everything hurt. Everything. He was there, holding my hand, whispering for me to wake up. And when I did, he was so happy to see her, like his whole—”

“And you didn’t think I would be?” Josh interrupted. “You think that if I had any idea that it was you lying in that hospital bed I wouldn’t have been there? That it wouldn’t have been my hand you were holding, my eyes you saw first?”

“I didn’t know who he was, who I was. And when he told me, when Mom and Dad told me I was Maddy, I believed them.”

“They told me you were dead, did you know that? When the police showed up at his house, Alex and I went to the ER. We had to pass Maddy’s car on the way. It was still there, wrapped around the tree. The nurse at the front desk wouldn’t let me see you. She told me nobody but your parents were allowed in the trauma room, and they weren’t there yet. I kept thinking of you, hurt and alone.”

“Don’t,” I begged. “Please don’t.” No amount of explanation was going to change this, no amount of anger or guilt could undo what I’d done.

“You know what Alex did?” Josh’s gaze locked on mine, forcing me to see, to understand every single word he said. “He sat down. Right there in the hospital waiting room, he sat down and waited. He didn’t argue with the nurse, or fight his way past the security guard to get to Maddy. He stayed there and didn’t move, like he was frozen in place. You know what I did?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t have spoken then even if I’d wanted to.

“I ignored them—the security guard, the nurse, everyone, and pushed my way through until some big orderly stopped me. But I got to see you, both of you, lying there hooked up to everything. The alarms on your sensors were going off. Hers … hers were silent.”

I didn’t remember any of that—not the emergency room, not the doctors, not Josh being there.

“You were both in the same room, your clothes piled up on the floor. I remembered the coat you had had on and the sweatshirt from RISD you never took off. I saw them in the pile of clothes. I knew you had them on when you came to pick up Maddy. I asked the nurse which one of you had been wearing that, and she pointed to Maddy. So that is where I went. Toward her. Toward the person I thought was you.”

I nodded. I’d given her both in the car. She was cold and wet and shivering and I didn’t know what else to do.

“One of the doctors asked if I knew you, and I gave him your names. He told me you were gone, that you had died instantly when you hit the tree. That you probably hadn’t suffered. Like somehow that was supposed to make me feel better.”

I knew what he meant. They’d told me the exact same thing, over and over. It didn’t help. Not one single bit.

“At first I didn’t believe them. I begged them to try again, to do something. But then the paramedic who pulled you—I mean Maddy—from the car came over and told me he’d done everything he could but she was already gone when they got there.”

He paused and swiped his arm across his eyes. He wasn’t crying but his eyes were heavy, and the hitch in his voice said he didn’t want to relive this memory any more than I did.

“You know what I did, Ella?” I shook my head, and he continued. “I stayed there. I refused to leave. I sat there on the floor next to you—next to Maddy’s body—until your parents arrived so you wouldn’t be alone. Even then, I wouldn’t go.”

“Mom and Dad were so happy to see me when I woke up,” I blurted out. “Everybody was. Alex was. I have never seen them like that, Josh, never seen any of them so scared and excited and relieved to see Maddy.”

“You’re kidding me, right? You based your decision to become your sister on your parents’ reaction to seeing you? On Alex’s relief that you were alive? I sat there for four hours holding Maddy’s cold hand while Alex sat in the waiting room. In the waiting room, Ella! Being coddled by Maddy’s friends. I was the one who was there with you … with her!” He waved his hand in the air, pissed. “It was me, not him, with you the whole time.”

“But you didn’t see my parents,” I said, remembering Mom’s tears, her whispered words about how she couldn’t lose Maddy, too. “You didn’t see Jenna or those people in the hall. Her friends. They were so happy that it was her who survived. I couldn’t tell them it was a mistake, take back the one person they had begged fate to let live. Plus, I owed her. I’d killed her, Josh. My own sister. I killed her, and I owe her my life in return. I owe her that much.”

Cursing my tears, I brushed them away. “She’s the one they love. She’s the one they were praying would survive.”

“Is that what you think?” Josh asked, and I flinched at the fury I could hear in his voice. His entire body was vibrating, the tears I had seen earlier gone, replaced with pure, unadulterated anger.