We Told Six Lies(75)

A field with a broken windmill.

The house with the wraparound porch.

The long barbed wire fence that used to hold two gray horses.

I make another sudden left turn, and this time the officer takes longer to back up and hit the gas. I consider taking wrong turns, any turns, just to widen that gap. But I’ll risk losing myself and losing Molly.

So I press down on the accelerator and keep gunning it. My hands are slick. My heart is explosive. And I just don’t know what I’ll do if he runs me off this road. They’ll never believe me. At the very least, it would take them too long to take action and find her—the way I will, right now, no matter what.

I’m coming, Molly.

The last turn is a narrow split between fences. I take the turn, and after slamming into one of the fences, the cop takes it, too. I pull in a shaky breath, steady my hands, and ready myself to play the only card I have.

We crash into the heart of the forest, the trees and brush so thick my only prayer is to stay on the dirt road. I remember this. I remember. But do I remember well enough?

I have a few crucial seconds. Just enough time to throw him off my trail. I arrive at the split I knew was coming and tear down the dirt path, then I throw the truck in reverse until I reach the split again—a split you’d only notice if you’d been here before. This time I drive in the other direction, cutting through the foliage.

When the officer whips around the bend, I kill the engine and clutch the steering wheel until I’m afraid my knuckles will split open. With any luck, he’ll see the dust I kicked up and assume that’s the direction I went. It’s the only clear road with enough turns and hills to have hidden my truck from immediate view. The path I’m on is hardly a path at all, just two tracks where tires have flattened the weeds and brush.

Holt has been coming and going, I realize.

When I don’t hear the officer’s approach, I breathe a sigh of relief and start my truck. Then I roll farther until I see the outline of a house squatting in the distance. My throat tightens, but it isn’t the sight of the cabin that destroys me, or the memories that come flooding back.

It’s the white van parked out front.

I get out of my truck, kicking myself for leaving the gun at the train tracks. I take one step onto the soil, and I’m slammed with a memory so heavy, my knees nearly buckle.

I’m playing with my brother near the cabin. My aunt is there. She’s very thin. Too thin, Dad keeps saying, and he seems sad.

Dad asks if I want to play baseball.

“There’s no bat,” Holt says. “No ball.”

Dad shrugs. Messes my hair. “Cobain could probably knock one to the pond with a tree branch and a stone. Wanna give it a try, kiddo?”

Dad slings his arm around me.

Dad hugs me to him.

When Dad isn’t looking, I glance at my brother. The look on his face is there. The one that scares me. The one he reserves for me late at night. Mom told me to stay away from him when he gets like that. Said sometimes he gets frustrated that things don’t come as easy to him as they do me, and that makes him sad. And because he doesn’t know how to process his sadness, he gets angry. So that’s how I always thought of my brother.

Holt, happy.

Or Holt, blue.

More often than not, he was Holt Blue.





MOLLY


Molly took his hand, and together they waded farther into the water.

When she felt her feet sweep from the dirt floor, she panicked. But then his arm was there, wrapping around her, and he said, “Together.”

Her eyes enlarged at the sound of his voice. It was so much like Cobain’s, but not quite. He looked so much like him, but not quite. Moved and ate and danced like Cobain, but not quite. He still had the same eyes she saw in that photo of him with Cobain, though—the brown of a grizzly bear hide.

She remembered how the photos had suddenly stopped when Cobain and his brother were young. How Cobain said he got “messed up in the head,” around that time. It took her a long time to recall these things. To fill the holes. She still didn’t know everything, but she knew enough.

What happened between the brothers to make one hate the other this much?

Would she live long enough to find out?

Molly closed her eyes and imagined it was Cobain’s arm that held her. It wasn’t him who stole her away from the life she had. And that meant he was still back there, wondering why she left him.

She nodded once because she couldn’t keep her head above water anymore.

Holt pulled his legs up, and the two floated toward the bottom. Molly opened her eyes and saw him watching her face. His eyes were unbearably large with fear. Was it even possible to keep themselves down there? Would human nature cause them to burst to the top for a lungful of air whether or not they were intent on ever breathing again?

Holt took her to the bottom, and Molly readied herself to pretend she was a corpse. She wouldn’t let him drown her. She wouldn’t die this way. Not with his arms around her. Not with him looking at her like she was the only thing that mattered. She wouldn’t breathe her last breath beside the brother of the only boy she’d ever loved.

But as the cold seeped deep into her muscles and her lungs began to burn for oxygen, she wondered what death awaited her if she resurfaced? Cancer, fifty years from now? A car crash two years out of college? A heart attack, though she’d never had the signs? One way or another she’d return to the earth the same way she came. Wouldn’t it be easier for this to be it?