The Confession
Page 2
***
“OK, on the count of three,” Steve said, “we jump.”
I peered over the edge of the bluff. Twenty feet below was the James River, all green and cold-looking. I had no idea twenty feet could look like a thousand.
“You go first,” I said.
Steve laughed. “Yeah, right, I’ve heard that before.”
I shook my head.
“No, really. You jump, I jump. Promise.”
Steve was thirteen. I was eleven. Parents say they don’t have favorites, but some do. My mom did anyway. Steve was her favorite by a mile.
“We’ll hold hands,” Steve said. “It’ll be like in the movies.”
I looked back to the river. It now seemed greener, colder and much farther below us than before.
“I don’t know,” I whined. “What if we hit a log or something?”
“C’mon, you big chicken!” he laughed. “We’re not gonna hit anything but water!”
Mom loved my brother because he was an underdog. Born prematurely, he weighed a little over two pounds at birth. Steve’s lungs were so tiny that he literally had to fight for every breath he took. He was a fighter, Mom said. My brave little fighter.
I was not a fighter. I was a chicken.
“Are you gonna jump or not?” Steve goaded one last time.
I stepped to the bluff’s edge, closed my eyes, and took in a really, really deep breath.
“OK, on the count of three,” Steve said. “One, two…”
Before he finished the countdown, however, I jumped backward. I just couldn’t do it.
That’s when the worst thing that could have happened, happened: Steve grabbed my wrist.
If only he hadn’t grabbed my wrist.
Oh, how I wish he hadn’t done that.
I yanked my arm free, then for some unknown reason, I did the unthinkable – I pushed him. It was instinct. I didn’t mean for him to fall.
But he did fall.
Sideways off the bluff onto the rocks below.
And the look on his face as he fell – that wonderfully tan and beautiful face – haunts me to this day.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I cried the day of the accident. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to…”
But it didn’t matter. The day her favorite child died, my mother’s heart closed up like a fist. I could see it in her eyes. I could see it in her face. She was dead to me. Dead to the world.