Echoes Between Us

by Katie McGarry

  Mom’s mouth gapes, and someone knocks on the front door. A curse flies out of my mouth as I leave the kitchen, stalk across the living room and yank open the door. I’m dumbfounded as a tall man, a real-life moving force of boulders, stares me down like he’s the reaper and I’m the one who just took my last breath. He’s in dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and black work boots meant to kick ass.

  “Yes?” My shoulders roll back, prepared to take a swing if he tries to walk in.

  “I’m Ulysses.” Our landlord. Veronica’s dad. Crap. Did our check bounce again? But then he extends his hand. “Are you Sawyer?”

  “Yeah.” I shake his hand and don’t miss how he squeezes to let me know that if he wanted, he could crush every bone in my body. I’m a strong guy, though, and have enough balls to squeeze back. “I’ll get my mom.”

  “Actually, it’s you I’d like to speak with.”

  Stunned, it takes me a beat longer than it should to step back and let him in. Ulysses walks in and glances around the living room, taking in the stack of boxes I’ve better organized lining the wall.

  “Hello,” Mom says, and Ulysses introduces himself. I forget that they’ve never met face-to-face—only dealing with each other via calls, texts and emails. Mom brings on her patented charm. They exchange a few pleasantries, and Mom invites him to sit at the kitchen table.

  He waves off her offer for something to drink, and the moment Mom and I sit, he’s pinning me with his gaze. “I won’t take much of your time. I wanted to talk to you about my daughter, V.”

  If it’s my attention he wants, he has it. “She okay?”

  “She’s dealing with a rough headache, but she’s asleep and she typically feels better when she wakes.”

  I nod because Veronica mentioned having headaches with her tumor.

  “V and I had a long talk, and she told me how you found out about her brain tumor.”

  Mom twitches with the news, news I never told her, information she didn’t know, but she recovers quickly. “Sawyer and I are so sorry and have been praying for you and your daughter since finding out.”

  “Thank you.” His eyes flicker from Mom to me. “V is private about the tumor. She’d prefer for people to focus on her and not on it. I hate that it was a friend of mine who told you. V said you won’t tell anyone else, and that it appears you’ve kept your promise. But as her father, I need to hear that guarantee myself, especially since I’m part of the reason you found out.”

  “I told Veronica I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I won’t.”

  Ulysses nails me with a glare as he silently communicates what torture lies ahead for me if I tell anyone Veronica’s secret. Satisfied he’s let my imagination figure out the ways he’ll make me bleed if I upset his daughter, Ulysses leans back in a chair too small for him and strokes his black goatee. “I appreciate your discretion.”

  “Of course.” Mom pops into the conversation. “I’ll admit, out of respect for your daughter, Sawyer hasn’t told me much about her tumor.”

  He crosses his massive arms over his chest. “The tumor is small, benign, and for now there’s no course of treatment because of the position of the tumor in the brain. Besides migraines, she’s fine, but the doctors keep a close eye on the tumor in case anything changes.”

  Mom leans forward on the table like she’s honestly concerned. “What happens if things change?”

  Doesn’t take a genius to see that question makes Ulysses uncomfortable. “That depends upon the change, but more than likely surgery followed up with extreme doses of chemo and radiation. At least that’s what my wife went through. The treatment will be tough. My wife was bedridden and sick the last years of her life.”

  Something in how he says “tough” makes me think of a living death.

  Mom’s head tilts, and there’s a pit in my stomach that this is now gossip for her. As she goes to open her mouth to dig for more, I intervene. “Veronica’s been amazing on our project.”

  Ulysses doesn’t smile, yet he beams with pride. “She’s enjoying it. In fact, that’s another reason why I dropped by. V said you two were going to work on your project today, but I’m putting a hold on that. V didn’t go to bed until late last night and she needs to sleep.”

  I glance at the clock on the stove. It’s six in the evening. How long can a person sleep? As if reading my mind, he says, “When she gets bad migraines, she’s been known to sleep for close to twenty-four hours. I know it was tough with V’s friends graduating and Nazareth on a different track than her to find a partner for the project. She said you’ve been good to work with, and I appreciate that. There will be times when her migraines will take her down for a day or two. V’s smart, smarter than what she gives herself credit for, and she’ll make sure that this project is perfect.”

  It already is. “That’s no problem.”

  “I also came to tell you I’m pulling V from school for the week. We’ll leave tomorrow morning. It’s not something I normally do, but it’s been a while since V and I’ve had a vacation. I’ve got a haul down to the Gulf Coast. V loves the ocean and she needs the time.” The sorrow in Ulysses’ voice causes something protective to coil inside me.

  “Is Veronica okay?”

  Ulysses doesn’t answer, just stares at the table. My mom touches my wrist and shakes her head at me as if I’m an idiot for asking the question. “Ulysses, Sawyer and I will watch over the house while you’re gone, and of course, we know Veronica will do a great job on the project. Tell her not to worry about taking whatever time off she needs.”

  “Thank you.” His voice is gruff. “V also mentioned that she told you about dinner next weekend. As of right now, she decided to put that on hold for a while.”

  “Dinner?” Mom pipes in.

  Mom won’t understand early Thanksgiving. I don’t pretend to get it, but I like Veronica so I go with it. Mom will judge. “She invited you, me and Lucy to have dinner with them next week so we could all meet.”

  Mom’s face softens as if she’s surprised someone like Veronica would do something like that. “That was nice of her. Tell her we hope she feels better soon, and that we’d love to reschedule dinner when she’s up for it.”

  Ulysses stands. “Will do.” As Mom and I move, he says, “I can see myself out. Thank you for your time.”

  From my seat at the table, I watch as he walks across the living room, opens the door then shuts it behind him. Thoughts race as to what could be wrong with Veronica. Yesterday, she was fine. Better than fine. She was brilliant sunshine, comebacks, and a daredevil. She was an unsinkable ship, but the way Ulysses looked when he said, V loves the ocean and she needs the time—it’s as if she’s dying.

  A pang of guilt lashes along my spine. What if she got hurt because I convinced her to jump? What if jumping messed something up in her brain? What if my decisions hurt her?

  My brain cracks into two halves and both sides have slipped into madness.

  The silence between me and Mom is deafening as I dread whatever might come out of her mouth next. Beyond being pissed I didn’t join Sylvia’s group, Mom’ll now be angry I’m partners with a girl who has migraines and a brain tumor and misses school.

  For the second time tonight, Mom reaches over, places her hand over mine and gives my fingers a squeeze. “I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  “That I raised a great boy.” She pats my hand, grabs her cell and then stands, leaving me feeling off balance.

  Any lingering feeling of the high I had from yesterday’s adrenaline rush flees. God help me, I want to jump again.

  What kind of monster am I that I’m filled with this need? But then another monster looms in the back of my brain, and I yell out, “Don’t tell anyone, Mom! Don’t you dare tell anyone about Veronica’s tumor!”

  * * *

  I’m at war with myself. Pissed because I don’t belong here. Pissed because I have nowhere else to go. Pissed because the place I want to go—to any cliff with a dangerous jump—is no good fo
r me.

  I’m in the back of the room of the AA meeting. My knee bounces so hard I’m shocked no one has tried to punch me. Listening is hard, concentrating is harder as the speakers get up and talk about the challenges, failures, and successes of their week. I’m not sure if I had any successes this week, but I’m racking up the failures left and right.

  Some people share the overview of their dismal affair with alcohol. Their stories are a mix and match of alcohol-induced scenarios that lead to losing jobs, marriages, kids, friends and family. People clap when a guy finishes sharing. Knox the Surfer Dude stands from his seat and goes to the podium. When he looks up to speak, he nods his chin at me to let me know he sees me. I nod back, even though I don’t like being seen.

  Knox talks about family complications—how his mom and dad drink and don’t understand why he doesn’t, and because of that, he’s moving out, even though he can’t afford it. He talks about trusting God with this choice, and that sounds like a lot of faith for someone who admits he doesn’t have enough money.

  He wraps up, and the person who led the meeting asks if anyone else wants to speak. There’s a part of me that does. I want to yell. Scream maybe. If I do, maybe that will make me feel better and I won’t want to jump anymore. Maybe if I can let go of all the things wound tight inside me, I wouldn’t be so messed up. But I can’t because my problem isn’t with drinking.

  The meeting is dismissed, and I equal parts want Knox to talk to me and for him to stroll right on by like I ain’t no thing. Knox makes eye contact with me again, and it appears like he’s heading in my direction, but takes his sweet time as he stops by every damn person to make small talk. Right when I feel like my bones are about to pop out of my skin if I don’t leave, Knox finally slow-strides his way up to me. “You came back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ready to talk?”

  I scan the room, wondering if someone is watching, if someone is judging, if someone knows my truth. Wondering if they know Mom and they’ll tell her where I’ve been and then the rest of the world will know all my secret weaknesses.

  “Brother,” Knox says. “There’s nobody here who’s going to judge you. We leave that nonsense to everyone outside this room.”

  I shove my hands into my pockets. “You still live at home?”

  “Not much longer. My parents asked me to move in last spring to help with bills. It sounded good at the time. I’m in college, working a full-time job, and things were and still are tight for me on my own. But then I moved in and remembered why I had to move out to begin with. Living with my parents is like playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Maybe someday they’ll change, but that someday isn’t now.”

  I’m playing with that gun every time I jump, and the guilt that walked me through that door tonight is a boulder in my stomach. “I put someone in a dangerous situation so I could feel high, and I can’t do that again.”

  Knox sizes me up. “Anyone get hurt?”

  “I scared her.” Because that’s how normal people would react.

  Veronica’s fall was a freak of nature, my jumping after her was a gut reaction the moment I heard her scream, but being on the ledge with her was where the lie began. We possibly could have climbed the rock wall. The ground was unstable, but the risks between going up and going down were equal. I should have made it her choice, but I wanted to jump and I wanted to jump with someone in my arms who couldn’t swim because it heightened the danger.

  But I’m haunted now, in ways I’ve never been before. The pure look of fear on Veronica’s face when we surfaced after the jump was a damn kick in the balls that won’t stop hurting. She was scared, is probably traumatized, and that’s my fault. “She’s physically okay, but I’m a bastard for putting her in the spot that I did. It could have gone wrong in a lot of different ways. If I had messed up even a fraction, she could have died.”

  “First step in all this is to admit you have a problem,” Knox says.

  “Yeah.” That much I read on the website. A small voice screams inside me that jumping isn’t as big of a deal, but then I think of Veronica shaking in my arms, her pale face, her wide eyes. I can’t do that again. Not to her. Not ever. “I don’t drink. I have these urges for an adrenaline rush. I find dangerous cliffs and jump into water, and it’s getting tough to stop. You still think this place is for me now?”

  Knox is quiet, and I prepare for him to turn me away. “Truth? Until I can find you that specific support meeting, which I’m not sure exists, you’re stuck with me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Do you want to jump off a cliff right now?”

  I nod.

  “Then yeah, you’re stuck with me. Want to go get some food?”

  Not at all. I really want to get in my car, peel out of the parking lot, find a jump and feel the sweet rush of flying through the air and then the slight pain of hitting the water. But I also don’t want to do any of that because as much as the rush will feel good at the time, the guilt of being so weak that I couldn’t stop myself will eat me in the morning. “Yeah.”

  “All right, brother, let’s go eat.”

  He starts for the door and when he notices I don’t follow, he glances over his shoulder. “You all right?”

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why are you taking me on?”

  “Simple answer—because someone took me on and saved my life. Complicated answer—there are a ton of things wrong with what you just told me, but there’s one that bothers me the most. You’re more concerned that your friend was in danger than you are that what you do will get you killed. I was like that once, right before I bottomed out. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think you need a friend. Am I right, brother?”

  Yeah, he might be.

  VERONICA

  I wake with a jolt. As if someone had said my name, the way one does when it’s important to be awake, but as I glance around, I’m alone. Not even my mom is in my bedroom. The room is dark except for the moonlight rolling in through the slats of my still-open blinds.

  Rolling from my side to my back, I hesitantly elongate my muscles as my body is stiff. The type of stiff where I could easily stretch my calf into a charley horse. I can sleep for days when I take the migraine prescription, staying so still that Dad says he puts his ear to my nose to confirm I’m breathing.

  Last time I was awake, I was leaning against my dad. I cried, he held me. I cried some more and he hugged me. I eventually calmed down and we talked. The good type of talk. Where I told him everything going on in my life from start to finish. Almost everything—I left out seeing Mom, but other than that he knows it all—down to me jumping into a river and me hugging Sawyer then almost kissing him in the car to Leo falling for someone else.

  I talked until I had nothing else to say, so Dad picked up where I left off because Dad gets me. He understands I don’t want to analyze my feelings or have a frank discussion about where I should go from here, but instead I want to forget so he mumbled in a low tone about his week.

  The boring stuff, the mundane. The trivial that makes the world feel normal and safe. I listened to every word as my eyelids grew heavy. Sometime, at some point, I fell asleep, and Dad must have carried me to my room.

  The jackhammering of my skull is gone, and in its place is a rare moment of silence. The digital clock on my bedside table reads midnight. Twelve with two zeros exactly. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and a smile creeps along my lips as I realize someone had said my name to wake me. Just not someone I can see.

  I exchange my old jeans and T-shirt for a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top and frown in the mirror at the rat’s nest of blond, unruly curls bouncing along my shoulder. There are so many tangles and picking them out after a shower will definitely suck.

  In the hallway, I peek into Dad’s room and my heart lifts when I spot Mom lying next to him. He’s in a deep sleep, and Mom’s eyes are closed as she’s snuggled close. His arm is outstretched over her and his hand touches hers. They l
ook peaceful, in love, and I pinch myself on the arm. Pain at the prick and I breathe out in relief. This isn’t a hallucination. It isn’t a dream.

  Dad’s body is curved protectively around the love of his life so he must know, at least subconsciously, that Mom is with him and that brings on a sense of warmth. Dad doesn’t see her because he doesn’t believe ghosts are real. Like how Sawyer couldn’t clearly understand the EVP. But the more I prove to them that ghosts are real, the more they’ll be able to see beyond what only exists in this realm. That way, when I die, I can join Mom in this house and then Dad will be okay because he’ll never be alone.

  Light taps come from our second-floor living room, and I silently curse that I don’t have the recorder. That would be amazing—to catch an EVP in my own house. I’ve thought about asking Mom to play along, but I can never bring myself to do it. That feels too private for others to listen to and pick apart.

  Loving that the house is coming alive, I’m quick yet light on my feet as I go down the stairs in search of the little girl who loves to play.

  SAWYER

  I walk along the long corridor, looking into the rooms as I pass. The rooms aren’t what they were before. They don’t seem so dark, so gray. There’s laughter echoing around me, nurses chatting with patients, patients talking with one another—helping with the staff. The rooms are bright, filled with personal belongings. The windows are wide open, a warm spring breeze blowing in.

  There’s a girl my age at a desk reading. I pause at her door, walk in and read what she does.

  Saturday March 23: Took a whole day today with Peg and Sade. We went out this morning and got a ride in a Ford. Oh, it was great outdoors. I hated to come in and go to services, but I did.

  Had a date with Harry for tonight, but he sent word that he was sick. Now, Diary, he wasn’t sick at all but he just wanted to go to the Match Pool Game. Never mind, he’ll get one grand bawling out from me.

  She glances up at me. “She’s lying to you.”