“Thank you.”
When I turn to leave, she says, “‘Wherever you go, go with your heart.’”
I turn back. “Rumi?”
“Confucius, dear.”
“What does it mean?”
“Maybe it’s time to be tender to your own heart now.”
The iris on the seat beside me, I drive around, going way out of the city limits into Dripping Springs in order to stay away from home and remind myself there’s still a world out here, with roads and trees and houses.
I end up back in town. At the cemetery.
A caretaker’s on a riding mower a couple of acres away. I brush loose grass off the edge of Harper’s gravestone. I remember some long, rambling poem we studied in sophomore English. Something about grass being the uncut hair of graves. I test the ground with my foot. Solid. What did I expect? Sod rumpled like a slept-in bed?
“I miss you,” I whisper.
I see her in black skinny jeans and her ash-gray three-quarter-sleeve sweater and her engine-red cowgirl boots. New guy, she says. Just for kicks. She tells me to cover for her with Mom. She checks her hair in the bathroom mirror, winks at me, and grabs her keys.
“I really miss you.”
I lower myself to the ground. The smell of green lining my nostrils, I lean against the back of the stone.
Maybe Florabelle is right. It’s time to accept. Accept that reality is reality, whether or not I like it. I set the iris down.
The lawn mower engine stops. There are footsteps at my back. The crazy girl stands above me. “I need answers,” she says.
I spring to my feet. She needs answers? How can the boys heal if she peels back the scab?
I slap her across the face.
She presses her palm against her cheek. Looks at it and me. I’ve shocked both of us. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You had no right to involve my brothers. You’ve messed them both up now.”
She raises a hand. I flinch. But her hand doesn’t come toward me. Instead, she grasps the collar of her shirt and tugs down. “How could Mom let them give up on me? Let them cut me open?”
I flinch again. I look away, but not before I see the scar in the same place nurse Tina wouldn’t have seen one on me.
“Max?” she says. Her voice seems very far away all of a sudden. “Max? Did you … ?”
I don’t say anything. But, apparently, that’s enough.
“You had no right,” she keeps saying to me, over and over. Pacing. Pacing that unsettles my stomach. “You had no right.”
“Don’t you remember?” I’m sitting again, because I’m sure my legs won’t work if I try to use them. “We talked about it. Remember?” I’m asking a girl who looks nothing like Harper to sift through Harper’s memories. Now who’s the crazy one?
“I was thirteen, Max. I was a kid. You can’t hold me to a childhood fantasy.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said! I said if I died, I wouldn’t want my heart thrown away.”
That’s exactly what she said. So is this Harper I’m talking to? Or have I officially lost my mind?
She finally stops pacing, but she’s staring at me with such ferocity I wish she’d go back to churning up the lawn. “That’s the kind of thing a dreamy girl says to her sister when she’s painting their toenails. It’s not a directive.”
Bingo again. Glittery purple nail polish. Harper got some on my lemon yellow duvet and I lost my shit.
“What gave you the right to pull the plug on me?” she spits.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“I was alive one minute, then I wasn’t. You tell me what that’s like.”
She’s trembling. The lilt of her voice is familiar, yet the sound of it is not. She’s unknown to me, and yet she knows. About us. About the most painful decision I’ve ever made.
“I thought it was the right thing,” I say. “My sister was gone. Her brain was gone. But I thought if she couldn’t be here, she’d want someone else to have a chance.”
She sobs. “That’s not the issue, Max. I wasn’t dead. I was in a coma. I read the news, so don’t try to deny it. People come out of comas. Sometimes it takes years, sure, but not everyone stays that way!” She’s moving again. Her energy is frenetic. Although this girl is petite, the way she’s pacing makes her seem much taller.
“The doctors—”
“Fuck them. It wasn’t their sister.”
“I can’t change the past,” I whisper.
She scoffs, kicks the edge of the headstone. “That’s for shit sure.”
“I’m sorry.” I am. So sorry. But who am I saying sorry to? This doesn’t make any sense.
Out of my periphery, I see two old people a few rows over cradling potted plants in bloom. I hear birdsong and try to use it to pry the lid off this nightmare. “You’re not even real,” I say to the girl. “I’m probably hallucinating you.”
She scoffs. “So you’re talking to an apparition?” She’s loud. The couple turns. “See, they hear me.”
“This is insane.”
“You basically murdered me, Max. And I’m supposed to thank you?”
“Murder? No. No.” I’m outside, and yet it feels like walls are closing in on me, trapping me in an airless place. “They said you—they said my sister had no brain activity. They showed me all the scans. She was brain-dead, okay? She’d never ever wake up! That’s not having a life.” I can feel the couple staring at us.
She’s biting her thumbnail, piercing me with her gaze. “Save the sentimental bullshit for the documentary,” she says. Which is something Harper used to say.
And then she stalks away.
I have to pull over after only a mile because I can’t see through the tears. Once I’m all cried out, I pick up my phone. I’m about to text Ezra, ask if he can come over. If we can process this. I dread being in the empty house as much as I dread the thought of the girl showing up there again.
My thumb zags away from him. I don’t need to process. I need to get on with my life.
Harper’s gone. All of her. I can’t explain the girl, but that doesn’t change what I know about my sister, about me. And I am not a murderer.
I text Chris instead.
Can you get away for a bit?
He responds within seconds. This weekend?
Now, I write. Shelby’s got the boys.
I think I can use my vaca time.
For what feels like the first time today, I exhale without any pain. Good. I need to unwind.
I’m your man, he writes. And then he sends
I feel better already.
III
I want to rewrite my heart and let the future in.
—Miike Snow
20
MAXINE
My arm dangles out of the open passenger window of Chris’s truck. The rush of hot asphalt air in my face steals the breath from my mouth, and I can imagine it stealing the thoughts from my head, too. Where we’re going doesn’t matter so much as the fact that we’re going. When Chris asked me to name a destination, I answered, “Away.”
He slides his hand over to my side and spiders his fingers around mine.
“Hey,” he says, “you forgive me?”
“For what?”
The late afternoon sun slants in his window, shading his edges like melted crayons. His eyes are locked on the road, a muscle jumps along his jaw. Have I really looked at him before? I mean, really looked, without distraction? I’m seeing a picture I’ve always known, but it’s just been set into a new frame. I squeeze his hand, squeeze back the lump of gratitude in my throat.
“You know,” he says softly, “for what happened on Rainey Street. With Ezra.”
I roll up my window to shut out the road noise. “Of course I forgive you. Not that there’s anything to forgive. I’m not a ref between you guys.”
He smiles small. “That’s a good way of putting it.” He raises our clasped hands to his mouth, kisses the back
of mine. That heat on my skin stirs up heat in me. I bring our hands to my lap and trace the ridge of his knuckles, red and chafed from the fight.
“Was your boss okay with you taking time off?” I ask.
“Things’ll be there when I get back. It’s welding, not brain surgery.”
Three deer appear at the grassy edge of the road up ahead. They seem indecisive about whether to dart back into the thicket or brave the blacktop. He checks his rearview mirror, slows down, pulls over. “Pretty beasts.”
“They are.” No antlers, so they’re female. They’re looking at us in that dark-eyed, nose-quivering way of theirs. Then one breaks the stillness of our locked stares and dashes out onto the pavement. The others follow her to the opposite side of the 195. I watch the trees swallow them up.
He’s inching the truck back up to speed. “Good thing I stopped.”
“For sure.” I try not to visualize what the deer would look like if the truck plowed into one of them. And there it is anyway.
“I just finished paying off this baby.” He pats the Ford symbol in the bullseye of the steering wheel.
“Oh. Yeah. That.”
“You never told me why you wanted to get away all of a sudden.”
“Can’t a girl be spontaneous?”
He shrugs. “Sure, a girl can. But it’s not your M.O.”
“Geez, way to make me sound boring.”
“Nah, not boring. Reliable. That’s a good thing.” He pauses, squints softly as if he’s assessing his words before he says them. He flicks the wipers on and adds a swoosh of cleaning fluid to the dusty windshield. “So what was my unboring girl escaping when she texted SOS?”
“Not an escape,” I fib. “I wanted to spend time with you.” Now that I’m with him I realize I was missing what was in front of me the whole time.
“Everything okay at home?”
“Yeah, you know …” I picture the raging girl with Harper’s borrowed memory, Harper’s borrowed outrage. Talking about that whole impossible-to-believe mess will only prolong it. I’m with Chris to get past it. I grab the last stick of gum from the cup holder, tear it in half, put a piece up to his lips. He draws it in with his teeth.
After a few chews, he says, “Isn’t the girl supposed to be the one to drag stuff out of the dude?”
“It’s the same old grind, you know. And today was shitty because it was the one-year mark. But you’ve been through all that.” That’s one thing that makes me feel safest around Chris. Right with him. What he’s been through. I wouldn’t tell him that, though, because I worry that might make him feel used. “You get it.”
“It gets easier,” he says. “You never forget the pain, but it gets to a size where you can carry it.”
There’s a long pause, the kind that’s content to stay unfilled.
We pass the exits for Killeen and Harker Heights, a sign promising food gas lodging, a sign announcing Temple 25 miles farther.
“You need a pit stop?” he asks.
“I’m good.” I want to mean that in all ways. A few minutes ago Shelby sent a video of the boys in their jammies, saying good night to me. They looked clean and happy. I responded with every grinning emoji there is. So for now, I’m good there.
I watch the landscape blur by. I want to imagine pain as a thing left behind. Just a few days of amnesia. “You know, speaking of welding … I’ve never seen you in your welder’s uniform. I bet you look hot.”
“The protective eyewear is a real chick magnet.”
I unbuckle my seat belt, scooch over to his side, thrust my tongue in his ear.
He laughs, and then: “Max! I’m weak, but you know how I feel about—”
“Seat belts,” I finish petulantly. “I know.” I slide back over and buckle up. He’s sensitive to that. No wonder: his aunt and uncle were killed in a car crash when he was a little kid, which is how Henry ended up being raised by Chris’s parents. And then a few years ago Henry was riding his bike when he was struck by a drunk driver. He died before the ambulance got there.
I tiptoe my fingers to Chris’s jaw, rough from a couple days without a shave, to his neck, to the ear I just licked. Sex has been a way to press the pause button on the reality that is my life, at least while my body is occupied.
“Hey,” I murmur as seductively as one can in a vehicle hurtling down the freeway, “how about before we reach wherever you’re sweeping me off to, you park this paid-off truck?”
He blushes. God, that’s a good look for him. “Damn, girl! You horny or what?”
We’re stretched out on the bed of his pickup, side by side on top of one of the sleeping bags we hastily unrolled before we did the deed, under the blue tarp stretched over the bed. It’s warm and humid under here. In a good way, though, not in the way that makes you wonder how long it takes for a human to suffocate under a wet blanket. Our jeans are by our feet somewhere. We’re in only our shirts. I’m content and peaceful. Like a lazy cat.
“Let’s get some fresh air,” Chris says, reaching above us to peel back a wet corner of our crinkly sky. It had rained lightly while we were covered, the tatt-a-tatt-tatt against the tarp percussive reminders of how safe and dry I was beneath.
When his arm comes back down his elbow brushes against my ribs, tickling me. I giggle. That makes him laugh, and before I know it, he’s on top of me again, laughter turning pensive. He presses his face between my chin and collarbone and inhales deeply. And then again, more deeply still.
“It’s like you’re trying to steal me into your lungs,” I say.
“And keep you forever.”
“This moment is good,” I say. “Right here, right now.”
“It’s special because it’ll grow into more moments. You’ll see.” He winks. “Gotta pee.”
He rolls off me and hops out of the truck, leaving me at the mercy of my thoughts. I wonder how long it’ll be before sex can keep me in my body and in the present instead of sending me back to the past.
Two months after Harper’s death, Ezra and I had gone to a grief support group together, the one where I met Chris.
“I’m scared,” Ezra had said after that meeting.
We were back at home. Shelby, who’d been sitting for the boys because my mother was in no shape, had only reluctantly gone home after we told her we were okay.
“Scared of what?” I said, though I was scared too. What if the worst thing that could happen happened again, this time to Will and Race?
“Scared that it’ll never get any better,” he said.
I was worried about that too, but it was further down on the list. “It has to.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I do.” I didn’t. But he needed to hear it.
“We’re only a few months out,” he said. “And those people at the group … they’re years into this, and they’re still a mess.”
“But we aren’t seeing them day to day,” I pointed out. “The group is a place where they can vent. It doesn’t mean they’re going through their lives crying.”
“You think so?” he asked. And he broke my heart with the way he looked at me, like whatever I said next would make him sink or swim.
“Yeah, Ezra, I think so.”
And I crossed the room to hug him, and he hugged me back, and I’m not sure if I noticed that my own breathing had sped up first, or if I noticed his breath on my neck, quick and furtive, but soon we were kissing, his tears in my mouth, mine in his, and only breath and bodies mattered, the stuff reserved for the living, and we let ourselves become bodies—only bodies, not broken hearts—and our two bodies urgently, hungrily came together in the way I had dreamed of when I was watching him with her, the way he looked at her, when I was imagining his electric touch lighting up my skin. We were reduced to hands, fingers, lips, skin—so much skin—the sharpness of want. It was my first time; I don’t know if Ezra knew that. He pressed through my body’s resistance. I swallowed down the initial pain. How could a first time feel so inevitable and yet so surreal? An
d so right in one heartbeat and wrong in the next? Wrongwrong, as if Harper had been in the corner of my bedroom, sitting on the floor with her knees tucked under her chin, scowling at both of us. That kind of wrong. How could the people who loved her most so thoroughly betray her at the same time they were grieving her?
Ezra never went back to the support group. Maybe it was because he feared another collision between us. There was no chance of that—I knew it was wrong. And judging by the way he never spoke of it again, he did too.
He didn’t get specific when I asked about the group, he just said, “It’s not for me.”
But it was for me, like a dark pull. Like I was a moth circling a burned-out bulb that I knew would shine again someday.
Chris climbs back into the bed of the truck, muttering about how it’s not a good idea to take a leak barefoot and pantsless right after a rain and how he needs me to warm him up. He rests his weight on me again and Ezra disappears. I have to press my tailbone against the bed in order to breathe. He makes his hands a bowl and cups the back of my head. Kissing my chin, his fingers play at the nape of my neck. They slow, searching for something.
“Hope we didn’t break the cord.” He sounds dismayed.
“What cord?”
“The cross,” he says. “The cord must’ve snapped.”
It takes me a few beats to realize he’s talking about the necklace he gave me. “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”
“In your bag?” he asks.
“At home.”
His fingers on my shoulders turn rigid. He sucks in a sharp breath.
At first I think something hurt him. Like a snakebite or bee sting. “Chris?”
He rolls off me, sits up in the night air with the tarp around his shoulders. “Forget it.”
But his voice carries an ache. I sit up too. I reach for his hand but he moves it out of the way, pulls his jeans on instead. I grope in the dark for my underwear, my jeans. He’s rolling up the tarp while I pull on my clothes. We’re tucked into the trees, well off the dirt road that led us here, but still, an engine I hear in the distance makes me get dressed faster. Chris is all business.
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