Chapter 46
David—Present Day
My knees hit the floor, and all I can think about is my little yellow folded-over Emma. Fuck me for forgetting to put her back into my pocket this morning when I went upstairs for a change of clothes. Fuck me for leaving her in my pillowcase for the last two days. I know that she’s safe there, tucked down at the bottom. But she’s alone. Instead of with me. Instead of where she should be.
My hands are slippery and warm against my stomach. I look up at the real Emma. She’s standing over her brother, looking down at him, still holding the gun in both of her hands. Just like I taught her. She’s not crying or screaming. She’s just breathing. I watch her there. Motionless and contemplative. Free.
“Holy hell,” Matt whispers, breaking my trance. His eyes are on my stomach. On the blood between my fingers.
Emma must hear him, too, because her head turns back to look at us. Her eyes meet mine for a brief moment, and there is love in them. So much love. And apology. And confusion.
Her gaze travels from my eyes down my body. Down to the place where Ricky’s bullet cut into me. The moment she sees it, she starts to move. Her hands drop the gun onto her brother’s quiet body. Her legs move forward, one after the other, propelling her toward me. If only in what seems like slow motion.
Then she’s next to me, dropping to her knees and putting her hands on top of mine, as if she’s trying to hold me together. To keep me from oozing out of myself. She speaks to Matt, telling him to call 911. He scrambles to standing and leaves us here alone, kneeling together on the floor.
“Fuck. You’re…you’re bleeding. Oh my God,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. Her skin is glowing. Red. Like it’s on fire. Her eyes look straight at mine and, she starts to shake her head from side to side. “What the hell did I do?”
“You did what you had to do. You shot him. I was planning to do it myself, but you beat me to it. Your aim was brilliant, by the way. You must have had a hell of a teacher.” She doesn’t like my little joke. I can tell because her expression turns sour.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. This…this wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says, her mouth a wavering line of emotion. “He was supposed to get arrested. They were supposed to lock him up. They were supposed to keep me safe. But they didn’t. They didn’t. And now look at this. Look at what happened.”
“It’s going to be alright, Emma,” I say, only half believing it. Because the pain in my gut is telling me something different.
“I just wanted to protect you,” she says. “Protect us.” Her head drops to her chest, and her eyes leave mine. They look at our hands. At my blood. “And I wanted to stop being afraid.”
She’s ashamed.
But the truth is that she has nothing to be ashamed of. I know all about wanting to protect the person you love. About wanting to do whatever it takes to shelter them from hurt and pain.
I sit down on my haunches, unable to keep holding myself up. Emma sits on the floor next to me, taking off her hoodie and gathering it into a ball.
God, she’s beautiful.
She pulls my hands away from my stomach and tells me to lie back, to let her press on the wound to try and stop the bleeding.
“I’m sorry, David.” She leans over me, her hair falling around her face, wrapping it in softness. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.” Her chin tilts down, toward my stomach. Her brow is furrowed with guilt.
“You don’t have a single thing to be sorry for.” I lift my arms and put my hands behind my head. I bend my elbows together up over my face, pushing away some of the pain. She’s crying now, pressing her hoodie firmly into my stomach. Her hands and arms are covered with blood. My blood. It’s everywhere.
Her eyes travel up my arms. Up to the birds now curled around my head. She bends forward and kisses my flesh. Kisses the ravens under my arm. Kisses us.
Then she lays her head down on my chest, over my heart.
“You can’t imagine what you’ve done for me,” I say, squeezing my eyes closed and trying to block out the murmur of Matt’s voice in the background. Pretending that it’s only me and her. Alone in this room.
“Don’t, David. Don’t say another word.” Her voice isn’t nearly as brisk as her words. Instead, it’s confused and sad. Broken.
“But you need to hear it.”
“The only thing I need is for you to be here tomorrow.”
“Just…please let me say it,” I tell her. She picks her head up off my chest and puts all of her weight over her bloodied hands, pushing down hard. Determined to keep me together. Her eyes dig into me, spilling their tears down onto my shirt. She’s angry now. Angry at the mere inference that I may not be here tomorrow. Angry at everything.
That’s my girl.
“Don’t you say a single goddamned word,” she says, her face tight with defiance. “You don’t have to say anything. Because I already know.”
There is so much I want to say. But instead of coming out of my mouth, all the words are pouring from my stomach, out of the hole that Ricky made. Because this is my happily-ever-after. This is everything I have ever wanted for my entire life. I finally understand. I finally understand the kind of love my mother told me about. The kind of love you would die for. It does exist. It’s real. And I have it, at last. With her.
Chapter 47
After Emma
The sandbags are the last thing to fall from the ledge and, as they do, I hear a sickening swipe. It licks at my heart. I watch her fall. She is falling for me. Her body tilts softly in the air, and she hits the water feet first. I know the sand bags will pull her down fast. They always do. The bubbles rise and the ripples widen and she is gone. Gone because I am a goddamned son of a bitch.
I put my face in my hands and drop to my knees. I am crying. I am sobbing. I am screaming.
Shit. What have I done?
I take a deep breath and start to count. I pull my sand-dusted Leatherman out of my pocket and rise to my feet. Slicing the sand bags will not have been enough. I’ll need the Leatherman’s blade again. In the water.
The numbers roll slowly through my head. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, steadying myself for what’s next.
I suck in a breath and jump.
Emma’s Epilogue
I shouldn’t have called him, but I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought he should know. I thought he would want to come. After all, David was his only son.
Who comes to their own child’s memorial service drunk out of their fucking mind?
An asshole like Shep Calgaro, that’s who.
It was pretty damned awesome, though, to watch Clive Jackson knock his ass down a few pegs. When Shep staggered over to me and announced that I must be one stupid woman to fall for his useless son, Clive looked him straight in the eye and told him that David was a better man than he’ll ever be. Faults and all. He said a man who isn’t a father to his own child is no man at all. Clive said he was proud to call David a friend. Proud to call him his son. Shep kept his mouth closed tight and didn’t say another word. I’ve never seen a man slink so low on his way out the door.
Shep Calgaro is going straight to hell, that much I am sure of, as soon as he drinks himself to death. And that day can’t come soon enough. Fuck him.
It’s been two weeks since David’s funeral. And, until today, I couldn’t bring myself to go upstairs. To look at his things. To look at the only pieces of him that are left. My guilt pinned me to my bed. Ate away at my soul. Sent me deep inside myself to question everything that’s ever existed. I was the one who deserved Ricky’s bullet. Not David. And I will have to live with that.
If I am strong enough to live at all.
I stand in David’s bedroom, inhaling his scent. Feeling the emptiness of it all. Wanting another hit of David more than anything else in this world. I wish I were wrapped in his birds. Instead of being here, alone and wrapped in my own
guilt.
I want to cry. But I can’t because there’s nothing left.
I open David’s closet and stare inside, brushing my fingers against his clothes, remembering him. Remembering us. There’s a backpack on the floor at my feet. One I’d never seen him use. But there it is. Filled with something and ready to go. I sit down on the floor and reach inside the closet, hoping the backpack will give me the precious hit of him I so desire. My David fix. Once it’s out of the closet, I notice there’s a piece missing. A square of fabric is gone. Cut out, leaving only a frayed edge behind. I narrow my eyes at the bag, knowing suddenly that it doesn’t belong here. It isn’t the piece of David I thought it was. It’s foreign. Through the hole I see a photograph. At first glance, it’s nothing more than a shadowy image. But when I move my gaze closer to the hole, I know immediately that it’s a picture of me.
But it’s not a picture of a twenty-two-year-old me. It’s an eleven-year-old me. A person that David never knew. In it, I’m standing in front of the mall entrance, holding a huge sign that says I am a terrible daughter. The words are written in thick, black marker. Michael made me write it, and then he watched me stand there, for hours, with that damn sign. All because the principal told him that I hit Sadie Wilkinson back. I remember the day. I remember how embarrassed I was. How degraded. And here it is now, in David’s closet. In a picture I never knew Michael took. A picture meant to document an eleven-year-old girl’s humiliation.
But why is it here?
My fingers find the backpack’s zipper, opening it wide and then flipping the whole thing over, dumping it out on the floor. My hands sift through the contents, recognizing them but yet not. It’s the shrapnel of my life. Fragments of me, outlined in pictures. There I am, in full color. Kneeling in a parking lot full of gravel after my sweet sixteen birthday party. Coming out of the drugstore after buying condoms for Michael and my mother. Scrubbing Michael’s car tires with a fingernail brush, a bar of soap in my mouth. Walking with Peter Beckman into the Sheraton for the after-prom party that Michael later crashed. He documented it all. Recorded my humiliation like it was something to be relished. Relived. Remembered. My skin prickles with disgust. I feel the heat rise through my body, coursing through my veins until they’re bursting with renewed hatred. Hatred for Michael and the life he made for me. Hatred for what he did to my family. Hatred for everything he ever made me feel.
And then, before I can stop my eyes from scanning for more, I see four pictures grouped close together. The sight of them causes my throat to tighten. Rage sears into my brain, ripping through it like wildfire. Turning me into a flurry of hot, angry flames, fueled and ready to set fire to the world. Four images of me. In my bed. Asleep. Each centered on a spot of my flesh. A spot of my flesh reddened by his palm or fist. Flesh he wounded when I wouldn’t bow down to him. When I wouldn’t surrender. There I am. Scarred and bruised. Inside and out.
There are a bunch of other things scattered among the pictures, things I can barely bring myself to focus on. Things of my mother’s. And mine. A figurine. My class ring. Three old videotapes with God knows what on them. I gather it all up, stuffing it back into the backpack. My mind and muscles sting with fury. I zip the backpack closed and throw it across the room, sinking my face into my hands and letting a lifetime worth of stifled screams rip through my throat.
And then I understand. I know why David had all of it. I know why he took it. He took it from Michael’s house for the same reason he took my mother’s bracelet. To show me I’m worth more than I know. To show me I’m worth protecting. I’m worth coveting. I’m worth loving.
Just like he was.
I sling the backpack over my shoulder and walk out the door.
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David’s old red BMW is parked on the 9th Street Bridge, and I am standing next to it, looking down into the water. Looking down at the ripples. At her ripples. At the ripples of the little redheaded girl I used to be. A girl that didn’t think she was worth anything at all. The sandbags pull her down fast. Just like I knew they would. I watch her disappear and the ripples return to calm.
I take a deep breath and walk away.
I’ve been born-again, courtesy of David Calgaro and the 9th Street Bridge.
THE END
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