by Lana Sky
I think I could.
Even if her heart is already broken.
Thorny doesn’t pick me up on the final day of the entrance exam. It feels off but not completely unexpected, if I’m honest with myself. He’ll probably send Elaine to get me, with some half-assed lie.
Though who knows? Maybe this time, he won’t even bother with the lie.
Regardless, I wait at his old writing spot while balancing a notebook on my knee. Pen in hand, I try to imagine what might capture the attention of James Thorne.
The heat?
The harried-looking professor sulking off to work in the summer?
Or maybe it’s the expression on the hopeful faces of the other applicants. It certainly catches mine. They radiate fear mixed with anticipation. Who knows what they wrote about or what might separate the winning ten essays from the rest.
They say art is subjective; I guess that’s true. Some tiny nuances in day-to-day life might go unnoticed by some and yet be impossible to be ignored by others.
Like the pair of officers dressed in uniform who make their way across the park. They’re hunting for someone, muttering amongst themselves. Upon spotting me, one of them looks down at a slip of paper in his hand and then back again. I bristle uncomfortably as he comes closer.
“Are you Maryanne Mayweather?” he asks.
When I nod, the other one approaches me as well. Together, they stand there, their expressions like matching blank stares worn by action figures. Their presence isn’t a soothing one. I don’t think it’s meant to be. It is clear they serve just one purpose in life: to deliver bad news in monotone voices.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us,” they tell me in somber tones. The rest of what they say I catch only in snippets. Pieces of information my brain struggles to string together as my notebook slips from my grasp and lands open at my feet.
Only one phrase actually registers in the end.
Thorny won’t be coming for me any time soon.
His wife is dead.
Thornfield Manor is a hive of activity, the likes of which it only seems to experience after a sudden death. Thorny’s sisters are waiting when I arrive, all three of them. They eye me like something found stuck to the bottom of a shoe but do their best to smile through their tears and hug me anyway.
Because hugs make everything better. Even if we aren’t allowed to go inside the house or speak to the prime suspect.
“They’re questioning him,” Caroline says, referring to her brother. “But I don’t know why. It was an accident. A terrible accident.”
She clings to that word, desperate to believe it. They all are, and they take turns uttering that magic word as the police shift through the house, feeding us bits of information at a time.
The preliminary consensus is Elaine’s death was swift and sudden. Somehow, someway, she fell off the upstairs balcony, breaking her neck, but they found no signs of foul play.
Still, they have to follow protocol. Which means Thorny was ushered into the back of a police car and taken in for “questioning.” Already, news vans are circling the outskirts of the property, desperate for a hint of red meat to feed on.
If only they knew.
My little red journal is missing. I know that even before we’re finally led inside and allowed to access a narrow sliver of the house so that I can gather my belongings. A silent police officer is my lone escort who follows me through the deserted entryway and up the winding staircase as my stomach drops with every step.
Yellow caution tape and a horde of police cordon off the rest of the hall. Elaine fell from the master bedroom, it seems. From experience, I know that the investigators will pore over every flaw in the railing and every bit of dust. They’ll sift through the untouched toiletries in the bathroom and the abandoned master bed.
My room looks just how I left it, at least. But, when I risk sliding my hand beneath the mattress, I find nothing. Just the edges of my old legal file and nothing else.
She found it. Elaine wanted to do a little spring cleaning to feel useful again. She may not be a faithful wife, but she can clean like one—could. My heart lurches at the use of past tense.
She could clean with the best of them all.
But then she found a naughty diary filled with sordid, lurid stories about her perfect husband. She wouldn’t know that they were only that—stories. She’d race to confront him, shoving the journal in his face. How could you?
And Thorny, always the stoic, would ignore her. Though, no matter how many times I spin that scenario around in my brain, I can’t envision the scenario where he would push her off. Ever.
Thorny was Thorny. He didn’t feel anything outside of a crippling sense of despair that led him to drinking. And, even drunk, he’d be too apathetic to resort to violence.
Right?
I chant the answer to myself over and over, leaving no room for anything else. Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes.
“Are you all right?” The police officer sounds annoyed.
“W-what?” I flinch, realizing that my face is wet. I’m breathing too loudly, choking on the hot air. My fingers try desperately to swipe the moisture away, but it’s no use.
It’s funny. An army of psychiatric professionals spent years trying to make me acknowledge guilt. Remorse is important, they said. It can serve as a block against impulsive behavior. You need to learn to take responsibility for your actions, Maryanne.
But they were wrong.
Guilt is pain. So sharp that you close your eyes against it and curl into a ball on the floor, hugging your knees to your chest. You’d take it all back—every bad, bad thing.
You’d give anything—everything you had—to take it back.
They release Thorny shortly after four a.m., but he’s not allowed to return to Thornfield. Marcia’s husband has to drive an hour away into the next town over to pick him up from the sheriff’s office.
I wait for them on the front porch of the tiny two-story rancher they rented for the night. It’s old and reeks of rotting wood and dust. When car headlights illuminate the driveway, I lurch to my feet, hugging my arms to my chest. Marcia’s husband exits the tiny rental car first, but after a second of waiting, I realize the passenger’s side is empty.
Apparently, Thorny wanted to stay at a motel on his own. Away from us.
Or away from me.
The official story is that Elaine’s death was an accident, like Caroline insisted. A terrible, terrible accident.
But, as far as the media is concerned, there’s enough gray there to shade in with hues of intrigue. Oh no, Thorny, the reclusive has-been, had a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit when he was taken in for questioning.
Elaine was so, so pretty.
He was so, so angry.
The logical conclusion was that he killed her, of course. Murderers can’t teach little girls, so he resigned from Walden barely a day after being cleared. By the end of the week, he was back at Thornfield, trudging through the empty halls.
Without the money from my inheritance, he might be forced to sell the property. So much for Grandmama’s wishes—though even she couldn’t have predicted the twist in her favorite son-in-law’s perfect life.
I don’t graduate until the end of the month—in fourteen days. Technically, I’m still under his custody, but Caroline, Marcia, and Lily argue the entire trip back to Frick Island about the risks of sending me back.
He doesn’t need the stress.
He doesn’t need the bother.
Someone else should take me in, just until I can claim my inheritance.
But not one of them has volunteered by the time we pull into Thornfield’s winding driveway.
Thorny isn’t waiting for me on the front steps. I don’t find him in the entryway, either, when I escape from the car and race inside. He’s not in the ramshackle living room or the disheveled upstairs hallway.
He isn’t even on the balcony, glowering in his favorite spot. I finally find him in his of
fice, slumped over the desk, a glass in hand. I sniff the air, eyeing the suspicious liquid inside. It’s clear. Odorless.
Water.
“You’re back.” He sounds surprised as he lifts his head, eyeing me through a bloodshot gaze. A frown has become a permanent fixture on his face now, distorting his mouth into a stern line. “Why? Caroline or Marcia should have—”
“It’s just for two weeks,” I croak, wringing my fingers together. Like I have the right to plead for that much. It’s only two weeks of his life. The life I destroyed.
He’s hard at work, I realize as he sits straighter and shuffles a stack of documents on the desk. A story? Or legal papers dealing with the fallout of Elaine’s death?
I can’t tell, and I don’t ask.
I’ve imagined this moment so many times during the seventy-two hours he’s been gone. I’d smirk and utter something funny. Something quippy. He’d snipe back like old times.
Then he’d say it. Those terrible words keeping me up at night: this is your fault.
As I stand here now, nothing is the way I imagined it. Not even close. The words I dreaded hearing him utter come spilling out of my own mouth as I hastily rewrite my own script. “This is my fault.” Heat sears my eyes and they well over. Moisture falls unchallenged down my cheeks and I don’t even try to wipe the drops away. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry—”
“Why?” He spits the word out, frowning as if he truly doesn’t get it.
Why?
“Because…” I tug at my hair, hating him for making me say it. “She read my journal.”
He laughs and my heart sinks. It’s the most beautiful, broken sound I’ve ever heard.
“Your journal,” he echoes as he wrestles his papers into a neat stack and sets them aside. “Of course you think this has something do to with you.” He frowns and then shrugs. “Though I guess maybe it does.”
Something catches his eye; instinctively, my gaze follows his to the book lying askew on a nearby shelf.
“I need to ask you something, Maryanne. The dedication in Swing. To the girl with the golden curls. What made you think it was for Elaine?”
I blink, confused. “W-what?”
“It wasn’t,” he says simply, meeting my gaze. “It wasn’t about her. It was never about her.” He stands and pushes past me, heading for the door. “And don’t blame yourself. What happened had nothing to do with you—”
“Nothing to do with me? It had everything to do with me. It was my journal. My words.” I’m shouting, and his sisters call from the front of the house, alarmed. They’ll rush back here, viewing the damage. But, for once, I don’t care who sees. I’m crying. I’m broken.
And Thorny is calmer than I’ve seen him in years. Not since…
Well, since the day we found my father.
“This is all my fault,” I choke out in between sobbing gasps. “Just let me admit that for once in my fucking life—”
“Your fault?” He cocks his head, his back to me. “You’re the one who left your journal on Elaine’s vanity, where she would see it? You’re the one who laughed in her face when she came to you, crying about the disgusting things she read inside it? You’re the one she lunged at before she fell?”
He stands there, letting the silence say what I can’t. “I didn’t think so.”
“Jame—”
“Wasteland,” he says cutting me off as footsteps hurry in our direction. “You asked me about the ending once, but I gave you the wrong answer. The woman didn’t fake her death because she wanted to disappear. She was ashamed. Everything she ever thought about love, and honor, and decency was turned on its head and she couldn’t fucking face it. So she ran. She ran away rather than turn to the people she wasn’t supposed to love or need. She was trying to be selfless—but she was fucking selfish.”
He enters the hall, nearly running over Caroline. Like a storm cloud, he rolls through the house and barges from the front door.
And I know. I just do.
He’s not coming back.
Night falls, but James doesn’t come home. Worried, his sisters call the police, and then they find something stuck to the kitchen fridge that makes them scream and race hurriedly from the house.
Thorny left a note. That fact swirls around in hushed whispers. He left a note. A note.
A note.
They never let me see what it says. Not Marcia, Lily, or Caroline, who combine their beautiful, blond faces in sorrow. Not the police.
I’m never given a reason why.
But they don’t know Thorny’s secret. I slip away when no one’s looking and race down to the beach. The water laughs at me, clawing its way up the shore. There’s no sign of him floating. No sign of him playing in the waves with a barely legal blond.
Just silence, and…
A flash of white catches my attention, but I have to dig through the sand to free the source of it: a man’s dress shirt wrapped tightly around a square object. I unfurl it slowly with numb fingers as the water laps at my sandals and the wind stings my face.
I blink several times before I fully recognize it: my copy of Wasteland dusted with sand. Someone taped it back together and scribbled over the final line.
You don’t need me.
You never have.
But, even if you hate me now, I can try to let you go.
So hate me. Scream it out. Write the most fucked-up story you can. Let me have it.
I deserve it.
And you deserve to be heard.
I’m not supposed to be sad. The moment I so much as sigh, Caroline has my therapist on speed dial and threatens to drag me to the nearest ER.
So I can’t be sad.
I can’t speak, either. Everyone prods and demands I express my emotions but then tunes me out if I open my mouth. I’m just a kid. What do I know?
Nothing.
All I can do is lurk in his office with the door shut and muddle through the last bit of work Jane assigned to me. Eventually, I lose focus and wind up mouthing his message to myself over and over again.
I deserve to be heard.
But how?
His sisters sniff and sulk around Thornfield, trying desperately to compile arrangements in hushed, serious voices. They can barely look at me, let alone listen. It’s when Marcia has the nerve to ask me if I have a black dress that I finally snap.
I start laughing.
“Maryanne?” She watches on in horror as I curl up in Thorny’s leather armchair and snort all over his fancy desktop.
The police have already called their search off. It’s only been three damn days.
But everyone is so certain.
He finally did it.
He’s really gone.
But they’re wrong. And that’s the part that hurts the most as my giggles trail off and I rest my chin against my knees. They’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
Thorny didn’t drown. He’s free, channeling the longing he expressed through every character and warped plotline for so many years. I can’t be the only one in the whole damn world who sees it: He finally said, Fuck it. Screw everyone else.
James Thorne finally stopped wishing for the ocean and confronted James Thorne.
All it took was leaving me behind for him to be brave enough to do it.
“Maryanne?” Marcia’s gone. Lily is the one creeping through the doorway now, her eyes bloodshot. She gently places something on the desk and scurries out a second later. “That came for you,” she explains from the hall.
I look up, finding an envelope with the name of Thorny’s old college stamped on one side. My stomach churns and I can’t help releasing another high-pitched laugh that quickly fades into a sigh. He planned his disappearance perfectly, old Thorny. At least he’s not here to see me fail.
It stings less if I pretend like it’s a joke. I’ll rip this letter open, find a rejection, and Thorny will jump from the closet. Tada! He got me. I don’t have talent after all.
Numb with acceptance, I flick the end of t
he flap with my thumb and drag out the slip of paper tucked inside. For dramatic effect, I read it out loud.
“Congratulations, Ms. Mayweather,” I recite, my voice breaking. “We are p-pleased to inform you…”
Of your acceptance.
With my mouth hanging open, I read that sentence over and over until I can’t see anything. My eyes are blurring. The room feels too hot and stuffy. I’m suffocating. I have to take the letter out of the house and down to the beach just to get some fresh air. With the water licking at my toes, I keep reading.
We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance into the James Thorne Writer’s Program at our esteemed university. Due to the caliber of your entrance exam, you have been selected as one of a handful of applicants to pen a personal essay to be published in a local newspaper at the beginning of the semester.
I frown at that. Without realizing it, I find myself wandering back into the house and sitting behind Thorny’s desk. I hunt for a pen and start writing on the back of the only paper I have within reach: my acceptance letter.
I hate James Thorne, I scribble in bold, block letters. I even underline them in heavy, dark strokes.
I hate him. Maybe he wanted me to all along. Nothing inspires like heartbreak. It hurts, and it hurts, and it hurts…
But at least you know you’re alive. You can scream. And kick, and shout so the whole fucking world knows you’re hurting. You’re in pain.
All you want is someone to see as much.
But screams fade. Bruises heal.
Nothing lasts like words. You can scribble them onto someone’s soul and make them feel important. Even for a little while. You can tattoo your understanding on their heart—and even when you leave. When you’re gone. When you turn away...
They always have a piece of you, hidden deep down.
Nothing heals like empty words.
Nothing soothes like little lies.
Twelve months later…
* * *
Life in a dorm isn’t half as dramatic as the sitcoms on TV make it seem. Not even when you’re the girl with the crazy, famous uncle who offed his wife and drowned in the ocean. The only downside is the fact that your mail gets left in the hallway, for anyone to find.