Truest

by Jackie Lea Sommers

  “You said it was a mistake.”

  “All I’m saying is that I should have been focused on my family—with Dad gone and Laurel so messed up. I didn’t mean—” He looked at me a little pleadingly.

  But I was stung. “You keep saying it was your fault, but if I’m the one distracting you”—I thought of last night, the conflict I’d seen in his eyes—“then you must think it’s really my fault she’s dead.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I climbed out of the swing and tore down the porch stairs. He scrambled down after me, and with those long legs, he caught up to me quickly in the lawn. “West, no, wait!” When I ignored him, he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. “Listen to me. I’m fucked up right now, do you understand? Fucked up. I just want some space to think.”

  “You’re supposed to want me!” I roared. I stared hard at him.

  Silas was crying.

  Everything warred in me: the desire to hold him, to press my lips against his temple and make him feel safe—and the compulsion to fly at him, or to call him a coward.

  “You’re supposed to want me,” I said again. I felt overcome with my selfishness, that I could say these words at this moment, but I was wild with loss. “I gave up everything,” I whispered. “For you. To you.”

  He lifted his hands to his face but still didn’t speak.

  And I thought back to June, when I had asked him what he wanted.

  It had always been about Laurel. Always.

  So I walked away.

  Back at the parsonage, I thundered into the house and up the stairs to my bedroom like a guided missile, ignoring the questions. Dad told the family, “Just give her some space.” I closed the door, pressed my back against it as I slid down to the floor. Shame made me want to keep all my secrets, but my guilt made me want to spill everything. I was hiding, but I wanted so badly to race down the stairs, climb into Dad’s lap, and tell him the story of my summer and especially of last night.

  Shame and sorrow and space pulled at me.

  It was astonishing: yesterday, it was summer; yesterday, we were dancing.

  I threw myself onto my bed. My fingers raked the sheets, their softness like an accusation. If what Silas said was true, then I deserved no comfort.

  I was still wearing Laurel’s shirt—it smelled like Silas, and the scent stuck to my throat like dust. I struggled out of it and threw it on the floor. Then, wanting to slip out of my body, I clawed at myself, leaving scratch marks on my arms and stomach. I thought of his finger making slow, gentle circles. . . .

  NO.

  The TV was on downstairs, though I couldn’t make out which show. I still half expected—half hoped for—footsteps, a hand on the doorknob, a face to peek through the door as it opened.

  There was only silence, only space.

  On my nightstand, a collection of books. His. A dance theater program. Hers. A photo of all of us, the whole group in thrift-store prom outfits, looking deliberately awkward and trying not to laugh. There is this staggering light in all our faces, at home in our eyes.

  In the photo, Laurel’s smile is real and true and raw. Everyone is looking at the camera, except for Silas.

  He’s looking at me, affection flashing from him like some kind of holy spark.

  I pushed it over, and the frame crashed loudly to the floor.

  But still no one came.

  thirty

  I woke up to a phone call from Trudy. “West! Holy shit, my dad told me what happened. Are you okay? Don’t answer that. I’ve been waiting for you to call. What can I do? How can I help?”

  I was quiet, overwhelmed. I pulled back my curtain and saw my mom and siblings cross the parking lot on their way to church. Dad had already been there for hours. They looked so small out my window, so much farther away than they really were.

  “West, are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to come over?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” My voice didn’t even sound like my voice.

  “Hold on a sec, okay?” I heard her talking to someone briefly before she said, “My dad said he’s meeting Whit at the station soon and is wondering if you can come too.”

  “Okay.”

  “She said okay!” she said to her dad. “Do you want us to come pick you up?” she asked. I assumed she meant her and her dad.

  “My parents are in church,” I said. “I can take the car.”

  “Okay,” Trudy said. “Then you can come over here afterward, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Whit’s car was parked on the street outside the tiny police station.

  Sgt. Kirkwood poked his head out of his office when he heard the door open. “West,” he said, then folded me into his arms for a giant hug. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Come in. Join me and Mark.” I wondered where Trudy was. Maybe I’d misunderstood her.

  “Is that okay?” I asked faintly. “For you to talk to us both at the same time?”

  He smiled gently. “There’s no foul play suspected, West. I just have a few questions.” His voice was soft and reassuring, and it tricked me for a moment into believing everything was okay.

  Until I stepped into his office and saw Whit.

  He was standing beside Sgt. Kirkwood’s desk, and his face was swollen and dark around the eyes. His lips were chapped, his mouth red even outside his lip line. He wouldn’t look at me.

  I snapped.

  I flew at him, shoving him. “What happened?” I demanded, the words scraping my throat as they came out. I gripped Whit’s shoulders and shook them with a strength I never knew I had. “How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?” I repeated like an invective.

  “West, sit down,” Sgt. Kirkwood said softly. “Both of you, sit down.”

  I started to cry; Whit seemed primed for it too. He looked so thin, so broken. I threw my arms around Whit and buried my face in his chest. He put a feeble hand on my back that brought no comfort.

  “Sit down,” Sgt. Kirkwood repeated, and this time we listened. “Now, let’s get this straight,” he said, his voice low like a hum. “No one’s in trouble. We just want to sort out what happened on Friday.”

  “Did you talk to Silas?” I asked, manic.

  “I did. He told me you two left the dance early.”

  I wondered just how much Silas had shared.

  “Let’s move backward,” said Sgt. Kirkwood. “You saw her last, Mark?”

  Whit nodded. It was so strange to hear him called “Mark.” It felt like another person was in the room with us. “We were dancing. Till late.”

  They were maybe the saddest words I had ever heard.

  “Were you drinking?”

  Whit stared at the desk separating us from Trudy’s dad. He didn’t speak.

  “It’s okay, Mark,” Sgt. Kirkwood coaxed. “Let me ask it this way: Was Laurel drinking?”

  Again, Whit nodded. Slowly. “Not . . . not much. Maybe two . . . two of the party cups the bar was using. Maybe only one, I don’t know. I know she had a little.” Suddenly he looked up at both me and Sgt. Kirkwood, his eyes serious and fierce. “I asked her if she was okay to drive home. We couldn’t find West and Silas. Where the hell did you two go?”

  I swallowed hard and stared at the corner of the room, where a fake plant sat covered in months of dust. “It was hot. We wanted to get away from the crowd.”

  “We looked all over—” Whit started, and guilt slammed into me again.

  “What did she say?” Sgt. Kirkwood interrupted, and I knew he knew. “When you asked her if she was okay to drive?”

  “Yes, she said yes.”

  “That was the last thing she said to you?”

  “We—we said good night. Then she kissed me and got into the truck.” Suddenly he hit himself against the forehead, over and over, growling out, “God, why didn’t I just fucking drive her home? Who does that?”

  I reached for his hands to stop him, but he pushed me away. Just like Silas in his yard, S
ilas on his porch. I laced my fingers tightly together.

  “It’s okay, Mark.” Sgt. Kirkwood’s voice was so gentle, so calming. I felt grateful Sgt. Kirkwood was the one asking the questions and not some officer I didn’t know. I hated every single thing about this meeting except for his voice. The glare of the floor, the thrift-store smell of the old wood paneling, the taste of the air being recycled through the window AC unit, the look on Whit’s face—the combination was making my stomach churn.

  “I think she killed herself!” Whit erupted, and the look on his face told me I wasn’t the only one having stomach problems just then. “I think she . . .”

  Sgt. Kirkwood’s eyebrows lifted, but only for half a second. I went stone still.

  “Why’s that?” Sgt. Kirkwood asked quietly. “Did she say something to you?”

  “No,” Whit said, then started to retch.

  Sgt. Kirkwood handed over his trash bin just in time for Whit to vomit. “Set the bin outside the door, son. Go clean yourself up.”

  Whit climbed over my legs and left for the bathroom, wiping at his mouth.

  How could any of this be real? It felt like a nightmare. I wanted to wake up. Just like Laurel.

  “Did you know that Laurel had . . . problems?” I asked, my words just a breath.

  He smiled sadly, nodded once, just barely.

  “Did Silas say the same thing to you? Like what Whit just said?”

  “No,” he said, looking genuinely surprised. “Does he think the same thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “He wonders.”

  I hated talking about Silas; it made me feel like I was back on the porch of the old Griggs house, having my heart ripped out of my chest.

  “Can I go?” I asked Sgt. Kirkwood. The scent of vomit was creeping into this small space.

  “Just a second,” he said as Whit reemerged, eyes bloodshot and face blotchy.

  “Mark, I’m aware that Laurel Hart had some issues, but I need to know why you think this might have been a suicide.”

  “I don’t,” Whit said, stone-faced now and with a new story. “I didn’t mean that. She’d been drinking. It was raining.”

  “And the pickup is so old and hard to drive,” I offered, my head a little dizzy from the suffocating smells. “The brakes were terrible.”

  “Yeah,” Whit agreed, so much force behind the one word that I knew he was lying. Well, not lying—not exactly. Not purposely trying to lie to Sgt. Kirkwood. Whit was trying to convince himself.

  “West, what about you? You’d interacted with Laurel earlier in the evening on Friday?”

  I nodded, distracted. “She was—she was good. And at the dance, the happiest I’d ever seen her.”

  “Anything else we should know?” Sgt. Kirkwood asked.

  I tried to think through the evening, looking for something—anything—suspicious. Or, hell, even not suspicious. Anything to help answer questions.

  “Silas said there was a note,” I piped up.

  Neither Sgt. Kirkwood nor Whit looked surprised.

  “It was for you,” I said to Whit. “Not that kind of note, just—”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “We’re holding on to it for a little while,” Sgt. Kirkwood told me, “but it seemed unrelated to the accident, so chances are we can relinquish it to the family soon. We’ll hope to pull together a full police report after the investigation is over. You two can go.”

  Whit and I stood to leave. “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “A month, maybe two.”

  “And then we’ll know what happened?” Whit asked. A flicker of something passed over his face—hope? determination? expectation?—and I knew that he, like me, needed answers. Sgt. Kirkwood looked sad. “No guarantee of that.”

  I wondered: If I knew it was an accident—bad brakes, bad weather—would I feel some relief, knowing I couldn’t have prevented it? Would Silas give himself a reprieve—or would he still feel guilty because he knew how to handle the truck better than his sister did? I didn’t know what Whit would feel, especially with the alcohol involved.

  But if it was a suicide. . . . My mind teemed with possibilities.

  Sgt. Kirkwood said, “Be careful out there, kids.”

  I drove directly to Trudy’s house. She pounced on me the moment I walked in the door, pressing her arms around me, cooing comfort in my ear. It was exactly what I needed. “Can I stay here tonight?” I asked. “In your bed? I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Of course!” she said. “We’ll all squish together and make room.”

  “We’ll . . . all?” I asked.

  “Ami’s here too!” Trudy said.

  “Hi, West!” said Ami from the top of the stairs.

  “Hi.” So that was the “us” in “Do you want us to come pick you up?” from before.

  “I heard about what happened,” Ami said, looking genuinely sorry. “I’m so, so sorry. What can we do to help?”

  Unable to stop myself, I gaped at her a little in disbelief. First, that she was using “we” to describe herself and Trudy, as if they were a team. Second, that she could be so removed from the events of the weekend and still try to insert herself into the mess. “I—nothing,” I said, then added, “Thanks.”

  We lounged around Trudy’s room, which was once a refuge for me but now felt so compromised by the presence of a stranger. Some weird song I didn’t know played over and over on Trudy’s laptop, the hot summer jam from Camp Summit, no doubt.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Trudy asked me.

  I shook my head, thinking, Not in front of Ami.

  So while the girls talked about counselors I didn’t know and reminisced over camp memories, I sat uncomfortably on Trudy’s bed, silently flipping through a stack of Trudy’s mail, seeing it without really seeing it, giving my hands something to do. I was drowning in summer memories of my own and feeling lonelier than I had when I’d been alone with my grief.

  While Ami rehashed a story from a camper-versus-counselor activity, I looked up and saw Trudy staring at me. When she caught my eye, she mouthed, Are you okay?

  I stared back for a moment, then slowly shook my head. But before she could do anything about it, I stood up to go. “I just remembered something I need to do at home,” I said. Trudy knew me well enough to recognize it was a lie.

  Outside of the bell tower, I’d never kept secrets from her before, but just now I wondered if I would start. I felt protective of these memories. They were mine. Well, mine and his.

  And I also felt selfish with the grief, which belonged to just a small knot of us in this town: me, Whit, Silas and his family.

  Tru followed me out to my car. “What’s going on, West?” she asked.

  I looked at her. “She was my friend, Tru.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I’m really sorry.”

  “Me too. I’ll see you at school?”

  “You don’t want to stay here tonight?”

  “I don’t think I should.”

  Trudy looked at me for a long while. “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you at school,” I said again, then ducked into my car.

  I backed out of Trudy’s driveway, wiping away tears and missing her more in that moment than I did even over the summer. If I’d only gone with her to Camp Summit, then it would be me and her telling stories in her room. I would be singing along to that ridiculous song instead of suffering this crashing, hopeless loss and guilt, because I would have never met them.

  The thought pulled at my heart as I drove the tired streets. Never met the Hart twins? Could I really wish for that?

  The answer was there in a moment.

  Yes.

  thirty-one

  When school started, there were whispers up and down the halls: A girl died, and did you know it might have been suicide? Since very few of us at the high school had known her, it was mostly gossip, though the administration invited local clergy to join the school
counselors in offering the students support and a chance to talk. Pockets of female underclassmen sobbed and comforted each other, annoying me to no end.

  “What’s she crying for?” I lashed out in the direction of one frenetic sophomore.

  Her friends glared at me, but the weeping one just spluttered, “Didn’t you hear about the girl who died? Her name was Laura, and it—could—have—been—any of us!” She dissolved into hysterics, and I stormed away without even bothering to correct her.

  Later that day, I saw those same sophomore girls through a classroom window, bawling to my dad, of all people. He looked so strong, so full of profound consolation, and it made me furious because all he’d offered me was space.

  There were rumors that Laurel had been crazy, gossip that twisted the accident site into a hanging, allegations that the brother had something to do with the death. But at lunch, Elliot stood up in the cafeteria and announced, “I will kick anyone’s ass I hear talking about it.” I assumed the announcement was mostly for Whit’s benefit, but Elliot’s eyes found mine in the crowded lunchroom and he nodded, just once.

  The whole school smelled like a department store, everyone in new outfits, and I walked the halls in a daze. Conversations sounded like blurred whispers. Whit avoided me, and Bridget and Marcy acted as if I was either going to break into pieces or else set fire to the school. And while Trudy had been at my side that morning, pressing her upper arm against mine in a show of solidarity, I hadn’t seen her since. Sometimes I felt as if I needed a support beam to keep me standing. Once, I would have made the request of Trudy; once, she would have known without my asking.

  Again I wondered if I should tell her about Silas and our night in the bell tower, but I was already in shreds, and silence was the simplest guard against becoming the most pathetic confetti. It made me think of the night Libby combed her fingers through the ravaged remains of those peeled-apart paper dolls and dropped them in my lap. “It worked just the way I guessed,” she had said, and remembering that made me feel so foolish. Out of the mouths of babes and all that.

  Elliot and I had fifth-period English together. When I entered the room, he was talking to a group of football players, but he looked up and offered me a sad smile before breaking away from the guys and crossing the room to me. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, okay?” he said to me. He opened up his arms, and it was so damn easy to fall into them.