“We?” Faye asks, though she knows what it means.
“You thought we had no idea. But we lived with you. We saw the way you looked at him, the way he found flimsy reasons to come by here. We used to laugh about it. We—” Clary’s voice breaks, and Faye’s hand goes out to her daughter, a reflex, like when she slams on the brakes and uses her hand as a human seat belt. It’s funny, the things that come naturally.
She rubs Clary’s back as Clary cries. She cries, too, both of them grieving Annie together. Annie, who is gone but not gone. Faye supposes she will have both Annie and Lydia on her shoulders now, one for each. She will carry them both with her.
Clary regains her composure and continues with what she was saying. “Annie and I figured it out.” She swallows, looks Faye in the eye. “Together,” she finishes, her voice steady this time.
Faye nods, doing her best to look properly chastised and penitent when what she really feels is an overwhelming sense of relief. She has not had time to let the implications flood in. That will come later, after the funeral, when there is time again for real life. Do the next thing. Isn’t that what she’s always done? It’s gotten her this far. It will have to get her the rest of the way.
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t a good role model,” she says. “I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down,” Clary says. “You didn’t let either of us down.”
Faye gives her a skeptical look.
“You didn’t!” she says. “We just felt sorry for you. That you love him so much and he’s married. We just want you to be happy. Same as you always said for us.”
Faye presses her lips together, gives Clary the thinnest of thin smiles. She looks at her daughter and sees life going on. She sees the circle of their lives—hers and Clary’s with Annie—closing. They are skaters on a very large rink, making a figure eight, one circle complete, a new one taking shape.
“You ready?” Clary asks. “We should get going.”
Faye attempts another smile and this time manages to get the corners of her mouth to turn up ever so slightly. She will be there for her daughter. She will do the next thing, the thing that is most needed at this present moment. She will make the arrangements to bury her niece next to her sister. She will help her child grieve, and she will grieve herself. She will close one circle and skate right into the next one. Because this is what she does. It is what she has always done, no matter how hard it is.
“I’m ready,” she says.
JUNE 3
TWO DAYS AFTER THE WEDDING DAY
Clary
On Monday afternoon, she goes to Miss Minnie’s to drive her, just like she always does. Faye begs her not to, says no one expects her to do anything, that Glynnis can care for her own mother. But Clary needs to do this, needs to do something besides sit in their silent house now devoid of policemen and searchers, because there are no more searches to be done. Annie has been found, and everything has changed.
And so she goes to Miss Minnie’s to hear the story she’s heard a thousand times, to drive the same route she drives every day and distract her brain from thinking about what all this means. She goes to do something she can do because she doesn’t know anything else to do.
Glynnis and Laurel are both there, clearly not expecting her when she knocks on the door, startling them as they sit at Minnie’s kitchen table talking about who knows what. They both look at her like they’ve seen a ghost. Glynnis leaps to her feet and tut-tuts over Clary, asks after everyone but, mercifully, keeps it brief, shuttling Minnie off to the car and giving them a cheery wave as Clary shifts the car into reverse. Laurel hovers in the doorway of Minnie’s house, watching. When she looks at Clary, there is a longing in her eyes, a hunger for a story. But the story has already been told.
Clary lowers the radio like Minnie likes, so that she can be heard. She expects Minnie to launch into the story about the time they hit the turnoff onto the main road, just like she always does. But Minnie remains silent. Clary looks over at her passenger, but the old lady is staring out her own window, watching the same roads she’s traveled all her life, turned new every day by a mind that cannot hold a memory. And yet she holds just one.
Clary prompts her. “It was a perfect day,” Clary says aloud, hoping that it will get Minnie going.
But Minnie is silent.
They round a curve, and she tries again. “Henry said, ‘Let’s go for a drive, Sugar.’” She thinks that if she feeds Miss Minnie a line, she will just pick up and go with it. For a frantic moment, she wonders if this, too, has been lost, if Minnie has lost her one remaining memory. Clary cannot take one more thing going wrong. She tries again with another standard from the story she knows by heart. “Family is the most important thing.”
That does it. Miss Minnie turns from the window and gives her a smile. “It is, honey. It really is.” Miss Minnie takes a good long breath, and Clary feels heartened, expectant. She knows that the old woman will tell her story, and they will drive their route. There is still one thing she can count on in this world. But what Miss Minnie says next is off script.
“It was because of my family that I told Henry he had to do it. He had to make that girl be quiet.” Minnie continues looking out the window. Her voice is quiet but clear as she adds, “She was going to tell everyone about him and her.”
Clary feels her blood run cold as she grips the steering wheel harder and tries to keep her foot steady on the gas, the car on the road. She glances over at Miss Minnie, expecting her to still be looking out her window, but instead she is looking directly at Clary with those cloudy eyes of hers.
“You favor her, you know. I’ve always thought that since the very first day you came here to drive me. And you kind of act like her, too. A little wild, a little different. She didn’t have those tattoos like you do, but she was always doing crazy things with her hair and whatnot. She had a wild streak in her. The kind a man likes to think he can tame.” Minnie cocks her head. “Has any man ever tried to tame you?”
Clary makes her face stay calm and emotionless as she stutters, “N-no.”
Finding no good place to turn around, she executes a three-point turn in the middle of the road. She almost wishes a cop would come along and ask her what in the Sam Hill she’s doing. Then she could get out of this car and away from this crazy old woman.
“He told me all about it that day,” Minnie continues, seemingly oblivious that Clary has changed their route or that she is about to completely freak out. “He said, ‘Let’s go for a drive, Sugar.’ And I had an idea why. I had suspected. He just up and confessed it all while we drove. Told me about that hussy we hired seducing him, causing him to stray. Said he had to get it out in the open because she was making threats about telling people. He said she had proof, that she could make real trouble for us. He said that he had to make it right, and he would do anything. He said anything, and he meant it.
“We drove right along this way, and it was a beautiful day. We talked about the kind of things that don’t really matter in the end but you talk about anyway. Because at the time they seem like they need sayin’. Then we went to watch Neil’s baseball game. And after the game, he dropped me at home and went to find her. She was camping that night, using equipment he gave to her out of our store. He said he knew right where she would be, and he would make sure it was over. Of course I didn’t know what he meant by that. I found that out later.”
Clary’s heart is pounding so loudly and she is shaking so hard that she’s afraid she will have some sort of attack and not make it back to the house where Glynnis is. She wills herself to just get there, to put Minnie out of the car so she can call Hal York, the man her mother loves, and tell him what she has just heard. She presses down on the accelerator, and the car picks up speed as Minnie shakes her head.
“Did you know she had her little girl with her that night? We were always so afraid that little girl would tell someone what she saw, that she would recognize him. But there was nothing we could do abo
ut it. It’s not like we could harm that sweet child—not without further risk to us both. We had to just hope for the best. And then the best happened. That little girl told the police it was someone else who did it.” There is silence. Then Minnie speaks again.
“She came to drive me the other day. Did you know that?”
Clary keeps her eyes on the road, forces her head to nod up and down.
“I told her that I knew who she was. But I don’t think she knew what I meant.” Minnie clucks her tongue. “Now that little girl is dead.” She shakes her head. “Isn’t that just a shame?” Minnie thinks about it for a few minutes, then turns back to look at Clary as they finally make it back to Minnie’s driveway.
She throws the car into park and staggers out, away from Minnie’s cataract stare, before falling on all fours into the strip of grass running along the drive. The smells of earth and grass waft up as the blades tickle her nose. She retches, then vomits as Glynnis comes running out of the house. “Oh, you poor dear,” Glynnis hollers. “I shouldn’t have let you take Mama today. I just knew it was too much.”
Glynnis stands over Clary as she spits into the grass, talking as though nothing is happening. “Did Mama upset you? She said she had something to tell you. But I didn’t pay it any mind. I just thought she’d tell you the same story she always does.”
Glynnis wrings her hands and continues to babble on. “She’s not been right ever since Annie came over here to drop off that handkerchief, if you want to know the truth. She just sits and worries that handkerchief to death. Then she saw on the news that Annie was dead and, well, she’s just been more confused than ever. So don’t pay her any mind—whatever she said. Okay?”
Glynnis glances over at Minnie, who is still sitting, unfazed, in Clary’s front seat, then back at Clary, who is sitting up on her haunches, wishing for water. “You poor dear,” she says to Clary. “Do you need anything?”
Clary nods, looks up at Glynnis, the afternoon sun a halo over her head. In the doorway of the house, Laurel watches, openmouthed. Clary wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I need you to call 911.”
JUNE 8
ONE WEEK AFTER THE WEDDING DAY
Kenny
His girlfriend was actually Annie’s idea. An idea he resisted for a long, long time. But once Annie accepted Scott’s ring, he told her he was going to go for it. He’d worn the shirt he knew she liked when he told her this, the one she bought him for his birthday. She said it brought out the color of his eyes. He wanted Annie to see what she was losing when he told her about this girl he’d met, one he was interested in. And he was interested. That part wasn’t a lie.
The girl who would become his girlfriend was pretty and kind and had a way of talking to him that reminded him ever so slightly of Annie. He was drawn to her—just not as much as he was drawn to Annie. But that ship had sailed, as the saying went. And he needed to move on. Just like Annie had told him to. He replayed those words in his head, in Annie’s voice, so that she was always with him, even when she wasn’t supposed to be.
When he told her about the girlfriend, he expected Annie to say all the things she usually said. Things about moving on and letting go and such. But instead, Annie started to cry. She cried until snot ran from her nose and tears poured from her eyes, and then she got up to go to the bathroom because she was embarrassed about the way she looked. But he thought she looked beautiful, and he told her so when she returned from the bathroom.
She started to cry again when he said that, and this time he got up to get her a tissue, but all he could find was a roll of paper towels, so he tore off a few and brought them back to her. She accepted them and blotted her face, looking mournful.
“I’m a coward,” she said, her voice muffled by the paper towels. “I do everything everyone else expects of me and nothing I want to do.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked her.
“I don’t know!” she screamed into her hands. And she began to cry all over again.
Sometimes he feels hurt down deep in his heart, but it’s so deep he can just pretend it isn’t there at all. He would have to be like a miner and go down where it is completely dark to find the hurt, to excavate it and bring it up to the light. Instead, he just lets the hurt stay where it is. And that is how he has learned not to let life kick his ass. That is how he has learned to live with his love for Annie. Annie who loves him but cannot be with him because she does not know what she wants. And because she does not know what she wants, she does what other people expect. She accepts Scott’s ring, and she plans a big wedding, and she keeps trying to be The Girl Who Turned Out Good.
He has told her he would not pressure her to get married like Scott has. They can just live together. They can be best friends. And they can talk about things and share their wildest dreams when it’s dark outside and it seems like it’s just the two of them on the whole Earth and anything is possible. It can be like it’s always been between them, but all the time. He tells her this, but she says no, that that’s not the way life works, that there are some things he just doesn’t understand.
“I wish I could outgrow you, like you outgrow eating Nerds or wearing overalls or going to the skating rink on Friday nights,” Annie says.
But Annie does not outgrow him. She calls him when Scott is gone. She comes over when she gets lonely. She tells him that she is sorry, sorry, sorry for using him. But he just says, “Use me all you want,” which makes her kiss him and ask how come he puts up with her.
“Because I love you,” he tells her.
“I love you, too,” she says back. But it is not enough. Sometimes love, Kenny has learned, is not enough. It was not enough for them to be together, and it was not enough to keep Annie here on Earth where he needs her.
There is a knock at the door, and for a moment, he feels that burst of euphoria that is her name resounding in his chest. It will be a long time before he doesn’t think, Maybe it’s Annie! when the phone rings or when there is an unexpected knock at his door. It might be for the rest of his life.
He shuffles over, hoping it’s not more cops, wanting to ask more questions. He is tired of cops, and besides, there should be no more questions. Not for him anyway. They say it wasn’t his fault. Everybody says that. For the first time ever in this town, he sees compassion and sympathy in people’s eyes when they look at him. As much as he values their acceptance, it will be a long time before he can agree with any of them. He shouldn’t have yelled at her, called her those names, driven her to run away from him.
But it isn’t a cop. It’s his girlfriend standing there, or the girl who used to be his girlfriend. She looks pretty and sad and a little afraid. He wonders if she is afraid of him or of what he will say. But he does not ask. He just gives her a little smile and says, “Good to see you.” Because that is not a lie. She is a sight for sore eyes, as Annie used to say.
“Are you okay?” she asks. She points at his black eye, his busted lip.
“I fell,” he says, and as he says it, he sees it again, the sheriff running across the room to try and stop his fall. He didn’t get there in time, but he tried.
“But I’m fine,” he adds quickly.
Of course he is not fine. He is miserable. But how can he tell her that he is miserable because the girl he loved most is dead? He has lost the great love of his life. And all the while, he’d let the girl standing in front of him believe she was that girl. It was wrong of him to do it; he sees that now. A thought occurs to him for the first time: it was wrong of Annie to ask him to.
“I heard about the girl the police were asking you about. Your . . . friend from high school?”
“Annie,” he says, and her name hurts to say out loud.
“It’s terrible what happened,” she says.
“Yes,” he agrees. She looks as awkward and nervous as he feels.
“I wish you’d told me about her,” she says, and her words are not angry anymore, just sad.
“She asked me not
to,” he says. He feels the sharp sting of tears prick his eyes. He does not like to cry. It gives him a headache. He has not cried for Annie yet. He is afraid to start. But looking at the girlfriend’s sad face, he wants to cry. He wants to cry over losing both of them. “Would you like to come in?” he asks, remembering his manners.
Sarah smiles, nods. He steps back and holds out his arm, the universal sign of come in, you are welcome here. But she does not see it as such. Instead, she sees it as the overture of a hug. And so she hugs him. She hugs him right there in the doorway, where anyone could see. She is not ashamed of him, she does not question him, and she never has. He hugs her back, tightening his arms around her. She is not Annie. She is Sarah, and she is here.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” she says. And it is not okay, but he doesn’t point that out. There in the doorway, with Sarah in his arms, it occurs to him that it might be okay again. And in that moment, just that feels like enough.
Faye
They leave her alone to do Annie’s hair and, once the door closes behind the funeral director, she sets about arranging the things she will need in the order she likes to have them: round brush, comb, flat iron, hair spray. She does not let herself think too much about what she is there to do. She tries not to think about the circumstances or the setting. She just ignores the cold and gets started, willing her fingers to cooperate instead of freezing, willing her heart and mind to leave the building while her body does what needs to be done.
The other girls from the shop offered to do it, of course, but she wouldn’t let them. She was to have been the one to do Annie’s hair for the wedding. It is only right that she will do it for the funeral. There is a symmetry to it that fits somehow. She was not there when Annie was born. She had wanted to be, but her husband wouldn’t let her go. She’d talked to Lydia on the phone moments after, promised to come as soon as she could to see her new niece. But Annie was more than a year old before she laid eyes on her.
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