The Whys Have It

by Amy Matayo

He sits on the sofa across from me, then removes his cap to scratch his head. “Want to tell me about her? And there’s no need to lie or make it sound better than it is. It’s my job to protect you. I need to know what we’re looking at.”

  What we’re looking at. There’s so much weight in those four words. I slump into the sofa, feeling everything I’ve worked for in life sinking right along with me. “She was a girl I knew back home, more years ago than I can remember.”

  “Ten,” Big Jim says. “Ten years is what I’m told. What happened to her?”

  I swallow. How much did Sal share with Big Jim? More confusing—how did he find out in the first place? I never told anyone but Kyle. My brother might hate me, but he wouldn’t talk. As for me, I would have been happy to keep it a secret forever. What isn’t spoken aloud can’t be used against you. Or so I’ve heard.

  “What’s going on, Jim?” I force an edge into my voice—an edge I don’t feel, but I need to get on the in-charge side of this conversation somehow. “The name Angela didn’t just pop up for no reason. What’s going on?”

  Within moments, I regret asking. For the next several minutes Big Jim tells me.

  Late the night before, Sal received a phone call from Kyle. Frantic and just this side of coming apart, my brother rambled on about an old incident involving me and a girl who died years before, dropping the name Angela once or twice into the conversation. Sal considered hanging up on him, figured Kyle was drunk or having a mental breakdown or at the very least his jealousy of me had finally come to a peak. But that’s when Kyle dropped the real reason for the call. That’s when Sal knew the story was true. That’s also when he called Big Jim in a raging panic.

  “They want you in Springfield tonight for questioning.”

  My hangover wanes, and I shoot forward on the sofa. “Who does?”

  “The police. Your brother gave them Sal’s number. Seems they tried to get a hold of you a few times last night. We all did. None of us could reach you.”

  I shove my hands through my hair and looked at the floor, the weight of regret seeping through my conscience once again. It seems that’s all I have time for lately.

  “Is my brother involved at all? Did he say if he’s in trouble?”

  When Big Jim frowns at me, I feel a small measure of relief. It’s bad for me. Maybe it won’t be as awful for Kyle. Still.

  “Why is this coming out now, after so much time?”

  Jim doesn’t answer, just twirls a gold ring in circles on his finger and works his jaw in thought like a man trying to grind out a solution. He looks at me, eyes tired. The giant man who intimidates many on mere presence looks weakened.

  “You realize this isn’t good, right?”

  I sigh, deep and resigned. “I realize it. I’ve always known it.”

  “Might not be the worst thing that could happen to you, though.”

  I feel a sideways lecture coming on and roll my eyes. “How do you figure that?”

  He stands up and looks around the room—at the marble columns flanking the front door, at a giant stone fountain bubbling inside the dining room, at my first gold record hanging above the mantle in front of us—before settling his intense gaze back on me.

  “This is a nice place you have, Cory. You built a good life, and anyone who could see this place would believe it.”

  “But you don’t?” I’m pretty sure where this is going.

  “Sure I do. No one could argue the merits of the life you lead or the hard work it took to get you here.”

  “But?”

  He sniffs, narrows his focus, tilts his head in a question. “But…does this make you happy? Is all this stuff giving you any peace inside? Deep down, if you had two choices—keep all this and stay the way you are or give it up and finally have some peace—which one would you choose?”

  I blink up at him, caught. He knows the answer. I haven’t had any peace of mind in ten years. Fun, yes. Adventure, yes. But peace? I stand up, the burden of my circumstances resting heavy on my shoulders, my gaze locked on the floor in front of me.

  “Cory?”

  I meet his stare eye for eye, blink for blink. Finally I concede and look away.

  “Pack a bag and meet me in the driveway. It’s time to stop running.”

  Time to stop running.

  Is that even a possibility?

  I doubt it is. Not for me.

  Still, daring to hope but knowing better than to dwell on it, I head for the stairs.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sam

  He knew her.

  I told him about my classmate that day at the lake, and he knew her. I understand why he would be afraid. I even understand why he would leave after hearing my story. After all, it’s one more person. One more tragic incident he was involved with that managed to somehow link back to me.

  Angela.

  My sister.

  Will it stop?

  But what I don’t understand is why he didn’t say anything. Running away never solves a problem, but Cory fled without a word.

  He just left. He left me, adding to a long string of people who’d already traveled down that tired path before. The difference is—unlike my mother from cancer and my father with no memory and my sister whose life was ended instantly without her permission—Cory knew what he was doing. He knew leaving would hurt me, but he made the decision to hurt me anyway.

  That almost makes it worse. When you knowingly walk out on a girl whose heart can’t take any more leaving, what kind of person does that make you?

  But if I don’t reach out to him, what kind of person does that make me?

  I’m wearing pajamas and staring out the window. I take a sip of coffee, then set the cup back down and scoot it an inch to the right, an inch to the left. I circle the rim a few times with my forefinger, liking the way the steam dampens my palm and warms my wrist. I tap the porcelain with a fingernail and listen until the dinging sound fades, then do it again I’m restless and fidgety, tired and anxious. I’ve downed three cups of coffee and desperately want a fourth if only to have something to do. Caffeine can’t cure what has me feeling so unsettled, so I called in sick this morning. And I am. Sick to my stomach. Sick with nerves. Sick of thinking about Cory. His brother called yesterday asking for my help, but what kind of help would I possibly be, considering Cory might not even want it?

  Help is a subjective term when it involves someone who walked out on you two weeks prior without any warning or goodbye or promise to see you later.

  I’ve waged this internal war with myself all morning, but I haven’t received a single mental scratch. I’m as lost now as I ever was, and no one’s around to point me in the right direction. I stand from the table, then make my way to the refrigerator and open it. Nothing inside but a bag of salad and yesterday’s leftover Taco Bell, so I close it. Chocolate might make everything clearer, definitely would make everything better. There’s no chocolate in this apartment.

  I lean against the refrigerator and chew on a fingernail, trying to avoid the clock.

  I need your help, he said.

  Tomorrow night at 5:00, he said.

  It’s two o’clock. Three hours to go. Three hours to decide.

  Three hours to shed these pajamas, take a shower, and make myself useful. Cory might not appreciate the effort, but I know his brother would.

  His brother isn’t the one I care about. His brother also isn’t the one who hurt me. There’s no end to this battle, and now I’m back where I started.

  Tired of spinning in circles, I give up and snatch my car keys off the counter, then walk down the outside steps toward my car. I want ice cream. Chocolate with sprinkles and whipped cream and a giant red cherry on top. That’s the only thing I’m ready to decide right now.

  CHAPTER 33

  Cory

  The interrogation room could double as a meat locker. It’s freezing in here, so cold that I can see little puffs of air in front of my mouth, but no one makes a move to turn up the heat. Maybe this is
a form of torture? Slowly turn the musician to ice; that’ll get him to talk. I’ve done nothing but talk for twenty minutes now. Tired of rehashing the past, I take in the room for a long moment.

  White walls and steel gray furniture added to the atmosphere—cold, hard, no-nonsense, wouldn’t want anyone to get too comfortable or think this was a friendly chat. I shift in my chair, exhausted by the questions the two men across from me have asked all afternoon, knowing they aren’t close to wrapping up. We’ve already run through the story once and I’m currently on the second time around, but they keep pressing for more details. More descriptions. More information. At first I was hesitant. Now the release of long-held secrets feels a bit liberating. Finally, I can be done with hiding.

  “So when you arrived, Miss Rogers was already drunk?”

  Miss Rogers. Ten years ago, I thought I was in love. Until today, I didn’t even know her last name.

  “Yes.”

  “And what had she been drinking?”

  “Does it matter? We were teenagers. She shouldn’t have been drinking anything.” Liberating sure, but they’ve asked this question three times already and I know they were taking notes.

  “Just answer the question, Mr. Minor.”

  “Vodka and two bottles of beer. Like I said already, that was all I saw her drink, but there were empty bottles scattered everywhere. Maybe they were hers, maybe someone else’s.” I scan my memory, remembering the bottles, the clear liquid running down Angela’s chin. I should have thrown them away, carried her to my car, driven her to safety. I should have done so much more.

  “And after you saw her drinking, how much time passed before she jumped into the lake?”

  By then I was drunk, and the memories were fuzzy. Still, I know the timeline; I’ve mentally replayed everything a million times in my head since that night. “A little more than thirty, I think. I wasn’t wearing a watch, but I remember when I arrived and what the clock on my dashboard read when I drove home.”

  “Did you try to stop her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she wouldn’t listen? Why weren’t you successful? A big guy like you, why couldn’t you keep her from going into the water?”

  I study the man. “I was seventeen, a little smaller than I am now. And I was drunk too.”

  The officer makes a note on the pad in front of him, then folds his fingers together and looks at me. “So we have two drunk teenagers that more than likely couldn’t hold their liquor sitting by the pond late at night. An age old case of bad combinations.”

  I lick my lips, despising the idea of being just another cliché. Another statistic. So many years of mind-altering worry came down to this harsh reality. The officers share a look, one I can’t quite decipher. Probably something along the lines of why are teenagers so stupid? I’ve been asking myself that for years.

  “The witness says he heard you scream at Angela. Something about not swimming in her condition. What were you referring to? Anything other than the alcohol?”

  I swallow. Two hours ago, this revelation hit like a hand grenade to the face. A witness. Someone who saw and heard everything. Someone behind that light that had flickered off in the distance.

  A flashlight. A young boy, outside looking for a misplaced Gameboy after dark, his house separated from the park’s edge by a chain link fence. He’d been eight years old at the time, curious about the voices that drifted across the pond. Scared but too involved in the happenings to head inside, he turned off the flashlight, climbed the fence, and crept unnoticed toward the two teenagers in front of him. He watched the entire exchange, coming forward only last week when he saw an ad for my new album online. The kid had never forgotten my face or the way Angela screamed my name, but it wasn’t until the ad that he put two and two together. Still, thinking he was half-insane to implicate Cory Minor in a crime he’d witnessed over a decade earlier, he quietly called the police.

  They called Kyle.

  He called Sal.

  Sal called Big Jim.

  Jim came to my house and rang the doorbell.

  I still don’t know all the details of the boy’s statement. Not that it matters. I’m not afraid of much anymore. The worst has finally been revealed. Still, there is my usual worry about a lawsuit; what I do know of the boy’s story rings true. What I don’t know—mainly the motive for telling it—is still up in the air. Celebrities attract lawsuits the way normal people attract local gossip. I remember the fear of being sued after Kassie’s death. That is laughable compared to this.

  “Mr. Minor, did you hear the question?”

  I blink, pulled from the memory. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then can you please tell us what you meant by the words “In your condition?”

  That she was drunk. That’s all I meant at the time, but the boy. He’d heard it all. He knew the horror of what Angela had revealed when she was vulnerable and without that wall around her that was usually so firmly in place. I want to lie. Angela can’t defend herself, and it doesn’t seem fair to drag her name farther into the dirt when what she really deserves is to rest in proverbial peace.

  And there is the matter of her family. Maybe they hadn’t known. This news might devastate them, and once again I will be the cause of someone’s grief. How many lives can one man ruin in the course of a single lifetime?

  A question without an answer. One that somehow still carries a death sentence. Namely mine—a hanging by self-loathing, a beheading in the gallows in front of cheering witnesses.

  I stare out the window behind the officer’s head, toward the people I suspect are watching from the other side of the one-way glass. More police officers, a prosecutor or two…I can only guess the rest. Swallowing his fear of being hated by all, I sit up straighter and answer the question.

  “She told me she was pregnant. She had just found out.”

  I can’t hear the gasps, but it isn’t hard to imagine them.

  The officer massages his temple. “Did she seem upset? Depressed? Had she shared anything else that night that might give us an indication of her state of mind?”

  I look between the two men, wondering what they know. What they aren’t saying.

  “She was scared, sir. That was her state of mind.”

  They glance at each other, and I know. Down deep in my gut I’m certain they asked the question to be polite and that tougher ones are coming. As much as I hate this interrogation, the worst part is just now beginning.

  “And that’s all? Nothing else to indicate what would drive her to drink alone by a pond so late at night? Anything that would indicate a reason for her depression. You had known her for a while, right?”

  I nod. “We met the year before.”

  This time the officer stares so long that beads of sweat break out on the back of my neck. The room is freezing, and I’m sweating. By this time tomorrow, the pneumonia should be fully set in.

  “You spent a lot of time together?”

  The hairs on my arm stand at attention. Angela’s family. If they’re watching this, they won’t be happy with my answers.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you ever physical?”

  An accusation. One we both know the reason for. “We kissed once, that was all.” I deliver the words like a shot of whiskey. Strong and to the point, no time to mess with lighter things. It hits me then that although I’m on top of the world in my career, I’ve hit rock bottom in life. Maybe God won’t listen to someone like me, but I fire a quick prayer toward heaven that there might be a way up.

  “So you kissed.” The officer seems to turn that bit of news over in his mind. “Nothing else?”

  “No sir.” I run a finger across my shirt collar, the air cold air feeling warm all of a sudden.

  “And in that time, she never mentioned anything to you at all? Nothing from her past? Nothing to give you a reason to question her stability?”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” my lawyer says.

  I ignored him, suddenly findin
g the way up. When you hit your lowest point, you have two choices: stay down and let the circumstances drown you, or find your footing and kick until you eventually break the surface. I decide to kick. I might not make it to the top, but at least I won’t stay in one place. Anything was better than feeling this low.

  I take a deep breath and ignore my lawyer. “She mentioned an uncle.” It’s all I can manage and, my throat tightens on the last word. My stomach clenches at the meaning behind it.

  The officer puts his pen down and tents his fingers, looking me in the eye. “Mr. Minor, were you aware that Angela’s uncle was released from prison three months before the accident?”

  My mind reels trying to process it. Her decade-old words came rushing back Got pregnant…don’t know what I’ll do about this time.

  “She told me he was still in prison,” I say.

  “Then she lied to you.”

  She lied. Of course she had. Why would she want me to believe otherwise? The truth was too dirty to speak when a lie would keep anyone from finding you covered in mud. Isn’t that what I had believed about myself?

  My head hurts.

  Eyes hurt.

  Chest hurts.

  In all the places a body can feel pain, mine feels it all and then triples the amount.

  “Mr. Minor?”

  I stare at my hands, at the tear that drips and lands on my first knuckle.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  Why?

  I would have helped her.

  Why?

  I wouldn’t have been jealous of the guy she’d slept with. Maybe…just maybe…I might have understood. Instead, I couldn’t see past my envy.

  That’s what it comes down to. My jealousy. My selfishness in wanting a part of her that someone else had experienced first. It’s the reason I didn’t stop her. It’s the reason I let her swim out alone to the middle of the pond. One look at a half-naked girl who wanted me, and I threw down my convictions for a chance to be with her. It didn’t matter that we were drunk. It didn’t matter that I was taking advantage. I wanted what I wanted, and I’ve paid for it ever since.