by Sarah Beard
Vivian came down the stairs and went into the kitchen to greet them. I listened as they chatted and dished up leftovers. They were talking fishing. My eyes stayed on the page, following the same line of text over and over, but I didn’t comprehend a single word. All I could focus on was Thomas’s voice, going on about nets and bait and trawlers. Dad laughed and shared his own fishing anecdotes like he’d found a new best friend in Thomas.
I’d gotten through two pages of my book, still not knowing what I’d read, when Thomas came out of the kitchen. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and turned to glance at me. His expression held an odd mix of remorse and impatience, like there was still more he wanted to say to me. I considered getting up and initiating a conversation with him, but Devin put his hand on my knee, and suddenly I was too concerned about what Devin would think. I turned back to my book, and Thomas went upstairs, closing the door to his room.
I glanced at Devin. His eyes were still on his sheet music, but his jaw was rigid. He turned and fixed an assessing gaze on me. In a hushed voice, he said, “It was him. Wasn’t it?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“The guy you were so hung up about last year. It was him. Am I right?”
I dropped my gaze, then nodded reluctantly. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know he was going to be here.”
“So . . . what is he doing here?”
“I don’t know. I asked him earlier, but he gave me a vague answer.”
“Huh.” He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “So all that time you were pining over him at school, moping around like the living dead, he was just . . . hanging out in the Netherlands?”
I nodded slightly, but said nothing. I didn’t want to have this conversation.
“Do you remember that night we went out after the concert at the Concertgebouw? There were some pretty seedy places in Amsterdam. Discothèques, drugs, legal prostitution. I think the legal drinking age is fourteen or something.” His brow wrinkled in contemplation. “I wonder what he was doing there all this time.”
“He was fishing.”
“Yeah, but what does a fisherman do at night?”
I closed my eyes and grimaced, trying to shut out the images Devin had planted there. Thomas’s words replayed in my mind. I became someone you wouldn’t recognize. A sick feeling wrenched my insides, and I stood. “I’m tired,” I said, and I was. Tired from the previous sleepless night. Tired from hiking all over a frozen mountain. Tired from the confusing thoughts and feelings that had continually bombarded me since Thomas’s reappearance. “I’m going to bed.”
He stood and hooked my arm, turning me around gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I let out a long sigh. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Listen,” he whispered and threw an anxious glance up the stairs. “I can see you need to get some answers from him. And I want you to know that you’re free to do that. You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I don’t see him as a threat. I know you love me.” His words were confident, but behind his eyes was a fear and insecurity I’d never seen before.
I put a hand to his cheek and looked in his eyes. “I do love you.”
He bent and kissed me. “I trust you, Aria.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I climbed the stairs, and as I passed Thomas’s door, I paused. I listened, expecting to hear his movements. But all I heard was my pulse throbbing in my ears. I raised a fist to knock, but lost my nerve and lowered it. I rested my palm against the door with fingers splayed, the wood’s proximity exaggerating my shallow breaths.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing he wouldn’t hear me. What else could I possibly say to him that I hadn’t already said? What could I ask that I hadn’t already asked? There was no reason that he would open up now when he had refused to earlier. So I stepped away and went to my room. I lay down and stared at the wall separating him from me, thinking how he may as well be thousands of miles away, back in the Netherlands. Soon, my weary eyes closed and I succumbed to much-needed sleep.
twenty-two
The next morning I awoke just before seven, as the sky was starting to lighten in predawn pale blue. I got dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast. I halted in the doorway when I saw Dad sitting alone at the kitchen table.
“There’s oatmeal on the stove if you want some,” he said, glancing up at me and waving his spoon toward the stove.
Apprehensively, I went to the cupboard for a bowl and dished up some oatmeal. “Is Vivian still sleeping?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She was up late wrapping presents.”
I joined him at the table and smiled to cloak my uneasiness. “It seems Vivian has been good for you.”
He nodded. “It’s been nice to have someone to come home to, to talk to. I didn’t realize how lonely I was until she forced herself into my life.” He smiled to himself as though reflecting on her endearing persistence. After a long moment, his eyes returned to mine, and his expression turned apologetic. “Aria, there’s something I need to say to you.”
My grip tightened on my spoon, and I suddenly felt like I was ten again, standing in line next to Dad for the Zipper ride at the carnival. It’ll be fun, he had said, and the next thing I knew, I was being hurled in a rickety deathtrap toward the pavement.
“You don’t need to,” I said with firmness.
He stared at me. “But I do. I—”
“Please.” I held up a hand and let out a sigh. “I came here because I want things to be different between us. Better. But I don’t want to revisit the past.” My voice was pleading. “Let’s just . . . start from here. Like a clean slate.”
A disappointed crease appeared between his brows, and he said, “The problem is, it’s still the same slate, and it needs to be wiped clean before we can start over.”
I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t. I know you’re sorry. You don’t need to say it. You don’t need to explain. It will only cause me more pain.”
His face fell, but he nodded slowly.
I paused, searching for a way to change the subject. “Are you working today?”He stared at me for a long moment as though still clinging to the prospect of his thwarted speech, then said, “Yeah. I volunteered so the younger guys could be at home for Christmas Eve.”
Christmas Eve. My heart sunk with the realization that this would be a hard day for Thomas.
“That Thomas,” Dad said as if reading my thoughts, “he’s a good kid.”
“You didn’t used to think that.”
“I know. I was wrong. He was a good friend to you, wasn’t he?”
He was much more than that, I thought. “Yeah, he was.”
“I saw him this morning—walking down the driveway toward the road.”
“He’s already up?”
“I think he went over to the fire site.” He paused. “Today is the day they died, you know.”
“I know,” I whispered.
He rose and took his dishes to the sink. “I could be wrong,” he said as he rinsed out his bowl, “but he’s probably the one who needs a friend right now.” He dried his hands and shrugged into his coat, then turned to me and smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow, for Christmas.”
I nodded and returned his smile, then watched him walk out the door.
Imagining Thomas alone at the fire site made me uneasy. I leaned over my bowl of half-eaten oatmeal, recalling how a couple years earlier, he had been there for me when I needed him most. The least I could do now was be a friend to him.
I pushed away from the table and dropped my oatmeal in the sink, threw on my coat, hat, and boots, and hurried out the front door.
As I walked along the icy road, the sun peeked over the mountain, casting long shadows across the sparkling snow. The air was perfectly still and clear from the storm the day before.
Turning down his driveway, the cavernous tomb
where his house once stood came into view. The blackened ruins stood out in the snow like ink splattered on white paper. All that remained was a scarred foundation littered with ash and rubble. Above it, singed and leafless branches arched like arms attempting to conceal the tragedy of what had occurred there.
In the shadow of the foundation, my eyes were drawn to a flicker of movement. There, camouflaged against a charred wall, Thomas leaned with head bent and hands stuffed in the pockets of his black peacoat.
I paused to watch him, puffs of my breath obscuring his figure with each exhale. His disheartened posture caused compassion to flood through me, making my heart ache with a desire to comfort him. Setting aside my own feelings and needs, I slowly approached him. When a twig snapped under my foot, he glanced up at me. His face was wet with tears, and his hand came up to wipe them away.
I lowered myself into the foundation and stepped carefully over the rubble to stand before him. His face was composed in a fragile mask, but beneath it his shining eyes were pain stricken.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that. It was selfish of me.”
He nodded, a feeble smile touching his lips. “All things considered, I thought you went pretty easy on me.” The smile gradually collapsed into a frown. “Aria—I’m so sorry. I never imagined my actions would hurt you so deeply. If I had known—”
I put a hand on his arm and shook my head. “It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay now.” I gazed into his face, searching his eyes for something, but not entirely knowing what. “What about you?” I asked gently. “How are you these days?”
His eyes strayed from mine, instead wandering over our dismal surroundings. Scraping his boot through the ash and decomposing leaves, he released a sigh. “It’s hard to be here, to see . . .” His voice broke and he turned away. “I miss them.”
Instinctively, I went to him and pulled him into an embrace. He stiffened at first, then his body relaxed and molded into mine. “I know,” I murmured, hoping he’d understand that in some way I knew how he felt and shared his burden.
“You do know, don’t you?” His voice was faint, his lips buried in my hair. I could feel his chest trembling, like it took all his effort to restrain whatever storm was raging inside.
The woods around us were quiet, but somewhere off in the distance I could hear a blue jay’s call. A warbling A-flat to C, like an old iron gate, swinging open and closed. Open and closed. Open and closed.
Thomas pulled away first, and it was then that I noticed a scarf coiled around his neck and tucked beneath his coat. Blue and gray herringbone. The same one I’d knit and given him for Christmas two years earlier. I reached up and touched it. The fibers were beginning to fray with wear. “You kept it,” I said with wonder.
His eyes softened and a faint smile appeared on his lips. “I kept everything you gave me.” His husky tone was rich with unspoken meaning. I gazed at him, waiting for him to expound, but he didn’t.
“Please, Thomas. Talk to me. Tell me what happened to you.”
He backed away, then slid down the blackened wall and rested his arms on his knees. “Does it really matter anymore?”
There had to be a way to make him see that he could trust me, that I was safe to confide in. I went and knelt in front of him, and in a gesture that took a great deal of courage, I slipped my hand into his. For a brief second, his face slackened in surprise, then his callused fingers softened and formed carefully around mine. I looked into his eyes. “It matters to me. I’m still your friend, and no matter what, I always will be.”
He stared at our hands, and when he looked back at me, his fragile mask had all but disappeared. His face was hauntingly expressive, a medley of eagerness and terror.
“You left me that morning in the motel parking lot,” I prompted when I could no longer bear his silence, “and then you went to Pasadena, and then what?”
I saw a change come over his face—like he’d been arguing with himself about something and had now made a decision. “I went to the funeral,” he said, shaking his head. “It was awful. Having to face my parents’ friends and our family, and explain to them what happened. Some were kind about it, but others . . .” His hand stiffened in mine, like he was reliving some hurtful memory. “I never realized it was possible for someone to offer condolence and condemnation all in the same look, with the same words. Richard made sure that everyone knew I was to blame. ‘Thomas, the grim reaper.’ ”
I squinted. “Why would he say that?”
Something like guilt washed over his face. “Aria . . .there’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago.”
The air around us suddenly grew quiet. Not even the blue jay was singing anymore. All I could hear were his words, hanging, echoing between the beats of my heart. “What?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“Do you remember when I told you I’d been in a car accident?”
I glanced at the thin scar above his right eyebrow and felt my pulse quicken with foreboding. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well . . . I didn’t exactly tell you the whole story.”
The terror his words stirred in me robbed me of my voice. All I could do was stare at him and wait.
“A few years ago I was at a party with some friends. Richard came with Sasha. She was pregnant, about six months along, and she was upset that Richard had brought her there because she didn’t feel well. She kept asking him to take her home, but he was too busy playing rounders and beer pong. So finally she tried to take his keys to drive herself home, and they got in a huge fight—he had this old Audi he’d put a lot of work into and was really protective of it. Eventually he gave in and agreed to drive her home. It was late, so I came along.”
He pulled his hand from mine and began tugging on the fray of his scarf, twisting it between his fingers. “Richard was angry that she’d made him leave. So he kept driving up on the curb to scare her. We were both yelling at him to stop, to pull over and let Sasha drive, but he insisted he was in control and that he was just playing around.”
He gritted his teeth and tore a piece of fray from his scarf. “He was laughing, while Sasha sat there crying, and it infuriated me. So when he started veering toward the curb again, I reached up from the backseat and yanked the steering wheel in the other direction.” He dropped his hand from the scarf, gazing past me with empty eyes and a placid expression, like he was no longer with me. He was sitting in that car, reliving that fateful sliver of time.
He didn’t need to tell me what happened next, because through the window of his eyes, I saw the scene myself. I saw the crumpled metal and shattered glass on blood-stained asphalt. I kept my expression steady, which strangely took little effort. I felt as numb as he looked.
“I woke up days later in the hospital,” he finally said, “with broken ribs and a torn spleen and stitches all over. I thought I had it bad, but then I found out that compared to Richard and Sasha, I’d come out unscathed. Richard was in the hospital for weeks with head and lung injuries. And Sasha . . .” Torment etched itself across his face, sweeping away the blanket of numbness.
“She didn’t make it,” I finished in a whisper.
He shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes.
“And the baby?”
“Emily lived long enough for everyone to fall in love with her,” he said hoarsely. “But she was too early.”
A tightness developed in my chest, and I realized I hadn’t drawn air for quite some time. I willed myself to breathe, and with each breath came a stab of pain.
“If I hadn’t yanked on the steering wheel,” Thomas added, “or if I wouldn’t have let Richard get behind the wheel in the first place . . .” He grimaced and shook his head. “I was fifteen. If I hadn’t been drinking too, I could have swiped his keys and driven her home myself. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Sasha and Emily are gone.”
What little control I had over my emotions crumbled away, and I stood and turned from him so
he couldn’t see my face.
The few months I’d spent with him were laid out before me like an open field. This new revelation drove over it like a plough, scraping up the grass to reveal the hidden soil beneath. I saw my memories with him against this new backdrop. His bookshelf full of journals to sort out his grief. His walls covered in paintings to curb his restlessness. The hostility between him and his brother. That dark, tormented look that sometimes seeped into his expression. All those untold stories in his eyes, all those moments when it seemed he was holding something back. The words, I don’t feel good enough for you, on the porch after the dance.
The plough and harrow then came over me, scraping my soul until it was raw with guilt. I must have been so selfish not to see his suffering. I thought about all the time he’d spent comforting me, helping me, and all the while he was suffering, silently carrying his own burden.
I didn’t want to cry when I was the one who should be comforting him, but even pressing a hand over my mouth couldn’t stop the first sob from erupting. Helpless to restrain the flood of tears that followed, I turned back and knelt in front of him, then putting my hands on his face, I forced him to look at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said fiercely through my tears. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I wanted to tell you so many times,” he said, a tear trickling down his cheek. “But every time I was about to tell you, I would look at you, at your trusting face, and I’d think of everything you’d already been through, all the things you’d already had to carry. I just couldn’t share it with you. Not because I was afraid that you’d think differently of me—though I was afraid—but because I couldn’t put that on you.”
“I wish you had put it on me,” I scolded. “I could have helped you. You were there for me when I needed you. But you didn’t let me help you. Do you have any idea how awful that makes me feel?”
His hands curled around mine and an intense flame ignited his blue eyes. “You did help me.” He pulled my hands from his face and lowered them to his lap, where he clung to them. “When we first met, that first morning I saw you in the tree house, I was in a very dark place, trying to forgive myself for what happened. Every day was a struggle with loneliness, emptiness. But you . . . you were like this little spark of light in the blackness. You gave me something to live for—to live up to. You made me feel loved, needed, worth something, and you made me look outside myself and my own despair. It was the first time in my life that I cared about someone more than I cared about myself. All I wanted was to make you happy, to make you feel loved and protected.”