“Could I ask you a favor?”
She started, realizing that her thoughts had wandered and that he was looking at her searchingly. “Sure,” she said.
“Could I … Would you mind if I touched your face?”
“Why?”
“My doctor says that sometimes fingers have memories even when the head doesn’t. He said that touching can trigger things for some patients. I want to touch you, Trisha, because I want to remember you from before.”
Her heart began to thud. “It’s okay with me.” She leaned forward and he very carefully stroked her cheek, then her hair. Shivers shot up her spine. It had been so long since Cody had touched her, really touched her, that her skin was starving for him. “We used to play a game sometimes,” she said. “You’d come up behind me in the hall and ask, ‘Who loves you, babe?’ and I’d say, ‘Have we met?’ and you’d say, ‘Don’t tell me you’re spoken for. Am I going to have to take some guy out before we can live happily ever after?’ And I’d say, ‘No. You’re the one I want.’ And you’d say—”
“Forever.” Cody interrupted her.
“Yes, yes. You’d say, ‘Forever,’ and I’d say ‘Forever’ back to you. Do you remember that?” She felt her heart beating really hard and searched his eyes for some light of recognition.
“Not all of it. But the word was there for me. I knew what word to say, didn’t I?”
“You knew.” Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes.
He grinned and dipped his forehead so that it touched hers, and together they sat in the heat of the sun, their fingers intertwined, holding on to the sweet moment of victory.
Trisha returned home, fairly bursting to tell someone her news. Her mother rushed out of the kitchen waving an envelope, her face beaming. “Look what came for you today in the mail,” she said. “It’s from the admissions office of Indiana University, Trisha. It’s a big fat envelope filled with paperwork. I’m certain it’s your acceptance for fall classes. Oh, honey! Open it right away.”
Fifteen
“College?” The news had come so far out of left field that Trisha felt off balance, as if she’d been shoved and couldn’t regain her footing.
“Yes, college. Remember all those forms we filled out last fall? Well, here’s the payoff for twelve hard years of schoolwork.” She shoved the envelope into Trisha’s hands. “Come on, open it. The suspense is killing me.”
Trisha’s fingers trembled, but not from excitement or expectation. She tore open the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Her mother stood beside her, peering over Trisha’s shoulder. The letter began, “Congratulations. You’ve been accepted for fall semester.…”
Her mother clapped and hugged her. “I knew it! I was right! Oh, honey, congratulations! I’m so proud of you.”
Trisha thrust the envelope at her mother, took a backward step. “Mom … I don’t know what to say.”
“Say ‘Thank you, the check’s in the mail.’ Wait until your dad sees this. He’s going to be so pleased.” Trisha’s mother glanced at Trisha and must have noticed that Trisha wasn’t jumping up and down the way she was. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be thrilled. We’ve been planning this for years.”
“You’ve been planning this for years,” Trisha corrected.
“But you’ve always worked hard for grades good enough to attend college. We’ve discussed it for years. Saved for it for years.”
“So much has changed now.”
“What?” Her mother looked genuinely bewildered.
“How can you ask that? My best friend’s dead. My boyfriend, who was planning on going to IU with me, probably won’t be able to go at all. Everything’s changed.”
“Trisha, the accident’s behind you. September is months away. You’ll feel differently when all your other friends are packing up to go off to college. You’ve got to start focusing on your future.”
Trisha threw up her hands in frustration. “Get a clue, Mom! I can’t handle the future right now. Don’t you understand? Why can’t you understand?”
Trisha spun and ran toward the stairs, her mother’s voice calling her name, chasing her up the stairs with its shrillness. She slammed her bedroom door, flung herself across the bed, and cried harder than she had since Christina’s funeral.
Trisha didn’t come down for supper. She remained in her room, sitting in the dark. Her father came up to her room eventually and sat down next to her on the bed. “How are you, honey? Can we talk?” he asked.
“I’m sure Mom’s told you that I’m horrible. And that I’m an ungrateful brat.”
“No. She’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be.” Trisha hunkered down against the headboard, holding a pillow against her chest as if it offered some defense.
“Look, we all know that these past weeks have been hell for you. No one is trying to ignore what happened. It hasn’t been easy on any of us.”
It seemed like a strange thing for him to say. To her way of thinking, life had gone on quite normally in their household. “I know I’ve not been myself—”
“Honey, the accident isn’t just about you. It’s involved all of us.” He sat silent for a minute, then finally asked, “Remember the time you fell off your bike and skinned the whole side of your leg?”
“You kicked the bike and bent it.”
“I was so mad at that stupid bike for allowing you to get hurt.”
Even at the time she’d thought his anger was irrational, but it had made her feel good to see him get even with the thing that had hurt her. “You put medicine on my leg and took me out for ice cream. Then you had to come home and fix my bike.”
“I couldn’t stand seeing you cry. I never could. But that night when the police showed up and said there’d been an accident … When I think about it, when I consider that we almost lost our little girl—” His voice cracked, and Trisha was jolted. She’d never seen her father get emotional this way. He got mad and yelled, but never teary.
“Daddy—”
He took a deep breath and regained his composure. “You have a future, Trisha. You have a lifetime of tomorrows. I want you to live every one of them.”
“I do too. It’s just so hard to think about all of them now. I’m so mixed up. I—I miss Christina so much.” She began to cry softly.
“I know, baby. For a very long time you’ll be dividing your life into two categories: before the accident and after the accident. The wreck is the line, the place where your childhood ended and adulthood began. I’d give anything if I could take you back to the other side of that line. But I can’t. No one can.”
“I know what you and Mom want for me, Dad. I once wanted it too. I don’t know how to go forward. I feel stuck in the middle of a nightmare.”
“You are stuck. But you’ll find your way out, because you’re smart and beautiful and wonderful.”
She eyed him and offered a slight smile. “Says you.”
“And I’m never wrong about such things.” He took her in his arms and held her. “How about we come up with a plan. We’ll fill out the paperwork to secure your entrance into IU. Then at the end of the summer, we’ll see how you’re doing, and if you want to go, you’ll be all set.”
“And if I don’t?”
“We won’t make you, Trisha. We can’t. This has to be something you want bad enough to go all out for. College isn’t easy, so you’ve got to want it. You’ll know a whole lot more about yourself in another six months. Trust me.”
“I do, Daddy.” She hugged him hard, holding on for dear life.
“Get out of the bathroom, Charlie—now! Don’t make me late for school.” Trisha pounded on the door of the bathroom she shared with her brother. By Monday, she’d forged a truce with her parents, with no one bringing up the subject of college. It would be one more thing for her to think about, but at least she didn’t have to think about it anytime soon.
“I’m busy.” Charlie yelled.
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�Get unbusy, and I mean right now.” She rattled the doorknob.
“I locked it.”
“Listen, you little dork-face, I’ll get a ladder and come through the window if—”
The door flew open. Charlie stood wrapped in a towel, his hair slick with water. “What did you call me?”
“A dork-face.” She leaned forward as if to threaten him.
He broke out in a smile.
“What’s so funny? You look like a grinning fool.”
“You called me a name.”
“I have others for you.”
“Don’t you get it?” His grin was wider. “You’re yelling at me again. You haven’t yelled at me since the accident, and now you are.”
She straightened. “And it makes you happy to have me yell at you?”
“Sure does. It means you’re back!”
The power of his logic struck her profoundly. She hadn’t been yelling at him. Wrapped in her own pain, she had been ignoring him. She thought back to the night she lay in the hospital and to his frightened little face and trembling voice. Despite her present irritation, she felt a smile creep across her mouth. “You’re definitely a dork-face, so, yes, I guess I’m back.”
“All right!” Charlie leaped up and gave her a high five. She slapped his hand, then grabbed his wrist and pulled him past her into the hall. “Hey!” he yelped.
She ran into the bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. “I won’t be long,” she called out to him, laughing heartily about what Charlie considered a breakthrough.
When Trisha pulled up to Cody’s house after school on Tuesday, Tucker Hanson’s truck was parked in the driveway. Tucker’s dad had bought him a small black pickup truck with a roll bar to replace the car that had been totaled in the accident. “It’s supposed to be a whole lot safer,” Tucker had told his friends. Trisha wondered what Christina would have thought of it, because they’d often made fun of guys in trucks.
“What do you call a guy with a pickup truck and a horn?” Christina would ask if guys in a truck passed them, honked, waved, and shouted for attention.
“Multitalented, because he can burp and say his name at the same time,” Trisha would answer. And the two of them would break into peals of laughter and ignore the boys.
Trisha found Cody and Tucker in Cody’s basement; in the background the TV replayed a football game. Cody held out his hand to her. “This is my girl,” he announced, a look of pride on his face.
“Tucker knows that,” she said.
“Cody and I were getting reacquainted,” Tucker told her. “I brought him a tape of the Super Bowl we watched together in January.”
“I don’t remember watching it,” Cody said. “But I remember football. That’s good, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s in your DNA code,” she said. Both boys grinned. She felt awkward, suddenly thinking that Christina should have been there.
“I came by to show Cody my new wheels.”
“I like the truck. Your other car was black.”
“Yes, a Pontiac.”
Cody scrunched up his forehead. “With silver hubs. And mud flaps.”
“Yes.” Tucker glanced at Trisha.
“Well, don’t I feel special,” she said. “I’m a blank in his mind, but your mud flaps make the grade.”
Cody blushed. “You’re not really mad, are you? Some things come back in a flash, and I never know when that’s going to happen.”
She kissed his cheek. “I’m not mad. Just teasing.”
“Was it hard for you to drive again?” Cody asked Tucker.
“The first time I sat behind the wheel after the wreck, my hands shook so bad I couldn’t even turn on the ignition. I thought I was going to throw up.”
“How about you?” Cody turned the question to Trisha.
“I’m all right about driving. At first I didn’t think I would be able to, but I can. I’m driving my dad’s old clunker now. He got a new one so that I could have a car.” It had been generous of her parents to sacrifice so that she could get around. Christina had usually driven Trisha around. Now Trisha drove alone.
Tucker said, “My dad took me by the salvage yard to look at my car a few weeks ago. It’s totaled. The roof was crushed, and there wasn’t a piece of glass in it that wasn’t broken. I couldn’t believe any of us got out of it alive.” Tucker’s knuckles had gone white, gripping the arms of his chair as he described the car’s condition.
One of us didn’t, Trisha thought, but she knew he needed no reminding.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Cody said.
“Lucky you,” Tucker said, his eyes full of pain.
“It’s all like shadows to me,” Cody said. “Sometimes I think I see something that looks familiar, but then it vanishes and I can’t get hold of it again. The girl who died, Christina … I have her picture, but I don’t know if she looks familiar because I remember her or because I’ve looked at her picture so much.”
“She was beautiful,” Tucker said. “I miss her more than anything in this world.” Tucker struggled to his feet. Trisha could see that he was shaken. “I’ve got to go.”
“Will you come back?” Cody asked.
“Do you want me to?”
“We were friends. I’m not sure I had that many.”
“You did,” Tucker said. “You were a regular guy. Everybody liked you.”
His use of the past tense wasn’t lost on Trisha.
At the foot of the stairs, Tucker said, “You two hold on to each other. Okay?”
Trisha watched him take the stairs two at a time, as if he were being chased by a ghost.
* * *
Trisha found a note from her mother stuck to the refrigerator door when she got home. It read: I’ve taken Charlie to b’ball practice. Julia called. She would like to see you. They’re moving.
Sixteen
Trisha drove to Christina’s house on Saturday morning in the rain. She hadn’t been there since a week before the accident, which made her feel ashamed of herself. She’d known Christina’s parents for as long as she’d known Christina, and she’d always liked them. She should have come by before now, before poor Julia had to call and ask her.
She pulled into the driveway. Julia stepped onto the porch, and Trisha realized that the woman must have been waiting and looking for her. Trisha hadn’t seen her since the funeral and thought Julia looked thin, delicate, almost waiflike. “Hello,” Christina’s mom called, smiling as Trisha stepped out of her car.
Trisha, dodging raindrops, jogged up to the porch, where they stood looking at each other. “I—I’m sorry—” Trisha began.
“No apologies necessary.” Julia waved her off. “Come into the kitchen. I made us hot chocolate.”
Just entering the house felt dreamlike to Trisha. Every nook was as familiar to her as those in her own home. Yet things had changed too. Pictures had been removed from walls, and the living room looked uninhabited. In the kitchen, Julia made small talk as she set a plate of cookies on the table and poured steaming mugs of chocolate.
She invited Trisha to sit, saying, “It’s good to see you. How have you been?”
“All right.” Trisha cradled the mug, mostly to warm her freezing hands. She couldn’t look Julia in the eye just yet. “Mom said you’re moving.”
“Yes. Nelson’s company had an opening in Cleveland and offered him the position.”
“When will you go?”
“They want us there by mid-April.” Julia glanced around the kitchen. “Packing up is a real chore. Movers will do most of it. But, as always, there are things we must do.”
Trisha nodded. “I remember moving from Chicago. It was hard.”
“Right now, it’s harder to stay. I’m glad we’re going. Too many memories.”
Trisha met her gaze. “I should have come by sooner.”
“No. It’s okay. I know how difficult this must be for you.”
Julia’s kindness touched her. “Mr. Eckloe … how is he?”
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“Better than he was the night of the viewing.” Julia pressed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “He must have seemed like a madman to everyone, especially Tucker.”
“His reaction was understandable.”
“We’ve talked to the police and have come to realize that it was an accident. It was just a senseless, stupid accident.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Trisha heard the rain hitting the kitchen window and saw it running down in rivulets, like tears. “I’ll never forget her, you know,” Trisha said.
“I know that. She loved you like a sister. She often said to me, ‘Mom, if I ever had a sister, I’d want it to be Trisha.’ ”
A lump swelled in Trisha’s throat.
“She loved Tucker too,” Julia added. “I didn’t always approve of the way he treated her, though.”
Julia’s announcement surprised Trisha. It must have shown, because Julia added, “I was sensitive to their relationship. I knew he sometimes made her unhappy.”
“He didn’t want her to go off to college.”
“Selfish of him.”
“That was his idea of love.”
“You do think she would have gone whether he wanted her to or not, don’t you?”
Trisha thought about her answer and saw no reason to mention the marriage offer Tucker had been planning to make. “Yes, I’m sure she would have gone. She knew what she wanted and wouldn’t have let Tucker take it away from her.”
Julia relaxed. “It’s hard raising kids. We loved her so much and tried to do everything we could for her.”
“She wanted you to be happy with her.” Trisha knew how conflicted Christina had been about her feelings for Tucker and her desire to do what her parents wanted. Trisha thought of her own college dilemma and understood the gift her parents had given her by not applying pressure and trying to make her decide something she wasn’t ready to decide.
“If you sit on a child too hard, they break. If you give them too much freedom, they don’t learn limits,” Julia said thoughtfully.
“You were great parents,” Trisha said.
Keep Me in Your Heart: Letting Go of Lisa / Saving Jessica / Telling Christina Goodbye Page 20