I'll Never Tell
Page 22
“I am so sorry.”
She raised her head. “He’s going to be all right.”
He took a step toward her. “That’s good.”
Mary didn’t answer.
“I fell asleep,” he said, “in the hayloft.”
“That explains it, then.”
“What?”
She reached up and removed a blade of hay from his hair. “This.”
“Oh. Not so cool.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. Mary knocked it out of his hand instinctively.
“Why did you do that?”
“You can’t smoke in a barn!”
“Okay, chérie, calm down.”
“Look up,” Mary said. He did. Above them was a winter’s worth of hay, as dry as kindling. “This whole place is one big bonfire, waiting for a match.”
“It did not occur to me.”
“It’s okay.”
“Have you been in a fire?”
“No . . . but I’ve seen other barns that have gone up.”
There’d been a barn fire at her neighbor’s a couple of years ago. A lightning strike had started that one, but it didn’t make it any less terrible. The horrible stench of burned horseflesh. The stricken look of the children. It was something she never wanted to experience again.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
He stepped closer. She could smell the tobacco on him and shuddered at the thought of how many cigarettes he might’ve smoked waiting for her.
“Where did you put your butts?”
“What?”
“Your cigarette butts? From earlier?”
“In one of the rainwater barrels.”
“There was water in it?”
“Of course.”
Mary let out a long breath. “That’s all right, then.”
He took his thumb and ran it along her jawline. “Should I go?”
“You must be tired.”
“I am not tired. Are you?”
“I am a bit.”
“I’ll go, then.”
He leaned in and brushed her lips with his. That was all it took. Like the barn, she was a batch of kindling waiting to be lit.
• • •
Afterward, they lay in the stall next to Cinnamon’s, their clothes scattered around them. Mary’s head was foggy; J-F was breathing heavily. Every nerve ending in her body felt alive. Why had she given this up? Yes, he made her feel confused sometimes. But this, this was worth it.
“How did we end up in here?” she asked.
He chuckled. “I will take this as a compliment.”
“You should.”
They turned toward each other and kissed. Mary could taste herself on him.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, feeling silly and girlish.
“I was trying not to wonder what Cinnamon was thinking.”
“That’s . . . weird.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
He pulled her closer. “So . . .”
“So.”
“I forgot about that.”
“Forgot about what?”
“How you repeat what I say after we fuck.”
Mary flinched. She hated that word. It was so cold. That was a feeling that came with J-F too.
“I guess we both forgot some things.”
She sat up and pulled her shirt over her head. She wished her clothes would go back on as magically as they’d come off.
“You are leaving?”
“There are a hundred people coming here for a memorial in a couple of hours. I’ve got to get ready.”
They dressed silently. Mary avoided making eye contact, feeling ashamed for the way she’d acted, the thoughts she’d had. Each piece of clothing brought her back to the person who’d pushed him out of her life. Pushed everyone.
She pulled her sweater over her head and shivered.
She felt colder with her clothes on than off.
Amanda
July 23, 1998—2:00 a.m.
Alcohol blurred the lines.
Time. Who I was with. What I thought the night would be.
It’s not that I forgot I was with Sean and not Ryan. I knew it was him the whole time. It was more that I cared less about the differences and focused more on how they were the same. Same height, approximately. Hair that had an unruly curl to it as the day wore on. And because everything took on a certain musky scent at camp, they even smelled similar. Woods, campfires, the oil that went into the crash boat. All these things mixed together were part of Ryan’s appeal, and part of Sean’s too by the time half the flask was gone.
When I kissed him—I kissed him—his lips didn’t feel that different from Ryan’s. His mouth tasted like mine, booze and our long-forgotten dinner. I kept my eyes closed and imagined it was Ryan, before he’d betrayed me and run away. Ryan before we’d ever kissed or he’d done something to give me hope. The Ryan I wanted him to be.
Sean’s kisses were different, older, more experienced. Enough Ryan to pretend, but not too much to remember.
Sean went along with all of it. He let me place his hands on my breasts, first over then under my shirt. He didn’t back away when I took off his shirt. He asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
I was. I was sure I wanted to erase this terrible night with something that felt good. And it did. Sean/Ryan: I didn’t care whose hands were on my skin, rubbing my nipples with his thumb, fingers tracing the edge of my underwear and then underneath and then inside, oh my God. Yes, this. This. It felt like everything it was supposed to feel like. And more, more. I wanted more. His mouth replacing his fingers. The ground was hard beneath me, but I didn’t care right up to the moment when he was inside me. Then there was a sharp pain, and my body pushed against it. He hesitated and asked again.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
I kissed him and he was inside me and my hands were on his back, my legs up around his waist. It didn’t feel the same as what had come before, both better and worse at the same time. I still wanted more, but then he groaned and shivered and it was over, his breath tickling the edge of my neck.
Then it all changed. Though his body covered me, I felt exposed. My eyes were still closed, but I knew it was the wrong man who was still inside me. That wasn’t his fault. I’d asked for this; I’d wanted it.
But now, I wanted him to go away.
Amanda
Margaux
Ryan
Mary
Kate & Liddie
Sean
9:00 p.m.
Lantern ceremony
Lantern ceremony
Lantern ceremony
10:00 p.m.
On the Island
On the Island
On the Island
Crash boat
11:00 p.m.
Back Beach
Back Beach
Back Beach
On the Island
Midnight
Back Beach
Back Beach
1:00 a.m.
Back Beach
Camp
Back Beach
2:00 a.m.
Back Beach
Back Beach
5:00 a.m.
On the Island
Cabin/Boat Beach
On the Island
6:00 a.m.
Secret Beach
Secret Beach
Secret Beach
CHAPTER 36
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
Ryan
Ryan had made so many mistakes. Mostly, they were about other people. Assumptions he’d made about how they’d feel, what they’d want. He’d done it with all the women in his life. Margaux. Mary. The twins. Kerry. Amanda. Stacey. He’d projected something he was feeling onto them and assumed they felt the same.
Take Stacey. He was feeling trapped and willing to take a risk to dislodge himself from his life, and he’d assumed she was like him. That she wasn’t fully reckless, just looking for a good time. If he’d been paying attention, if he’d looked at her instead of who he wanted her to be, he would’ve seen she was unstable. That she wasn’t to be trusted, certainly not with a car, not with his life, not even with her own. Instead, he assumed because he wasn’t dangerous, neither was she. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? He was dangerous. Look at all the chaos he’d been a part of. His family would be better off without him. It would’ve been better if he’d died.
“Don’t die on me, okay?”
“What?”
Kerry was standing next to the bed. He felt cold. The girls were no longer snuggled up against him. Where had they gone? He must’ve drifted off after Margaux left, and these deep thoughts were a dream he was having, one where he took responsibility for his faults and did something about them. Not like life, then.
“Don’t die,” Kerry said again. “If that’s what you’re thinking. We’re not better off without you.”
Ryan didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t the first time Kerry had done this, read his mind, but it always freaked him out. He never knew what she was thinking, even after all these years. He’d been sure, for instance, when she learned about Stacey, that she’d leave him without so much as a second thought. Instead, she’d set about planning their wedding, accepted his apology and his proposal, and said they never needed to talk about it again.
“I wasn’t—”
“Before you go thinking I’m some kind of witch, you were talking in your sleep.”
“I was?”
“You do it all the time.” Kerry tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She looked beautiful and tired.
“I do?”
“You do.”
“So that’s . . . that’s how you’ve known . . .”
She smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was enough for now. “Yes.”
“And all this time . . .”
“You thought I had magical powers? Damn, I should’ve kept this to myself. Anyway, the point remains. Don’t die. Don’t leave us. We need you.”
“Did you hear what Margaux said?”
“Yes.”
“And still?”
“I’ve known about that for a long time.”
Ryan pulled the sheet up to his shoulders. Why was it so damn cold in here? “Because of the sleep talking?”
“Partly. Also things I’ve pieced together. A few things your father said.”
“My dad? He told you . . . ?”
“No, I asked him.”
“What?”
Kerry twisted her engagement ring around her finger. That solitary diamond she’d picked out after she’d agreed to marry him because he’d proposed without a ring, which was also typical.
“After everything with Stacey, I thought . . . He said something . . . something about how women weren’t safe around you, and I asked him what he meant. I thought I was pregnant—”
“What?”
Ryan’s heart was racing. That couldn’t be good. He glanced at the machine next to the bed, the one monitoring his vitals, expecting his panic to register, but the lines moved up and down with the same frequency.
“I’d missed my period, and then all that stuff with Stacey happened, and I was trying to decide what to do. Leave you or stay. Was I going to keep it? If I left, could I be a single mother? Would I even tell you about the baby? Then you apologized and asked me to marry you, and I said yes, but I needed to be sure.”
“So you spoke to my dad?”
“Not about all of it. But I wanted to know what he was talking about, so I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he thought you might be responsible for what happened to Amanda, and then he showed me all these documents he had, this timeline he was working on.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It was a bit crazy, Ryan, to be honest.”
“You knew this whole time that my dad thought that about me, and you never said anything?”
“You have to understand. It seemed like a stupid project, something even he knew didn’t work.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Anyone could see from his timeline that it didn’t add up. For instance, why would you go back to the Island and bring Amanda to Secret Beach? Why not leave her for the others to find in the morning? It didn’t make any sense, and I told him so.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. And he laughed and agreed, but I’m not sure he actually got it.”
“And then?”
“I got my period. I wasn’t pregnant. We got married. You know the rest.”
“But my dad?”
“We never spoke about it again.”
Ryan tried to let it all sink in. The pregnancy that wasn’t. The reason Kerry had agreed to marry him. Her knowing this whole time that his dad blamed him. That he was crazier than any of them thought.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kerry stretched her hands out in front of her, interlacing her fingers. “You’d begged me for a fresh start, a ‘clean slate,’ you called it, and I was still in love with you, and I thought, okay, I’m going to do this. But if I do, then I need to be fair and give you another chance. If I wasn’t able to do that, then I thought it was better for both of us if I let you go. To be honest, I kind of put it out of my mind. That seems weird to say now, but that’s what I did.”
She lowered her arms so they rested lightly on his chest. She looked vulnerable, as if she were uncertain about their future. Not because she was thinking of leaving, but because she wasn’t sure what Ryan might do with this information.
He knew what he needed to say.
“I’m glad you didn’t leave me, but you really should’ve told me this. Maybe some of this could’ve been avoided.”
“Some of what?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.” Kerry sat on the edge of the bed.
“Where are the girls?”
“I sent them for breakfast with one of the nurses.”
“Okay, well . . .” Ryan took a deep breath. It hurt, but not as much as what he was about to say. He told her everything that had happened in the last two days. The will, and the vote, and that stupid whiteboard. Kerry listened, shocked into silence.
“He really was crazy, then,” she said eventually.
“More than I ever thought possible.”
“You should’ve let me come down here.”
“What would that have changed?”
“Maybe your sisters would’ve listened to me.”
Ryan picked up Kerry’s hand and kissed it. “Sweetheart, I love you, but you know my sisters aren’t big on listening to others.”
“Margaux would’ve.”
> “Margaux’s already on my side.”
“What do we do now?”
“Not sure. Soldier on, I guess. If you’ll have me.”
“You mean, give up?”
“What other choice do we have?”
“Up and awake, I see,” a woman in a white coat said as she came into the room.
Kerry stood up. “Ryan, this is Dr. Townsend.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You gave your family a scare.”
“Apparently.”
“Well, the good news is that it wasn’t serious.”
“That is good news.”
“But you’re going to have to manage your diet and stress levels going forward.”
“I can do that, I think.”
Dr. Townsend smiled. “Good. Now I heard you have a pretty special event to attend today.”
“Who told you that?”
“We did!” The girls came running into the room, smelling like cafeteria food. “We can still go to the memorial, right, Dr. Townsend?” Sasha asked.
“I think so.”
“Oh, goody,” Ryan said.
“Don’t you want to go, Daddy?”
“Of course I do, honey. Daddy was just being silly.” He met Kerry’s eyes over the girls’ heads. “You sure you want to do this?”
“We’re worth fighting for.”
Ryan hugged Maisy to him. “We are.”
CHAPTER 37
IN A FLATBED FORD
Kate
When Liddie parked the car in the parking lot next to the rusted-out truck that had been there forever, Kate was glad for the stop in movement. She felt queasy, like she did on the ride home from the airport after a flight, one too many moving pieces sending her over the edge.
They sat in silence, the early morning sounds of the world waking up, floating in through the cracked windows. There was a touch of frost in the air, and Kate thought she heard the distant cry of a Canada goose, wheeling overhead, already in search of a warmer clime.
“Crazy night, huh?” Liddie said.
Liddie had a way of boiling things down to their essence; you had to give her that.
“I’ll say.”