chapter thirty

MEREDITH

They say you should never go to bed mad, but when it came to my fights with Josie, Mom always enforced the opposite. She’d send us to our respective rooms, insisting that we “get some sleep” because “things always look better in the morning.” It was actually pretty sound advice, as we usually woke up and simply pretended that nothing had happened (before finding something new to argue about, of course). Occasionally, we’d even laugh it all off, aligning ourselves against Mom and painting her as an overreactor.

But around four-thirty in the morning, when I awaken and find that sad stuffed rabbit perched on my pillow, I do not feel even a tiny bit better. Instead, I feel considerably worse—just as angry and hurt, but also racked with guilt and worry, certain that my sister will be gone. Sure enough, I get up and look around the apartment, finding no trace of her other than her shampoo on the edge of the bathtub and one of her retro striped tube socks peeking out from under the bed. I search the place one more time, hoping to find a note, if only to get the last word, but there is nothing. I pick up the rabbit and begin to panic, wondering where she could have gone in the middle of the night, whether she could be lying in a ditch somewhere. And although I can’t imagine Josie ever harming herself, Lewis’s sister does flit through my mind.

So, despite my resolution never to speak to her again, I call her cell. It goes straight to voicemail. I hang up without leaving a message, then get back in bed, still clutching the rabbit. I fall asleep for another couple of hours, then wake up, sweaty and weepy, piecing together a dream about Daniel—the first I’ve had in a long time, at least the first I can recall. The two of us were waiting on a subway platform together, talking and laughing, and then suddenly he vanished. Poof. Gone. For days, Josie, Mom, Dad, and I hung placards, plastering his face all over the city, like the ones posted after September 11. But Daniel never turned up. Of course, it doesn’t take an expert to decipher the nightmare, and I can clearly see that it stems from some combination of Josie leaving and Daniel dying, along with the grim thought of Lewis’s sister plunging to her death on the subway tracks. I know it was just a dream, but I still start to worry that it is closer to a premonition than a nightmare—and ask myself what I would do if I never saw Josie again. Would I tell my mother about our fight, or would I keep it a secret, history repeating itself?

I get up, pacing frantically all over the apartment, searching for clues that don’t exist, before calling Josie a second time. Straight to voicemail again. I then call Delta, thinking and hoping that she simply got on an earlier flight—but they refuse to give out her information. I hang up and call them back, this time pretending to be Josie. I get flustered, then busted, then reprimanded about confidentiality. I really start to lose it, then decide to call Gabe—what feels like a last resort.

“Hi,” I say, bracing myself when he answers.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, either clueless or in cahoots, both scenarios equally plausible.

I answer the question with a question, asking if he’s heard from Josie, determined not to be outwitted by someone I’ve always viewed as a worthy adversary.

“No,” he says. “I thought she was with you this weekend?”

“She was,” I say, my hands turning clammy. “We had a fight last night. She left….I thought maybe she got on an earlier flight….”

“Not that I know of,” he says, his voice completely flat. “I haven’t heard from her.”

“Okay,” I say. “Will you let me know if—when you do?”

He hesitates, and it only takes three seconds for me to be pissed. “So I guess that’s a no,” I snap. “Never mind.”

“Jesus, Mere. Chill out,” he says.

“Chill out?” I yell into the phone. “She disappeared in the middle of the night, Gabe.”

“She’s a big girl.”

“Yeah. Well, she told me about her big secret,” I say, feeling sure Gabe knows everything.

Silence.

“About the night Daniel died?” I press.

“Okay,” he says.

“O-kay? That’s it? That’s all you have to say about my sister’s role in my brother’s death?”

“I think that’s a bullshit characterization, Meredith.”

“You think it was okay to keep that secret from me?”

“No,” he says. “And I’m glad she finally told you.”

“Fifteen years late, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s ever too late, actually,” Gabe says, sounding all sanctimonious and superior and infuriatingly calm. “But that’s just me.”

“Easy for you to say,” I scoff. “Maybe you’d feel differently if it were your brother who was killed. And your sister had kept a secret from you about the night he died.”

“Maybe I would,” he says.

For one second, I’m nearly appeased, until he snidely adds, “Then again, Josie didn’t keep the secret from me, now did she?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I shout into the phone.

“It means exactly what I said, Meredith….She told me everything, years ago. She confided in me. Not you. And I think there’s a pretty good reason for that.”

My mind races for a retort as he continues, “So maybe you should take a closer look at yourself and stop blaming Josie for everything.”

“You’re a real asshole,” I say, my face on fire. “You know that?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But I’m the asshole who’s always been there for Josie. Which is more than I can say for you.”

I hang up on him and throw the phone down, my hands shaking as I collapse onto the sofa and burst into tears. I cry as long and hard as I did when Daniel died, although the grief is obviously a different strain, more layered and complex. At some point, there are no more tears, but I stay put on the sofa, contemplating my life, how I got here. I think of Daniel’s accident, of course. And my marriage to Nolan. And those years in between. I think of acting and law school and parental expectations and the home that has always been my home. I think of Josie, how fucked up our relationship is, and consider that maybe Gabe is right. Maybe it is my fault. Maybe I resent her because of my own choices. I think of Josie’s theory that it’s all interrelated, that it all goes back to that night in December, all of our decisions and dreams and mistakes from the past inextricably linked. I consider calling Nolan, then my mother, then Ellen, then Amy, even my father. But I really don’t want to talk to any of them, for different reasons, and it strikes me that I’ve never been so alone.

And it is in this despondent, desperate moment that I think of the one person in the world whom I love without condition. The one part of this tragic story that is beautiful and perfect and untouched by regret or what-ifs.

“I am Harper’s mother,” I say aloud, feeling an incredible sense of peace wash over me. Then I stand and start to pack my things, finally ready to go home.