Hailey’s with me when I see Max by the lockers Monday after school. I’m not sure whether it’s because he’s been looking for me, but we end up walking stride for stride on the way to the parking lot.
“I wanted to talk to you. About yesterday. I wanted to apologize,” he says.
He’s walking backward, and Hailey and I keep moving. Hailey wants to know if I’m driving home—now that cross-country season is over, she’s ready to leave right after school as well. I don’t answer Max, and Hailey doesn’t acknowledge him, in a show of solidarity, I’m guessing. She doesn’t even know what cause she’s supporting, but Hailey’s like that, and I’ve always loved her for it.
“I have to go to Caleb’s house,” I tell Hailey, letting that be a response for Max as well.
“Will you let me help you at least?” Max asks, still keeping stride with us in reverse.
“Eve doesn’t want that,” I say. I don’t want that. It’s a delicate balance, me in that room. If he’s there, tearing things apart with his own motivation, I might miss something. I might lose something. I feel like Caleb is a mirage, and every time I think I have him, that I can track the path of him—his motives, his journey—he flickers and fades, and I was wrong.
Someone calls to Hailey, and she looks at me. “That’s my ride. Or, it was supposed to be my ride.”
“I’ll call you tonight?” I say. It’s a question. I’m asking her.
“Later,” she says. She squeezes my arm, gives Max a look, and spins around.
I focus on Max, really looking at him, and I say it point-blank. “Was he cheating on me?” I ask. He knew Caleb better than anyone. Better than me, I’m realizing now. This, at least, would be an answer that would give things more shape.
He looks surprised by the question. “No.” Then he opens his mouth and closes it again. “I don’t think so.”
My stomach falls. “You don’t think so?”
“He didn’t tell me everything.” I see his throat moving. He lowers his voice. “I didn’t tell him everything.”
But I remember Caleb’s words that last day, as I walked down the stairs. “Are you sure? Because he knew, Max. He knew.”
He looks up at the sky, as if it will absolve him. “Not from me, Jessa. Besides, there was nothing to know.”
“For you, maybe.”
He shakes his head. “It was the moment. It wasn’t you.”
It feels like a line, and I wonder who else could possibly be blamed for it. “You’re the one who stopped me,” I say, “if I’m recalling correctly. So I think you get a pass.”
“I didn’t at first. Not fast enough.”
“You did.” I remember the embarrassment. I remember thinking to myself, Oh, so this is mortification. Yes, now the word makes sense.
“I didn’t want to, Jessa. I really didn’t.”
His words echo in my head the whole drive to Caleb’s. But even thinking about them now feels like betrayal.
Mia’s bus is letting out just as I arrive at Caleb’s. I watch, like a creeper, as she walks with her purple backpack hanging too low, and her dark hair swooped over her shoulder. Suddenly, she turns and stares directly at me, as if she knew I was here all along.
I quickly exit the car, to seize the chance to speak with her, but Eve opens the front door at the same moment and Mia skitters in behind her. Eve holds the door open until I’m inside as well.
It smells stale in here, like nobody’s cooked in ages. With the packing, I’m starting to get a whiff of the house itself, all plaster and wood polish and dust, like everyone’s been on a long vacation. I’m starting to notice things, now. Like the laminate peeling in the kitchen, and the grandfather clock that doesn’t chime, and the empty drawers, the sounds the house makes on its own.
I remember the police had been here that first day, when Caleb was just missing, before his fate was decided, and official. And how different his home had looked then, from a different angle, with too many people crowded into the doorway.
Thinking about it now, it seems obvious the police must’ve accessed his email somehow during that early investigation, and then changed the password. Maybe they even shut down the account.
I’m standing across from Eve in the entrance, staring into her green eyes. I realize I’m the same height as her, that her teeth are clenched together, that she lost her first husband, and a son. And I don’t know how to ask the question. I circle around it, stalling. “Did the police look through Caleb’s email? To see if they might know what he was doing?”
She shakes her head, looking at me funny. “No. He was eighteen. He accidentally drove off a bridge. There was no cause for the police to gain access, which would’ve taken a subpoena to the email company. Whatever emails he had sent or received did not matter. There was a flood. It was an accident.” She frowns, like she had also considered this and asked.
“Not even after…?” After he was declared dead. Say it, Jessa. But I don’t. Not to her. She fought against it, at first. Saying there was no proof, that there was always hope. Until weeks later, when the current shifted, and the larger pieces of his car began washing ashore. If the current could do that to steel, well—the rest was unspoken.
“Not even then. Not even with a death certificate. His account was with one of the services that won’t transfer access after death. It seems people are entitled to their privacy, even then.” Eve speaks the words I don’t, the word death coming out choked, a note higher than the rest. She says it when I will not, as if daring me to do so as well, or proving that she is stronger.
Then she leans closer, and I smell the sharp scent of her perfume, the coconut of her shampoo. “Why, do you know his password?”
I shake my head, the easiest explanation.
So it wasn’t the police. And it wasn’t his mother. And it wasn’t me. That left Max.
“What’s the matter, Jessa?”
I’m a terrible hider of secrets. Caleb must’ve been able to read them in my expression. Instead, I scramble for something else I can use. “I still can’t find his glasses. I’m just wondering where he was going, why he needed them.”
It’s like when I was at school, seeing all the empty places Caleb used to be. Seeing only what’s not there, what should still be there, if fate were fair.
But Eve gives a little sad shake of her head. “He was going to see you, Jessa. Like always.” Then she leans a little closer. “You never told me, what he last said to you. Don’t you think you owe me that?” As if reminding me why I am here. Why I am here.
He didn’t say anything that day. And it’s only then, when she asks, that I realize that I too am searching for those words. To go back and have him say something, so I will understand. So I will be absolved. Going to the library. Or I’m hungry, might grab a bite to eat. Or I’ve been seeing someone else, and I’m going to visit her. Even just I feel like taking a drive. Just something. The weight of the unsaid words presses down on me, and all I can tell his mother is the truth: “He didn’t say anything.” A hard, sad thing to admit. The last words spoken from him to me were in the stairway from his room, said to my back, in anger.
She waits a beat, as if the answer will suddenly change. But when I don’t flinch under her unrelenting stare, she steps aside, so I can ascend the steps.