Em
Jake’s mom and I sit on either side of the bed, listening to the steady shushing of the ventilator. We’ve been listening to that noise for almost twenty-four hours. I’ve started to wonder if it will be forever stuck in my brain, like a constant soundtrack of white noise.
“I’m sorry.”
I look up.
Jake’s mom is looking right at me.
“About what?” I ask.
Her cheeks turn pink and she looks away. “About what happened with my brother.”
It takes me a full ten seconds to process what she’s saying, and then I almost pass out in shock. She’s bringing that up now? Here?
“I never wanted to believe it. He was my brother.” Her voice is strained. She darts a glance up at me. “It was easier to think you were a liar.”
My instinct is to stand up and leave the room, but a voice in my head tells me to stay and hear her out.
“It wasn’t an accident, you know.”
“What wasn’t?” I ask.
“He killed himself. It wasn’t a hunting accident.”
I lean back in my chair and blink at her. “How do you know?” I ask, my voice sounding remote and faraway.
“He wrote me a note. A letter. He said in it that he couldn’t live with the guilt of what he’d done to you.”
The room spins. He admitted it.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I should have come forward then. I planned to. But my mother was in a very bad state after he died. She’d already had a couple of strokes, and I was scared if she found out the truth, it would be the end for her.” Tears fall down her cheeks and she starts to sob.
Does she have any idea of what I went through? I don’t know what I’m supposed to say because I have no idea what I’m feeling right now: a mix of anger, shock, upset, and, weirdly, happiness.
She buries her head in her hands. “Em, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We can do it now. I’ll speak up. I’ll go to the police. Whatever you need.”
Whatever I need? It’s too late to speak up. It’s too late to go to the police. It’s too late. You can’t rewind the clock, I want to scream. You can’t undo what was done to me. But then I pause. There’s a freedom to what she’s offering me. If people were to hear the truth, it would be some kind of recompense, wouldn’t it? At long last to be vindicated? What would Jake say?
“Does Jake know?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “I’m going to tell him when he wakes up. He always knew he was guilty. I should have listened to him.”
I stroke Jake’s hand.
“He confronted him; did he tell you?”
What? I look up.
“Jake confronted him at Thanksgiving a few years ago. I thought perhaps it was time to all get together again as a family. He’d stayed away—Ben had—but he came to my parents one year. They invited him. Jake . . . well, Jake refused to stay in the house or speak to him, and when Ben tried to talk to him, Jake punched him. Broke his nose.” She shakes her head. “He was always so calm and gentle as a little boy, but then he suddenly had all this anger raging in him with nowhere for it to go. He started getting into scraps. One time his school called us in because he’d gotten into a fight. Turned out that the boy he’d hit was two years older and had fought back. Jake ended up in the hospital with a fractured wrist.”
I shake my head, confused. Aside from Jake’s run-in with Rob, I hadn’t seen that angry side to him.
“You want to know why he got in a fight?”
I nod.
“Some kid in his class was being bullied and called names by this older boy. Jake told him to stop. He didn’t. So Jake hit him.”
I frown. The scene sounds familiar.
“He was angry. All the time. I think he was so frustrated, and I think deep down he thought he was delivering some sort of justice.” She chews on her lip. “He should never have hit Rob, though.”
“No,” I say glumly.
“But I’m glad he was standing up for you. I’m proud of him for that.” She smiles fondly at him, and I can’t help but do the same.
“He sounded different when he called me,” she goes on, “over the summer. He was happy, back to being the old Jake. He was laughing again. I thought maybe he’d sorted things out with you, but also . . . I thought maybe he’d finally managed to deal with some of that anger and frustration.”
Wow. I’d been so focused on me that I never stopped to think much about how Jake was affected too. Both of us felt angry and unheard. Only, my anger was buried so much deeper it couldn’t ever erupt. I couldn’t even give it voice until Jake encouraged me to start writing.
I begin to probe, gently at first. Is it still there? Usually, when thinking about Coach Lee, I get a clawing panic in my chest, a choking pressure inside my throat. My skin crawls. But now I notice the absence of any panic, of any pressure. I press harder on the memory, but it’s as if a deep, ugly bruise has finally healed.
“Jake told me it was awful for you—after we left.”
I turn back to Jake’s mom, slowly, a little stunned. “Yes,” I say, nodding. “It was bad.”
Her expression is so pained, it makes me feel bad for her.
“I’m going to call your mom.”
“I think,” I say, after a pause, “she’d like that.”
* * *
I stand at the window and look out. The lake sparkles in the far distance. I close my eyes, listening to the beeping of the heart monitor behind me, trying to summon images of Jake and me as kids: there’s Jake smiling, running, skating, riding his bike. More recent memories force their way in: him spinning me on the ice, taking my face in his hands and kissing me, firelight flickering across bare skin, the touch of his hands, silk on skin on silk.
I open my eyes. The lake’s still glinting in the distance, like a fragment of mirror someone’s using to signal to me. I rest my head against the cool glass of the window and sigh. And then I hear a voice behind me.
“Hi.”
I spin around. Jake’s eyes are open. He’s smiling at me—a broken, unsure smile.
“Hi,” I say back, fighting the impulse I have to throw myself on top of him. Something holds me back—the same uncertainty I can see in his smile.
“How’s the other guy look?” Jake asks.
I burst out laughing. “A lot better than you.”
Jake laughs and then winces and groans. “How long have I been in the hospital?”
“Four days,” I tell him.
His eyes widen. He looks around and sees the camp bed laid out on the floor and the sofa piled with blankets and cushions.
“Your parents are here. They’ve just gone to take a shower.”
“You’ve been here the whole time? Sleeping here?” he asks.
I nod.
He frowns. “Why?”
“Because I love you, Jake McCallister, and nothing, not Reid Walsh, not Koskela, not fear of what might happen in the future, is ever going to keep me away from you again.”
Jake smiles wide.
My feet unglue, and I rush toward him. No more push-pull, no more contradiction. The magnet inside me has finally figured out its charge.