47 · Ben
When I get home from the cemetery, Mum’s clearing glasses and a tray of cookies off the table.
“Hey,” I say to her back, and when she turns from the sink, she has a huge smile on her face.
“Ben, thank you.” She sets down the tray. “Thank you so much.” She hugs me tight.
For what? I count the glasses. Four.
“Um, did you have company?”
“Yes,” she says, and finally lets me go. “Lucy and her delightful friend, Hannah.”
“What?”
“They popped over after the parade. Thank you, Ben, for clearing things up with Lucy. I hope that you’ll be able to be friends with her again.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded.
I think back to last night. Did I say something to Lucy? Did I apologize to her? I was drunk, yes, but not drunk enough to not remember every single thing I did or said.
Or what was said to me.
“Did she say that I did?” I ask.
“No, darling, I’m sure it was awkward for her.” Mum smiles again. “We had a wonderful visit.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her this happy.
God, I’m a real piece of shit for a son. All those days she couldn’t get out of bed, all the times she sat in Trixie’s room and cried, all those hours she spent in her garden, missing her dead daughter—would those days have been better if I hadn’t been such a shit to Lucy and kept her away?
I take a deep breath. I should tell her that I didn’t say a word to Lucy, that I haven’t kept my promise.
Lucy came back on her own.
“That’s nice, Mum,” I say.
“Are you okay, Ben? You seemed upset when you left.”
Am I okay? I think I’m better, at least. “Mum, I’ll be in my room, okay?”
But I don’t make it that far. Trixie’s door is open, the late afternoon sun streaming across the floor. There’s a fresh vase of wildflowers on her desk.
I haven’t set foot in here since before Trixie died.
But I do now.
I walk into her room, over to her bed, crisply made, half a dozen decorative pillows propped up against the headboard. Her alarm clock, an empty glass, two unwrapped butterscotch candies, a paperback copy of The Outsiders facedown and splayed open to the page where she’d stopped reading. Lucy always scolded her when she did that.
I turn to the window, run my finger along the sill. There is no dust.
Trixie’s desk is cluttered, papers and pencils and books scattered across its surface. A bulletin board above the desk is filled with movie ticket stubs, postcards, photos of her and Lucy through the years. School dances, with Emily, at the beach, on the pontoon.
In all these photos, Trixie’s face is lit and sparkling and wild, and that light carries across to Lucy’s.
I peer closer, to one of the two of them at the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth last summer, and I can see that I’m wrong. I remember Lucy’s excitement, her joy, and I realize that the light of her smile is her very own.
They were good for each other, those two.
Lucy was good for me, too.
A composition notebook lies on the corner of Trixie’s messy desk. I recognize it, the notebook that Trix and Lucy scribbled in constantly.
The words The Book of Quotes stretch across the cover, written in blue bubble letters.
I sit down at the desk and gently open its tattered cover. Colorful letters fill each page, each quote written with a different, bold-hued marker. Song lyrics. Movie quotes. Funny things they said to each other. Long passages from The Great Gatsby, Jane Austen. Sketches and doodles fill the edges of the pages: flowers and stars and hearts.
I hold on to the words that my sister loved enough to write them down. I feel closer to her here, in her room, the same as it was the day she left us, everything exactly as it was that last morning she lived.
She died doing what she loved best. She died in the lake she loved.
I turn another page and there, in bold purple letters, Trixie wrote this:
Life is short, so live it.
I can almost hear her say the words the day I bought the Firebird.
Her life was short, but she did—she lived it.
I close the notebook and set it back down on the desk, feeling a familiar sinkhole in my gut.
She’s never coming back.
She’s never coming back.
I didn’t get to her in time.
I sit at her desk, my head in my hands, and choke back a sob.
Life is short, so live it.
Ever since that day, I haven’t been living my life, not really. I’ve blamed myself and numbed the pain and wasted time.
I won’t do it anymore.
I can’t do it anymore.
I stand, push in the chair, walk to the door. But I stop, turn back, and grab the book.
It doesn’t belong here.
Lucy should have it, this artifact of her friendship with my sister.
A couple of hours later, I get a text from Guthrie to meet him at the carnival. I assume he’ll be there with Hannah, and I want to ask him if Lucy’s going to be there, but I don’t. What would I do anyway? Not go?
I’m going to go, whether she’s there or not. This is the Watermelon Days carnival. I’ve never missed one.
I’ve never missed one and neither had Trixie. Like the parade that we always watched from our front yard.
Another first. My first Watermelon Days carnival without my sister.
I see Guthrie and the girls at the mini-donut stand, lit up bright and cheerful against the dusky night sky. I stop, shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, and take a deep breath.
How much does Lucy remember about last night? If she didn’t remember that I beat up her boyfriend, I’m sure she knows by now.
But Simon’s not here. I wouldn’t guess he’d show his face, for a couple of reasons.
There’s a twinge at the base of my stomach as she looks up from her bag of mini-donuts, one held between two fingers, catches my eye, and looks away quickly. Guthrie sees me, too, and lifts up his hand in a half wave. I move my feet again. Hannah smiles, first at Lucy and then at me.
“Hey,” Guthrie says. “You made it.”
I nod. Hannah loops one arm through mine and one through Guthrie’s. “Lucy has to be home by eleven, so let’s do this.”
Lucy doesn’t say a word, not to me, not to anyone.
I can’t believe it, but Hannah convinces her to go on a ride. Last year she could only handle the Ferris wheel—the worst if you’re afraid of heights, I think—and the rest of the night, I stayed behind with her while Guthrie and Trixie and Clayton and the others hit every one, some two or three times.
“Go on the rides, Ben,” she said while we waited in line for the ring toss. “You don’t have to stop having fun because of me.”
“I’m having fun,” I said. “Are you kidding me? What’s more fun than the ring toss?”
I smiled at her then, and she looked up at me and smiled, too, and it would have been so easy to lean down and kiss her and show her how I felt about her.
But I didn’t, and Clayton appeared out of nowhere then to tell us where everyone had ended up for the fireworks.
Now, after the first ride, she steps off the car and says, “I—I think I’m going to go home.”
Hannah frowns. “No, Lucille, not yet! It’s only 9:30! It’s not even dark yet, not really. Come on, stay.”
Lucy shakes her head. “Really, I can’t stay. This—this is the first carnival without Trixie, you know?” She says this in almost a whisper, but I hear it. She feels it, too.
I expect Hannah to say something like It’s time to accept it or She’s gone, there’s nothing you can do, those terrible things people say, people who don’t understand.
Instead she pulls Lucy into a hug. “I get it. This is a sad day for you. We’ll take you home.”
Lucy shakes her head again. “No, don’t be stupid. I can walk.”
“You’re not walking home by yourself! Guthrie, tell her we’ll take her home.”
“I can take her,” I say. I don’t know where it comes from. Hannah and Guthrie both look at me, surprised, but Lucy doesn’t. She won’t look at me. I don’t blame her.
“No,” Lucy says. “I want to walk home. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
I reach out and put my hand on her arm. Now, finally, she looks up at me, her eyes wide. “I’ll take you home.”
She nods and hands the rest of her ride tickets to Hannah.
“Text me when you get home, Lucille,” Hannah says, “so I know you’re safe.”
Lucy starts walking.
She’s not arguing with me. She’s letting me help her.
She’s not pushing me away.
There’s a twinge again, but this time, it’s not guilt. It’s hope.