Page 54 of The Last to Let Go
“Hey,” he says, his tone not so much casual as it is exhausted. I feel the cold coming off him in waves as he plops himself down on the couch next to me. He yawns through the word “Jesus,” sighing as he rubs his eyes. Then he turns to look at me, surprised, as if he didn’t fully realize I was here.
“What?” I ask, wondering if there’s any way he can tell where my mind has just been, where my body was earlier. “How did it go today?”
“Wait, should you be here right now?”
“Oh. Um, I came home—I have a headache.” Not a total lie. “So how did it go?”
“Fucking sucked.”
“Why, what happened?” I ask, pretending I wasn’t there for at least part of that torture.
He shakes his head, opens his mouth, but nothing comes out at first. “It’s not going well, Brooke. It was like every person who got up there to testify—the other lawyer twisted everything they were saying, made Mom look...” But he stops himself from finishing.
“Look... what?” I ask. “Guilty? Crazy? Stupid?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “All of the above.”
We both look away. I turn the TV back off and set the remote down on the table.
“Sorry, I’m just trying to tell you the truth,” he adds. “I don’t want you to be scared.”
And in the forbidden part of my brain I hear the sentence that followed:I don’t wantanybodyto be scared anymore.I wish I couldn’t remember so clearly now—I wish I’d kept that memory locked up tight and safe. “Are you?” I ask, some new surge of bravery stirring in my gut, daring me to trespass once more. “Are you scared?”
His gaze travels across the room, and I think maybe his eyes set on that goddamn stain for a second before he lets his head fall back against the couch and closes his eyes. He doesn’t have to say yes.
I watch him in profile, and suddenly the entire puzzle of him clicks into place. He couldn’t keep pretending anymore—he told me as much, but I don’t think I really knew what he meant until now. Because I think for the first time in my whole life I’m beginning to see things clearly, feel the way things really are, the way things have always been.
I’ve been pretending along with Mom for years, scrubbing out all the stains alongside her, trying to erase all the ugly things as if they never existed.
TRESPASSING
WHEN I ARRIVE ATthe courthouse the next morning, Caroline is waiting for me outside. “Still no snow,” she says. In her gloved hands she holds out a book. “Here, I brought this for you.”
I look at the cover as I take it from her; it has shades of sky blue with a series of white snowflakes printed in rows:Snow Crystals. “You brought this for me? To keep?”
She nods. “To keep, yes.”
“Why?”
“Well, your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?”
I nod, wondering how much she really knows about us all—clearly more than we know about her.
“There you go. My father gave it to me for my tenth birthday. That edition’s from the sixties, but it was first published in 1931. Bentley,” she says, pointing to the name on the cover. “Snowflake Bentley, you ever heard of him?”
I shake my head and open the book—in the upper right-hand corner of the first page, in the kind of precise, neat, loopy cursive they used back then, blurred blue ink spells out:This book belongs to Caroline.
“He was a strange person—dedicated his whole life to photographing snowflakes. They’re in there, thousands of them. When I was ten, I wanted to grow up to be just like him. Life doesn’t always go as planned, though, does it?” she asks, but before I’ve had a chance to respond, she adds, “Well, shall we?”
We take our seats in the back row; this time we sit next to each other. We wait, our own silence drowning in the chatter that surrounds us. The air feels thicker today, denser, less open space for hope to breathe.
“Thank you,” I finally say, holding the book on my lap.
“You’re welcome.” It scares me that I’m starting to get used to the sound of her voice, her different facial expressions, that I could close my eyes right now and clearly picture what her face looks like when it’s smiling. Or maybe the scariest part is that I already can’t do that with Dad. It gets harder to remember his face every day.
Like yesterday, the guards bring Mom into the courtroom. She gives Aaron a small, sad smile. Mr. Clarence pulls out her chair again. But as she moves around to the other side of the table, she raises her head. She looks directly at me, then to my right, at Caroline. She freezes. Her face blanches. Her jaw drops open for a moment, then clenches tight. She feels her way into the chair, not taking her eyes off me until she’s seated.
She leans in toward Mr. Clarence. I see her mouth move—what the words are, I can’t tell—but she’s talking fast and gesturing with her hands. He turns and looks in my direction. Followed by Aaron and Jackie and Ray and Tony. They all stare at me—I’m not supposed to be here. I’m trespassing again. I’m tempted to stand up and shout out,I’m sorry. Only I’m not sorry. Not this time.
