Page 59 of The Last to Let Go
He does. Then he sits down on my bed next to me, my presents between us. He looks at me as if he’s waiting for an answer to a question he hasn’t asked.
“What?” I ask.
“So that was her, huh? Your girlfriend, right?” When I don’t answer, he laughs, giving me a light punch in the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “You seem happy.”
I can’t help but smile. But it’s immediately coupled with guilt. “Is that bad?” I ask him. “It feels like I don’t have a right to be happy, with everything that’s happening.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not bad. Not at all.”
PUSH
I DIDN’T SET MY ALARMbefore going to bed last night. I wasn’t in a hurry to start this particular day, because it’s my real birthday. One more thing that my parents are missing, one more piece of evidence that time is going to keep on moving ahead, that we’ll have to keep pushing forward without them.
I hear the phone ringing, muffled on the other side of my closed door.
Aaron’s talking. I pull my pillow over my head and consider sleeping through this whole day. But someone’s knocking on my door.
“You awake?” Aaron calls to me.
I roll over, force myself to get up.
When I open my door, he’s standing there with the phone. “It’s Mom,” he says, holding it out to me. “For you.” I stare at the phone—wish that I didn’t still want to hear her voice so badly, wish I could cut her off, cut her out for good. “Take it—she might not have long,” Aaron whispers, covering the mouthpiece.
“Hello?” I grumble.
“Brooke, happy birthday, sweetie.”
“Oh, is it suddenly okay to talk again?” I ask her, my words turning sharp.
“Don’t do that,” she says.
“Why? You can do whatever you want, but I’m not allowed to?”
She scoffs. “Please, I can’t do whatever I want—I can’t doanythingI want.” I hear her breathe into the phone. “Talking to you is one of the few things I can still do, so please just let me.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you.” I have to stop to catch my breath before I continue. “How could you? How could you just throw it all away and give up like that?”
“Brooke, I was only trying to make things right for everyone.”
“That wasn’t what was right! That was selfish—we need you here. You’re the mother, we’re the kids. Don’t you understand that?”
“Yes, of course I do. But I need you to understand that I had to,” she tries to explain, but I won’t let her—not this time.
“No.No, it’s too late. I hate you for this, I really do.”
“Don’t say that, please. Look, they’re moving me next week. To the state prison. And I really would love it if you would come visit me before they do.”
“Are you serious?”
“Brooke, I—”
But I hang up. I push her away this time.
I try to go back to sleep, but my mind won’t stop replaying every word. I have to take some pills for my head to quiet all the noise. And eventually I’m able to fall back to sleep. I don’t get up again until dinnertime.
NEW YEAR
“IS THIS CRAZY?”I whisper, my cheek against Dani’s shoulder as we stare at the ceiling of her bedroom, lined with soft, white twinkle lights. The falling snowflakes maketink-tink-tinktapping sounds against the windowpane, accentuating the deep, middle-of-the night silence that has washed over the world. I imagine the snowflakes crystallizing way above the surface of the earth, beginning as specks of dust and water droplets, like Caroline said.
