“We’ll be gone by then,” he says, hauling his backpack onto his back. “We’re not waiting.”
I shake my head. “My things are on the other side of the river. If he finds them there, without me…” I try to imagine what Max might think. The raging river. The text, that I had tried to cross it. My phone and the backpack left behind. No sign of me.
“He’ll be fine, Jessa.”
But I jerk back. Is that what he really thought? That we had all been fine when we thought he died? And that we would all be fine without him again?
That’s when I realize, I am not who he thought, and he is not who I thought, and we are not alike in the ways that count. There are things I know about Max in my bones, too. That he is coming, and that he wouldn’t leave me—and you have to be willing to do the same for each other.
Caleb never seemed to realize the things we had to do for each other, to pull each other up.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going with you.”
He pauses for a moment, and I think he’s going to argue. But he doesn’t. There’s nothing left to say.
He has left me once more. I watch his back as he goes, walking down the steps of the trailer.
And then he pauses, turns around. “Did you find the necklace, Jessa?”
“What?”
“Your necklace. You asked me to keep it safe.”
And suddenly I can’t breathe.
“I left it for you,” he says. “On the floor, in my jeans. I hoped you would find it.”
“Yes,” I say. “I found it.”
He left me the necklace. On purpose. Because it was mine, and good luck, and he knew I had trouble doing anything other than the way I’d always done things.
“I tried to make things easier,” he says, and he turns, one last time.
The way we broke up, so public that it would leave no doubt. His expression that day on the steps outside his room. Impassive. Stone-faced.
An ugly, cruel breakup that crushed all hope of any reconciliation.
A gift, to soften the blow.
All these things he hoped would remain hidden.
The necklace hangs, twisted on the broken chain, from my dresser necklace holder. It should be at the bottom of the river. It should have been in his pants pocket, when he drove off the road.
The last piece of the puzzle slides into focus, the thing I’ve been chasing since that very first day. Why go home first?
He came back two days later for the camping gear. Let himself in with a house key. So why did he need to go home first before driving to that bridge, to leave his clothes on the floor, change—change everything?
It was supposed to be the start of his story. Going to Jessa’s race. Witnesses to see him there, who would notice he left, driving home in the rain. His car on the storefront cameras. An accident. But instead my eyes found his on the starting line, and there he was, a familiar face. Please hold this for me. Please be careful.
I had altered his plan, with a necklace in his pocket.
Could it be that simple, then? He went home to leave this behind for me? In a way that wouldn’t make anyone suspicious. He didn’t hand it to someone else to give back to me, or leave it in my room for me to find. He dropped it on his floor, where it could be found, should I come looking for it. Not in the hamper. On the floor.
I wish that was enough to cancel out all the rest. “Why come to my race that day? Why not something else, another story? Didn’t you realize people would think it was because of me? That everything happened because of me?”
He cringes. “I wasn’t thinking that, Jessa. I was thinking I just wanted to see you, one last time. That’s all.”
My stomach aches. My heart aches. He loved me once, too.
“Caleb?” I say. I want to tell him it mattered. It’s over, but I cared.
In the silence that follows, when I’m trying to find the words, the rain sounds relentless on the metal roof. “Jessa, I know.”
And then I am alone again.
I found him, and lost him again, but things are not the same.
I’m alone in the dark, but I feel the shape of his Swiss Army knife in my pocket, and it gives me comfort. I keep it in my hand as I walk; as I run.
—
I arrive back at the river. The light still shines, faintly in the distance. I’m almost numbed now, and I remember how I felt that day in the subway, at the ball game. I feel like that again. Like I am alone.
And, like then, I also know that someone is coming. Max will be here soon. And I can’t leave him alone, to find a backpack and a flashlight and my phone and a raging river. With no one showing up but Eve, to ask what he’s doing there. Eve, who might think he’s somehow involved in Caleb’s disappearance, if he suddenly shows up here looking for me.
I make it halfway across the river by momentum alone, my feet grappling below. And I’m just finding my footing on the other side of Nowhere, when I see her.
She’s standing beside the light, watching me.
She’s in jeans, a raincoat, sneakers. She must’ve found my car, and followed her gut, if nothing more. And now, she’s watching me. I stop moving for a moment, but the water keeps moving past me, and I have to keep going one way or the other, or it will eventually push me over. I keep walking toward her. What are my other options—swim away and run blind through the forest?
“So, you found him,” she says, when I am firmly on solid ground. She doesn’t hand me my coat. She doesn’t come any closer. She has my phone in her hand, but she’s locked out. I wonder what she was looking for.
“I didn’t,” I say, coughing into my fist. I am shaking so hard I can’t feel my toes. Everything numbs. But, I think, shaking is good. I remember this from science—if you’re still shivering, you’re fine. Maybe not fine. Maybe just okay. Still, I’m okay.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she says.
The rain has let up to a drizzle, but it coats everything, and I’m soaked through anyway, and the river continues to rage behind me.
Finally, her voice tears through the silence. “Caleb!” she yells.
But only the river answers.
“Is he over there, then?”
I want to tell her she’s too late, that he’s gone, that she’s lost her hold on him, but I also want to give him time. I don’t know whether she’ll call the police, set up a roadblock. I don’t know what she really wants, underneath it all.
“I’ve done everything for you,” she calls, but there’s no one to hear. “And you would just leave us?”
“I know what you did,” I say, stepping closer, taking my jacket from the ground. “It wasn’t for him.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
I think of what I told Caleb earlier, that there was another way, if only he would risk it. “I know that perjury is a crime,” I say. “I know that lying under oath, and sending an innocent person to jail, is punishable with jail time.”