“Stop,” I said. “You can tell me the rest later. I’m going to go get a nurse.”
She clutched me around the wrist with freezing fingers. “Not saying anything to you all these years was my first lie,” she whispered fiercely. “And I haven’t stopped since. Whenever Mom or Dad—or anyone else—ever asked me what was wrong, I told them ‘nothing.’ Everything was always fine.” Her face contorted. “If I had just told them then, right at that moment, maybe none of this would have turned out this way.”
“This is so much easier, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Just being straight with each other. Think of all the time we’ve wasted doing everything except this.”
“I’ve done it too,” I whispered, stroking Sophie’s cheek with the tip of my finger. “It’s not just you, Sophie. We all do it.”
She winced. “But not at the expense of someone else.” She struggled to get her breath. I slid myself alongside her in the bed, wrapping my arms gently around her shoulders and drawing her toward me. She rested her cheek against my collarbone.
“He said he was going to go downstairs to start the grill,” Sophie started again. “Five minutes. That was all.” Her eyebrows narrowed. “But I knew where he was going. And all of a sudden, thinking about it, I got really, really pissed. Boiling mad. Red mad.” She paused. “All I could think about was getting rid of those blue cans. So I got out of the tub.”
“You left Maggie?” I asked faintly.
Sophie nodded. “I told her I’d be right back. I told her to sit down and be very quiet. And then I left. I went downstairs. Dad was outside in the backyard, already drinking out of one of the blue cans. He had one of Mom’s aprons on, and he was whistling. I could smell the charcoal. And then real quick, before he came in, I opened the fridge and grabbed the stack of cans. I had one under one arm and was just reaching for the other when I noticed something different.”
“What?” I asked.
“They were blue, but they didn’t have the white stripe on the side like his beer usually did.”
Her eyes roved the ceiling above her, searching, searching.
“I remember there was a red stripe on the side, and little black letters that spelled out C-O-L-A.” She blinked. “I was so confused that I didn’t even hear Dad come in. He gave me this funny look and asked me what I was doing. I couldn’t even answer. I put the cans back in the refrigerator and told him Maggie wanted a drink.
“‘Where is Maggie?’ he asked me.
“When I told him she was in the tub, he said, ‘By herself?’ and then he rushed off.
“I followed him up the steps. I could hear water running for some reason. And then I heard this yell…”
Sophie closed her eyes. I had not realized how tightly clenched she had been until she released herself suddenly against me. “She’d turned the water back on, maybe accidentally, maybe to make it higher, and she’d gone under. The doctors said later that if she hadn’t had asthma, she might have lived.”
An anguished sound came out of her mouth suddenly, and she brought her fist up and bit down on it hard. Her eyes were wide, wild with fear and memory. I knew what she was feeling now was more painful than any of her injuries.
I bent my head over hers and wept.
chapter
53
I was still in bed next to Sophie when Jimmy returned. He was holding two plastic packages of cream-filled oatmeal cookies and a large container of orange juice. He stopped when he saw us, tears still running down our cheeks. “Should I come back?”
“No, no,” Sophie wiped at her face with the heels of her hands. “Come in. Where’s Aiden?”
“He went back into town to get something.” Jimmy walked in hesitantly, nodding at the items in his arms. “It’s all I could find this early,” he said apologetically, dumping them on the little table next to Sophie’s bed.
Sophie smiled wanly at the cookies, and then looked away, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry…,” she started.
I took her hand in mine. “No more apologies,” I whispered. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She stared past me, out the window.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
She sat motionless, her eyes empty and riveted.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I said it louder this time, and squeezed her hand.
She blinked.
Jimmy came over and took her other hand. We exchanged a look across the bed and I knew then that she had told him about Maggie, that maybe he was the only one in her entire life up until this moment who had known. And that he loved her anyway. Just as I did.
“It’s not your fault, Sophie,” I said again.
“It’s not,” Jimmy echoed.
She broke down all at once. Her body strained forward, even as her hands clutched ours, as if they were the only things left in the world holding her up. Moans drifted out of her mouth, and her thin frame shook under their weight.
We held her tight, Jimmy and I, and let her cry.