I had had enough of feeling guilty.
“What?” he said.
“I want you to forgive me for … for …” I started to cry.
“Pull yourself to-*******-gether,” said the voice, but I didn’t mind, it was okay, that was just how the voice talked; I knew that now. Also it was quiet these days, not the loud voice it had been—more like a whisper in my ear. Almost as if it was the wind speaking, like I could ignore it easily if I wanted to.
“For what?” said Dad.
“For killing Mom,” I said all in a rush.
“Oh,” said Dad.
Silence hung between us like string drawn tight; a humming kind of silence—a bird hanging on the air, wings beating, or one of Dad’s insects moving its legs together so fast you can’t see them.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Cass,” said Dad slowly. “I don’t think you killed your mom.”
“You do,” I said.
“You may think that. I don’t.”
I continued to cry; I felt better and worse at the same time. “I moved her head,” I said. “I moved her head, and she had a head injury and—”
“She was already dead,” said Dad, a strange expression on his face. “Didn’t you … didn’t you know?”
“What?”
“She was already dead, Cass. The doctors were very precise on that point.” I was staring at him. I saw that his eyes were red, but there was such love in them—do you understand? Such love and such softness, it was like I had broken through some hard shell on the outside of him, some exoskeleton, and suddenly he was the flesh of the bug beneath, naked.
“What?” I said again, dumbly.
“She was already dead when you lifted her head, or at least there was no possibility of recovery. The doctors had no doubt. No doubt at all. The blow. It … it … it destroyed the cerebral cortex, pretty much. That’s the part that does all the thinking. All the being.”
“But I … you let … why didn’t you …”
“Why didn’t I tell you? It was an upsetting detail. I didn’t think …”
“But when we argued,” I said. “When you dumped out my pills, you said—”
“I was angry, Cass. I felt like I couldn’t trust you. Like you were going behind my back again and again, and I didn’t know how to get through to you and I just … snapped. I couldn’t control it. And I was … I am … I was angry with myself, for not being there when she died. For the fact that it was you. That I wasn’t there for her.”
Snapping. It happens in a moment, it happens suddenly.
I knew that feeling. I knew what it was like.
“So you don’t … you don’t blame me?”
“Cass,” he said, very softly, but then he fell silent.
“Yes?”
“Cass, I don’t blame you. I blame myself, for not being there to stop it. You … I’m only grateful to you.”
“Grateful? Why?”
He moved closer to me, put his arm around me. “You know what I tell myself? In the dark, at night. I tell myself …”
“Yeah?”
“I tell myself that the last thing she saw, the last thing she knew, was you reaching down to hold her. You, kneeling to pick her up. You. She loved you so much, you can’t imagine. One day you’ll get it, when you have kids, I guess. You were the universe to her, and all the stars in it. So I picture her looking at you, having you as her last sight in the world, your face, and then the darkness inside me goes away.”
Oh.
I’ll skip the next bit. There was a lot of crying. You don’t need to see that.
But there was something else important.
After all the hugging was done, the hugging and the crying, I kind of coughed, like you do when there’s something hard to say and you don’t want to say it but at the same time you know you have to.
Cough.
“Dad,” I said. “I’m not going to stop seeing that boy. I mean, I don’t know if he will forgive me now, but I’m going to write him, and you can’t stop me.”
“Cass …”
“No. I’m not a little girl anymore.” And that was true. Something had changed in me when I climbed that rope. I could feel it.
“I know that, and—”
“I swear to God, Dad, if you stand in my way, I will leave this house and you will never see me again.”
He sighed.
A long silence.
“I don’t want to stand in your way.”
“So you won’t stop me seeing him?”
Another silence.
“If you follow your doctor’s orders,” he said eventually, “if you—”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see her and Dr. Lewis, and we’ll work it out together, I promise.”
“Yes, yes,” said Dad. “Him too. But fine. If you do all that, then I’m not going to stand in your way.” He made a lame effort at a smile.
“Seriously? You’re … you’re fine with this? With me writing to him?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m fine with it, but I can live with it.” He stood up. “But I would say, Cass …” He looked pained. “I would say it’s not me you need to convince. I don’t know what you did to that boy, but last time I saw him he did not look happy.”