The Secrets We Keep (26 page)

Molly got up and brushed what she could of the mud from her pants, then took a step back. “If you ask me, I think Alex always knew you weren't Maddy. He just didn't care. That's why he fought so hard to make everything seem perfect between the two of you and to cover for you.”

I knew what she was trying to say. He wanted Maddy, wanted
me
to be Maddy so much that he ignored the truth, hid from it like I had.

With one last encouraging nod, Molly turned and walked away. She stopped when she reached her car and called back, “You know what happened with your sister and the drugs? Well, that is done and over with. As far as I am concerned, that incident was buried with Maddy.”

“Thanks,” I said. I'd already done enough damage to Maddy's name. I didn't want her to suffer anymore.

 

42

My eyes scanned the nearly empty cemetery. When I woke up in the hospital, when everybody, including myself, thought I was Maddy, there were dozens of people there waiting for me to open my eyes. Here, on the day I was bringing Ella back, there were only Molly and Josh. But somehow that was okay. The person who mattered to me most was standing a few gravestones away, waiting for me to make the first move.

Josh held out his hand, softly beckoning me forward. He was the last person I wanted to hurt and the one person I didn't think of when I made my choice to live a lie. When I didn't move, he came to me.

“Hey, Ella.”

“I'm sorry.” It seemed completely inadequate, but I said it anyway. I was sorry for what my sister did to Molly. Sorry for taking my sister's life in every way possible. Sorry for lying to my parents. And sorry for not trusting Josh with the truth from the beginning.

I slipped my hand into his and let his warmth comfort me. I didn't know which one of us needed the physical contact more, but it made no difference either way. We both needed the reassurance that this was real, that I was finally admitting who I was and reclaiming my own life.

I turned and looked up into his eyes, silently thanking him for being here and never giving up on me. His eyes weren't red-rimmed like mine, but they were glossy, letting me know he'd also been crying.

I ran my hand across his cheek. It was soft and strong like him. He stared at me, his eyes distant and sad as if unsure, or maybe too scared, to believe I was finally me. I couldn't blame him. For so long I wasn't.

I'd never touched him like this before—gently, intimately, like he meant more to me than anything else in this world. He did; and if he'd listen to me, give me a second chance to explain, I'd tell him.

“I love you, too,” I whispered. “Since the day Maddy introduced me to you, it's been you.”

Josh's eyes brightened at my words and he squeezed my hand tighter.

His silence troubled me. “It's me. Ella. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to be Maddy anymore. Not with you, not with my parents, not with anybody,” I promised.

Josh looked down at the gravestone bearing my name. His hand shook in mine, and I was too afraid to break the forgiving quiet with words. I mumbled another apology and looked away.

“I was pissed at you, Ella, angry that you lied and hurt that you wouldn't trust me with the truth, but that never changed the way I felt about you. I'm sorry that I wasn't there in the hospital when you woke up, sorry that I didn't stay with Alex and see for myself who you were.”

“What I did … why I did it had nothing to do with you. You don't need to apologize. You didn't do anything wrong.”

“I did everything wrong,” Josh said. “I should've told you I loved you the minute I realized it. I should've continued to tell you every day I saw you. I should've made you go to your parents and tell them you weren't Maddy the minute I figured it out.
I
should've told them myself. I should have—”

I held a finger up to his lips, silencing him. “And I shouldn't have lied.”

The tears he'd been holding in finally fell, his eyes glinting with hope and promise. Everybody I needed was right there, including Maddy. As long as I had Josh, then somehow, everything—the accident, Maddy's death, me pretending to be somebody I wasn't—was going to be okay.

“I have something for you.” Josh pulled his hand away from mine and dug into his front pocket. His fingers curled around the object he'd yanked out. Whatever it was, it was tiny, completely eclipsed by his fingers.

“What is it?” I asked. When he opened his hand, a thin multicolored string fell between his fingers. I took it, turning the string bracelet over and over. I could see where the doctors had cut it off in the ER, where Josh had tried to piece it back together.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“I looked for it when I got to the hospital, to see which one of you had it on, but they'd cut it off. There was a pile of your stuff in the hall … both your things. I went through it and took it.”

“Why?”

Josh shrugged. “I wanted it.”

I handed it back to him and held out my wrist. “No, give me your foot,” he said as he knelt down in the wet grass. I felt his hands on my ankle. They were shaking like mine. “I did the best I could to fix the strings they cut in the ER,” he said as he tied off the last knot. “I know it's not perfect, and I'll buy matching ones for our wrists tomorrow, but I want you to wear it anyway.”

The tears I'd seen moments earlier were gone, his eyes now full of nervous anticipation. “I've missed you,” he said, and stood up, his hands toying with the damp strands of hair falling around my face. He was so close, close enough that I could see the flecks of gray in his green eyes.

“I have waited forever to do this, Ella, and I nearly lost you twice in the process.”

I suppose I should've waited for him, let Josh close those final two inches between us. But my stomach twisted in anticipation, my mind close to freezing up. I had waited for that moment for so long, had dreamed about it.

Ignoring my fear, I reached up and ran my hands through his hair, tugging gently until he got my hint. I didn't want to wait anymore. I didn't want to lose another second to fear or uncertainty.

He stopped as his lips met mine, his words whispered across my breath. “I love you, Ella Lawton. If you believe in nothing else, I need you to believe in that.”

I shook my head as he tried to swipe at my tears with his nose. I wanted to cry. I needed to cry. For the past, for the future, for him.

“And I love you, too.” Those words were an extension of me, every syllable of their meaning saving me from myself.

I heard rather than saw the car come to a stop, the tires screeching to a halt as the car door opened. They didn't bother to turn the engine off or shut their doors. They got out and ran those few short steps to where I stood.

Josh grabbed my hand, probably afraid that I'd bolt. I wouldn't. They already knew; the simple note I'd left them was still in my mom's hand.

They looked so different, sad and hopeful at the same time. Mom smiled, the first true display of happiness I'd seen from her in weeks, and it was for me. Dad mouthed my name, my real name, then nodded. They knew who I was, what I'd done, and they'd come to find me anyway.

“Hi.” It seemed like such a silly way to start the conversation, but it was the only thing I could think of, the one word that solidified in the jumbled mess of emotions pouring out of me.

“This is Ella. Ella, these are your parents,” Josh said, and I laughed at the insanely sweet way he tried to smooth out the tense silence that surrounded us.

Dad chuckled, too, then held out his hand in a mock gesture of greeting. “Nice to have you back. I'm your father and this lovely lady standing next to me is your mom.”

I took his hand, fully aware he was going to pull me into his arms. I let him, burying myself in his chest and holding on like he was the last solid thing left in the world.

“We've missed you.”

The whispered words came from behind me, and I lifted my head enough to see Mom staring at me before she kissed the top of my head. I wiggled free, confused as to why they weren't upset with me. I'd expected anger … for the accident, for lying, for taking what good memories they had of Maddy and destroying them. I was prepared for that, was prepared to accept that. But this, this silent forgiveness … I didn't know what to do with it.

“You're not angry,” I said as my head whipped between Mom and Dad. I was waiting, wondering which one of them was going to lose it on me first. Neither did. Mom shook her head, and Dad held out his arms again, offering me shelter and comfort.

“Why? I don't get it, why aren't you mad?”

“We're sorry that you thought you had to do this. Sorry that you ever thought Maddy was more important to us than you. We are confused and angry with ourselves for not recognizing who you were the instant you woke up, but we're not upset with you, Ella. We couldn't be.”

Ella.
The sound of my name coming from my mother had me shaking, seeking out my father's hand as the weight of the lie I'd been carrying finally lifted. I sucked in a ragged breath and then another one after that, my heart, my soul, my entire being realigning itself with the truth that everybody now knew: I was Ella Lawton.

I reached out a hand to Josh, pulled him into the circle my parents' arms had created around me. Somehow I knew it was going to be okay. Everything I needed was here, enveloping me. And as for Maddy, she was my sister, my first and best friend. Here or not, she was part of me and I would carry her with me forever.

Like Molly said, it wasn't going to be easy—there would be gossip, and questions, and a crapload of family therapy—but I'd take it, because right there, standing at the grave of my sister, my life literally started over.

 

EPILOGUE

I had a few more boxes to unpack, most of them extra toiletries Mom insisted I needed. The room was smaller than I'd expected—nothing more than a shoe box with two identical beds, two desks, and two closets. I'd managed to jam as much as I could into the small space, even sent a duffle bag of clothes home with my parents, but it still felt overstuffed. Where Mom expected me to hide a year's worth of tampons, I had no idea. I shoved them under the bed with the seven thousand bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste she'd made me keep.

I'd do anything she asked—keep a lifetime's worth of toiletries shoved under my bed and call her every night if that's what she wanted—in the hopes of making up for what I'd done.

According to Mom, this was my chance to start over, to reinvent myself, in a world where nobody knew about my past. But I wouldn't be alone. Instead of the single room I'd wanted, I had a roommate. She wasn't there yet. Her name was Sadie Rose, and she was from Austin, Texas, or so the meet-your-roommate e-mail I'd received in July had said. The message even included a picture of her, not that you could tell much from it. From what I could see, she was blond and apparently had an affinity for thick black eyeliner.

We had exchanged a couple of e-mails, mostly revolving around who was bringing the mini-fridge and who was bringing the microwave. She seemed nice enough.

She had texted me this morning. Her flight had been canceled and she doubted she'd be here before tomorrow afternoon. That was fine by me. It gave me one more day to figure out what to say to her in person.

I left her side of the room completely untouched, taking over what I calculated to be my half of the ten-by-twelve-foot space. I hoped she wouldn't mind which side I'd picked and didn't have space issues; that would suck.

The door to my room opened, and I didn't bother to turn around to see who it was. I already knew. He'd been in and out of my room five times in the last half hour, trying to figure out how to make the wooden bulletin board I brought from home stick to the cinder-block walls.

“The guy at the hardware store said this should work,” Josh told me as he held up some double-sided tape. “Although I still don't get why you didn't do what your dad suggested and lean it against the window.”

I shrugged. “I like it this way better.”

Mom gave both Maddy and me bulletin boards when we started high school. She said it was the perfect way to show off what was important to us without marring our walls. We'd killed our walls anyway, taping pictures to them and nailing up photos, but that didn't stop us from using our bulletin boards to tack up whatever memento was important to us that day.

I'd combined the items from our two boards before I left, took an old concert-ticket stub and the picture of her field hockey team off Maddy's and added it to mine. There was a picture of Molly and me that was taken the day before she left for UNC, the crumpled-up drawing of the tree that had given me away to Josh, and our prom picture—not the formal one but a candid his mom snapped as we were getting into his car. In the center of it all were Maddy's car keys, the ones to the blue Honda that nearly claimed both our lives, and the appointment card for the counselor Mom had found me here. I didn't want to tape these things to random spots on the wall. I wanted them like this—smushed together in one contained, controllable spot. It was a combination of the two of us and I now used it to remind me how strangely similar and oddly different Maddy and I truly were.

“Okay,” Josh said as he dropped the tape onto my desk. “If it is that important to you, then I will find a way to make it stick, even if it means holding it up there myself all year.”

I laughed. The idea of Josh stuck in my room—in my life—for the next four years was not something I minded. Not in the least.

“What's so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. You.”

“Great,” he said as he launched himself onto my bed and held out his arms. His eyes darted to the bare frame and empty mattress across the room, and I knew exactly what he was thinking before he spoke. “What are the chances of your roommate showing up anytime soon?”