For This Life Only (7 page)

When she slammed the last book in place, a pen fell out and skittered across the floor.

I spoke up without thinking. “Hey, you lost your—”

She spun around, and to my shock, her dark eyes were filled with tears. Then she leaned toward me until mere inches separated us. I could see one tiny freckle, like a spot of ink, under her right eye.

“It should have been you,” she said, each word a cold, hard bullet, enunciated carefully so I wouldn't miss it. “Eli was worth ten of you.”

Her words stole my breath. It was something I'd been thinking, something I knew other people thought. No one else had had the balls to say it.

But it was the raw grief in her eyes, as deep, horrible, and personal as anything I'd seen from Leah yesterday, that really shook me. I'd been watching people cry over Eli all day. Eli as a concept. Eli as the nice guy in class. Eli as someone they knew who was now dead.

But this was different. Who was this girl to Eli? Or maybe, who had Eli been to her?

She straightened up abruptly and turned away, moving toward the door with purpose.

“Hey, wait,” I called after her.

But she ignored me.

By the time I levered myself to my feet and limped to the door, she was halfway down the hall, threading her way through the mob. As I watched, she gathered her hair and tucked it into the neck of her shirt with a practiced motion. Then she tugged her hood up and over her head and vanished into the crowd, like a magic trick.

THE ONLY GOOD THINGS
about physical therapy were that it was exhausting and it hurt. Getting through the reps and exercises took everything I had, to the point where I couldn't focus on anything but getting through it.

And then afterward, I was normally too tired to think about anything except the pain and trembling sense of overwork in my arm and leg.

But not today, unfortunately.

My brain kept cycling back to Thera Catoulus. What she'd said. How she'd stormed off.

Her reaction didn't seem like everyone else's. That wasn't just grief today. That was anger and frustration and loss, and you didn't feel that for someone who, I don't know, loaned you a quarter for the vending machine, did you?

Not unless you were seriously unstable, which, okay, maybe she was, given her history.

But she didn't seem unstable. She seemed pissed. A sentiment I completely understood. Which, to me, meant she'd known Eli in a way that would have generated those emotions.

That last night, before we crashed, I'd asked Eli if he was cheating on Leah. He'd been acting so weird. But I'd been joking. Mostly.

Now I wasn't so sure. If he was messing around with Psychic Mary's daughter, that would explain the weird. In more ways than one.

A familiar pang of guilt shot through me. By all logic and justice, he should have been the one to survive. He was the good one. He was the one wearing his seat belt. He was the one who should be here, not the one who was gone.

“Everything all right?” my mom asked, startling me. We were almost home. “Was therapy okay?”

“It was fine.” I'd said the same thing about school, when she'd asked.

She sighed, but said nothing more.

Frustration bloomed white-hot. I couldn't give her the detailed reassurances she wanted. I didn't have them to give, not without asking questions about faith, God, and fate that she wouldn't want to hear.

I slunk lower in my seat and kept my head down in an attempt to prevent further inquiries.

The umbrella—pink-and-white-striped—stuffed in the organizational bin between our seats brought back the memory of that bright blue umbrella sailing past my face during the accident.

That night, Eli had been asking questions about doing the right thing. And no matter what he'd said then, I was beginning to think now he hadn't been talking in the theoretical.

“Mom, was everything okay with Eli before . . . before?” I asked. “Do you know if something was bothering him?”

She tensed, glancing over her shoulder to the rear seat, where Sarah was strapped in. When I looked back, Sarah was watching both of us from her booster seat.

“No,” Mom said quickly. “Everything was fine.” Her tone indicated that this should be the end of the conversation.

I wasn't sure if she was afraid I was trying to question things that were a certainty to her, or if she knew something and didn't want to discuss it.

“But I think maybe he—” I began.

“Jace,” my mom said in warning. “Not now.”

“Right,” I said, swallowing my frustration.

As we rounded the corner onto our street, my mom slowed, frowning.

I followed her gaze. A vaguely familiar SUV, a black BMW, was parked in our driveway.

“Who is that?” I asked. Drop-bys were a big no-no at our house. It was a rule—or it used to be, at least—that all visits had to be cleared ahead of time. The illusion of perfection had to be maintained. No dirty dishes on the counter or piles of laundry spilling out into the hall. Nothing that could be reported back to the congregation or whispered about.

Before she could answer, the front doors of the SUV popped open. On the driver's side, Mr. Hauer, Riverwoods' council president, climbed out. On the other, his daughter and Eli's girlfriend, Leah.

Her long blondish-brown hair swung in a ruthlessly straight line at her shoulders. She was wearing her St. Luke's uniform; the white blouse was slightly rumpled after a long day of classes, but her tie—in the same blue-and-black plaid as her skirt—was perfectly knotted and in place at her throat. She looked washed out, a faded version of herself.

Leah and her dad moved to the back of their SUV to wait for us.

“Can we pretend we don't see them?” I asked my mom. Maybe it made me a coward, but I couldn't do this right now. I couldn't see the pain on her face again.

“Hush,” my mom said, but not with any harshness.

My mom pulled in the driveway and parked next to them, summoning a bright smile. “Rick, how wonderful to see you!” she called out as she pushed open her door.

I took an extra second to steel myself and then followed her example.

“Mr. Hauer,” I said when I reached them, offering my right hand to the closest thing my dad had to an earthly boss, all too aware of my sweaty clothes and likely stench.

He shook my hand without hesitation, squeezing hard in that man-test kind of way. “Jacob, glad to see you up and about,” he said too heartily, as if yesterday had never happened.

Leah said nothing, staring somewhere over my right shoulder, like she couldn't look directly at me.

We stood there for a long awkward beat until my mom intervened.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked. “Let me just get Sarah.” She moved past me, squeezing between our vehicle and theirs to pull the sliding side door open.

Before the accident, Sarah would have gotten herself unbuckled and wrestled the minivan door open on her own, or would have at least been loudly protesting about being forgotten.

This version of Sarah was waiting meekly in her seat.

“We don't want to interrupt your afternoon,” Mr. Hauer
said as my mom lifted Sarah out and then took her hand. “I'm sure you folks are busy.”

Why did everything he said sound so patronizingly jovial and fake? Had it always and I just never noticed?

“Leah wanted a chance to speak with Jacob.”

“Of course. Let's go inside.” My mom led everyone up the front stairs and through the door, which we never used ourselves, and then turned to me. “Jacob, why don't you and Leah talk in the living room?”

She gestured to the room across from us, as if neither Leah nor I knew where it was located. As if I wanted to have this conversation, whatever it turned out to be, with Leah in any location.

Then my mom turned her attention to Mr. Hauer. “Rick, I have some of that coffee you like. Sumatra, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, that's it.” He sounded delighted and surprised. But my mom was good with people.

“Come on back to the kitchen,” she said, waving him forward. “Let me get Sarah settled with a snack, and then you can tell me more about the expansion plans. Micah said the council was meeting with the architect again.”

With a warning look at me that I couldn't interpret, my mom led Mr. Hauer down the hall, leaving Leah and me alone.

Before I could figure out what to say, Leah turned
on her heel, her plaid skirt flaring out behind her, and headed into the living room.

She sat on the couch. I lowered myself into the armchair across from her, keeping half the room and part of the piano between us.

The uncomfortable silence continued, and I could hear the low murmurs of my mom and Mr. Hauer talking in the kitchen, most likely about us.

“What's up, Leah?” I asked, a little more abruptly than I meant to.

She flinched and then held her hand up in apology. “I forgot how much you two sound alike.” She took a deep breath. “And I'm trying to get used to the idea that I'll never hear Eli say my name again.” Her eyes went shiny with tears.

I clamped my mouth shut. What could I say to that?

Leah took another breath, then lifted her gaze to meet mine. “I came here because I wanted to say I'm sorry for yesterday.”

“Yesterday? For what?”

She sat up straighter, smoothing her hands over her skirt. “That couldn't have been easy for you, coming back to church for the first time since . . .” Her voice faltered. “I didn't mean to make it harder. I haven't been sleeping well.”

Was she actually apologizing for fainting? Like that
was something she could control. “It's fine. You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said.

“No, I'm not the only one who lost. I need to remember that.”

The back of my brain registered the faintly martyred tone in her voice, exactly the kind of thing that made her so irritating, but I was more preoccupied with a larger revelation.

“You're not mad at me,” I said, but my surprise made it come out more like a question. After all, maybe she was better at hiding her anger than others.

She shook her head and stared down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Of course not.”

“Why not?” I blurted. It was an accident, yeah, but the circumstances leading up to it had been put in motion by me.

“Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven, Jace,” she said with an admonishing look.

Thanks, Leah, how incredibly helpful.
I knew the Bible verse—Matthew something—just as well as she did. Okay, maybe not quite as well. But regardless, what the verse lacked was the
how
. How do you forgive someone that much? How do you forgive yourself? How do you stop being angry? Where was
that
quote?

“Because Jesus told me to” wasn't a particularly compelling or useful explanation in this situation.

Her shoulders sagged. “Besides, it's what Eli would have wanted,” she added softly.

I cleared my throat. “Thanks.” She was right; Eli probably would have wanted that. But that didn't mean I deserved her forgiveness. Or his, if he were able to give it.

“I also wanted to ask a favor,” Leah said. “You knew Eli probably better than anyone besides me.”

Maybe. Today of all days, I wasn't so sure about that.

“Would it be weird if we talked about him sometimes?” Her throat worked. “I loved him, and I miss him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks to her jaw. “And I thought maybe since you did too, we could . . . I don't know . . .”

Leah had planned her entire future around my brother. They'd spent days comparing course catalogs and college brochures and being generally annoying downstairs in the rec room, while I was playing Xbox. If anyone could have made a relationship in high school survive all the way through college and beyond, it would have been the two of them.

But now here she was, half of a whole that no longer existed. Maybe in that, Leah and I finally had something in common.

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my palms down the legs of my pants. “Whenever you want.”

Leah nodded her thanks, wiping under her eyes carefully. After a beat of silence, she started to get up.

A stupid impulse took hold of me. “Wait. Can I ask you something?”

She sank back onto the couch.

I hesitated. The last thing I wanted to do was make her cry more. “Was everything okay with Eli that last night? He, uh, seemed upset about something.”

She blinked, confused. “No, I don't . . . I didn't really talk to him much that day. Did something happen at the party?”

I stared at her. “What?”

“It's just, that was more your scene than his.” She lifted her shoulders in an uncertain shrug. “Maybe someone said something—”

“At Zach's party,” I said slowly, trying to fit the pieces together.

“Yes, Zach's party,” she said, giving me a sidelong look. “Eli wanted to spend time with you. What other party was there that night?”

“I . . . none, I guess,” I managed, my hand clutching tight to the arm of the chair.

Leah shifted closer to the edge of the cushion, looking at me and my death grip with concern. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get your mom?”

“No,” I said too quickly. “I just didn't know that he'd told you that. About wanting to spend time with me, I mean.”

Her eyes spilled over again, a sad smile pulling at her mouth. “He told me everything.”

No, no, he didn't.

Because Eli sure as hell had not been at Zach's party.

He'd told my parents and me that he was with Leah. And he'd told Leah he was with me.

The realization led to a strange twisting sensation in me, like something long held was breaking loose.
Eli had been lying to all of us.

But why?

In a flash, I saw again the deep, unmistakable grief on Thera's face.