Meet Me at the River (25 page)

“Just till tomorrow. Every day all you have to do is stay alive till tomorrow.”

We don’t say anything else, just sit there for the longest time letting the sunlight widen and narrow through the trees, listening to the rustle of squirrels and birds and marmots. Watching and hearing the river, incongruously cheerful—meaning no harm whatsoever, just making its way through the world, the day, these next few hours.

*   *   *

Since school’s back in session, I’ve been staying with Mom and Paul again. H. J. drops me off after dark at the end of the driveway. He doesn’t pull in front of the house, perhaps sensing that my family would get the wrong idea if they saw him. He leaves the car running and keeps his hands on the wheel. His face looks flushed and suddenly young—much more like Evie’s brother than her dad—and this moment before good-bye feels awkwardly like a date. I shift sideways in my seat, away from him, my fingers on the door handle.

H. J. doesn’t seem to notice my slight retreat. “It was nice running into you, Tressa Earnshaw,” he says.

“Likewise, H. J. Burdick. Thank you.”

I grab my backpack and open the car door in one fluid movement, then stand for a second and wave, waiting for him to pull away. He leans forward and rolls down the window.

“I’ll wait till you’re inside,” he says.

Walking down the driveway, I remember all the nights I’ve walked for miles, alone or with Luke, and think how silly it is, H. J.’s careful eyes upon me. When I reach the front door, I push it open and turn and wave in a shaft of light from the front hall. H. J. answers with a little beep, then pulls away.

*   *   *

I had planned on making an excuse to avoid dinner, but instead of the aroma of my mother’s cooking, I’m
greeted by Matthew’s wails. I walk into the kitchen to find Paul, pacing and jiggling and trying to calm the baby. At the sound of my footsteps, he whirls around, a hopeful expression on his face. When he sees it’s only me, his expression collapses back into a frown. He immediately thrusts the baby into my arms, and I wonder where my mom is.

“Tressa,” he says. “Where is your mother?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I have to yell over Matthew’s crying. “I haven’t seen her since this morning.”

He sinks into a chair at the kitchen table. We both look at the wall clock: 5:45, certainly not an alarming time of day. But of course, like my grandparents and me, Paul has begun to notice the glaze in Mom’s eyes, the tapping feet, the too-apparent dreaming of elsewhere.

Despite all the noise Matthew’s making, we hear the sound of tires crunching on gravel. My mother must hear the wails even from the driveway, but there’s no sense of hustle in her approach. She enters the house through the front door instead of the kitchen. We hear her arrange packages in the foyer. Then she saunters in to us, her face flushed and calm. She stops for a moment and stares at me holding Matthew as if she is trying to place each of us, our relationship to each other, our relationship to her. Then she sighs and reaches out her arms.

“Give him to me,” she says resignedly. She carries him to the seat across the table from Paul and pulls up her shirt. The baby snorts and grunts and sets to nursing.
It’s a noisy process, punctuated by sad little shudders from having cried so hard, so long.

“Where were you?” Paul says in a low voice. I see the anger, but also the fear of letting the anger show through. My mother has become restless, and he knows he shouldn’t act like any kind of captor. He continues tentatively: “I came home, and your mother was here with the baby. She left more than an hour ago. I don’t know when he ate last.”

“I left formula,” Mom says. She gestures toward the refrigerator with a jerk of her chin.

“Formula,”
Paul says, disgusted, and I think he is an unlikely La Leche League activist. “He wouldn’t take it,” he tells my mother. “He wanted nothing to do with it.”

My mother shrugs. “Just keep trying,” she says. “He’ll drink it if he’s hungry enough.”

The baby looks plenty hungry to me, but I’ve had enough of this conversation. “Speaking of hungry,” I say, “I had a late lunch, so I don’t need any dinner. I’m just going to go upstairs and study.”

“Fine,” they both say at the same time. I carry my books up to my room and put on my iPod, not wanting to hear another word of whatever spoils there may be—from Paul’s misguided devotion, and my mother’s inevitable longing to escape from it.

During the night I wake, thinking I hear something. I get out of bed and go to my window. When I look down,
there he is
, finally, standing on the ground, staring up at me. Luke! He’s here! I thunder down the stairs, not caring whether I wake up the baby, or my mother, or Paul. Just let them try to stop me. Luke has come back. He’s waiting for me.

Downstairs the little alarm panel reads
READY TO ARM
—they’ve forgotten to turn it on. Victory! I still have to crawl through the dog door to avoid that announcing Australian voice. Outside, frigid air envelops me as I step into the driveway and run around to the spot beneath my window. My bare legs tingle with the freezing air that’s too cold even for snow. The weather changes quickly at this altitude, and this afternoon’s
balmy sunlight feels worlds and worlds away. I look around wildly. But Luke’s not here.

“Where are you?” I call. “Luke. Luke!” I reach out my hand to feel the air in front of me, as if maybe things have shifted and now I’ll be able to feel but not see him. But I just
did
see him; I know I did. He was standing out here, and now he’s gone, and for a second I want to leap out of my skin and run after him, no matter how cold it is and no matter how flimsily I’m dressed.

One more day
, I say to myself.
Just one more day, to see what happens
.

That voice in my head startles me, and I wonder if I’m getting better. Is “better” the right word? What if, as I get better, healthier, the need to keep Luke here, hovering around this world, fades, and then—he fades too? I think of Carlo, walking away forever. What if Luke does the same thing? What if he’s supposed to? And me, so selfish, keeping that from happening. But to never see his face again—
never—
I can’t. I can’t!

I won’t. I stand here in the cold. It must be ten degrees or less. My body shivers and my skin stings. But I will myself not to care, not to wish for warmth. I will myself to court this danger, this pain, if only it will bring him back to me.

How can I want to get better if that means sending Luke on his way? At the same time my body rebels, urgently, against the frigid air that feels wrong, violent, in my lungs and against my skin. If I don’t know how
to wish Luke gone, I also don’t know how to freeze to death. So finally I turn and walk into the artificial warmth of my artificial home.

Don’t ask me why, but I disappear as soon as Tressa comes outside. Then I’m back, but standing in the woods. I can see her through the trees but she can’t see me. I try to walk over to her but it doesn’t work. This could drive me crazy. Her face looks way too pale, like she’s already got frostbite. Plus her lips are turning blue. All I want to do is head toward her but my legs don’t move.

“Where are you?” she yells.

I’m here. I’m right here
. But I can’t hear my voice. I don’t think she can either.

Tressa stands there so long that I start to remember what cold feels like. It’s like her bare legs are my bare legs. Why is she wearing a nightgown in winter? It must be ten degrees out.
Go inside
, I yell.

Suddenly I feel guilty. If I went away like Carlo did, Tressa wouldn’t be out here with bare legs, looking for me, the kid who wasn’t strong enough to stop fighting and stay in this world. The same kid who can’t fight his way toward her now, out of these woods.

Go inside
, I yell again. Maybe she hears me, or maybe it’s just that the cold finally gets to her. She turns back
toward the house. I see her hugging herself and I can’t stand how much I want to walk over to her.

Maybe I
should
leave. But I can’t.

At the hospital, before they let me see him, before Francine arrived, I hit the EMT who told me Luke was dead. Maybe she thought I blamed her. It took so long for them to find us, the hiker who’d come upon us having shouted hysterical directions into his cell phone. But that wasn’t why I hit her. In my heart I’d known Luke was gone before the hiker even dialed 911.

The sheriff had driven Carlo to my grandparents, and I rode in the ambulance with the EMTs. On the ride they worked over Luke’s body too constantly for me to get near him. I hunched in a corner. When we arrived at the hospital, they handed the stretcher to medical personnel, and I slid out of the back behind them. One of them, the woman—not much older than me and not much taller—turned and placed one hand on my shoulder. She meant to be kind, to be honest.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You should know, there won’t be anything else they can do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He’s gone,” she said. “We did everything we could, and I’m so sorry. But he’s already gone.”

Before that moment I had never hit anybody in my life. But I hit her. Even though I already knew Luke was dead, I lifted up my hand, and I balled it into a fist, and I punched her right in the face, knocking her backward. The two other EMTs ran to help her. Part of me wanted to run from them, away from the hospital, screaming at the top of my voice:
No, no, no, no, no.
But before they could reach me, or her, I felt a pair of arms encircle me, even though nobody stood nearby. A strong, disembodied, invisible pair of arms—wrapped around my waist, holding me steady.

Then the arms disappeared. I stepped forward. “I’m sorry,” I said to the woman. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s the shock,” she said, rubbing her jaw. The other EMTs looked at me, dubious. “It’s okay,” she told them. And I left them to walk inside and find Luke, before the rest of the world descended.

I can’t get back to Tressa. I don’t know why. I try and I try and I can’t get there, so instead I visit my mom. Sometimes I sit at the table while she eats breakfast. Or else I sit on the couch while she gets ready for school. I like to hear her moving around the house like she’s still got important stuff to do.

One time I sit next to her in the car while she’s driving. I talk a lot, even though she can’t hear me. “I love you, Mom,” I say. Not something I told her much, the last couple years. And then out of nowhere, I tell her, “Hey. Mom. Watch out for Tressa. Okay?”

I know it’s not fair to ask. Probably she’s had enough of looking out for people, especially Hannah’s kids. But I can’t help it, and anyway, she can’t hear me.

I get out of Mom’s car and walk a long way, hours or days or weeks. I’m losing track. On what looks like a very cold night I turn up at my dad’s and find a kitten in the well of a basement window. It’s wedged up into a little ball, barely breathing. What’s a little kitten doing out in this weather? It’ll die out here. I reach in and touch its spindly back. There’s some warmth from the house, which I guess kept it alive so far. But that won’t last long. I know nights like this. If I leave it where it is there’ll be nothing but a kitten Popsicle come morning.

So I scoop it up. Just like I could feel Carlo when he was alive, I can feel the kitten. I hold it to my face. Its nose is freezing. How can I hold a kitten, feel a kitten, but not Tressa? It makes no sense. I close my eyes and try to will myself to Tressa’s room. When I open them I’m still standing outside. I stare up at the stars a moment. I’ll try again.

This time I head for the front door. It pushes open. The alarm panel blinks away, but for some reason it doesn’t go off. I guess I don’t register in the after-Luke,
even when I open doors. So I go through the kitchen, up the stairs, past my old room.

When I get to Tressa’s room, she’s sleeping. I wish I could crawl into bed with her and just sleep. The kitten moves a little, like maybe it notices things have warmed up. I put it down next to Tressa.

I get onto the bed too. I lie down and put my arms around Tressa. She doesn’t wake up, but that’s okay. I’m here. I’m here. I close my hand around her wrist, feeling her skin. I know that if I close my eyes this’ll be over. When I open them I’ll be someplace far away. But I can’t help it. I close my eyes, so that just for this minute we can sleep, wrapped up. Together.

The strangest thing: I wake up, and here’s this tiny black kitten—a kitten!—no more than eight weeks old, curled up right on my chest, purring the creakiest little purr I have ever heard. I close my eyes, wipe sleep away, then open them. She’s still here. I’m not dreaming.

I lift her to my face. She opens her eyes, a thousand layers of emerald, a thousand more flecks of jade. “Where did you come from?” I ask, though I know right away. She is a gift to me. I am a gift to her.
Luke was here
.

I can smell it on my pillow, that sandalwood scent. I can feel it in the pulse of the kitten’s heartbeat beneath
my thumb, pressed against her fragile rib cage. Luke was here. Luke brought me this kitten, and he wants me to take care of it. And I know, I know, exactly what he’s telling me: He wants me to stay alive.

I think about what H. J. said, about the chain of events we unknowingly halt or set into motion. I have thought about my life in terms of monumental moments that can’t be undone. My mother’s letter to Paul, all those years ago. That first day meeting Luke. Our last walk by the river. The X-acto blade across my wrists.

I have neglected the seemingly less monumental moments. The decisions we never think of again, the actions that change the course of time without our ever knowing. In another world and time I am a high school graduate. Luke and I live miles away, we walk hand in hand beside Boulder Creek. We have left Rabbitbrush and its inhabitants, our families, behind.

In still another world my mother stayed put. She never sat down at that table, never wrote that letter to Paul. Instead she endured, took care of the twins, stayed with her husband. She never traveled, never met my father. Francine married someone different. Luke and I never existed at all.