Tangled Thoughts (35 page)

That's how I felt about Uncle Dan too. I darted glances at him, trying to decipher what he was thinking, feeling, wanting. What he needed, and if I could provide it. I couldn't shake the desire to please him, just like I couldn't shake the doubt still plaguing me, not that he deserved it today.

The priest cleared his throat and looked at Tessa. She glanced behind us, saying nothing, and the priest followed her gaze. I resisted the urge to do the same. As Lainey's footsteps drew near, Uncle Jeff's attention snapped to a space between us and the police perimeter.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“A person,” he said. “The angel mausoleum. Don't look.”

Bastard. “Should we do something?”

“I will.” His voice was colder than I'd ever heard it, and it reminded me that he was a soldier. Dangerous if he wanted to be. Whoever was intruding on our tragedy was a fool.

Lainey finally rejoined the end of the line, and the priest started his bullshit. They all said the same things, and none of it made any difference. The dead were still dead and we were still here, living. If we saw them again, met them in the afterlife or joined them in spirit or whatever the hell, we'd be dead, too. That was supposed to be a comfort? If death was so great, why was suicide a sin?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I was the last in the line to pay respects. I took only a handful of earth, tossing it onto the tiny coffin and feeling guilty. I scrubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand.
I'm sorry
, I thought. What else was there? A hand fell on my shoulder, and I turned to find Uncle Jeff.

“It's over, Carter,” was all he said. I wondered how long I'd been standing there. All around us were tears and hugging, the sound of
sobs and murmured assurances. I joined the melee, touching everyone, even Jillian. Somewhere in the distance bagpipes played.

Uncle Dan looked less in control than I'd ever seen him. “I'm sorry, Uncle,” I said for a countless time. It was so inadequate.

“Carter.” He looked at me with eyes that were haunted and distant. If he hadn't said my name, I'd have wondered if he saw me at all. He gripped my shoulders tightly before pulling me to him. “I need you more than ever now,” he said, before he released me and was gone.

Tessa was the hardest. She felt weightless in my arms but hugged more fiercely than anyone. I didn't understand how she was still standing, let alone hugging me in a way that seemed more like giving comfort than receiving it. She said nothing—I wasn't sure she'd spoken the entire time—but she patted my cheek and stepped away, turning to take Uncle Dan's side and start the trudge back to the limos.

And then all that was left was Lainey. She was there, off to the side, in body at least. She hugged and was hugged, but it was all reflex. A light wind gusted, blowing her hair across her face, but she didn't move to brush it away. One hand wiped absently against her thigh and her eyes never strayed from the small hole in the ground.

I stepped next to her, wanting to touch her but knowing I shouldn't. “Lainey.”

Slowly, her eyes came back into focus, and she looked at me, really
looked
at me. I'd wanted to know what it would feel like, and it felt like this: heartbreak. But I knew right then that everything was forgiven, too. All of it. I might never understand, but I no longer needed to.

“Carter—” she said. Her mouth opened and closed like there was something more, but instead of words, all that came out was tears. She fell into my arms and I didn't let go.

She shook, quaked like an earthquake, sobbing so hard I was the only thing that kept her upright. It had hurt seeing her in pain and not being able to comfort her. It hurt more holding her now and still
knowing there was nothing I could do. Nothing would change this. It wasn't even me who should be holding her, but I wanted to. And there was no one else here.

“I'm sorry,” I said into Lainey's ear. I said it over and over while she cried onto my chest.

Automatically, I ran my hand down her hair, just like old times. It was soft like I remembered, but cut differently. There were shorter pieces—layers—and little streaks of a color like honey at the ends. When she didn't protest, I did it again. I kept it up the whole time. I'd have held her until the next day, or forever, however long it took. Eventually her breathing slowed and the shaking subsided into tremors. They vibrated from her body to mine.

Abruptly, she pulled back. “I'm sorry—Ow,” she said as her hair caught in the exposed cuff of my shirt. A clump of strands dangled from it, wrapped around the button. I stuffed my hand in my pocket. I opened my mouth to say something but there were so many things I wanted to say, to ask her about, in the jumble of my head, I couldn't find the words.

“I'm sorry,” Lainey repeated, wiping swiftly under her eyes. She looked a wreck, face red and blotchy, eyes puffed nearly closed and ringed by makeup, nose running. A line ran down her cheek from where it had pressed into the edge of my lapel. When she noticed the patch of my shirt wet with tears and mucus, she groaned. “Oh, God, I'm sorry.” She lifted her hand as if to brush it away but instead pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. “We should go.”

“Wait—” I said. But she was already striding away. I followed her toward the idling limousine, the hand still in my pocket curled into a fist.

“…
NO FURTHER EVIDENCE
or witnesses have surfaced…”

The TV was on as it always was now, though I barely heard it anymore.

“…at this time, investigators still believe the failed assassination to have been the work of a lone individual. No groups have yet come forward to claim responsibility. Some are hinting the incident was an accident—a tragic accident…”

They were saying that because most of the shots fired inexplicably went into the ground. The shooter had been a relatively new member of the private security team. It was his first, and last, time working a high profile event. He couldn't explain whether it was an inept assassination attempt or a weapon malfunction because now he was dead.

I watched the screen intently, staring hard at the images replaying again and again. Nothing ever changed, but still I watched, hoping for a new angle or a new video to surface.

Because if there was one thing I knew it was this: what happened was no accident.

“…Senator Astor and his fiancée, Teresa Espinosa, ask for your understanding and respect of their privacy in their time of grief…”

Fiancée
. That was new. I'd not heard anything official, but I'd never been first to learn anything about them. Maybe Tessa had relented, or Williams had begged them hard enough. It could hardly improve Uncle Dan's standing in the polls at this point. His popularity had surged since the tragedy, vaulting him to the top of the polls.

The video on this channel slowed down and zoomed in, though for what purpose, I couldn't say. So people could see Tessa screaming? So everyone could watch Manny pointing right before they shot a possibly innocent man?

Or was everyone watching what I was: me, looking straight at the shooter before a single shot was fired.

I paused, rewound, and watched again.
There
. I'd noticed it a few days after the incident, standing in line for coffee. I'd been trying
not
to
watch the coverage, considering I'd been there. But that TV wasn't mine, and I couldn't click it off. The news channel I was watching now must have been covering the gala live. Their video was excellent. And then there I was, in the middle of the screen.

I couldn't remember anything about those seconds before the hysteria, but I couldn't deny what I could see with my own eyes. There was my uncle, smiling at me, lifting his chin and then I—
Why
had I looked across the lawn, toward the shooter?

Halfway through replaying it again, the phone rang. Uncle Jeff.

I picked it up and paced the living room, wondering if now was the time to tell him. “Hello?”

“Carter.” He cleared his throat, an absolutely un-Uncle Jeff thing to do. Like he was nervous or didn't know what to say. Uncle Jeff planned every word before he spoke it. “The results are in.”

“What? Already?” I'd carefully transferred the strands of Lainey's hair that caught on my sleeve at the cemetery to Uncle Jeff before he left. Zeus couldn't have had it for very long.

He cleared his throat again and I decided I should probably sit down. “It turns out,” he said, “the sample was already in the database.”

“
What?
How?” There was
no way
Lainey had donated it. If I knew
anything
, I knew that. Which meant someone had submitted it without her permission. “Or, no,
who
?”

“It was my brother, Carter.” I sucked in a breath. “It was Dan.” I couldn't believe it. How could he do that to her? “There's more,” he said.

I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“It's a match.”

A match. So it really was true. Lainey was part Astor.

And Uncle Dan had known all along.

Lainey

J
ack was waiting for me. That thought kept me going for the rest of the week I spent with Aunt Tessa through the plane ride home. Otherwise, I closed my eyes and saw the tiny coffin slipping below the dirt and the destroyed look on my aunt's face. I heard Abuela sobbing and Uncle Tommy whispering “okay, okay” over and over. I felt the familiar weight of Carter's arms holding me and Daniel Astor's eyes following me. All of those sensations pressed on me from inside my head, crushing and expanding at the same time, getting louder and sharper and heavier until I was afraid I might explode.

It was all I could do not to scream.

So instead, I thought about Jack. There was something
good
waiting for me at home. At least I had that.

When he flung his apartment door open and crushed me to him, I couldn't contain the tears anymore. I'd kept them in the whole flight, the whole mercifully short taxi ride from the airport, but the pressure had built and built until the sobs erupted from me like a geyser.

“At least I have you,” I hiccupped out, the words broken and garbled between breaths. “At least I have you.”

“You do,” he said into my ear. “I swear it. You do. Only you matter.”

Jack held on, and I clung to him. It was different from when Carter held me, because I didn't have to let go. Carter was just one more thing I'd lost, the first thing. Like being held up by a ghost. Jack was mine. He was real, and here, and I could stay.

I stayed. Safe in Jack's arms, and knowing they'd still be there when I woke up, I slept the first decent hours since my brother had died.

F
ROM
MY
BEDSIDE
table, my phone blared, the ring so loud it made the phone bounce and me jump to answer it. I always answered now. I'd never miss a call again.

“Hello?” I said groggily.

“Lane?” Amy's voice faded in and out, the way it did sometimes when she was in her dorm, making her seem farther away than just the few miles across the river. She seemed farther away than ever lately, and a little voice I didn't much like said that was my fault. “Were you sleeping?”

I rubbed my eyes, hoping that would ease the dull ache behind them. “Yeah.”

“It's five o'clock. PM.”

“It was…a late night,” I admitted. Fun though. One of Serena's regular clubs had Salsa Night and a rather lenient ID policy. It was the kind of place you'd be afraid to see in the light of day, but after dark and a couple of shots it was great.

After a pause Amy said, “On a Wednesday. Did you go to class?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

I wasn't proud of the way I responded to what happened. Though that was something I only thought of distantly, in the down moments
when I wasn't actively pursuing distractions. I still went to classes, always, even if I was tired or hungover or not prepared, which was most of the time. My grades were dropping, though not as much as they
should
have, if not for my “extenuating circumstances.”

Amy sighed. “So I guess we're not going to that show tonight?”

“What?” I sat up, regretting the throb it caused in my head. “Yeah, we are! Why do you think I was taking a nap?”

“Lane—” I knew that tone of voice.

“You
can't
bail on me.”

“I don't want to, just—are you sure?” She said it in a way that made it obvious
she
wasn't sure. Irritation tickled at me like a stray hair. I wanted to brush it away but couldn't. “Two nights in a row? And, I mean, you're
napping
. You never nap.”

I never used to do a lot of things, but things change.
Maybe that's just what happens
, I thought. How could we ever stay as close as we were in high school? Our lives were different now. Separate. I still missed her, but it was an entirely different feeling than before. I think what I really missed was how things used to be easy.

“Ame,” I said, trying to keep the irritation from my voice. “I want to go! You love this band! I'll be fine.”

“Will you?” she said softly, more like a thought than a question. “I don't think you're fine, Lane. I'm worried.”

I stood, stretched, searching for my sweatshirt so I could go for a quick run. “Aspirin, exercise, and dinner. That's all I need. I'll be fine,” I repeated.

“That's not what I meant,” she muttered, and then sighed. “Okay. Meet before dinner or after?”

“Um. Jack will be here…” I quickly scanned my messages. “Any minute, actually. So whichever you want. We can meet you. Thai maybe? And yes,” I added as she started to respond, “you can stay at my
apartment. Of course.” At this point it was as much Amy's apartment as mine.