Truest (24 page)

I pushed it over, and the frame crashed loudly to the floor.

But still no one came.

I woke up to a phone call from Trudy. “West! Holy
shit
, my dad told me what happened. Are you okay? Don't answer that. I've been waiting for you to call. What can I do? How can I help?”

I was quiet, overwhelmed. I pulled back my curtain and saw my mom and siblings cross the parking lot on their way to church. Dad had already been there for hours. They looked so small out my window, so much farther away than they really were.

“West, are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to come over?”

“Yeah, maybe.” My voice didn't even sound like my voice.

“Hold on a sec, okay?” I heard her talking to someone
briefly before she said, “My dad said he's meeting Whit at the station soon and is wondering if you can come too.”

“Okay.”

“She said okay!” she said to her dad. “Do you want us to come pick you up?” she asked. I assumed she meant her and her dad.

“My parents are in church,” I said. “I can take the car.”

“Okay,” Trudy said. “Then you can come over here afterward, all right?”

“All right.”

Whit's car was parked on the street outside the tiny police station.

Sgt. Kirkwood poked his head out of his office when he heard the door open. “West,” he said, then folded me into his arms for a giant hug. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “Come in. Join me and Mark.” I wondered where Trudy was. Maybe I'd misunderstood her.

“Is that okay?” I asked faintly. “For you to talk to us both at the same time?”

He smiled gently. “There's no foul play suspected, West. I just have a few questions.” His voice was soft and reassuring, and it tricked me for a moment into believing everything was okay.

Until I stepped into his office and saw Whit.

He was standing beside Sgt. Kirkwood's desk, and his face
was swollen and dark around the eyes. His lips were chapped, his mouth red even outside his lip line. He wouldn't look at me.

I snapped.

I flew at him, shoving him. “What happened?” I demanded, the words scraping my throat as they came out. I gripped Whit's shoulders and shook them with a strength I never knew I had. “How did this
happen? How the hell did this happen?
” I repeated like an invective.

“West, sit down,” Sgt. Kirkwood said softly. “Both of you, sit down.”

I started to cry; Whit seemed primed for it too. He looked so thin, so broken. I threw my arms around Whit and buried my face in his chest. He put a feeble hand on my back that brought no comfort.

“Sit down,” Sgt. Kirkwood repeated, and this time we listened. “Now, let's get this straight,” he said, his voice low like a hum. “No one's in trouble. We just want to sort out what happened on Friday.”

“Did you talk to Silas?” I asked, manic.

“I did. He told me you two left the dance early.”

I wondered just how much Silas had shared.

“Let's move backward,” said Sgt. Kirkwood. “You saw her last, Mark?”

Whit nodded. It was so strange to hear him called “Mark.” It felt like another person was in the room with us. “We were dancing. Till late.”

They were maybe the saddest words I had ever heard.

“Were you drinking?”

Whit stared at the desk separating us from Trudy's dad. He didn't speak.

“It's okay, Mark,” Sgt. Kirkwood coaxed. “Let me ask it this way: Was Laurel drinking?”

Again, Whit nodded. Slowly. “Not . . . not much. Maybe two . . . two of the party cups the bar was using. Maybe only one, I don't know. I know she had a little.” Suddenly he looked up at both me and Sgt. Kirkwood, his eyes serious and fierce. “I asked her if she was okay to drive home. We couldn't find West and Silas. Where the hell did you two go?”

I swallowed hard and stared at the corner of the room, where a fake plant sat covered in months of dust. “It was hot. We wanted to get away from the crowd.”

“We looked all over—” Whit started, and guilt slammed into me again.

“What did she say?” Sgt. Kirkwood interrupted, and I knew he knew. “When you asked her if she was okay to drive?”

“Yes, she said yes.”

“That was the last thing she said to you?”

“We—we said good night. Then she kissed me and got into the truck.” Suddenly he hit himself against the forehead, over and over, growling out, “God, why didn't I just fucking drive her home? Who
does
that?”

I reached for his hands to stop him, but he pushed me away. Just like Silas in his yard, Silas on his porch. I laced my fingers tightly together.

“It's okay, Mark.” Sgt. Kirkwood's voice was so gentle, so calming. I felt grateful Sgt. Kirkwood was the one asking the questions and not some officer I didn't know. I hated every single thing about this meeting except for his voice. The glare of the floor, the thrift-store smell of the old wood paneling, the taste of the air being recycled through the window AC unit, the look on Whit's face—the combination was making my stomach churn.

“I think she killed herself!” Whit erupted, and the look on his face told me I wasn't the only one having stomach problems just then. “I think she . . .”

Sgt. Kirkwood's eyebrows lifted, but only for half a second. I went stone still.

“Why's that?” Sgt. Kirkwood asked quietly. “Did she say something to you?”

“No,” Whit said, then started to retch.

Sgt. Kirkwood handed over his trash bin just in time for Whit to vomit. “Set the bin outside the door, son. Go clean yourself up.”

Whit climbed over my legs and left for the bathroom, wiping at his mouth.

How could any of this be real? It felt like a nightmare. I wanted to wake up. Just like Laurel.

“Did you know that Laurel had . . . problems?” I asked, my words just a breath.

He smiled sadly, nodded once, just barely.

“Did Silas say the same thing to you? Like what Whit just said?”

“No,” he said, looking genuinely surprised. “Does he think the same thing?”

“I don't know,” I said honestly. “He wonders.”

I hated talking about Silas; it made me feel like I was back on the porch of the old Griggs house, having my heart ripped out of my chest.

“Can I go?” I asked Sgt. Kirkwood. The scent of vomit was creeping into this small space.

“Just a second,” he said as Whit reemerged, eyes bloodshot and face blotchy.

“Mark, I'm aware that Laurel Hart had some issues, but I need to know why you think this might have been a suicide.”

“I don't,” Whit said, stone-faced now and with a new story. “I didn't mean that. She'd been drinking. It was raining.”

“And the pickup is so old and hard to drive,” I offered, my head a little dizzy from the suffocating smells. “The brakes were terrible.”

“
Yeah
,” Whit agreed, so much force behind the one word that I knew he was lying. Well, not lying—not exactly. Not purposely trying to lie to Sgt. Kirkwood. Whit was trying to convince himself.

“West, what about you? You'd interacted with Laurel earlier in the evening on Friday?”

I nodded, distracted. “She was—she was good. And at the dance, the happiest I'd ever seen her.”

“Anything else we should know?” Sgt. Kirkwood asked.

I tried to think through the evening, looking for something—anything—suspicious. Or, hell, even
not
suspicious.
Anything
to help answer questions.

“Silas said there was a note,” I piped up.

Neither Sgt. Kirkwood nor Whit looked surprised.

“It was for you,” I said to Whit. “Not
that
kind of note, just—”

“I know,” he said.

“Oh.”

“We're holding on to it for a little while,” Sgt. Kirkwood told me, “but it seemed unrelated to the accident, so chances are we can relinquish it to the family soon. We'll hope to pull together a full police report after the investigation is over. You two can go.”

Whit and I stood to leave. “How long will that take?” I asked.

“A month, maybe two.”

“And then we'll know what happened?” Whit asked. A flicker of something passed over his face—hope? determination? expectation?—and I knew that he, like me, needed answers. Sgt. Kirkwood looked sad. “No guarantee of that.”

I wondered: If I knew it was an accident—bad brakes, bad weather—would I feel some relief, knowing I couldn't have prevented it? Would Silas give himself a reprieve—or would he still feel guilty because he knew how to handle the truck better than his sister did? I didn't know what Whit would feel, especially with the alcohol involved.

But if it was a suicide. . . . My mind teemed with possibilities.

Sgt. Kirkwood said, “Be
careful
out there, kids.”

I drove directly to Trudy's house. She pounced on me the moment I walked in the door, pressing her arms around me, cooing comfort in my ear. It was exactly what I needed. “Can I stay here tonight?” I asked. “In your bed? I don't want to be alone.”

“Of course!” she said. “We'll all squish together and make room.”

“We'll . . .
all?
” I asked.

“Ami's here too!” Trudy said.

“Hi, West!” said Ami from the top of the stairs.

“Hi.” So that was the “us” in “Do you want us to come pick you up?” from before.

“I heard about what happened,” Ami said, looking genuinely sorry. “I'm so, so sorry. What can we do to help?”

Unable to stop myself, I gaped at her a little in disbelief. First, that she was using “we” to describe herself and Trudy, as if
they were a team. Second, that she could be so removed from the events of the weekend and still try to insert herself into the mess. “I—nothing,” I said, then added, “Thanks.”

We lounged around Trudy's room, which was once a refuge for me but now felt so compromised by the presence of a stranger. Some weird song I didn't know played over and over on Trudy's laptop, the hot summer jam from Camp Summit, no doubt.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Trudy asked me.

I shook my head, thinking,
Not in front of Ami.

So while the girls talked about counselors I didn't know and reminisced over camp memories, I sat uncomfortably on Trudy's bed, silently flipping through a stack of Trudy's mail, seeing it without really seeing it, giving my hands something to do. I was drowning in summer memories of my own and feeling lonelier than I had when I'd been alone with my grief.

While Ami rehashed a story from a camper-versus-counselor activity, I looked up and saw Trudy staring at me. When she caught my eye, she mouthed,
Are you okay?

I stared back for a moment, then slowly shook my head. But before she could do anything about it, I stood up to go. “I just remembered something I need to do at home,” I said. Trudy knew me well enough to recognize it was a lie.

Outside of the bell tower, I'd never kept secrets from her before, but just now I wondered if I would start. I felt protective of these memories. They were mine. Well, mine and his.

And I also felt selfish with the grief, which belonged to just a small knot of us in this town: me, Whit, Silas and his family.

Tru followed me out to my car. “What's going on, West?” she asked.

I looked at her. “She was my
friend
, Tru.”

“I know,” she said. “And I'm really sorry.”

“Me too. I'll see you at school?”

“You don't want to stay here tonight?”

“I don't think I should.”

Trudy looked at me for a long while. “Okay.”

“I'll see you at school,” I said again, then ducked into my car.

I backed out of Trudy's driveway, wiping away tears and missing her more in that moment than I did even over the summer. If I'd only gone with her to Camp Summit, then it would be me and her telling stories in her room. I would be singing along to that ridiculous song instead of suffering this crashing, hopeless loss and guilt, because I would have never met
them.

The thought pulled at my heart as I drove the tired streets. Never met the Hart twins? Could I really wish for that?

The answer was there in a moment.

Yes
.

When school started, there were whispers up and down the halls:
A girl died, and did you know it might have been suicide?
Since very few of us at the high school had known her, it was mostly gossip, though the administration invited local clergy to join the school counselors in offering the students support and a chance to talk. Pockets of female underclassmen sobbed and comforted each other, annoying me to no end.

“What's
she
crying for?” I lashed out in the direction of one frenetic sophomore.

Her friends glared at me, but the weeping one just spluttered, “Didn't you hear about the girl who died? Her name was Laura, and it—could—have—been—
any
of us!” She dissolved into hysterics, and I stormed away without even bothering to correct her.

Later that day, I saw those same sophomore girls through a classroom window, bawling to my
dad
, of all people. He looked so strong, so full of profound consolation, and it made me furious because all he'd offered me was
space.

There were rumors that Laurel had been crazy, gossip that twisted the accident site into a hanging, allegations that the brother had something to do with the death. But at lunch, Elliot stood up in the cafeteria and announced, “I will
kick anyone's ass
I hear talking about it.” I assumed the announcement was mostly for Whit's benefit, but Elliot's eyes found mine in the crowded lunchroom and he nodded, just once.

The whole school smelled like a department store, everyone in new outfits, and I walked the halls in a daze. Conversations sounded like blurred whispers. Whit avoided me, and Bridget and Marcy acted as if I was either going to break into pieces or else set fire to the school. And while Trudy had been at my side that morning, pressing her upper arm against mine in a show of solidarity, I hadn't seen her since. Sometimes I felt as if I needed a support beam to keep me standing. Once, I would have made the request of Trudy; once, she would have known without my asking.

Again I wondered if I should tell her about Silas and our night in the bell tower, but I was already in shreds, and silence was the simplest guard against becoming the most pathetic confetti. It made me think of the night Libby combed her fingers through the ravaged remains of those peeled-apart paper
dolls and dropped them in my lap. “It worked just the way I guessed,” she had said, and remembering that made me feel so foolish. Out of the mouths of babes and all that.

Elliot and I had fifth-period English together. When I entered the room, he was talking to a group of football players, but he looked up and offered me a sad smile before breaking away from the guys and crossing the room to me. “Let me know if there's anything I can do for you, okay?” he said to me. He opened up his arms, and it was
so damn easy
to fall into them.

The week was long and lonesome. Dad spent evenings over at the old Griggs house, and I spent them alone in my bedroom, wallowing in guilt and grief, trying to come to the surface long enough to learn calculus. I overheard my dad mentioning an autopsy to my mom, but when I asked for details, he said he didn't know.

“How is Silas?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

“You'd know better than I would,” Dad replied, headed off toward his bedroom. “He doesn't say much to anyone else.”

Dad didn't know.
He still hadn't realized what had happened between me and Silas. I could hardly imagine the Silas my dad had just described—quiet, reclusive, broken.

“How—” I started to ask, but Dad was already gone.

I didn't even know what I was going to ask. Nothing. Everything. How does he look? Has he been eating? Does he
go running?
Please, God, let him run.
It would probably be the finest choice of medicine for him right now.

Does he ever ask about me? Does he still blame us?

I knew the answers to those: no and yes.

I didn't want to go to the funeral—really,
really
didn't feel ready to face Silas—but of course I went anyway.

Libby stayed home with Shea while Mom and I walked across the parking lot to join Dad at the church. Inside, we passed my dad's empty office—and the discreet, locked door to the bell tower—then up the stairs to the lobby of the sanctuary, where I hadn't been in over a month.

The whole building felt cold; in the front of the church was the coffin, surrounded by flower arrangements—forget-me-nots in blue, pink, white. When I saw Silas in his suit, I felt my throat constrict and tears prick at my eyes.

“Coming, honey?” my mom asked, pausing at the open doors to the sanctuary.

“In a minute,” I said, then retreated to the ladies' room, where I came undone.

My heart was going
too
fast. My throat felt raw. Even though tears were expected at a funeral, I wiped away all evidence of my crying with a wad of toilet paper. I willed myself to
breathe
while I waited for my face to return to its right color, staring into the tiny mirror above the sink, which reflected a second mirror on the wall behind me. Image after image after image
trapped between the two, shrinking into a minute infinity. “Just a second!” I shouted when someone jiggled the doorknob. My voice sounded strange: a facsimile of the real thing.

With deep breaths, I stepped out of the bathroom and made my way back to the sanctuary. My parents were standing together near the front, but off to the side. A part of me wanted to take them each by a hand and drag them from this place; another part wanted to leave Green Lake on my own and never, ever look back.

I hung back in the lobby until Silas left the sanctuary with some cousins before I approached the coffin. The center aisle felt a thousand miles long as I made my way to the front.

Laurel's eyes were closed; her face looked plastic. She was wearing the same dress she'd worn to
Carmina Burana.

Someone stepped up beside me. Papa Arty, his tears quiet but devastating. “Sweet Pea,” he murmured, his lips barely moving. “Sweet Pea,
how?
” Then he glanced over at me, and though his gaze was soft with empathy, it felt like an indictment. I hurried away.

I had thought I'd sit beside my parents, but when I saw Whit sitting alone a few rows back, I joined him instead. He had this strange, pained look on his face as if he had bit into something rotten. It occurred to me that he'd probably worn that same charcoal-colored tie to his own father's funeral years ago. When my eyes lingered on it, I knew he interpreted my thoughts. “It's the only one I've got,” Whit whispered.

People had flown in from north and from south, relatives from all over. Papa Arty and Oma Lil, along with Glen's parents, sat in the front row with Glen and Teresa and Silas. Beside me, Whit stared at the back of the pew, at his feet, at his hands—anywhere but the front.

My dad officiated. His face was perfect: grieved but consoling, sorrowful with that small strength of hope that came from his core. He looked directly at the Harts while he spoke from the podium, “Today we celebrate the
life
of Laurel Judith Hart.” I wanted him to look at
me.

There was no mention of suicide—of course—just a continual stream of platitudes about heaven, about the people Laurel had touched, about the pleasant memories of her we were left with.

Bullshit.

Instead, I thought of Laurel's sadness, of how she struggled to let people in. Thought of her wasting away right in front of us.

A few relatives spoke: Laurel's aunt—Teresa's sister—about one of Laurel's performances. A cousin shared a funny story about a time she and Laurel got caught taking mud baths. Then Silas stood up.

“My sister . . . ,” he started, then stopped. His hands gripped the edges of the podium, white knuckled. “My sister was beautiful and brutal.” I saw Teresa clutch at Glen's arm. Then, Silas said, “I wrote this poem for her. ‘The low moon lags beside men out late. . . .'”

He struggled and strained against words that he still desperately wanted to believe. He had meant for this poem to feel safe, protective; it felt so backward here at a funeral. I stared at his lips, at the way he formed each word with intentionality, like each one was a gift for his sister—which I supposed was true, both then and now. The church was full, but this moment was between Silas and Laurel alone.

Silas's voice faltered. He pressed his lips together, and I could see him swallow hard. Bereft, he looked up, looked into the crowd. I knew it wasn't
me
he needed—just strength somehow—and though it cost me, I straightened in my seat and met his eye, nodded once. That second felt like ten minutes, and I swear I wanted to run to the front of the church and hold him, wanted to take the paper from his trembling hand and read it myself.

He looked back at the poem. “‘What words work . . .'”

You're a distraction
, I reminded myself bitterly.
Just a distraction.

I was the only person in the room—except maybe for Whit, I didn't know—who understood what it meant when Silas adjusted his tie at the pulpit, his two fingers pausing for a millisecond over his heart.

Displays were set up in the lobby: photos and trophies and a looping home video of Laurel's dance recitals. On a table with the guestbook sat the small pile of picture books Arty had given her the afternoon we'd spent in the Mayhew attic. I signed my
name to the guestbook, offered the pen to Whit—who refused it with a terse dismissal—and then opened
Vivien's New Friend.

Inside, the illustrated girl from the cover held a doll—a tiny ballerina with a red dress and gloves, and small silver toe shoes.

My breath caught.

I closed the book and moved it to the bottom of the stack.

Without warning, Whit hurried toward the door. Suddenly on my own, the same panicked feeling returned. My mom was talking with Mrs. Hart. My dad was talking to Silas. Dad had a hand on Silas's shoulder, and I could almost feel the weight of it, the strength and solace of it. I hurried out after Whit.

I was surprised to find it was still morning. The funeral had seemed to last hours and hours. Whit was making a beeline for his car. I jogged to catch up to him. “You okay?” I asked, wondering if I looked as destroyed as he did.

“I don't think so,” he said, his voice quiet, hoarse.

“Are you going to the burial?”

He already had his car door open. He turned around and shook his head, just slightly. “I can't do it. I can't watch them. I have to go.”

“Whit,” I said, and it was a plea.

He paused but didn't look at me.

“Whit, I have no one to talk to about this,” I said.

“You have Silas,” he said.

“No. I don't.” I didn't elaborate.

After a few more moments of silence stretched between us, he nodded his head toward his passenger door. “Get in.”

Whit's mom and stepdad weren't home, so Whit went straight for the liquor cabinet, grabbed a big bottle of whiskey, and took it outside, where the two of us sat on a trampoline, trading off the bottle between us.

“Is this wrong, you think?” I asked after taking a gulp that burned my throat. “When alcohol is what probably killed her?”

“You think that was it, then?” Whit answered. “That it was a drunk-driving accident?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Do you still think she . . .”

“I can't decide which way is worse,” he said.

“Silas thinks it's my fault,” I said. I hadn't meant to say it aloud.

“No, he doesn't. Why would it be your fault?” Whit responded. “That's stupid. He thinks it's
his
fault.”

“It's because of me that we . . . disappeared.” I paused. “How do you know he thinks it's his fault?”

“He told me,” Whit said, taking another drink. “I went over to their place to get the note.”

“What note?”

“The note Laurel was writing to me in a notebook.” Whit
tipped the bottle up, slammed another gulp, and then pulled the note out of the pocket of his dress pants. “Here.”

“Is that it? It ends in the middle of a sentence?”

He nodded. “What do you think?”

“Are you asking me if it's a suicide note?”

Whit looked grave. “I told her the worst thing my dad did was not leave a note. Was she trying to . . . spare me?”

“I don't know.” I looked at the note again. “I mean, it's maybe a little weird that she didn't write, ‘You
make
me happier'—present tense—but it doesn't prove anything. You'd think if she knew it was a good-bye letter, she'd have finished.”

“But what does ‘whatever happens' mean? And what was she hoping?”

“Oh, gosh, Whit,” I said, leaning back and staring at the clouds. “Could be anything. Like, it could mean, ‘Whatever happens between you and me this next year, I'm hoping we'll stay friends.'”

“Or ‘Whatever happens
to me
, I'm hoping you'll forgive me and move on,' that sort of thing.”

“I don't know,” I whispered.

“Seems like that's all anyone ever says these days.”

“I hate it. But the police report—that will have some answers, right? That'll be good.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, lying down beside me.

“How are you doing?” I asked. The whiskey was starting to get to me: I couldn't remember if I'd asked him this already.

Whit turned his head and looked at me like I was crazy. “I'm fucking awful,” he said. “You?”

“Same.”

“The night before my dad died, we played catch. Did you know that?”

I shook my head, took another drink. It was either because I was lying down or because I was tipsier than I thought that a little came spilling out the sides of my mouth. “Shit,” I muttered. I felt it drip down my neck.