WORTHY, Part 1 (6 page)

“You’re my first,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “I do always sort of feel like there’s something magical about these woods, as corny as it sounds. Maybe it feels oppressive to you because your brain’s trying to remember what happened—or because your brain knows something traumatic happened to you in here.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

We walked on in silence, following the sound of the creek. I took care to keep our pace at something manageable so as not to tire Jonathan. For someone who’d been mostly bedridden—or couch-ridden, rather—for a while, he seemed to be in pretty good shape. That was one clue to his identity. He took care of his body.

“So here’s the creek,”
I said, holding my hand out as they stepped through some branches. “Obviously.”

“I still can’t believe you waded it while it was flooding,” Jonathan said disapprovingly.

“And I still can’t believe you’re upset about it,” I said. “It’s shallow enough here. We can cross.”

We
picked our way atop the stones that were exposed above the surface of the rushing water, helping each other climb the bank on the other side. I looked around for a few moments, trying to get my bearings. Everything had looked different during the storm and the flood. Where had I found Jonathan? It had to have been closer to the river.

“This way,”
I said. “I think.”

Finally,
we reached a place that looked a little familiar to me. The creek had been higher, of course, but this was the place I’d found Jonathan, crumpled on the ground and bleeding. It was hard to believe that he was standing next to me right now.

“Here we are,”
I said, holding my hands out. “It was right here.”

We
started scouring the area, looking for anything. It had rained since, so there weren’t any tracks. I figured that the rising water would’ve also helped to wash any possible evidence away, though it couldn’t hurt to look.

A wallet wouldn’t have stood a chance against that raging creek,
I thought a little glumly. It would be at the bottom of the river by now.

I
turned to see Jonathan on his knees and hurried over to him.

“Are you all right?”
I asked.

He glanced up at
me. “Yeah,” he assured me. “I was just looking at the ground to see if there might be any tracks.”

I
shook my head. “The rain—and the flood—would’ve washed anything away, I’m afraid. Our footprints are long gone.”

“Not footprints,” he said. “Maybe tires. Like an ATV or a bike or something. What if I was involved in a crash or something? Or maybe someone riding something hit me, though I couldn’t imagine why I’d be walking all the way out here.”

The mention of a crash made my world shrink to a pinpoint. I was aware that Jonathan continued to talk, but his words blended into sounds of the woods—birdsong, the creaking of the trees. Everything went away as panic climbed my throat, threatening to strangle. I had to get out of here.

“A crash?”
I was incredibly pale, my eyes bugging out of my head. “That—that can’t be. That’s impossible.”

“You’re probably right,” Jonathan said, sighing and standing up, dusting off the knees of his pants. He noticed the look on
my face right away. “What’s wrong?”

My
hand went to my throat as if I could open it up, will the oxygen in to help my lungs get more air. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“
Michelle?”

“Can we walk?”
I managed to choke out, each word falling out of my mouth like a prayer. “Walk away from here?”

“Of course.” Jonathan quickly took
me by the elbow—a practiced gesture, I happened to notice, one that spoke of good manners. There was another clue. He took care of his body, and his body knew how to conduct itself appropriately, with good manners, whether he knew it or not.

“I’m sorry,”
I said as he helped me across the creek. I was supposed to be the strong one here.

“Don’t apologize,” he fussed. “You’ve been working really hard while I’ve been lying around on my ass
—butt—all day. Of course you’re tired. I’m selfish, Michelle. You need to tell me what your limitations are. I don’t want to exhaust you like this.”

“I’m not exhausted,”
I protested. “It’s just that—that…” God. To even think about thinking about the incident was hard. I certainly couldn’t talk to Jonathan about my fears, could I?

“You don’t have to think up any excuses,” Jonathan said. “I’m not worth it,
Michelle. You’ve done enough. Let’s contact a police station or something to come pick me up at your cottage. I need to become someone else’s problem. You don’t need this problem anymore.”

“I’m sorry,”
I said, my eyes tearing up unexpectedly. “I know you’re upset about not finding anything at the place I found you. We can go back. I’m sorry I panicked. Let’s go back and look some more. Come on.”

Jonathan snagged
my arm as I tried to do an about face back toward the creek.

“No,
Michelle,” he said. “There’s nothing there for me.” He peered into my face and I squirmed away. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,”
I said quickly. “Nothing.”

He cocked his head at
me. “You know, I’m pretty tired,” he said, plopping down on a log. “What do you say we take a break here? Not a bad place for a picnic.”

“If you say so,”
I said. “If you’d like to.”

“I would like to,” Jonathan said. “I’d like you to, also.”

I plunked down on the log beside him, keeping him on my right side and setting the backpack in between us.

“Ready for some lunch?”
I asked brightly, trying to shake off the last of my panic, the claws of my despair. I couldn’t handle thinking about car crashes. I needed something else to focus on.

He shook his head
as I started to take the lunches out of the backpack. “I’m ready for you to tell me what’s going on with you,” he said.

I
froze. “What do you mean?”

“What was that back there?” he asked. “You looked freaked out, like you’d seen a ghost, after I mentioned a theory about a crash.”

“I don’t really talk about that,” I said, my voice sounding shrill to my own ears.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to,” I said, hating how sharp my voice was. I knew I was being unreasonable. Jonathan didn’t deserve to be lashed out at because of my past. “Now, I’ve packed some sandwiches…”

I
started to root around inside the backpack in earnest, but Jonathan snagged my wrist, stilling me. His touch seared my skin, took my breath away, made me wish that things were different.

“I think it would be good for you to talk about it,” he said. “You put on a happy face,
Michelle, but I know that you’re holding onto some deep things. Maybe it’d be best if you let them out, seeing as how you finally have someone to let them out to sitting right beside you.”

“I don’t think I can,”
I whispered.

“I’m right here,” he said, and somehow, the simple statement was comforting and caring, enveloping
me like a hug. I realized that Jonathan was still holding my wrist and blushed a little bit, pulling my hands into my own lap. Was I really going to do this? I’d left everything behind when I moved to the cottage, but somehow, it all seemed to be rushing to catch back up to me. This was exactly what I didn’t want, but I felt like I owed Jonathan something. He had his own problems to deal with, and I didn’t want to distract him with keeping secrets.

I took a deep breath.

“It’s nothing—well, it’s something. My parents, they—they died,” I said, hating myself as I did, my voice too soft, too shaky.

I
stared, unseeing, at the ground in front of us. Unwillingly, I was transported back to that dark night.

I had been so happy, telling my parents about the summer job I was planning on starting. I was going to make some money to save for college, which would start in the fall. Even though I’d just finished high school, my life seemed like a wide open door in front of me. I had been aware of everything seeming like it was just beginning.

I had been so full of hope.

Then, my dad had cursed. He never cursed, so I remembered being a mixture of shocked and amused. Then, terror.

The screech of tires was one of the things I remembered very well. My dad was trying so hard to stop the car, but the tires against the wet road couldn’t handle the sudden necessity. They screeched on and on like terrible, panicked birds. They’d made the panic build inside of me, too.

I don’t know who started screaming. Maybe it was my mom. She was sitting in the front seat, so she would’ve seen it coming, the unavoidable collision. But I probably would’ve screamed, too, hearing her scream. She never screamed.

Then, everything was swallowed by the bone-crunching thud. It silenced everything, became the new ending to all my nightmares. That thud was the end. There was no hope after that. What my dad had been trying to avoid, what my mom had been screaming at, had come to pass.

Things were confusing, after that. I’d had so many people try to explain it to me
—well-meaning relatives and counselors, hoping it would give me some sort of peace or closure or understanding or something—but I preferred my version. My version was cleaner, less definitive.

After the life-ending, future-ending thud, there was a strange,
jarring sense of weightlessness, as if we were floating away somewhere, much too gently for what had just happened. There was utter silence: no screeching of tires, no screaming, no thuds.

The next thing that had grabbed my attention was the smell. It was corrosively sweet, and it made my stomach turn. Looking back, I knew that it had to have been a mixture of gasoline and oil, of all the fluids that worked together to make the car run. They were all leaking, their various containers punctured in the crushing crash.

The silence, the smell, then, the heat—God, the heat. Nothing was that hot. Nothing could be that hot. I remembered screaming myself hoarse, screaming so loud and long that I coughed blood for days after. Even when strong hands pulled me from the crumpled wreck of the car, the heat was still there. Then, there was nothing.

They told me that a drunken driver had crossed the centerline and hit our car head on. They told me that my parents had died instantly, that our car had caught fire in seconds, that if a cop pulled to the side of the road to bust speeding motorists hadn’t been there to pull me through the shattered back window, I would’ve burned alive, the flames licking more than just the side of my face.

Sometimes, I wish I had burned. All of me. It was too hard, much too hard to just keep going, knowing my parents had died while I still lived.

I
buried my face in my hands, shuddering on the log in the middle of the woods. The memories were still too fresh, even five years after the fact. They were too terrifying to examine. Too horrifying to share with anyone.

A strong arm around
my shoulder made me gasp, but it was insistent on drawing me against Jonathan’s chest. He hugged me, wincing a little at his ribs, but persisting.

“Your parents died in a car crash,” he said, resting his chin on top of
my head. Somehow, in this position, I felt safer. The terrible memories were still there—the screech, the screams, the thud, the smell, the heat—but it was as if he were somehow holding them at bay. His arms were protecting me from something inside of my head, and I marveled at the strangeness of it. I’d become so used to protecting myself all these years that it was a relief to have someone else take a crack at it.

“Yes,”
I murmured. “My parents died in a car crash.” It felt better to say it like that, to leave the terribly vivid experience out of it. It was as simple as a sentence: My parents died in a car crash. No matter what else might lie behind those words, that was the truth.

“And that’s how you got your scar, too,”
Jonathan said, readjusting his hug to bring his fingers close to my face. That was too much. Too much, too soon. I couldn’t handle him touching my scar. I could hardly touch it myself.

I
scooted away from him, out of his embrace, and felt immediately bereft. His muscular arms around me felt really, really good—like nothing bad could happen to me. A girl could get used to being in a pair of arms like that.

“I wish I had something to tell you,” he said. “I wish I had an anecdote to tell you that everything would get better, but I can’t remember if I know anyone who died in wrecks. I’m basically a blank slate,
Michelle, for better or for worse. My first memory is waking up on your couch, and before that is nothing.”

I
hesitated for a moment before I took his hand, squeezing it.

“We’ll get this all figured out somehow,”
I said. “Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” he said. “I want to help around the cottage, in your garden, with the chickens. If I’m going to be a part of your life, to stay with you to try to figure this out, I want it to be an equal partnership.”