“I’m third of four, you know, with two older brothers who still bully me, and a baby sister. You might have met Luke. He came to visit a couple times. And Aris visited. She’s twenty-four now and runs circles around the rest of us.”
He shifted his gaze as if lost in some memory from his childhood. “Well, my five nieces and nephews run the show really. Luke has three kids. Peter, a year older than me, had one, until a baby girl arrived a few months ago. Mom is driving Helen, my sister-in-law, crazy over her first and only granddaughter. But she has to bite her tongue because Mom is the queen of the kids’ department at Nordstrom in Phipps Plaza—she’s worked there for fifteen years—and gets an amazing discount. Helen loves herself some tiny smocked dresses.”
I laughed. “Everyone still comes for Sunday dinner?”
“For now . . . They’re all in Atlanta, but I suspect Helen will put a stop to that soon. The battlefield is extending beyond dresses.” Mat looked into the street and stepped forward. “And to think, before reading Caro’s . . .”
His words faded away as time slowed for me. In an instant, my mind consciously synthesized what I’d unconsciously noted. Mat had looked left before stepping into Sheffield Terrace. Midstride I glanced the opposite direction, the direction from which cars in London would hit you first—to the right.
I heard it as I saw it. A deafening horn, a black cab. Mat twisted slightly, perhaps to talk to me, his face lit with a smile. I watched as his mouth slackened and face paled in horror as the cab filled his vision.
The next thing I knew, Mat was tumbled across me on the edge of the sidewalk. The cab was screaming by us in a bluster of wind and noise. The horn still blowing loud. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
“Caroline. I— Caroline.” He scrabbled off me and pulled me away from the curb.
“Stop!” I called out. Yet with no air, it fell between us in a soft whimper. Every bone rattled. My head felt heavy. My vision blurry.
“I can’t believe you did that.” Mat was sitting next to me, his hand under my head. “Are you hurt? You landed hard. I—I can’t believe you did that. Can you sit up?”
I lay there watching the crowd build above us. The curious and concerned pushed closer. Mat lifted me to sit upright and I drew in a few deep breaths. My ribs hurt, my shoulder burned, and my left elbow felt like it was on fire. I lifted up my arm, pleased that it moved properly. My white blouse was torn at the sleeve, my elbow scraped and bloody.
“Let’s get you home. Let’s—”
One look at Mat and I burst into tears.
“Hey . . . hey.” Mat, with a hand beneath my good shoulder, helped me stand. He tucked me close as the crowd pressed in. It took several pleas of “I’m okay” and a few repetitions of “She’s okay” from Mat to get everyone to disperse.
“Let’s get a cab.”
I tried to shake my head. It still ached, but my vision had cleared. “I want to walk. Please. I need to move a little.”
“Okay.” His voice was full of doubt. He probably thought I might break—I was certain I already had.
We walked slowly, with his arm tucked tight around me, for several minutes before Mat spoke again. “Thank you. I didn’t see it coming. I— You saved my life.”
“I had a sister,” was all I could say.
In twenty years, I couldn’t remember more than a few times I’d willingly spoken about Amelia. After her death, none of my friends wanted to talk about her; they wanted to help me heal, forget, laugh, move on. They meant well. After all, at eight, what else do you do? You watch movies, play games, eat junk food, and pretend.
Then it simply became awkward. Amelia faded from collective memory, and to bring her up stifled any gathering. In college, I seized a fresh start. No one knew. So when asked, I told the truth. “I have an older brother.”
“I remember you telling me about a brother, but I didn’t know you have a sister.”
“Had. She died when I was seven, almost eight. She was only nine.” I stepped away and looked behind us, turning my whole body as my neck was already sore and stiff. “Just like that.”
Mat reached for my hand as I told him the story. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t ask questions. He merely looked the proper direction at every street crossing and let me talk on. I told him things I’d never shared—like how cool that Rube Goldberg machine was and how far it stretched across our rooms, like how we used to make tents out of sheets and furniture and live in them during the summer, like how we would sneak through the door between our rooms after bedtime and talk late into the night. How she was my best friend and I didn’t really think I’d ever found another. And how I dreamed about that moment—all the time—and woke up in a sweat, racked with guilt at my inability to move, to yank her forward, or to do anything but watch her die.
“You can’t think that way. There is nothing you could’ve done.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Because when there was something to be done, you did it.” Mat gestured to a high curb and watched me step up with solicitous care.
I thanked him and continued. It felt important to get it out, almost like Margaret turning to Beatrice after a painful event. She wrote to process. Talking felt equally cathartic. “I always thought it was only Amelia. That what I did, that what happened to her, broke us. But after all this, I wonder if we were already broken and I was too young to notice.”
We crossed another street.
“Right after her funeral, my parents moved me to Jason’s old rooms on the third floor. I think they were trying to do what everyone else was doing—distract me, surround me with new colors, shapes, textures, anything. But those rooms, Amelia’s and mine on the second floor, and that life we had together, just sat abandoned behind our closed bedroom doors. We never talked about it. Ever. And that stupid Rube Goldberg machine sat in there for three years before I kicked it down one afternoon. Now we say nothing real to each other and soon . . .” I shivered, unable to draw closer to my lunch with Dad and what was to come. The motion sent a shuddering gasp through me.
“You okay?” Mat paused.
“I am. Everything moves, but everything hurts.”
“Just wait until tomorrow. Or the day after.”
We walked on at an interminably slow pace. The perfect pace. My mind returned to Caro and Margo, Amelia and me. It was as if those split seconds had opened a dam and memory was washing in, bringing with it insight and even acceptance.