29.
“Two souls may be too widely met.”
—“A MISSIVE MISSILE,” 1934
I can hear her running water in the bathroom as I sit alone on the couch. I watch the shadows of her feet move in the slice of light coming from beneath the door, like if I take my eyes away, she might disappear again. Just vanish into the night like before. She’d have reason to, with what I know now.
I barely spoke in the last hours, and she unraveled it all, detail after painful detail, like I imagined people did in confession if they were really serious about it. And that’s what it felt like—a confession. I didn’t ask, but I don’t think she’d ever said any of it out loud. But she had no choice with me. Her own words, in her journal, had come back to haunt her and brought me along with them.
So she told me everything. She told me that after she’d swum to the shore, she lay there alone until the snow stopped falling and a blanket of white covered the red of the snow all around her. The clouds moved on, and the stars appeared again, just in time to disappear into the pale light of morning. And that’s when she crossed the line she could never come back from. She said good-bye. She didn’t say any more than that about Shane, but I knew what that meant. The papers said they’d both been swept down into Summit Lake by the rushing cold water of the river, and I know now they were right about him.
She’d walked all the way to the other side of the lake then, bruised and bleeding, in shock and half frozen. A broken person, lost and then found by a carful of college kids on their way back to Southern California from Summit Lakes. They thought she was lost, a runaway, a victim of something horrible. She let them believe it. They tried to take her to a hospital, get her help, call someone she knew. She told them no, that she just needed to get as far away as possible. And that’s what they helped her do.
She didn’t go into the details of what happened next. Only said that the months that followed were the darkest she’d ever known, but that the longer she stayed away, the harder it was to think about coming back—like watching a door close by inches and millimeters, until finally it’s locked and the key is thrown away.
I listened to everything, weighing each of her words, and trying not to think about what they meant. I tried to put myself in the place where she’d been, but I couldn’t. It was a place I didn’t even want to imagine, and one that I wasn’t sure I could ever understand.
When she finished, she said, “I’ve been alone for a long time, and it’s how my life should be. I caused too many people too much pain, and after this long, going back would do it all over again. I told you all of this so you could understand why, even if I wanted to come back, I couldn’t.” She paused then, and the certainty in her voice seemed to waver. “Even with Orion there. Even if I thought we had a chance.”
I wanted to argue with her, despite everything she’d told me, because a little part of me still believed there was a reason for all of this. For everything. And that maybe it was never too late. But her small jaw was set when she spoke again, and she looked me in the eye, and it was with conviction that she said, “I need you to promise to keep this secret.”
“I promise,” I answered, and I felt sick and empty when I said it. It’s a strange, surreal thing to watch an ideal crumble right in front of your eyes, and to know there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Julianna comes out of the bathroom now, her hair pulled back and her face washed clean of the rain and tear-smudged eye makeup, but I can see it’s the only thing she’s washed clean of. Telling me everything didn’t absolve her of anything. Didn’t change anything.
“You can stay here if you need to,” she says. “I can help you find your friends in the morning before I leave. I’m sure they’ll be back here looking for you.”
I hope so. After Julianna’s story I’d tried to call my phone to at least let Trevor and Kat know where I was, and that I was okay, but it just went to voice mail. Now I have no idea where they are or how I’m going to find them, but I can’t stay here any longer. Sitting here on the couch in her living room, it’s the saddest, loneliest place I’ve ever been. I’m angry and frustrated and heartbroken, and I want to hate her for it. I want to hate her for not being who I thought she was, and for not doing what I hoped she would, and jumping at the chance to go back to Orion, because I’m more sure now that she loved him, and had things been different, she might have even ended up with him. But I can’t. I’m too sad to hate her.
I look at her standing there, resigned to the choices she’s made, and I know there’s nothing more I can say or do. I’m finished here. “Thank you,” I say, standing up. “But I should go.” I glance at the journal on the coffee table. It’s where it belongs, but I am not.
Julianna doesn’t argue, just nods like she understands. “Thank you for just listening like you did. I’ve never told anyone. And I’m sorry. You must think . . .” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you think. I hope you know I would go back and change it all if I could.” Her eyes drop to the floor, away from mine. “But life doesn’t work like that, and we all have to live with the choices we make.”
She walks me to the door, and we say good-bye, and then just like that, it’s over. The story ends with the soft click of her lock sliding into place.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I say to the empty hallway. “You called yourself Hope.”