I shook my head, not knowing what to say. “I can’t do this now. Not with you.”
“Not with anybody if you have your way.” Josh backed up and pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket. His gaze was fixed on mine, like he was giving me one last chance to say he was wrong. He mumbled something under his breath when I stayed quiet, then dropped the piece of paper and walked away.
25
It was wrinkled, like it had been crumpled into a ball, then smoothed out and neatly folded. The paper was thin, blue-lined, the jagged pieces from where it had been torn from a notebook still hanging on.
I carefully unfolded it and smoothed it across the granite marker. The dampness started to seep through the paper, curling the edges and blotching the middle. But I didn’t need it to be perfect to recognize it. I knew what it was—a crude drawing I’d made thousands of times before. I didn’t remember sketching this particular version, but I recognized the length of the lines, the gentle curve of the strokes, the darkened pressure marks where each line started. It was one of my drawings, no question about that.
I wondered where Josh had gotten it and why he was carrying it around. I had fifty of these at home, each one better than this. Why would he bother to keep this one?
“Maddy?” I swung around at the sound of my father’s voice. “You okay?”
No was the truthful answer, but I shrugged. “I’m fine. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. I tried Alex’s first, thinking maybe you would’ve gone there when you left the house.”
“I didn’t,” I said. Alex’s was the last place I would go. He was half the reason I had left school early—I couldn’t figure him out and was terrified I’d screw up.
“I passed Josh on the way in,” Dad continued. “You know he comes here every day like me.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. I knew Dad stopped here on his way home from work. As for Josh … well, I wasn’t exactly surprised.
Before the accident, I’d hardly ever lied to my dad. Now it seemed all I did was lie to him. To everybody. “Josh wanted to talk to Ella,” I said, vaguely sticking to the truth.
“Is that why you’re here? To talk to your sister?”
“Yes.”
“I was hoping maybe you could talk to me,” he said, “but you left before we had a chance.”
“Because there is nothing to talk about.”
Typical of Dad, he nodded and changed his line of questioning, coming at me from a different angle. “Everything okay at school?”
“Yup. I didn’t feel well, so I went home.” He knew that was a lie. I’d insisted I felt good enough to return to school last night when we argued about it. They wanted me to take a few more days, meet with the counselor before I went back.
“Your mother is worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Dad. Honestly. But I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.”
“Are you talking to Alex at least?”
Alex had stopped asking me about the accident after my first day home. I’d clam up or sometimes cry whenever he mentioned it at the hospital. By the time I’d gotten home, he probably figured it was safer not to ask. “Yeah. I guess.”
We stood there, neither one of us knowing what to say to break the heavy silence that surrounded us. The rain had nearly stopped, a few scattered drops staining the paper. My eyes drifted to the drawing I clutched in my hand.
“What do you have there?” Dad asked as he reached for the drawing.
I gave it to him and watched as he studied it. He folded it neatly and gave it back to me, his gaze turning to the gravestone behind us.