“She loved to draw. I swear she learned how to use a crayon before mastering a fork,” Dad said, chuckling. I hadn’t heard that sound in weeks. It made me smile and remember how when I was a kid, I’d made him enough drawings to completely cover his office walls. Every single one of them courtesy of Crayola.
“I miss her.” It was the first honest thing I’d said to him since I woke up in the hospital. I missed her hogging the shower in the morning and the smell of nail polish remover overtaking the bathroom. I wanted to hear her yelling for me to come down for dinner and teasing me when I tried to explain to Mom why I had no desire to go to prom.
And I missed me—Ella. I missed sitting at the lunch table with Josh, laughing to myself as Kim vied for his attention. I missed our Saturday-afternoon movie marathons and his moronic texts asking me how to handle Kim.
“I miss her too. More than you can ever know.”
Those last words were whispered. I don’t think he intended to speak them aloud, but they stunned me all the same. I couldn’t help myself—I asked, “What do you miss most about her?”
He stepped back, his face going pale. “I don’t blame you, Maddy. Nobody blames you. Please don’t think—”
“I don’t,” I interrupted. “I’m trying to figure her out. Ella, you know. What people thought of her. Who she really was.”
“Quiet,” was Dad’s first response. “Beautiful, and quiet, and so incredibly talented, but you already know that, don’t you?”
I thought about asking him what, exactly, he meant. Luckily, I didn’t have to. He answered before I could speak. “She was your twin sister, Maddy. I remember when you two were little. You were inseparable, even insisting on sleeping in the same room, in the same bed. You probably knew her better than anybody.”
“Umm, yeah, not so much anymore.”
Dad shook his head. He knew we’d grown apart these last few years. Everybody who spent any time with us knew that. “She’s the same Ella she was back then.”
“Maybe,” I said, hoping that was true, that somewhere beneath this lie was the real me. I picked at the tattered edges of the picture I was holding, mindlessly dropping the shreds of paper to the ground. “Dad, have you ever made a mistake, done something that you didn’t intend to but couldn’t take back?”
“Of course. Everybody has, but you can’t change the past, Maddy. You can’t change what happened.” He pulled me into his arms, and I knew he thought I was referring to the accident, that I was finally starting to talk. “You can’t go back. You have to try to make peace with what happened and move forward. We all do.”
His arms tightened around me as if he was willing me to believe him, to forgive myself and move on. I pulled away. It felt wrong to be forgiven.
“If you are looking to learn more about your sister, perhaps you should start with Josh. He was her best friend. He spent more time with her than any of us.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Go,” Dad said, nudging me toward the road. “Go talk to him. He’s hurting as much as you.”
26
I traced a circular pattern on the driveway with my foot. I could see the pavement through the spot I’d cleared, the puddle of rain trying to ease its way back as I continued to swipe it away. I’d been standing in Josh’s driveway for over twenty minutes trying to talk myself into knocking on his door, and I still couldn’t find the courage to move.
“Stop being a chicken, Ella. It’s just Josh.” I took one long, fog-filled breath and made my feet move, willed them to walk those last few steps up the slate walkway to his front door.
The bright motion-sensor porch lights came on as soon as I hit the bottom step, announcing my arrival to anyone sitting in the living room. I couldn’t even apologize to Josh in privacy.