He got out of the car, and Brynna followed. Her stomach twisted, and the few bites of lunch she had managed expanded in her belly, shooting a heavy wave of nausea through her. “We really don’t need a family meeting for you to tell me you’re getting a divorce.”
Brynna’s father snapped around so quickly she ran into him. His eyes were glittering pinpoints, and from their close proximity, she could smell the faint odor of scotch on his breath. It made her stomach tighten even more. He glared at her for a beat but then closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes, there was true sadness in them, and something inside Brynna’s chest broke. This was her family; these were her parents. Her life was already fragmented and upended, and her parents’ divorce would only guarantee more of the same. She felt a lump grow in her throat, sudden dread growing in her belly. Her eyes went around her father to the closed interior door where Brynna knew her mother was sitting beyond. She didn’t want to go inside. She wanted to get back in the car and reverse all the way back to Point Lobos, to before the dare, even before she’d ever met Erica. This was all her fault. A simmering anger swallowed up the cancerous guilt, and she felt vaguely relieved, having someone to be mad at. If it weren’t for Erica, Brynna’s parents might have learned to be happy. Brynna might still be happy.
She followed her father through the door and into the kitchen where her mother was seated at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. She wasn’t wearing her painting smock, but Brynna could see chips of paint around her fingernails, a fading white streak down the length of her jaw. She looked as though she had been interrupted while working, and now she sat, stone still, her watery eyes red-lined and unfocused.
Brynna dropped her bag and rushed toward her. “Mom? Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
Her mother made no response, and for a brief moment fear and anger clawed at Brynna’s chest. “Mom?”
“Oh, Bryn, you’re home. Can I make you some tea?” She smiled thinly, but Brynna could see her blink away tears.
“Have a seat, Bryn.”
Her father pulled out a chair while her mother fiddled around the kitchen, preparing a cup of tea that Brynna hadn’t asked for. When she set it in front of Brynna, she looked from her mother to her father and growled, “If you’re getting a divorce, just tell me.”
A fat tear rolled down her mother’s cheek, and her father wouldn’t look at her. “This isn’t about your mother and me, hon.”
Brynna felt her mother’s hand on her own, squeezing with almost no strength. “It’s about Erica, honey.”
Everything in front of Brynna went black. Her tongue went heavy in her mouth, and her jaw went slack, every muscle, every vein, every cell turning into lead weight. “You know?” Her own voice was unrecognizable. “You know what she’s been doing to me?”
All at once, every image shot in front of Brynna’s eyes, like heinous snapshots, horror after horror: Remember me?, the eyeglasses, the dark form in the water, the nightmares, that night on the pier. She felt her bare feet itch as they left the splintered, salt-water-licked wood; she felt the lightness as her body vaulted through the air; she felt the tug of Erica’s arm as their fingers laced together. Then the black chill of the water as it swallowed them both up, feet-knees-hips-shoulders-head, the darkness settling over them like a death mask until there was only calm.
Brynna was crying, hiccupping, her breath locked in her chest. “Ever since we got here, Erica has been watching me and following me and leaving me things. She blames me; she hates me! The day in the coffee shop, that was her, wasn’t it?”
Her parents exchanged startled glances, and her mother started to cry harder. “No, honey, no.” She shook her head, her auburn hair swirling.
Her father took her hand, his grip firm and comforting. “Erica is dead, Brynna—”
“No!” Brynna was on her feet so fast that the chair she was sitting in went clattering to the hardwood floor behind her. “I told you, she’s here! I’ve seen her!”
“No, honey. They found her.” Brynna’s mother’s soft voice hitched. “They were able to identify her remains. Erica is really gone, honey.”
Color and sound exploded all around Brynna. It would have been loud, overwhelming, if her head hadn’t been filled with cotton or the rushing sound of her own blood, or whatever it was that was stifling every sound, vaulting her further and further away from her parents, from her warm kitchen and her lukewarm cup of tea.
“What?”
“A coroner the next county over from Point Lobos recovered”— Brynna’s father bit his lip, carefully considering his words—“some remains, a few months after Erica drowned. They were classified as a Jane Doe since there was no identification found.”
“Remains?”
Remains weren’t people, Brynna thought, and they certainly weren’t fifteen-year-old girls.