“I’m not sure I even believe it yet,” she said. “He could have lived. Should have.”
Warren ran his tongue over his teeth, his eyes softening. “It’s hard,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you about that. And I’m not going to say some stupid thing people think they should say, either, because that just makes it worse.”
Her cheeks burned. He shouldn’t be comforting her. It should be the other way around. And yet she couldn’t stop.
“I don’t have many friends,” Sylvie said, her head down. “I … I know a lot of people. But there aren’t many people I can really talk to. I find it hard to connect. I’ve always envied people who find it easy.”
A garbage truck two streets over began to back up, making a high-pitched beeping sound. Sylvie brushed hair out of her face. Warren was still staring at her, puzzled. “My last name is Bates-McAllister,” she explained.
His eyes darted back and forth. He put a thumb to his chin.
“You might have heard things,” she said. “Things that seem terrible. I’m not asking you to believe them or not believe them. I’m not asking you to do anything.”
Warren still looked baffled, but she had to keep going. He deserved exactly this, didn’t he? To judge for himself. To make up his own mind. To make this right, if that was what he wanted.
The letter was in her hand. All she had to do was pull it out of her pocket. All that money she knew he could use. But all at once, she knew she couldn’t. It wouldn’t make things right. It wouldn’t make things go away or even serve as any kind of salve. Just like the ring James had given her didn’t serve as a salve. She had accepted it, yes, because if she didn’t, it would’ve made things worse. And all she’d wanted was to wipe the slate clean. It wasn’t possible, though. It wasn’t that easy.
“I have to go,” she said, pulling her coat around her, the envelope still tucked inside her pocket. She walked backward fast, accidentally sloshing through an enormous mud puddle, the water seeping through her shoes and socks and straight to the bottoms of her feet. But she also suddenly felt free, as if she’d stepped off a cliff and was now floating through the air. Down, down, down, as delicate as a feather.
Chapter Eighteen
Charles drove for hours. He drove by landmarks he’d known since he was a child: the old stone house where the family of a childhood friend still lived, the old bowling alley near Swithin, abandoned but not yet torn down, an old thatched-roof playhouse where he’d taken Bronwyn to see The Importance of Being Earnest in high school. It comforted him to see things that were familiar and unchanged, a reminder of a time when life made a lot more sense.
What Bronwyn had just told him rang in his head. There were so many things to consider. His mother didn’t know about it, for one thing. She might have guessed that some sort of transgression had occurred—perhaps it was the reason for the big diamond ring that had randomly shown up a few months ago—but she didn’t know it was Bronwyn, that was for sure. For she’d asked Charles about her too recently and much too innocently, So no one has heard from her? Well, I’m sure she’s done well for herself. She’d even gone so far as saying, once, I always thought Bronwyn was such a sweet girl. I mean, Joanna is sweet too, of course, but as high-school girlfriends go, she was just so … pleasant.
Charles had tried to call Joanna dozens of times, but her phone went straight to voice mail. Call me, he said in each message. Please pick up. He feared what had happened, what she had assumed.
He reached a familiar intersection and stopped. Charles knew where he wanted to go—only it scared him. Finally, he coasted up the winding driveway. His mother’s car wasn’t there; nor was Scott’s. This relieved him—he couldn’t imagine seeing either of them right now. Not like this.
He gripped the steering wheel, staring at the house. Every day his father walked up those slate steps and through the mudroom door. Every day his father plunged his hand into the stone mailbox and extracted bills, magazines, junk coupon circulars.
We had the same kind of angst, Bronwyn had said. It matched up.
We talked about anything. College. My parents. Pressure.
He told me a lot of good things about you, Charles. Do you want to know?