“No,” I said. “It was on the freeway. Dad and Ben were going to another town to run some errands. The guy who hit them was drunk, right in the middle of the day. He died too.”
I waited for Leo to say things. Like I’m sorry or That’s so sad or Drunk drivers are the worst. All of those things were true.
“I wish I’d known your dad and your brother,” Leo said.
“Me too,” I said. “I wish that I had.”
I could tell that Leo didn’t know what I meant.
“I mean,” I said, “I thought I knew them really well. But it turns out there was a lot more to them.” And I realized I didn’t only mean Ben, who was hard to know, who had his own world. I also meant my dad. I mean, he was my dad. I knew the way his face looked in the morning before he shaved and that he would read you a story almost any time you asked him to, especially on Saturday mornings. I knew that he loved to watch soccer and eat chocolate chips with a spoonful of peanut butter and I knew his favorite Christmas song was one that hardly anyone knew called “Far, Far, Away on Judea’s Plains.” But I didn’t know lots of things. Did he believe in God and how much? When he was a teenager, who was the first girl he kissed? How long did it take him to learn how to read? What music did he listen to when no one else could hear?
“You don’t have to know someone all the way to miss them,” Leo said. “Or to feel bad that they’re gone.”
“Like you and Lisette Chamberlain,” I said.
Leo looked horrified. “That’s not what I meant.” His face was red.
“I know,” I said, “but it’s true.” I kind of missed Lisette too, now that I’d seen her alive. It was not the same at all as for my dad and Ben. But it was still missing someone. Wondering about them.
“Anyway,” I said. “Thanks for letting me watch the play. You’re right. She was amazing.”
We went up the stairs and Leo came outside with me. The turkey vultures were wheeling around in the sky above the neighborhood. “There’s those freaky birds,” Leo said.
“Did they live in our backyard before we bought the house?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “They came after the Wainwrights left. But before you moved in.”
That did not make me feel better.
I wanted them to be Wainwright birds.
16.
Back at home I pulled Lisette Chamberlain on over my head and studied my new T-shirt in the mirror. It fit perfectly. I would have to wear another shirt over it in the morning so my mom wouldn’t think it was weird that I was wearing a shirt with a dead lady’s face on it to go running.
There wasn’t anything on the windowsill, but it wasn’t night yet. Still, it had been a little while. Maybe I was supposed to respond somehow? Like leave something back?
The things Lisette (if it was Lisette) was leaving for me were things Ben would have loved. Was she trying to help me heal?
How could I help her?
Did she need us to help her with something involving Roger? Did she want us to find her ring?
Maybe I should leave something purple on the windowsill so Lisette would know I was trying. Or maybe I should ask Leo what her favorite food was, and then I could leave that out for her.
And then I started laughing at how stupid I was.
Because that was what you did for Santa. Who was also not real. Like the ghost of Lisette Chamberlain was not real. Someone real had to be leaving those things.
Maybe it was Leo. Was that possible? The gifts hadn’t started arriving on the windowsill until after I met him.
17.
Saturday night after work there still wasn’t anything new on the windowsill. But I did have a nightmare. Or maybe a dream.
Ben and I were driving. I was picking Ben up at school, which I did tons of times but I was always the passenger in real life and never the driver. In the dream I was great at driving. Perfect. I flicked my turn signal. We stopped at all the stop signs. It was like I had been driving all my life.
And then when we got home Ben stood in front of the door and wouldn’t let me in because he wanted to talk to me. “Blue T-shirt,” he said. “Gray pants. Orange sneakers.”
And I realized he was wearing the outfit he’d had on when he died.
I hadn’t remembered until the dream what he’d been wearing that day.
“It’s okay, Ben,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“Blue T-shirt,” he said again. “Gray pants. Orange sneakers.”
“Ben,” I said.
“Blue T-shirt.”
“Please stop,” I said. “I remember now.”
And he did stop.
Because I woke up. Crying.
18.