“Oh, Ellie.” Sean’s sweet face is creased with concern. He shakes his head.
“But you don’t understand,” I say. I look down at the lyrics in my lap. “I know where she was going. This song is about her. And this part, about going as far as she can go, that’s about going to San Francisco. It’s a joke we had when we were younger. That’s where she wanted to go. That’s where she would be if she hadn’t…” My voice breaks then. I can’t even bring myself to say it.
“I think it’s time to let go now,” Sean says. “It’s time to let go.”
Sean’s phone starts vibrating again. He snatches the phone off the seat and hits Ignore. He slips the phone in his pocket. And then he takes both of my hands in his and puts them up against his chest, so I can feel his heart through his shirt. “That part of your life is over now,” he says.
Back in the room, I drift in and out of a thick heavy sleep that paralyzes my limbs and fills my head with crazy dreams. Fast flashes of brilliant colors interspersed with slow-moving images, almost white, like a video made on a too-sunny day. Real memories and made-up ones mixing themselves together—Nina and I at a birthday party eating cake with our hands. Nina and I trying on dresses at Attic. Sean and Nina playing tag. Sean and I in bed in the hotel. Sean standing on a chair in this very hotel room, pushing something in between the blankets at the top of the closet, looking down to make sure I’m not awake to see him. Nina and I toasting each other in a fancy restaurant. Nina and I running away from home. Nina and I in France. Nina in a car with Sean’s brother, driving away from the house we grew up in, waving, waving, waving good-bye.
Thirty-six
I do not have the luxury of forgetting. There is no moment of blank calm, no moment of peace before reality catches up. I wake up as the sun rises, remembering exactly where I am and exactly what has happened. I’m crying before I even open my eyes. This is the first morning I’ve had to know it. Yesterday seems hazy, like a dream, a dream full of paranoia and denial and trying to convince myself that reality was not reality. But this morning I have woken up with a clear mind at the bottom of a well. Now this is real. This is all completely real. And now I have to deal with it.
It is time to tell my mother.
I can hear the sound of water coming from the bathroom. The shower is on.
I get out of bed. There is a beige plastic phone on the bedside table. I pick up the slightly sticky headset and hold it to my ear. How will I find her number? I called her on Sean’s phone, when was it, two days ago?
Sean is singing in the shower. Loudly and terribly. His phone is blinking on the desk.
I flip it open and go to the call log. There’s my mother’s number right there. I hold it in my hand as I dial 7-7-3-5-5-5-7-6-4…I am about to dial the last digit when I realize something strange. Something so strange my heart starts pounding before I’m even done processing. The call log. There’s the incoming call from Unavailable that I answered in the car last night. And before that there’s a call to voice mail. And then there’s my call to my mother on Tuesday morning. And before that, there’s a number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we started driving to Nebraska. The number looks weirdly familiar.
But there were no other calls made on this phone between my call to my mother and the call I made last night except for the one call to voice mail at around four-thirty yesterday. Which is right around when Sean told me Nina was dead.
One call to voice mail when Sean said he was calling the investigator’s number.
So when did Sean talk to the investigator exactly?
I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for this. I’m sure there is. There has to be.
My heart is pounding harder now. The phone starts blinking in my hand again. The unavailable number is calling again. And I don’t think. I just pick up.
“Hello?” I whisper. I don’t hear anything for a moment. And then a voice, whispering back.
“Are you alone?”
I stare at the bathroom door. I don’t think I hear the rush of the water anymore. I think the shower has been shut off. Sean will be back any second.
“Are you alone?” the voice says again.
“Yes,” I whisper. My hands are sweating. “Who is this?”
“Is this Ellie?”
My heart stops at the sound of my name. “Who is this?” I ask again.
“You called me the other day,” the voice says. “You were looking for your sister. My name is Max and I know her…” The bathroom door opens a crack, a trail of steam escaping. It looks like smoke. “…and Sean did, too.”
“Wh…” I start to say. But before I can get any words out the bathroom door opens.
I snap the phone shut and toss it onto the bed just as Sean emerges from the bathroom, his hair damp, a white towel wrapped around his waist, another one hanging around his neck.