“I didn’t want to, Jessa. I really didn’t.”
His words echo in my head the whole drive to Caleb’s. But even thinking about them now feels like betrayal.
—
Mia’s bus is letting out just as I arrive at Caleb’s. I watch, like a creeper, as she walks with her purple backpack hanging too low, and her dark hair swooped over her shoulder. Suddenly, she turns and stares directly at me, as if she knew I was here all along.
I quickly exit the car, to seize the chance to speak with her, but Eve opens the front door at the same moment and Mia skitters in behind her. Eve holds the door open until I’m inside as well.
It smells stale in here, like nobody’s cooked in ages. With the packing, I’m starting to get a whiff of the house itself, all plaster and wood polish and dust, like everyone’s been on a long vacation. I’m starting to notice things, now. Like the laminate peeling in the kitchen, and the grandfather clock that doesn’t chime, and the empty drawers, the sounds the house makes on its own.
I remember the police had been here that first day, when Caleb was just missing, before his fate was decided, and official. And how different his home had looked then, from a different angle, with too many people crowded into the doorway.
Thinking about it now, it seems obvious the police must’ve accessed his email somehow during that early investigation, and then changed the password. Maybe they even shut down the account.
I’m standing across from Eve in the entrance, staring into her green eyes. I realize I’m the same height as her, that her teeth are clenched together, that she lost her first husband, and a son. And I don’t know how to ask the question. I circle around it, stalling. “Did the police look through Caleb’s email? To see if they might know what he was doing?”
She shakes her head, looking at me funny. “No. He was eighteen. He accidentally drove off a bridge. There was no cause for the police to gain access, which would’ve taken a subpoena to the email company. Whatever emails he had sent or received did not matter. There was a flood. It was an accident.” She frowns, like she had also considered this and asked.
“Not even after…?” After he was declared dead. Say it, Jessa. But I don’t. Not to her. She fought against it, at first. Saying there was no proof, that there was always hope. Until weeks later, when the current shifted, and the larger pieces of his car began washing ashore. If the current could do that to steel, well—the rest was unspoken.
“Not even then. Not even with a death certificate. His account was with one of the services that won’t transfer access after death. It seems people are entitled to their privacy, even then.” Eve speaks the words I don’t, the word death coming out choked, a note higher than the rest. She says it when I will not, as if daring me to do so as well, or proving that she is stronger.
Then she leans closer, and I smell the sharp scent of her perfume, the coconut of her shampoo. “Why, do you know his password?”
I shake my head, the easiest explanation.
So it wasn’t the police. And it wasn’t his mother. And it wasn’t me. That left Max.
“What’s the matter, Jessa?”
I’m a terrible hider of secrets. Caleb must’ve been able to read them in my expression. Instead, I scramble for something else I can use. “I still can’t find his glasses. I’m just wondering where he was going, why he needed them.”
It’s like when I was at school, seeing all the empty places Caleb used to be. Seeing only what’s not there, what should still be there, if fate were fair.
But Eve gives a little sad shake of her head. “He was going to see you, Jessa. Like always.” Then she leans a little closer. “You never told me, what he last said to you. Don’t you think you owe me that?” As if reminding me why I am here. Why I am here.
He didn’t say anything that day. And it’s only then, when she asks, that I realize that I too am searching for those words. To go back and have him say something, so I will understand. So I will be absolved. Going to the library. Or I’m hungry, might grab a bite to eat. Or I’ve been seeing someone else, and I’m going to visit her. Even just I feel like taking a drive. Just something. The weight of the unsaid words presses down on me, and all I can tell his mother is the truth: “He didn’t say anything.” A hard, sad thing to admit. The last words spoken from him to me were in the stairway from his room, said to my back, in anger.
She waits a beat, as if the answer will suddenly change. But when I don’t flinch under her unrelenting stare, she steps aside, so I can ascend the steps.
I’ve got to talk to Max again. Now that I know it wasn’t Caleb’s mother or the police who went through his email. I think about calling him, but I know voices carry in this house. I think about texting him, but I don’t even know what to say. He’s been through this room. Maybe he’s been through his email, too. Did you hack into Caleb’s account? What were you looking for? Did you find it?
Can I see it?
I look out the window, but there’s no movement at his house. And anyway, Eve is downstairs. I can’t just leave with no explanation.
Instead, I start on what’s left on the shelves, boxing away the trophies (karate, youth soccer, math Olympiad, lacrosse championship). All gold figurines that look identical, frozen in time.
Caleb Evers, Captain is written on the bottom of the prep state championship trophy. My nail hooks and locks in the groove of his name.
—
Hailey and I had driven nearly an hour. Well, neither of us had our license back then yet, so Max drove. Except Max didn’t have a car yet (Still saving, he mumbled, anytime we teased him about it), so he borrowed Caleb’s, since Caleb was on the team bus.
“Sophie said you guys broke up,” Hailey said from the backseat, leaning between the center gap.
“Yep,” Max said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Hmm.”
I spun in the passenger seat, gave her a look. One that said Stop. It had only supposedly happened the day before. Caleb would be thrilled, I thought. Though he seemed to have grown to like Sophie just fine. Or, he tolerated her, for Max’s benefit. Honestly, I didn’t get the animosity. She was perfectly unimposing, unassuming, un-everything.
“What happened?” Hailey asked.
“Hailey,” I said.
She gave me the What? look.
“Nothing,” Max said. It was the beginning of May then, and they’d been together longer than me and Caleb. It seemed like a long time to be together to call it off for no reason.
“There had to be something,” she said.
“Hailey,” I said.
What? There does, her look said.
“No, nothing happened.” He paused. “Nothing ever really happened.”
“Oh,” Hailey said.
“Oh,” I said. It seemed a long time to stay together without a reason, too. But then I thought, maybe it was easier to stay with the stream of momentum, no concrete cause to call it off. And I got this slight unease in the pit of my stomach.