They stay downstairs, clearing the table and pretending I’ve fallen off the edge of the earth. I take the laptop out of Mags’s room and bring it into mine, mostly to piss her off. If she wants it, she can come get it.
She doesn’t. Two nights later, it’s still there. I’m curled up in bed at seven thirty, dozing because I’ve got nothing better to do.
I wake up to the sound that the laptop makes when a new email pops up.
Holy crap.
The email stands out in bold. Sender Rhiannon Foss, no subject. It hits me hard: tight chest, eyes open so wide that they burn as I stare and stare. I’m scared of what she might say after all this time, after everything that’s happened. I’m scared to feel what’s coming next.
I double-click. There’s no message. Only a link.
It brings me to a page on a poetry site. The poem’s called “The Uses of Sorrow” by a lady named Mary Oliver:
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
I press my hand to my mouth. The words won’t let me go. I see myself in them. I see the night of the boys waiting in their cars for us. I see Nell, and Mags, and the summer behind us. And beneath all that, like some underground stream, runs Brad Ellis.
I see Rhiannon standing in the cold that night after I got out of the Explorer, hands jammed in her pockets, her expression closed off to me. I changed my mind. Or maybe her feelings for somebody else had. Even before that, I hear her say, Isn’t she in special ed? and then making sure we started hanging out at her house, far away from Nell.
That was freshman year. That far back? Had he been working on her longer than Nell, adding them both to his chain? Rhiannon wasn’t in drama freshman year, but that didn’t matter, not for him; he could’ve talked to her in the halls, planted the seeds, charmed her into turning out for stage crew the next year. Later, selling the whole I don’t want to hurt Elise, but I can’t seem to get you out of my mind thing? Had both she and Nell been trying to tell me in their silences, in their looks? Rhiannon, holding her car keys out to me, eyes deep wells in the firelight. Understanding everything. Just take them. And later, after I dropped Nell off at our house and took the Fit back to the barrens, I just left the keys in the car and went to find Kat, who was finally sober enough to drive me home. I never even told Rhiannon thanks. I never saw her again.
I make a soft sound, jerking away from the computer, leaving the bed. I’m in the hallway before I know it. My feet take me to the place I always go when I’m hurting.
Mags reads in bed, her glasses on the nightstand. I stand there in the doorway until she notices me, raises an eyebrow, and looks back at her book.
I bite my lip. “Mags.” My voice wavers, and I take a couple steps in. She doesn’t look up. “It’s about Nell.”
My face is in the lamplight now, and she finally gives me her full attention. Some of the hardness fades from her eyes. She lays her book down. “So talk.”
It’s bad. My words weave a long snarled string, tangling Mags into the mess Nell and I have spent a year making.
Her eyes go wide, her mouth goes grim. She shakes her head like she’s got too many words to let out. At one point, she slams her fist against the wall, sending a hollow vibration through the upstairs. I wait, shoulders hunched, to see if she’s going to pound me, take the hurt and anger out on me like I almost hope she will because we’ve beat each other up before, we know how to deal with that. Instead she stares dully at her hands. If she could make it better with her fists, she would. Out of all of us, it never should’ve been Nell.
“How could you not tell me this?” she finally whispers.
“Because you would’ve made us do something.”
“Goddamn right.”
“Like tell the school or the cops. Then everybody would’ve ripped Nell apart. You know they would’ve. She was seventeen when they did it, not some little kid. Everybody would say, there’s the girl who slept with the teacher and got him fired. There goes that slut.”
“So you were gonna just keep on swallowing it. Taking it on you. Letting us all think—” She cuts off. Then Mags’s arm goes around me and holds on tight, so tight my shoulder pops. It feels good.
Finally, she says, “Come on,” nudging me out of bed, leading me to the hallway.
Mom’s watching her little bedroom TV in the dark, a pillow hugged under her arm, another behind her head. She sits up, her face watchful as we come in. Mags guides me, her hands on my shoulders.
The blue glow flickers and flashes across Mom as she takes us in. Then she reaches over and turns on the light.
TWENTY-EIGHT
AROUND ONE O’CLOCK on Saturday, Edgecombe pulls up to our house, but he doesn’t come in. He walks through the side yard to the trailer, a big guy with big strides and his hand hitched in his equipment belt. Mags and I are on the porch playing Whist. We like Hearts best, but like I said, you can’t play with two people.
I go over to the railing, watching him walk up the trailer steps and knock. After a second, the door opens partway, and he goes in. I guess they’ve been waiting on him.
“We playing or what?” Mags doesn’t take her eyes off her hand, holding our can of Moxie out for me to sip.
He’s in there a long time. We play two more hands of Whist and a full game of Spit, pretending to care about winning quarters and dimes.
They could’ve come to the station with us on Friday afternoon. Mom says it would’ve been better that way, if we’d all gone. But you can’t make Libby do anything she doesn’t want to do. And right now, she doesn’t want anything to do with us.
Eventually, we hear the screech of the trailer door again. Mags goes with me to the railing. We’re hoping to see Nell.
Edgecombe steps out into the daylight. I catch a whiff of Libby’s hazelnut coffee on the air, picture her asking, Cream or sugar? and pushing a plate of of Nilla Wafers on him while Nell sits there, ripped wide open with all her most private parts on display. It was hard enough for me to talk about, and it really wasn’t my story to tell.
Just walking across the station house to Edgecombe’s desk felt like a journey. He sat over some paperwork and a steaming Colby College mug he must’ve brought from home. He didn’t look smug, like I’d expected, or like he was going to give me some big lecture. There was heavy stuff going on behind his eyes. Almost like I’d proven something to him. I dunno, maybe that’s stupid. He took us into a private room with folding chairs waiting for Mom, Mags, and me. When we were situated, he leaned forward, clasped his big hands, and said to me, “When you’re ready.”