“No, no, I’ve been good.” She laughed. “Are you kidding? I feel like I’ve looked into the face of something even more monstrous than my own disease. Trust me, that’ll sober you right up.”
Between bites of her bagel, Pia fidgeted with a bracelet looped a few times around her wrist. It looked pretty ratty, whatever it was, not like the hip jewelry she usually wore. And then I recognized it.
“Is that Rory’s bracelet?”
She nodded.
“When did you—”
“When you guys went to look for the raft that first time, I just wanted something . . .” She cleared her throat, then added more softly, “He’s the last guy I’ve been with, you know. I can’t bring myself to . . . Well, I know you guys didn’t think much of him.”
Rachel gave her a look. “Earlier, when I asked if you dreamed about her, I was talking about Sandra. Do you think about her, is what I meant.”
Pia whitened, tossed the bagel on her plate. “Do I think about her? Jesus, Rachel, did you really just ask me that?” She shook her head, disgusted. “And of course I dream about her. I’m covering her face with those leaves and stones, over and over again. . . .” She launched herself off the couch, snatched her rain slicker off a hook by the door, and threw it on. “I’m going for a walk.”
Rachel and I exchanged a glance. “Pia, it’s a hurricane. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds.”
“So I’ll go by myself.”
I jumped up and slipped on my coat over my pajamas; Rachel did the same. Oddly, Pia’s desire to go for a walk in a storm comforted me. A touch of normalcy; Pia out the door, full steam ahead.
Head down, she marched out onto the patio, where—-momentarily knocked off-balance by the wind—she put her shoulders into it and soldiered off into the deluge toward the crashing waves.
Clasping her hood tight to her neck, Rachel called out, “Pia, what the fuck are you doing?” Barefoot, we sprinted after her, the soft sand dragging us back.
I could tell she was crying, even turned away from us, even with all that rain and wind. “I was going to train for this ironwoman thing, but I don’t feel like iron,” Pia choked out. “I’m a piece of marshmallow shit.”
“Well, we all can’t be—” I started.
She whipped around to face us. “I can’t forgive myself!” she cried. “I keep looking for ways to tell myself it’s all right, like it was just chance and shit happens and life is hard like that and tragic, but I can’t! I killed her, you guys, you know it, and I’ll understand, you know I’ll understand if you never want to see me again or hang out or whatever, because things will never be right, never—”
“Hey, Pia, come on.” Rachel rested her hand on Pia’s shoulder. Pia wrenched herself away.
I blinked in the torrential rain, trying to see my friends’ faces, but they were ghostly washed-out ovals. I thought about Pia at Sandra’s funeral, how she had kept herself together better than any of us. It worried me more than if she had fallen apart.
“She saw through all of our bullshit, you know,” Pia said. “Especially mine. All my jumping out of planes and shit, she knew I was trying to prove I’m Superwoman, when I’m not brave at all. I’m more scared all the time than anyone I know.”
“We’re all scared, Pia—”
“And Rachel—she knew you were a softy underneath all your tough crap. She saw that. And you were there for her with the cancer thing, and I just wasn’t. I was fucking off somewhere in New Zealand or wherever. And Wini? You?” Pia looked at me, stricken. “With Marcus? I don’t even know where I was. . . .”
“She loved you, Pia,” Rachel called out into the wind. “She loved all the adventures you dreamed up and dragged us to. Come on, you know that! She was game. Always. Especially this time. Nobody wanted to be there with us on that river more than she did.”
The rain slammed at us sideways. “Did you see her mother’s face at the funeral? When she looked at me?” Pia pushed her sopping--wet bangs away from her eyes. “Did you see her face?”
We had. There was no forgiveness. All horror.
“And her kids, now, with no mother . . .” She seemed to crumple before us.
“You inspired her,” I shouted, the wind sucking at my words. “She told me she was going to leave Jeff. You inspired her to be brave. She didn’t get the chance, but her mind was made up.”
“Oh, God.” Pia covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, dear God.”
She turned away from us and started to walk toward the pounding surf, but Rachel and I threw our arms around her and dragged her back, made her stay. We pulled her long, tall self down toward us and locked her in like that, until we became a solid unit of three, the rain drumming so hard on our backs it felt like a blessing.