All the pieces of all the girls go flying and I’m holding the one who’s left.
My arms are wrapped around her, but I don’t say anything. I don’t think anything. I don’t even know if I breathe. I’m so afraid that I am not going to be able to hold her together. I’ve seen her cry once before but it was nothing like this. She is gone, disappeared into some otherworldly oblivion of pain. The sound. It’s raw and primal and horrifying and I don’t want to hear it. Her hand is pressed between my chest and her mouth, trying to stifle it, but it’s not working. She won’t stop shaking, always the shaking, and I’m begging in my head for her to stop. I can feel everyone in the room watching, but I can’t think about them right now.
She’s still standing, but she’s not. All of her weight is on me. All of it. The weight of her body and her secrets and her tears and her pain and her regret and her loss and I feel like I’m going to break, too, because it’s too much. I don’t want to know any of this. Now I understand why she spent so much time running. I want to run away, too. I want to drop her and fling the door open and not look back, because I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough, not brave enough, not comforting enough. I’m not enough. I’m no one’s salvation. Not even my own.
But I’m here and so is she and I can’t let go. Maybe I don’t need to save her forever. Maybe I can just save her right now, in this moment, and if I can do that, maybe it will save me and maybe that can be enough. I tighten my arms as if I can still the shaking with that alone. The crying has turned silent. Her face is buried against my chest. I’m watching the light reflect off her hair on top of her head and I focus on that, because I can’t look around me and see all of those faces asking me for answers I don’t have.
Gradually, she calms. Her breathing slows and her body settles into mine and it steadies. Then I feel her take her own weight back, for just a moment, before she pulls away from me.
I loosen my arms and let her go, but my eyes stay on her. Her face goes blank, the way it was the first time I saw her and I see every emotion being put away. It’s like watching a video of an explosion played backwards, every piece of debris being sucked back into place, like nothing ever happened.
I’m afraid to look away. Afraid she’ll fall apart again. Afraid she’ll disappear. Afraid. I never should have left my garage. I never should have let her in it.
Then she sees the pile of notebooks on the table and everything about her goes still. Her eyes won’t leave them. They are a question and an answer all at once.
“How?” her mother asks, finally. Confused. Betrayed. Relieved. “You didn’t remember.”
I look at the faces of the people who love her, who haven’t heard her voice in nearly two years. No one expects a response. But they get one.
“I remember everything,” she whispers, and it’s a confession and a curse.
The only other noise in the room is the sharp intake of her mother’s breath at the sound of Sunshine’s voice.
“Since when?” her father asks.
She pulls her eyes away from the notebooks to face him when she answers.
“Since the day I stopped talking.”
***
Somehow, everyone eventually sleeps; scattered across the house on beds and floors and sofas. I end up on the twin bed in Sunshine’s room, with her body curled up against mine, and I don’t care how small the bed is, because she will never be close enough.
No one made any attempt to stop me when I climbed in with her. I think they all knew they couldn’t prevent it. There was nothing in this house or on this earth that was going to keep me from being next to her.
Drew is on a makeshift bed on the floor because I don’t think he wanted to be far away from her, either.
I listen to her breathing; the soft intake of air reminding me that she’s here, her body pressed against mine, the way we’ve slept so many nights that I’ve lost count.
Sometime during the night, her mother comes in and looks at us on the bed together. Her expression is one of acceptance, if not understanding.
“What did you call her?” she asks, but I don’t think it’s her real question.
“Sunshine,” I say, and she smiles like she believes it’s perfect and she may be the only person other than me who would think so.
“What is she to you?” she whispers. The real question and I know the answer even if don’t know how to say it.
Drew’s muffled voice rises up from the floor before I can respond.
“Family,” he says.
And he’s right.
CHAPTER 55
Emilia
My parents leave the next morning for the news conference, and Asher goes to school, even though they told him he could skip today.
I walk Drew to his car and I think I could hug him forever.
“I’ll miss my Nastypants,” he tells me.
“There will never come a day when I won’t be your Nastypants.” I smile and let go. “Tell Tierney to give you another chance. If you screw up this time, I’ll take you down myself.”
And then he’s gone; and it’s just me and Josh Bennett and all of the unasked questions.
I hand him one of the notebooks because it’s the only way he’ll know, and he looks at it like it’s a viper.
“I don’t ever want to know what’s in those books,” he says, and he won’t take it out of my hands.
I tell him that I don’t want to know what’s in them either. But I do know and I need him to know too. So he reads it and his face tenses along with every other muscle in his body and I can tell he’s trying not to cry. And when I show him the pictures, he shoves his fist against his mouth and I think he wants to hit something, but there’s nothing here to hit. When he gets to the one of my hand, the one with the bones coming through the skin in so many places it’s hard to believe they ever put it back together again, he throws up. And I don’t blame him.
I show him videos of me playing the piano and photo albums full of pictures and introduce him to the me he never met; but we don’t say very much.
“You were really good,” he says, his voice faint as it breaks the silence.
“I was f**king amazing,” I try to joke, but it just comes out sad.
“You still are,” he responds with quiet conviction, piercing me with his eyes the way he does when he wants to make sure I’m listening. “Every way that matters.”
The silence returns and we sit on the couch, photo albums on our laps, staring at the wasted piano in the corner.