I linked my hands together in my lap and stared at the cherry blossom grove, at the beauty and the uplifting colors and said, “I don’t know how to talk about that night.”
Savannah reached out and linked her arm through mine. “I’m here whenever you’re ready.”
“You have enough to deal with, Peaches. You don’t need the added weight of my trauma too.”
“It’s not heavy,” she said and squeezed my arm. “If it unburdens you, then it’s the lightest weight in the world.” She kissed my exposed bicep, and the shards of ice that had created an impenetrable armor around me melted in the exact place that her lips had touched.
I felt guilty for even contemplating laying all my trauma at her feet. But here I was, in Goa, at night, beside a dreamlike seaside with a painting that was haunting my every move, and I just needed to purge everything from my soul.
“I wanted to do it for her. But I needed to do it for myself,” Leo’s words rang in encouragement in my mind.
“Nothing was different about that day,” I said, and my vision blurred, forcing me to relive it all in my head. “I went to practice. Then Cillian had a game that night.” I huffed an unamused laugh. “He got MVP. They won—a shutout. Cillian scored all the goals, a hat trick.” I shook my head. “He played his heart out. Now I wonder if he played so hard because he knew he would never play again. Was that his final goodbye to the team he loved so much and the fans who had supported him since starting Harvard?”
My leg bounced in nerves. I’d never talked this much in my life. It was like slicing open my heart and letting it bleed out, willingly. “At the game, I was with my parents. But afterward, I met up with my teammates. Stephan, my best friend, had been invited to a party one of the Harvard guys was throwing, next door where my brother lived off-campus.” I remembered arriving at the party, everyone celebrating. “We’d been to a hundred of them before. My brother was there, of course, but when he saw me walk in, rather than wearing the happy smile he always gave me, his eyes were stormy, and he told me to go home.”
I shook my head, like I was back there living that night. “He’d never been like that to me before. It had shocked me so much. He never sent me home. Always stayed by my side. I just thought he must have been tired—“
My voice cut out and I choked on a sob. “There was a sign, Sav. And
I missed it. He’d never been like that to me, ever. He wasn’t the typical big brother growing up. He was always so good to me.” His face came to mind. He looked more like my dad than me; I had my mom’s features. But anyone could tell we were siblings. “He was a good person and was all about family. He never treated me like I was lesser than him. Hell, he never even told me to get out of his room. He didn’t send me away from the frozen pond on our property when his friends came to play hockey. He included me.
Always.” I turned to Savannah and saw tears running down her face. Her bottom lip was trembling. “But he never told me he was hurting, Sav. He never told me that. Never told me the most important thing.”
I sniffed back tears and just gave in to the sadness I’d held trapped inside for too long. “He’d never sent me away before that night. But he did then. I should have fought him, asked why he was acting that way. I think I was too stunned. He threw a twenty in my hand and told me to run to the store and grab some snacks for the house.”
I glanced down at my hand and the palm that had held that money. “I didn’t see it at the time, but he’d wrapped his fingers around my hand when he’d put that money in my palm. Tightly. Just a few seconds longer than normal, but I can still feel it. Like a brand.” Savannah took hold of that hand and brought it to her lips, kissing me on the palm. A choked cry escaped my mouth at her touch, at her soft lips kissing that calloused, tarnished skin.
“You’re doing so well,” she said and laid her head on my shoulder. Her body heat seeped into mine, thawing some of the ice.
“I looked up into my big brother’s eyes and he said,
“Keep safe, yeah, kid?” In hindsight, his voice was gravelly and stacked with emotion. I thought maybe he was just getting the flu or something. I’d told him I would. I thought he was talking about Stephan’s driving. But now I know he was talking about my life.
Christ, Savannah, that was his goodbye to me, and I didn’t even know it. That was the last time I would hear his voice or feel him touch my hand. That was it.”
Savannah wrapped her arm around my shoulders and held me as I fell apart in the crook of her neck, my tears soaking her curly hair. “I replay that moment over and over in my head, all the time, several times a day. I see the subtle hints now. Hear the slight shake in his voice. But I didn’t see them at the time. His window wasn’t transparent; it was thick with condensation, and I just couldn’t see through it.”
I looked at the cherry blossom flowers Savannah had painted, then the stars that hung like gems from the sky. “Stephan was with me. We were on our way to the store, when he realized he’d forgotten his wallet back at the house. He wanted to grab some food for himself, was hungry, and we didn’t have enough cash to go through a drive-through. We turned back, only to see my brother’s car roaring down the road we were on, in the opposite direction. I was so confused as to where he was going. He was meant to be at the party. But what concerned me more was the speed he was going. It was reckless. He was never reckless. Always calm and measured. I told Stephan to follow him. A pull in my gut was telling me something was wrong.” My teeth gritted together. I wasn’t sure I could do this last part. I wasn’t sure I could find it in me to say what happened next out loud.
“If that’s all you can say, that’s okay,” Savannah said, clearly reading me right. I pressed a kiss to her hair, then met her watery eyes. I wanted to tell this girl. I wanted to share this with her. “No one is pushing you to say more.”
I searched her face, then thought of my painting again. I
had to tell her. I didn’t want that darkness to be my future. The truth was, I think it had already begun to take hold of me. I had come to believe that kind of darkness acted in a stealth attack. Slowly invading a soul bit by bit until it had consumed them without them even realizing. Then they were too weak to fight it off.
I sat up straighter, determined to fight the goddamn thing back. I didn’t want it to consume me. “We saw Cillian’s taillights up ahead and followed him. I was so worried about him. He was picking up more and more speed, swerving in the road as he fought to keep it on track.” I paused, fought back the lump in my throat. I breathed and whispered, “Then I watched him purposely plow headfirst into a huge, solid tree just off the road’s sharp bend.” Savannah sucked in a quick breath. I was shaking, I was shaking so badly as I was thrust back to that moment whether I wanted to be there or not.
“I jumped from Stephan’s car before he’d even stopped. And I ran for Cill. I ran faster than ever before. And when I got there, I wrenched the driver’s side door open and saw him …” I shook my head, trying to rid myself of that image. “It was too late, Sav. He was gone.” Savannah’s arms wrapped around me tighter, and she crushed me to her chest. I fell apart. I drowned in my tears until my chest was raw and my lungs burned so much it hurt just to take in a breath.
“There were no drugs or alcohol in his system. We found out afterward that he’d disabled the airbag, Sav. Before he’d driven. The seat belt too. He made sure there was no coming back from what he intended to do.” I tried to clear my throat, but my voice was so graveled it was almost nonexistent. “I pulled him from the car … and I held him. I held his broken body until the paramedics came and they forced me to let him go.”
Racking sobs still came, refreshed and carrying just as much weight as the ones before. “I still feel him in my arms sometimes, still feel his lifeless body pulled to my chest. I tried to bring him back—CPR, pleading to God to save him—but he was gone, Savannah. He was gone. As quick as that … and I watched him do it.”
“I’m here,” Savannah said as I dropped from the wall to the floor—she followed me down too. She held me in the gazebo beneath the stars, surrounded by painted memories of the dead, and all I saw was Cillian. So, I held her tighter. I turned my back on the painting that had reduced me to this and fought it with all I had.
I refused to let it consume me too.
Broken Hearts and Fractured Memories
Savannah
CAEL’S LARGE, STRONG BODY TREMBLED IN MY ARMS. I
PRAYED THAT I
WAS enough to comfort him, to hold him through this moment. I cried too. I cried as I replayed what he had told me. I cried for Cillian, and I cried for Cael.
He’d seen it.
He’d found him.
He’d cradled his older brother in his arms … I could only imagine the trauma that had left within him. The scars that must have seared onto his broken heart. I rocked him back and forth and couldn’t help but be thrust back into Poppy’s bedroom, my hand in hers after she had died. How naively I had thought that if I just didn’t let go, none of it would be real. That if I just stayed by her side, her eyes would open, and a miracle would have occurred. She’d believed in God so devoutly, so surely He would grant her a miracle and keep her with us all. The cancer would leave her body and she’d be healthy again. She’d get to live out her days with the people she loved most. She’d see our birthdays, weddings, and births of our future children. And we would see hers. We would see her marry Rune in the blossom grove that had become synonymous with them as a couple.
But that miracle never came. I knew now that when it came to death, they rarely do.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.