Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Blaise
NOW
I drive with single-minded determination in a pricey rental car that put a serious dent in my always-tight budget. Whatever. It was the fastest way to get to Rhode Island, and I’ll need a car when I get there anyway. People have asked me, upon hearing I’m from the smallest state, if we need cars to get around there. It’s not that small.
Thinking about trivial things like that helps to keep me from obsessing about where I’m going and what I plan to do when I get there.
Through Rye, New York, into Connecticut, past Greenwich, Norwich, Stanford, New Haven and New London, I get more anxious with every minute and every mile that goes by.
I haven’t driven in a long time. Normally, I enjoy it. Nothing about this trip is normal or enjoyable.
I cross the state line into Rhode Island at two o’clock and press the accelerator, anxious to get where I’m going before it’s too late. I don’t want to have to wait another day.
One more day is too many. It’s already been too long. I can’t take this for another second, not another hour or another night or another morning.
It has to happen today.
Before I lose my nerve.
Again.
I almost did it once before, a couple of months after it happened, when I feared I might have some sort of serious breakdown if I didn’t do the right thing immediately.
I’d planned to go to the Land’s End Police the next day and tell the truth, to hell with the consequences. I’d resigned myself to becoming a pariah in my own life. Anything, I thought, was better than the purgatory I was stuck in while the kids I grew up with called Neisy every foul name under the sun to discredit her.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
And then Louisa died, and I couldn’t do it.
I told myself I was staying quiet for her, for Louisa. I was honoring her memory with my silence, but that was bullshit.
The only person I was protecting was myself.
I knew that then, and I’ve known it every day since.
I’ve hated myself for fourteen years for keeping this secret.
That ends today.
Hearing Ryder is running for Congress was the catalyst. I actively loathe myself for not doing this before now. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of that night, that I haven’t thought of Neisy and what she went through or how I could’ve helped her and didn’t—not just after it happened, but every day since then.
I simply can’t live with it anymore.
While I’m certain the consequences will be every bit as devastating for me as they would’ve been then—my brother is still best friends with both Elliott brothers, who are now married with children and successful careers—I don’t care what happens to me.
I love Arlo.
I truly do. I feel terrible about rupturing our relationship, perhaps beyond repair. I hate that it’ll put a terrible rift in the center of our family, that my mother and siblings will be looked down upon, that I’ll be called out, judged, denigrated.
I don’t care.
As I crest the Newport Bridge—I’ll never call it the Pell Bridge—a flood of memories come over me as I take in the island I called home for the first eighteen years of my life. My childhood there was idyllic, made up of long days at the beach, sailing on Narragansett Bay, cozy Christmases, football games and pep rallies and a feeling of belonging that comes with living in a small town, where everyone knows you and your family. Parents look out for all the kids, not just their own.
When I say words that can never be unsaid, I’ll tear apart the fabric of that town where Arlo, Ryder and Cam now live with their families. I know from social media that Cam married Sienna, and they have four kids under the age of seven. Ryder took a long time to recover from the loss of Louisa. After his appointment to Annapolis was revoked, he went to the University of Rhode Island, got an engineering degree and served eight years in the navy after graduating from college.
After an honorable discharge from the navy, he landed a big job with a prestigious engineering firm in Providence.
Now he’s running for Congress, representing the district where we grew up.
Not if I can help it.
I feel sick.
My stomach churns with nausea that burns my chest and throat, a feeling reminiscent of that awful summer. I was so nauseated all the time that I couldn’t eat. I lost twenty pounds. People told me I looked good when I went back to school for my senior year. They also talked about the apparent rift between me and Sienna, speculating endlessly about what’d come between best friends since the third grade.
Neither of us ever said.
“People grow apart,” I told my mother when she asked me about it.
I withdrew from all my friends. I didn’t go to football or basketball games. I kept to myself in school and out. In the spring, I refused to attend my prom and only walked the stage at graduation at my parents’ insistence. I wouldn’t allow them to have a graduation party for me, preferring to count the days until I could get out of there once and for all.
When I arrived at my college dorm at NYU, I exhaled for the first time in more than a year. I’d survived. Somehow. And now I had a whole new life ahead of me in a city where I could disappear amongst the masses.
However, the thing about moving away and bringing a devastating secret with you is that nothing changes. If anything, it gets worse when you’re removed from daily contact with the people you were trying to protect by staying silent.
My health declined precipitously that first semester. I battled eating disorders and mono, and nearly flunked out of school. Only because the thought of going home was so revolting did I rally at the end of the semester and end up with a fairly respectable two-point-eight GPA. But the health issues didn’t let up. I developed vexing skin conditions and have had ongoing difficulties with eating.
I continued my pattern of keeping to myself, which made for a lonely existence.
I told myself the isolation was for the best, but even then it felt unsustainable.
No one can stay completely removed from others long term. Eventually, I had to reengage with the world, if for no other reason than to support myself, but the shame was always with me. I thought of it as a tumor that wouldn’t kill me but would make me sick for as long as it was inside me.
The tumor comes out today.
I drive through the familiar town of Hope, past endless stone walls and the grassy fields where my siblings and I played soccer, lacrosse, baseball and softball. As I go by the street that led to Sienna’s childhood neighborhood, I experience a pang of longing for the long-ago time when I thought a friendship like ours would last forever.
I know better now.
Passing by the entrance to my own neighborhood, I give it a passing glance as I stay focused on the road ahead of me, the road to Land’s End, where I’ll come clean to the man who hosted the now-notorious summer party.
Houston Rafferty is now the chief of police there and is the one I’ll share my story with.
No one but him.
I only know him by reputation, but I trust him to do the right thing with the information I’ll give him.
I’d forgotten how long the ride from Hope to Land’s End is, how winding the roads are on the way to the remote little town. I recall the anticipation when the LE kids, as they were known, joined us for our freshman year of high school. The infusion of fifty new kids into our class was the most exciting thing to happen to us in years.
Many of them were a bit wild compared to us. They lived way out in the middle of nowhere and had to take an hour-long bus ride to get to school. Their older siblings had the best parties, and their parents were super chill. It was like a whole new world had opened to us, and we loved it. We could look across the river and see their town, but it was as if they’d come from another country.
With Teagan and Arlo having experienced this influx of new friends from across the river before I did, my parents had learned to be wary of what went on “over there” until they had a chance to get to know the kids and their parents. I had a few friends from LE, but I wasn’t super close to them. Wouldn’t you know that the first party I attended “over there” was the night that changed my life forever.
I haven’t been back here since. My skin feels clammy, and my stomach churns relentlessly as the GPS takes me closer to the police station and my date with destiny.
For a full fifteen minutes after I park in the lot outside the station, I sit staring at the building, which is painted a cheerful yellow with blue shutters and flower boxes. It doesn’t look like a police station, not that I know much about how they should look.
As I get out of the car and walk toward the main entrance, I tell myself everything will be better when I share this burden with someone who can do something about it.
But I don’t know that for sure.
Maybe telling my secret will make everything worse.
How is that possible?
Nothing could be worse than sitting on this horrible information for fourteen endless years.
I pull open the door and step inside, determined to get this over with. Whatever the fallout, I’ll take it to be free of this heavy weight.
“May I help you?” a young female officer asks.
“I’d like to see Chief Rafferty, please.”
“He’s gone for the day. He’ll be back by eight in the morning.”
“I need to see him today. It’s an urgent matter.”
“Your name?”
I lick my lips. Here it is. The do-or-die moment.
“My name is Blaise Merrick, and I’d like to report a crime.”