Chapter III #6
And that was when I realized I felt angry, really, really angry—an emotion I didn’t usually feel and was very uncomfortable with.
Usually I felt sad or lost or vacant or strange.
Anger was new. Anger was hot, crawling up the back of my neck, making my fingertips numb.
It had been building since we left Vermont without me even realizing it.
It had grown and grown and grown and now it was right on the surface.
I could feel my skin rippling, creeping, crawling.
You should help her, Esme had said.
I couldn’t make Evelyn stop loving Henry.
But maybe I could do something else …
“Why do you look so weird?” Henry said, there suddenly, sitting on Evelyn’s bed.
“Aren’t you supposed to knock,” I said, not really a question so much as an accusation, a first blow.
He had a small (sad?) smile on his face.
He looked like he had been waiting for something and the something had finally arrived.
He looked almost relieved, maybe, like he could finally stop thinking about whatever it was he had been waiting for.
I both did and didn’t know what he had been waiting for.
I both did and didn’t know that somehow, he had been waiting for me, for this moment, for what I was about to do, for the inevitable conclusion I would come to, for this conclusion, here, now.
“How can I help you, Winnie?” he asked.
It was just a tad rude, the way he said it, but to be fair, I had started it.
“Where is she?” I said, and this, too, came out like a sort of accusation.
“She went out somewhere with Clara,” he replied.
“And you’re in love with her?”
He softened—visibly softened—and nodded. In a small voice, he said, “Yes.”
“But that’s ridiculous, Henry,” I said. “You’re dead.”
I hadn’t meant it to come out so mean, but maybe it was impossible to remind someone they were dead without it sounding very, very harsh, without it sounding almost a little braggy, like I know you are but what am I.
“Just say what you want to say, Winnie,” Henry said, and he relaxed his stance a little, and I realized that before he had been tense, bracing, and now he was defeated, slumped.
“You can’t be with her. You can’t do this to her. You have to stop.”
“I have to stop,” he repeated.
“Stop,” I confirmed. “Stop showing up, stop answering when she knocks, stop appearing, just STOP.”
The last word came out as a shout. I could still hear the shower going, so I knew Bernadette hadn’t heard me, and hopefully Mom was still downstairs or would assume I was yelling for Bernie.
“Good for you,” Henry said, and he shifted again, back to tense, back to bracing. “You’ve finally found some gumption. Only took you sixteen years.”
“Stop talking like it’s the 1800s. Nobody says gumption anymore.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You are,” I argued. “You have to.”
“I’m not leaving her. I would never leave her. That would kill her, Winnie! That would break her heart!”
“It will kill her if you stay!” I said, shouting again.
“Don’t you see that? Don’t you see that if you don’t leave, Evelyn won’t leave?
She won’t ever leave. You’ve already been stuck in this house for far too long, do you really want Evelyn to be stuck here with you?
Do you really want to watch her get older and older, do you really want to watch us all leave her, do you really want to watch her die alone? ”
“She wouldn’t be alone,” Henry said, but his voice sounded uncertain now, his resolve was fading. “She’d be with me…”
“What a great comfort that will be. A half-here eternally seventeen-year-old boy who is so selfish, so self-centered, so fucking greedy, that he can’t do what’s right for the girl he supposedly loves.”
“I do love her … Of course I love her.”
“Then you have to leave, Henry. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
“I don’t … I can’t…”
His eyes were wet, like, if he could, he might start to cry—shiny, iridescent, sparkling tears. Ghost tears. I took a step closer to him, felt the temperature shift just the slightest amount, just a few degrees colder.
This was the moment. I could feel it. I could go through with it.
I could convince Henry to leave. I was so close already.
All it would take was just one final, crushing blow.
The words were ready, on the tip of my tongue; my mouth burned with them.
They held a power I didn’t understand. It flowed through my body, a gentle pulse, my skin thrummed.
I knew once I said them, I could never take them back.
I couldn’t make Evelyn stop.
But I could make him stop.
I could make this stop.
“None of us want you here anymore,” I said, not shouting now but almost whispering, my voice cold and horrible and not mine at all. “Can’t you see that? We don’t want you here. GO AWAY, Henry.”
He didn’t say anything.
We looked at each other and I felt—
It was stupid, maybe. Because he hadn’t had one in so long.
But I swear I could feel his heart stopping. Or breaking. Or shattering into a thousand pieces. I just swore I felt something.
And there was this look on his face, a look of confusion and pain and …
He cocked his head like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear.
He said, in the quietest voice possible, “Oh.”
And then he disappeared.