Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Lainey
Present Day
I couldn’t stop rocking back and forth on the cold metal bleacher. I couldn’t stop gazing at Rhett even though, at times, his face was too much to look at. So was the feel of his presence. The way he stared at me, just like he had all those years ago, brought me right back to the summer after our senior year.
Rhett!
My mind was this wild mix of: I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe I’m sitting so close to him, I can’t believe I’m giving him a chance to tell me about that dreaded day, I can’t believe I’m listening, and I can’t believe I want to .
Not just want to. I needed to.
I’d just gotten done telling him I didn’t understand how things between Pen and him had gone from yelling to … and then my voice had cut off.
I couldn’t finish.
Why was it still so difficult to say she was dead? Even in my dreams—which occurred several times a week, like the one I’d had last night—there were signs that I’d lived far more life than her. But saying it out loud was just too difficult. Too definitive.
“I know you blame me. Your parents blame me too. What I’m trying to tell you is that … it wasn’t my fault.”
Rhett and I were sitting in silence while the words he’d just spoken resonated through me.
Someone had to be at fault. It was the only way to make sense of what had happened, so my parents and I had turned him into the enemy.
That was how we survived.
But was that fair?
Was that title even accurate?
Rhett’s account was pushing together the missing pieces of a tragic puzzle, filling the gaping holes that had never made sense.
Did I blame him? Still?
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered, repeating his last statement. A shiver ran through me, and I held myself tighter, balling up to stop anything from getting in. “I have so many questions.”
I needed to back up. I needed to make sure I understood this all correctly.
But, damn it, why did he have to have the most gorgeous icy-blue eyes? A color I’d seen in the waters of Italy and again when I’d gone to Portugal. Every time I’d visited those countries, I would take in the view of the ocean, and I would think of him.
And each time, I’d have to look away.
Just like I was doing now.
“I’d hoped you would have questions. Ask them. Ask me anything.”
My brain was a giant spinner, separated into slices, like the Wheel of Fortune game, the arrow waiting to land on a question.
There were so many.
Where do I even start?
“The police,” I said, a place that felt obviously comfortable. “You told them you and Pen were arguing about going to the beach house. That was what had caused her to jump. Was that true?”
“Partly.”
I stilled after shaking my head. “You lied to them?”
“I just didn’t tell them everything.”
“Why?”
He held his hands together, his thumbs upward, a lion tattoo on one. It was so precisely done; I could even see the whiskers.
“I knew you and your family would see the police report. I didn’t want you all to know what she had really been like in that moment.”
My stomach sank.
Cocaine.
I had never suspected it. Was I naive? Ignorant? Or had it been obvious and I just hadn’t wanted to see it?
“High, you mean?” I clarified.
“High as fuck and out of control.”
His head dropped enough to show me more of the blackness of his hair. I swore it had thickened since high school, had even gotten curlier. His beard, too, had completely filled in, the open, splotchy patches no longer present.
“I didn’t mention the almost accident to the police either. I didn’t want it on record that she had been all over me.”
When he glanced up, the whites of his eyes were turning a slight shade of red.
“The whole time I spoke to them, all I could think about was you. What it would feel like to read those things about your sister. I didn’t want to shit all over the memory of her. Not when you and your family would be grieving for the rest of your lives. So, I honored her in the only way I knew how, and that was by giving the police enough, but not giving them the whole story.”
“What if a witness had seen her on your shoulders and the almost accident that happened? What if they’d reported it?”
He shrugged. “I would have come up with something.”
“And her bag? The divers weren’t able to recover it, it was lost at sea. But you told the police you threw it overboard out of anger. Was that true?”
His exhale was loud and emotional. “I threw it because there was coke inside. I knew the police would search it and find the blow, along with the dirty mirror and the powdered bill she’d stuck up her nose, and I couldn’t let that happen. Lainey …” He quieted while he gazed into my eyes, the silence building before he said, “Again, I was just trying to protect her memory and you and your family from knowing that part of the truth. A truth that I was sure would only hurt all of you.”
My head fell back, my throat open to the wind.
I’d come up with so many reasons. He had thrown it because he couldn’t stand the sight of one more thing of hers. He had thrown it because there was something inside that would incriminate him. He had thrown it because he couldn’t throw her—she’d angered him that badly.
But protecting her? And us?
I’d never considered that.
“I have to admit something that isn’t easy.”
“None of this has been easy, Lainey.”
I waited, begging my heart to calm down, which was a laughable request because I knew it wouldn’t. “There were so many times I wanted to reach out and talk to you about what had happened. I found your Instagram account. It’s the only social media I could locate, unless the rest is under a pseudonym.”
“Instagram is all I have.”
I nodded. “I was going to message you on there, but the account looked dead. You never posted a single photo.”
“Is that really the reason you didn’t reach out? Because the account looked dead?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“The real reason is that I didn’t have the nerve to.” My voice softened as I said, “I was afraid, Rhett.” I rubbed my lips together, the wind making them so dry. “There was so much I didn’t know from that day on the boat. So much that I couldn’t piece together. Parts that just didn’t make sense in my head. An argument? About going to the beach house? It wasn’t adding up.”
“I didn’t think you’d accept that as an answer … but then you did, and you didn’t want to hear anything else. Neither did your father.”
My hands touched my earlobes, remembering back then how every sound had pounded my eardrums, even an almost-silent dribble. “I couldn’t hear anything else.” The knot was so thick in my throat that I could barely swallow. “All I kept thinking about was how much she adored you. How she loved spending time with you and being around you. What could have possibly made her want to get away from you? And then my brain would spiral. Did she know the engines were on? Did she jump on purpose?—”
“No. She didn’t know.”
“I don’t think so either. Pen wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t have suicidal ideation either—but if she had, would I have known? Because I’d missed so many other things, like her using. I don’t trust my awareness at all.”
“You’re coming up with scenarios because that’s what we do. We analyze. We interpret. We try to understand even if it doesn’t make sense and it’s impossible to understand.” His hands moved to the metal, gripping the edge on either side of him. “I can hear every word she spoke as though it happened seconds ago.”
“You mean of that day? Right before she jumped?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I heard myself gasp. And then I heard myself say, “Tell me. I want to hear it.”
“Lainey, the last few minutes I spent with Penelope are imprinted on my brain in a way you can’t even imagine, in a way that I’ll never forget.” He took a breath. “Are you sure you want to hear it all, word for word?”
“Yes. More than anything.”
He let out a deep, loud breath. “The boat was stopped. I’d pulled over to a clear spot, and we were idling since we’d almost just gotten into the accident.
“We’d gone back and forth about you, and she said, ‘I deserve all the things too.’”
“When I asked her what she wasn’t getting, she responded with, ‘Everything!’”
He huffed, rubbing a hand over the top of his head.
“So, I said to her, ‘You’re going to NYU, the only school you wanted to go to—are you forgetting that? And the guys in our high school you wanted to date or hook up with, you got them too. What do you want that you don’t have?’” He was staring straight ahead, toward the track that I’d been walking on, as though he was watching the scene play out in his head.
“‘God, you’re so stupid,’” she said to me.
“Then, I replied, ‘You’re right. I must be. We have another twenty minutes until we’re at the beach house. Can you control yourself long enough to not almost get us into another accident? I’d like to get there already so I can forget about this shitstorm of a day.’” He ran his tongue over his teeth, his eyes getting redder.
“She pointed at me and said, ‘Fuck you.’”
“Rhett …”
If he sensed the emotion in my voice, he didn’t acknowledge it. If, from the corner of his eye, he saw me wipe my tears, he didn’t look at me.
“I tried to say her name, and she said, ‘Leave me the fuck alone.’”
“I opened my arms, Lainey, knowing I’d crossed some kind of boundary, and said, ‘Come here. We’ll hug it out, and then we’ll get going. Don’t forget, we have a joint to share once we get to Timothy’s.’”
“She’d tried to get me to smoke on the boat, and I wouldn’t. I’d promised her we’d share a joint at the beach house just to get her off my back. And the hug was to change her mood, but it caused her to flip me off and tell me to go fuck myself.” He finally looked at me.
The expression on his face was haunting.
Harrowing.
But that wasn’t the only thing that sent me over an edge that I hadn’t realized I was teetering on.
The truth had done that. Penelope’s last moments, which were unlike anything I’d ever imagined.
The tears were suddenly dripping freely down my face, my chin quivering, my breathing coming out in pants.
“The last thing she said was, ‘I’m fucking out of here.’”
“Seconds later, I heard the engines. That sound …” His hand went to his chest, and his eyes shut. “I’ll never get over that noise, Lainey. It was a torture that ripped right through me.”
His eyes opened, and a chill covered my body.
“But there was another noise that followed the engines that I’ll never recover from either.” He waited several beats before he said, “And that was her scream.”
I held up a finger, searching for the words, but my throat was so tight that air wasn’t even moving through it. “I need a second.”
Emotion was pouring through me. It poured over me. And it poured out of me.
I bent toward my lap and covered my face, and as soon as I was hidden, I sobbed. I let out everything that was inside me. The years of sorrow, the pain, the unknown that had eaten at me. I cried for what Pen had experienced the second her feet left the boat, how those engines had beaten her to the point of …
Out of nowhere, I felt heat.
An arm.
And then another.
Rhett was hugging me so hard, changing my coldness to warmth, and I didn’t ask him to let me go.
“I’m sorry, Lainey,” he whispered into the back of my neck. “I’m so fucking sorry.”