Chapter 20
T he prickle that formed in Ellie’s chest was like the tail end of a firework; hot to touch, fleeting, an ending.
On-screen, the movie blurred, and Drake’s memory started to play, but Ellie was already standing, flinging the auditorium doors open, and moving down the curved stairwell through the pulsing red lobby.
The prickle became pressure. Doom swirled above her head, but Ellie wasn’t going to give in to it.
No, if she could get out of there fast enough, away from the theater, maybe she could outrun the memory.
Cold air stung her cheeks as she pulled on the heavy brass handles and burst out into the night.
Ellie wrapped her coat tight around herself and started the descent down all the slick cobblestones.
If only she could press rewind. Had her strategy of forgetting been so bad?
Clarity was overrated. And at least, before that night’s showing, she didn’t have to live with the truth.
She had gone to the cinema hoping it would prove her fears wrong.
Instead, it had proven them exactly right.
Ellie felt herself pulled in by a big black coil.
Mae’s Famous Scoops was on her periphery, but the world around her wasn’t real.
She had the sense that if she reached out and touched anything—an iron bench or a wooden store sign—they would evaporate.
Ellie was wound farther into the coil. The only comfort came from the glow of the theater growing dimmer and dimmer behind her.
“Ellie. Slow down.” Drake’s voice.
Drake.
He’d never see her quite the same way again, would he?
“Ellie?” His hands brought her shoulders to a stop.
“I think you wore the wrong shoes for a chase sequence.” His humor was an attempt to speak her language.
When tough things happened, Ellie leaned on levity.
But right then, she didn’t want to make light of things.
She started to move again toward an unknown destination.
The idea of away grew shinier in her mind. “Can, can you slow down?”
Ellie couldn’t slow down. She only wished her feet would move faster.
Her heels got in the way as she darted toward the bottom of the alley, leaped through the open doorway, and returned to the street lined with whimsical storefronts.
A beeping sounded in her ears. Drake’s truck was being unlocked.
He ran ahead to grab the passenger door for her, sending out smoke signals with his breath.
“I can’t—” Ellie told him. She didn’t finish the thought, but Drake seemed to read between the lines.
Ellie could not, under any circumstance, get inside a car after what they had just seen.
Drake flicked his watch forward to check the time.
He opened the trunk to rustle around for something and returned with a fleece blanket, which he draped around her like a cloak.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“It’s late,” he said, rubbing the soft material over her shoulders. “And cold.”
“So?”
His hands found his pockets. “So, everything around here is closed.”
“So—”
“So now you’re the queen of the blankets.” Ellie’s fingers started to thaw. Drake’s thumb brushed her face and rubbed off some of her tears. “I’m here,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready to talk.”
“The rules,” she reminded him.
“I think this is a good moment to press pause on those.”
Ellie knew she was closed off when it came to sharing her inner world.
People before Drake had hinted at this. Lucas, one of her boyfriends in her twenties, had described her as a castle.
She was beautiful, he’d told her, but out of reach, full of mysterious hallways and secrets.
His assessment was right, she worried. Yet, Drake had just seen it all.
She feared he’d love her less after learning the truth.
But no, he was standing on the castle draw-bridge, waiting to be invited in.
Where should she start? Ellie’s mind strained to hold on to every detail about Ben. It was important, she recognized this time, to preserve the nuances of her brother. Because she had promised she wouldn’t forget him, and she had been failing at that.
The moment he died, an hourglass had flipped.
The harder Ellie gripped onto the fragments of him, the faster the grains of sand slid to the bottom of the glass.
Memories of events together were first to fade—holidays, birthdays, bits of conversation.
Next, she lost the sound of his voice. Lately, Ellie was losing the way Ben looked.
Giving away his things was one of her biggest regrets.
She’d thought she couldn’t handle the weight of them, but they were pieces of him.
Now, she studied the same photographs over and over again, confined to a flattened version of him.
Until a few weeks ago.
Ellie had come to the cinema wanting to fill in the gaps of her memory, but she’d found something better: her brother, alive.
There he was again, on a big screen. There was his cheeky smile, his Hollywood charisma, his lightning-sharp wit, the bounce in his confident gait.
There was her brother in the driver’s seat right next to her, eating french fries, listening to obscure music, giving her advice.
Advice she desperately needed. Why had she resisted his guidance?
And now, she’d lived through losing him for a second time and felt the full burden of it.
Green light. Go!
Drake was pulling the blanket away from her face to get a better look. “Ellie?”
The Case of the Girl in the Car Accident.
“It’s all my fault,” she said finally.
“Oh, hey. That’s not true, Ellie.” Drake moved closer. “It wasn’t your fault what happened. At all. It was a green light. You told him it was a green light … Anyone would’ve done that. The other driver is the one who ran it—”
“If I hadn’t been making such a scene,” Ellie said. “If I hadn’t taken up all his attention, he would still be here. You would meet him and know him. You would love him, Drake.”
“My heart is breaking for you.” Drake was tearing up now, too.
His arms hugged her blanketed form, and she planted her head on his chest. “I had no idea you were there that night. I mean, when you told me about the accident, I should’ve put that together.
Asked more questions. Or … I don’t know.
I’m so sorry, Ellie.” Drake’s arms wrapped tighter around her.
Ellie’s weight gave into him. Sharing her grief was new; now she didn’t have to do the work of carrying her past by herself. Drake was proving he could handle the elements, the cold, all of her pain. So she sobbed in the empty street while Drake held her.
She described the weight of missing Ben. She shared the way the loss had pulled her family apart, slowly and painfully. And Drake didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch. He stood on the side-walk with her, in the dark, and took in every word.