40. Chapter 40
Chapter 40
Savannah
February 2009
E mily watched a drop of rain slide down the silky white petal of a rose. The bouquet, one of many, made the fresh grave of Veronica Haywood Willburne stand out painfully among other, more sparsely decorated ones. Covered in flowers, notes, and ribbons, the place was a clear mark of another soul leaving, another welcoming of ashes into the ground.
Emily had barely heard any of the service. Black spots moved at the edge of her vision—the invited leaving the funeral with murmured condolences, their umbrellas spurting open like dark flowers. Her brain couldn’t process it. As for her heart, it felt too heavy to take on more.
The heart was a curious thing. Most of the time, she wasn’t even aware of it. It could beat fast in excitement or contract in shock. Or it could, like in Mama’s case, one day simply stop working. Decide it had gone dormant in this unmoving body for too long and call it quits.
A hand on her shoulder made Emily jerk.
“Let’s go.” Nicky’s voice sounded exactly like Emily imagined her own would, if she spoke right now. Low and tired of fighting back tears.
Nicky wrapped the other arm around Debbie, and Emily numbly let herself being led away, not minding the rain disturbing her vision. A puddle close by splashed, and Emily looked up as Nicky stopped.
Dad stood a few feet away, his face a trying-hard stoic expression Emily had seen all too often these days when she looked in the mirror. She was usually able to maintain it for a few minutes.
Dad opened and closed his mouth a few times, until he finally choked out, “May I?”
Nicky looked toward the grave, then back at him, and slowly nodded. “Come, girls,” she said, and led them away as Emily spared one last glance toward the grave, and Dad kneeling next to it.
Emily was in the hallway when she heard a dull thud in Debbie’s room, followed by yelling. “Debbie?”
Her sister sat on the floor near her desk, gripping a pencil in one hand and massaging the back of her head with the other.
“Are you okay?”
“It’s the stupid pencil,” Debbie grumbled. “The tip broke, so I went to sharpen it, but it broke again and then the stupid thing fell under the desk and I hit my head and it’s all because of this dumb piece of wood that won’t cooperate, like how hard is it for a pencil to work, I mean, it had one job…”
Emily kneeled next to her. Debbie clutched the pencil, hitting its broken tip against the floor rhythmically.
“It’s okay, Debs.”
“No, it’s not.”
Emily pulled her into an embrace, letting Debbie’s head rest on her shoulder. She expected Debbie to rebel, but she melded into that hug, sniffing.
“The last words I said to her, while she was still… awake, were something about being late. I was going over to Monica’s and Mama told me to be back for dinner. It’s so stupid. It wasn’t even a goodbye. I just left and…”
Emily pressed her closer, rocking them both gently.
“At least you were there when she left,” Debbie said in a small voice. “You probably said goodbye. I didn’t even get that.”
“It doesn’t matter what we said to her that day.”
“But it does! It was the last time I saw her like that. I wish I could hug her properly. And say something nicer to her. Something that would make me feel like I made it better for her.”
“She wouldn’t need that. She knew you loved her.”
“What did you say to her last? Do you remember?”
Emily wasn’t sure. She’d been back to the past, to that day, so many times. Which version stuck? Please, Mama, don’t go? I love you? Bye, see you?
No wonder she didn’t treasure—or regret—her last words in the same way Debbie did. She always had the option to go back, have another last word, another last hug. Debbie couldn’t.
“It was probably something stupid, too,” Emily answered. “It doesn’t matter. She heard us in the hospital.”
Where, considering how Emily ignored Nicky’s calls that day, Debbie probably had the better goodbye.
Fighting back tears, Emily released her sister and picked up the forgotten pencil. “Do you wanna go destroy this? We could break it, burn it…”
Debbie managed a tiny smile. “No. Leave it.” And then, in a surprising gesture, she fell back into the hug. “Do you think she still hears us?”
Emily rested her chin on top of her sister’s head, smoothing her hair. Slowly, she nodded.
“I hate literary questions.” Sarah rotated on Emily’s desk chair, waving the practice test for the SATs. “Look at this. Even they admit two options are theoretically correct! Who makes these things?”
Sarah was a wonderful bubble provider. That’s what Emily called them—her school friends, the people at the hair salon, even some teachers. Nicky had insisted the girls return to school a few days after the funeral three weeks ago. And being out among the people was better. When Emily was alone, she got that feeling—the feeling of being underwater, its cold, wet mass crushing her body, the mere glimpse of sunlight so far out of reach. She gasped for air, and even though she wasn’t suffocating, she couldn’t draw a full breath.
But then someone or something would come along, providing a momentary distraction—a bubble of air—and she could breathe again. The trouble was, the bubbles ran out sooner or later, and she was back in the water, sinking, struggling.
Which was why she was so grateful for Sarah. Her friend had tried her best to provide companionship and distraction, watching over Emily like a guard dog. It also helped the SATs were just around the corner, forcing Emily to focus—and Sarah to rant pretty amusingly.
“I’ll skip to the math part.” Sarah sifted through the papers.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to do that in reality.”
“Whoever wrote the questions for the reading part is as dumb as a box of rocks. What do you know what the author had meant, huh, random… person?” Sarah turned the paper around, as if she expected to find a name there. “That’s why I like math better. It’s either right or wrong.”
Such a Will’s way of thinking. He would’ve said something like that; that math was nice because it was certain, objective, absolute. There was a right solution or a wrong one. Will sure loved his right and wrong.
Unfortunately, Will hadn’t been around since the afternoon of cheating the test—he left to give Emily some privacy. No, don’t think about that afternoon. Bubble, bubble…
Luckily, Sarah continued to chat. “You should’ve seen Cory yesterday, the poor thing. Four of us had to help him on the bus with that leg of his.”
Emily happily grabbed the new topic. “I’m surprised his mama didn’t take him out to home school him yet. Apparently, she’s mighty protective of him.”
“You can never protect your child from everything, Emily dear.” Sarah tried to exaggerate her accent to sound like a typical Southern Mama. “You’ll see that when you have some of your own.”
Emily tossed a pillow at her, but Sarah ducked, and it hit the desk instead, knocking over a pencil holder.
“And you might also want to teach those kids not to do that,” Sarah’s burst of laughter ended her accent. Emily cracked a smile, and her lungs filled with the clean, healthy air of relief. Sarah really was the best bubble maker.