Chapter 40 – “Never Let Me Go” - Florence The Machine #2
I lift my head from Everett’s chest, catching August’s face just in time to watch it fall. His eyes glaze over with a haunting emptiness, and the expression slices directly through me, gutting me so thoroughly I’m surprised my insides don’t splatter to the ground at my feet.
“No,” he whispers, hollow and choked. “I’ll never subject anyone else to that image, even inside their own mind. That’s mine to harbor alone.”
“It doesn’t have to be. We can carry it with you,” my brother says.
August wipes a hand down his face, morphing his features from composed numbness to devastated realization, his eyes fluttering closed as the tears finally begin to free fall.
Leo reappears from the back door, now wearing a burnt yellow Heathen’s hoodie, with his hands in both pockets. Nodding toward the back of his property, he says, “Do you guys want to go watch the sunset on the beach?”
Everett and I turn to August, leaving the decision up to him. He blinks rapidly, wiping his eyes before nodding and pushing off the porch railing. “Yeah, why not.”
Everett helps me off the porch swing before following Leo down the steps and onto the pebbled pathway that leads through his backyard and toward the lavender-lined cliffside.
I’m not sure who originally forged the trail that takes us down to the beach, but it’s been there since Darby’s grandmother owned the house when we were children.
We used to sneak down here often to take advantage of the private cove at the base of the cliff, and though I’m now positive that Diane Andrews was aware of our shenanigans, she never ratted us out for trespassing.
Leo has had some work done to make the trail more navigable and less steep, so it’s much easier to follow now than it was back then.
He’s also having a second, wider path put in on the other side of his property so it’ll be easier to carry surfboards and beach supplies down to the bottom.
That path will lead directly to the guesthouse he’s having built behind the detached garage.
Everett and Leo walk ahead of me, and I reach back to grab August’s arm, ensuring he’s right behind every step I take down the narrow trail. Once we reach the bottom, the trail broadens as the rocky cliffside meets the sand.
Pulling him beside me, I say softly to August, “You could talk about it with us. Clearly, we all have unresolved feelings when it comes to our last moments with him, and if we finally stopped keeping them to ourselves, maybe we could understand them a little better. Maybe we’d stop feeling so alone. ”
He only blinks at me, green eyes shimmering with unshed tears behind his glasses. He doesn’t offer a response but lifts my hand to his lips and presses them to my knuckles.
Everett and Leo sit down next to a large piece of driftwood, drawing their knees to their chests.
I sit beside Everett, and August plops down next to me.
The sun is fading faster now, and not much daylight remains, but the rays beam upward in the sky, and it appears as if the clouds are dancing under reflective glass, clashing together in a bright display of color.
Light skips across the whitecaps as they crest and crash against the shore, giving the whole world a soft, blurred glow that makes you question whether you’ve been momentarily transported to a more rose-colored reality.
“We had made plans earlier in the week to go surfing that morning. I normally check the weather app the night before to make sure conditions are good, but I’d forgotten,” August says quietly, breaking me out of that golden blur and snapping me back to the only reality I’ve ever known.
“It was windy, and the sky was dark. I knew it was bad, and I tried calling him a few times before I left, but he wasn’t answering, so I figured I’d just show up anyway.
” I look at him, but his gaze is planted firmly on the horizon.
“It was Cyprus State Park. You know the one off the highway, a few miles north of town?”
“Yeah.” Leo sighs.
“I was already there when he arrived. He was so fucking mad at me. I understood why. I got it. It’s hard to watch the person you’re in love with fall in love with someone else, especially when you love that other person too.”
The words burn. Like acid rain falling from his mouth and landing on my skin.
“I told him I understood it, but I wasn’t sorry, and that his anger wouldn’t change anything.
” August swallows, tucking his knees into his chest and hugging them.
Leo shuffles sideways, forming a circle of the four of us so he can look at August head-on.
“We went back and forth for a while, but he seemed to settle—to somewhat understand. He told me that it made sense, that you and I had always made sense.” He glances down at me, and when our eyes meet, I know the guilt is slicing through us both, leaving him and me in tatters.
“He said he’d get over it eventually, but that there were things he’d said to you… ”
You are impossible to love.
“I was the one who got angry then. I hadn’t known he’d been with you that morning, and he was taunting me for it.
When I realized that you two had your own confrontation, that he’d said something hurtful to you…
” August shakes his head, his eyes a million miles away as he relives the memories flashing across his mind.
“I figured that he and I—the three of us—would end up okay. We were angry in the moment, but had a base of understanding. You were the one who got left behind, so I wanted to find you. I told him he leaves damage in the wake of his recklessness. He called after me, but I kept going. I knew I was leaving things unresolved, but I didn’t care.
He was my brother, you know?” He turns to us, tears streaming freely from his eyes.
“Even when things weren’t okay, you had confidence they would be. They always are in the end.”
How many times has August watched Leo, Everett, and me fight over the years, end our conversations abruptly, and shut each other out, always having faith in future resolution? How many times did he watch those interactions, knowing he hadn’t escaped one of his own?
He told me love had been a question, and that’s why I was so afraid of it. It’s only now that I realize the meaning of family may be the same for him.
A drumming ache erupts in my chest at that thought.
“Things won’t always be okay,” I whisper. “Even when they’re not, I want you to remember that they are. No fight between us”—I glance at my brothers—“will ever mean more than the love that’s there too.”
In my periphery, I register both Everett and Leo nodding.
“I told him it was a bad day for surfing before I left, and when I reached my truck at the top of that cliff, I looked out over it, searching for him so I could tell him again.” August’s gaze tracks the horizon line once again. “He was already gone.”
I loop my arm through August’s, leaning my head on his shoulder. I close my eyes, the setting sun warming my cheeks as I face the horizon. I embrace the warmth, because I know the memory we confront next will be the darkest of them all.
“I tracked the shoreline from end to end, searching for his red board, but I came up short. That’s when I immediately began bounding back down the stairs, yelling his name.
” August takes a rattling inhale, and I hear Leo mutter a curse beneath his breath.
“Apparently someone down there had already seen whatever wave took him out. They’d called for a lifeguard, and I made it to the beach just in time to see them wading through the water in search of Zach.
I ran straight to them, but by the time I was knee-deep, they were pulling him out. ”
I squeeze my eyes like I’m trying to rid my mind of the image August presents, but it doesn’t work. Suffocating beneath my emotion, I gasp for air. August’s palm slides beneath mine, clasping our hands together and resting them on top of his knee.
“Paramedics arrived, and they were doing all they could, but I knew. Before we made it to the hospital, before the doctors confirmed. I knew the moment I looked at him that his soul wasn’t there anymore.”
I feel the warmth of a second palm on mine before the pressure of another lands atop it. I know it’s my brothers, but I’m not ready to open my eyes yet. Not ready to face the devastation I’ll see reflected back at me.
I’m not sure how long we sit in silence before Leo shakily says, “This is what I retrieved from inside the house.”
I let my eyelids flutter open, vision blurry through my tears before I wipe them away to find my brother sitting cross-legged in the sand, a small black box in his palm.
“Sadie was too distraught to handle the aftermath of it, and you were taking care of her.” He nods toward August, before doing the same to Everett.
“You were trying to help Elena, and though I made my own attempts, I felt like there was some deeper twin-level connection I couldn’t reach.
I felt so fucking helpless,” he whispers.
“So, I helped Alex with a lot of the…logistical shit that nobody should be having to think about. I remember calling to cancel his gym membership…” He shakes his head.
“I closed his bank accounts, sorted through his belongings, cleaned out his fucking car. I also retrieved his ashes from the funeral home.” Leo looks at the box in his hand.
“They asked me if I’d like to have them split into individual parts for loved ones to keep.
I knew Sadie and Alex probably would’ve said no, but I said yes.
I had the majority set aside for them, but I made sure to have something for each of us to keep or spread how we wanted. ”
A sob rips through me at the realization of what my brother holds in his hand.
“I spread mine for him in Nazaré, because he’d always dreamed of going,” Leo continues. “We keep Everett’s at Heathen’s, because he was supposed to work there with us.”