Chapter Twenty-Eight River
Twenty-Eight
River
“Amelia, get back here!” I followed my sister through the front door. “We’re not done talking about this.”
She ignored me. The same silent treatment she’d given me in my truck when I got her from the police station after she’d been picked up for truancy. She stomped up the stairs to her room. I was about to go after her when a sharp pain lanced up my shin. I tripped, catching myself on the banister.
“Goddammit.”
Someone had left a steamer trunk in the entry. It looked vaguely familiar; maybe Dazia was back for a visit. I rubbed my shin with a curse and started after Amelia upstairs, but her door slammed hard enough to make the house shiver.
“Shit.”
I gave the trunk a kick, anger and frustration boiling up in me. I fought for calm; if they escaped, the grief was sure to follow.
“But the fucking police station?” I seethed and stormed through the house to the den.
Dad was in his chair, having taken the day off from the shop. He’d been doing that more and more lately. He was streaming a replay of the 2018 Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl on the TV.
“Dad, we have to talk.” I turned the chair beside his recliner to face him.
“Sure, son,” he said, his eyes on the TV. “What can I do ya for?”
“It’s Amelia. She’s ditching again. The cops picked her up at the mall.”
Dad sat up, his eyebrows rising. “The police?”
“I don’t know what to do with her anymore. I’ve tried everything. I need you to…” Do something. Anything. “Talk to her. Please. She needs you, Dad.”
I needed him too, to come back from wherever he went to escape the grief.
“I will,” he said. “She’s gone too far if the police are involved.” But his eyes were already drifting back to the game. “Look at Brady’s pass.” He shook his head, marveling. “That could be you, you know. It’s not too late.”
I clenched my jaw. “Dad…”
“I know, I know. It’s too dangerous.”
I started to tell him—again—the car accident had nothing to do with why I quit football but didn’t bother. He rarely spoke about the accident, and he never mentioned Holden or my nonexistent love life. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Dad, when are you going to talk to Amelia?”
“Soon. Tonight.”
I sighed. Amelia had passed her midterm by the skin of her teeth after we’d spent two solid weeks going over the material. I thought things were improving, but now she was slipping again, and nothing I said or did was propping her up.
“River,” Dad said. “I will talk to her. I promise.”
I nodded and started to go. I was at the door when he said, “Oh, a big delivery came for you today. I had them leave it in the entry—it’s too damn heavy for me to carry to your room.”
“That’s for me?”
“Yep. All the way from Paris.”
Every part of me froze except for my heart, which took off, racing around my ribs. I practically ran to the foyer and knelt beside the trunk I should’ve recognized immediately.
“His life’s work,” I murmured, running my hand over the surface.
I took hold of the side handles and hefted it. It was heavy as hell; my left shoulder ached as I struggled to carry it upstairs.
In my room, I kicked the door shut behind me and dumped the trunk on my bed.
Its dark red surface was scuffed, customs notices from Paris and New York affixed to the front and a shipping address from Le Bristol Hotel.
The lock had been taped over by thick industrial tape that took me several minutes to cut through.
My heart in my throat, I opened the trunk to Holden’s journals.
Maybe a hundred of them; he’d told me they dated all the way back to when he was a kid.
I took one out and held it in my hands. A newer one, less worn than the others.
My fingers itched to open it, to read his words and reclaim a piece of him I’d gone so long without.
I can’t. It’s too private.
But he’d sent them to me. He’d meant for me to have them, didn’t he?
Slowly, I opened the journal and flipped to a random page dated November of last year.
The conversion therapy’s cruelest lesson wasn’t taught in the hardest moments—the night marches, the beatings, or even the lake.
The cruelty was in the words fed to us, a steady diet of self-hate.
A mainline of loathing and unworthiness injected directly into our bloodstreams every day.
Long after the bruises have faded, the poison lingers, circulating through every part of me and rotting everything I touch.
When River tells me he loves me, the poison whispers that he’s lying.
When I want to say it back, the poison tells me my words aren’t worth the breath it takes to utter them.
The poison commanded me to run away, and I did, even though I’d have given anything to stay.
I took the words like a deserved punch to the gut and flipped through other pages, scanning quickly.
But the same theme rose to the surface every time—what was done to Holden in Alaska went deeper than I could ever know, even after witnessing his alcohol benders, his shivering in seventy-degree heat, his march into the ocean that black night.
He covered it up with elegant clothes, a fuck-the-world attitude, and a sense of humor that reassured everyone he was fine. But underneath…
I shut the journal, my heart breaking all over again and guilt filling in the cracks. Holden was in constant pain, and this trunk was filled with his cries for help. Page after page, thousands upon thousands of cries for help.
And no one answered.
He’s calling to me.
I shut the trunk and went to my laptop. Google told me Le Bristol Hotel was in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. That didn’t mean anything to me, but now I had an address.
I hurried from my room and knocked on Amelia’s door. My sluggish blood felt electrified. Fear and hope and love—God, the love came rushing at me full force, whacking me so hard when I’d started to forget how strong it was.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Amelia said from inside her room.
“Amelia, it’s serious.”
“Go away, River.”
“That trunk downstairs? It’s from Holden.”
I heard a rustling, then the door flew open. Amelia grabbed my arm, pulled me into her room, and shut the door. “You heard from him? Oh my God, sit down. Tell me everything.”
I chuckled lightly. “I don’t know much. He sent me old journals he wrote during a pretty fucking terrible time in his life.”
“Okay so…why? What does it mean?”
“It means I have to go to Paris.”
Amelia cocked her head sarcastically. “Uh-huh. Oh, I forgot to mention it, but my ex-boyfriend called me. He’s really sad, so I have to jet off to Tahiti to cheer him up.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I think Holden’s hurting really badly, and I…”
“Miss him?”
“To put it mildly. But I need your help, Amelia. I can’t leave here if I think you’re just going to get in trouble again. Or hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt, for crying out loud.”
“Says the girl I just picked up from the police station.”
Amelia held my gaze defiantly, then flopped back on her pillows.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that everything feels so pointless.
Like, my friends at school talk about the stupidest shit, and I just want to grab them and scream in their faces, None of that bullshit matters.
” She shook her head, face crumpling. “I just miss her, River. I miss her so much.”
I lay beside her on the pillow, shoulder to shoulder. “I know. Me too.”
“Yeah?” Amelia said, a hint of accusation in her voice. “Of the three of us, you’re the only one who seems to have his shit together.”
“We’re taking turns being a mess.” I nudged her arm. “You’re taking a really long turn, by the way.”
“Ha ha.”
My smile faded. “Amelia, I haven’t heard from Holden in almost a year. And it really fucking hurts. Every day.”
“On top of missing Mom.”
I nodded, my own tears pricking my eyes. “And now I have a chance. If something happens and I didn’t at least try to be there for him, I’m not going to be okay. I’m not going to be okay at all.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see what happens when I get there. If he hasn’t taken off again.”
A shiver racked me to think Holden might regret sending me his journals and disappear all over again.
“Are you going to bring him back?”
“That’s not up to me. He has a lot of stuff to get through.”
“Like what? You never told me why he left in the first place.”
“Because he thinks he’s no good for me.” I looked over at her. “Can I trust you with something personal?”
She nodded quickly. “Yeah, sure.”
“When he was fifteen, Holden’s parents sent him to conversion therapy.”
My sister’s eyes widened in fury. “To try to make him not be gay? Assholes!”
“They taught him that he wasn’t worth anything the way he was, and it stuck. As much as I…care about him, I can’t magically fix him. It’s not possible. But I can let him know I’m still here.”
“A year’s a long time, River,” Amelia said gently. “How long will you wait?”
“However long it takes.”
“You really love him, huh?”
I nodded. “But I love you too. And I can’t go to France and spend the entire time scared something’s happening over here. I need to be able to trust you.”
“You can trust me, River. Even though it looks like I’m caught up in my own shit and get pissed at you sometimes—”
“A lot. You get pissed at me a lot.”
“Shut up. I’m trying to apologize. I see how hard you work for us. And how sad you are, though you don’t show it. I see it.”
“Thanks, Amelia,” I said, relief and the electric nervousness humming through me that in less than twenty-four hours, I might be with Holden.
“When will you leave?” she asked.
“As soon as possible. Right now, actually,” I said, getting off the bed.
Amelia walked me to her door. “Do you think you’ll be gone a long time?”
“I’ll come back as fast as I can.” My stomach clenched at her dubious expression. “Unless… Maybe I shouldn’t go.”
“No, no. You should. I know you need this. We’ll be fine, I swear.”
I felt torn in half. “You sure?”