Day 90
Adam
“Tell me about them,” I spur her on gently, as we drive through West Virginia and the clouds clear.
“About my family?”
I nod.
Eve seems to get lost in her mind for a while, and I let her, not wanting to disrupt whatever thought process she has going on.
“You remember the sweatshirt I was wearing when we first met,” she states after a while. It’s not a question, but I still mumble an affirmative. “The navy one. You asked if I took it from a boyfriend.”
I do remember. The sleeves were too long, but even if they weren’t, the image of her standing above me is not something I’d ever forget. I could probably paint it from memory alone.
“I didn’t, but you were right to assume it wasn’t mine,” she admits, and I throw her a glance. She’s staring ahead through the windshield as she speaks. “It belonged to my sister.”
Her sister who died.
“There were three of us; Vanessa, Olivia and I. Vanessa died when she and I were in high school.” The words drag out from her mouth like they hurt to voice out loud. “Car accident.”
“That’s so young,” I mutter with a pain similar to her own. I’ve lost people, too, but I’ve never had a sibling. Not by blood, anyway.
“That’s what I keep in the suitcase, you know.
” She leans her elbow on the open window.
“Her things. Some of her clothes. A bottle of perfume. I could buy replicas, but it’s not the same.
She wouldn’t have touched them.” I think I see her blinking rapidly from the corner of my eye. “They wouldn’t be hers.”
I reach out and grab her hand. I’m not really sure what there is to say, so I don’t. ‘I’m sorry’ is meaningless in the face of what she’s shared.
“Being the eldest daughter, I had to try and keep us together, after,” she speaks again after a while.
“I pushed for us all to get grief counseling. I wasn’t even out of high school yet, myself.
But I couldn’t let us sink.” Her voice thickens with emotion and she clears her throat.
“It’s been a few years, now, and we’re better.
It still hurts like crazy, but we’re in a different place.
” The hope and determination falter before she adds, “Or, well, we were.”
“Don’t lose hope.” I tighten my hand around hers. “Let’s just get there first.”
Realistically, though, I know what we’ll probably find, and I just try not to think about it. With everyone gone, I doubt that there will be anyone at her childhood home, of all places, to greet us.
Eve isn’t stupid. She’s aware of it, too. But assuming is different to knowing, and I just hope she’ll let me pick up her pieces when we get there and learn the truth.
“Wait, slow down.” Her tone makes me hit the brakes without question.
It’s not quite the panic with which she warned me about that deer-thing, but there’s still concern there, and a moment later I figure out what it is that’s worrying her.
I put the car in park and we step outside to walk forward, until there’s no road left anymore.
“Well, that’s just great,” I mutter at the remains of the road which rest in a canyon about a hundred feet below us. The greenery has overgrown parts of it, already, the shrubs likely the reason the asphalt fell apart to begin with.
“Good thing you spotted it,” I add with a sigh. “Or we would have driven straight over the edge, Thelma and Louise style.”
“We’ll have to go back and circle around.” She shakes her head.
I know she’s thinking about the Canada border as she stares at the gorge below. I’m not as smart as her, not in biology or geography or—I don’t even know what to call this. Environmental science, maybe?—but I know that it should probably take years of decay for a highway to just collapse like this.
She’s quiet when she finally speaks. “Is it odd that I’m a little relieved?”
“No. Not really.” I want to put an arm around her, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. “If you regret it, we can always change direction, too. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I know.” She gives me a crooked smile. Then she looks at the steep edge of the fallen road, taking in a deep breath. “But we should try. I owe them that much.”
She doesn’t add anything else as we head back to the car.