Chapter Twenty-Seven Jenn
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jenn
Sunday morning
After Jess died, everything in my life spun loose for a long time. I know what it looks like when someone’s coming apart. And I won’t stand by and watch that happen to Mary Langston. Not if I can change the trajectory.
As I stroll through the hospital parking lot toward the entrance to the building, I walk right past several journalists.
They clock me, give me the once-over, decide I’m not someone who can offer them any intel, and return to their phones and their conversations.
Which was the whole idea of dressing down this Sunday morning.
I’m not very doctorly in well-worn jeans and Sketchers, hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Mission accomplished.
I smile, amused by the idea that they have no clue who I am and that I’m the one person—outside of Mary herself—who could give them the scoop they’re all so desperately looking for.
Up on the VIP floor, I find Mary sitting up in bed, reading. And while the scabs and abrasions on her face are healing nicely, her big icy eyes are ringed with deep, dark circles.
“Good morning,” I greet her softly and hold up a white bakery bag, shaking it. “Up for a little sugar/carb infusion? I’ve got fresh pastry from the Cuban bakery down the street.”
“Oh God, yes,” she agrees, and I set it on the tray table that hovers over her bed. She peers inside and pulls out a flaky morsel filled with sweet cheese and guava paste. She nibbles on the point of it, closing her eyes. “Mmm. Thank you. I needed this. I slept like shit last night.”
“How come?” I ask, pulling up a chair so I can sit at her side.
“Ugh. Nightmares. All night long. At one point I got so twisted up in the sheets, I had to call for a nurse to help me get untangled.”
“Do you remember what they were about?”
She pauses with the cup poised halfway to her chapped lips. “I dreamed about her,” she tells me after a beat of silence has passed between us.
“About Sam?”
She nods. “It was really upsetting. And . . . it made me remember some of what happened. Not all of it? but a lot more than I knew before.”
I have to be careful here, not wanting to spook her by seeming too interested. Or dissuade her by being not interested enough. But inside I’m doing a fist pump in the air. I knew it was in there somewhere; it was just a matter of time before it came floating up out of her subconscious.
“Okay. Can you tell me about that?”
“Well, I don’t remember all of it,” she tells me again quickly.
I hold up a reassuring palm.
“That’s totally fine. Anything is good. Sometimes things like this come back to you in flashes, like little pieces of a puzzle. You just keep collecting and sorting them until you have enough to put it all together.”
She nods thoughtfully, and when she speaks again, I get the sense she’s weighing her words.
“I remember it was getting dark. And she was . . . weak, I guess? Sick, maybe. I, uh, I tried to paddle us out on my own, but, yeah, it was like pitch black, and I didn’t have a headlamp for some reason.
But there were all these downed trees and branches everywhere.
And then we lost the tide, and I knew we weren’t going anywhere for hours. Sam was just getting worse and worse.”
“Do you know what was wrong with her?” I prod gently.
Her brow furrows as if she’s willing her memory to go back. But it won’t. Not yet, anyway.
“I think . . .” She shakes her head as if trying to dislodge a thought or an image within it, then sighs in frustration.
“I don’t know,” she says at last. “But I know I held her in the canoe. And we talked in the dark, trying to keep warm. And at some point, she was just . . . gone. I guess I must have tried to hike out, because they said the ranger found me about a quarter of a mile from the boat, where I’d left Sam.
But I don’t have any memory of how it was that I got there. ”
I reach out and pat her arm. “Hey, it’s going to be all right.
Whatever it is. Whatever happened. Mary, you have to keep in mind you’ve experienced a multilayered trauma here.
Not only did you experience your sister’s death, you had to fight for your own survival.
And now you’re having to figure out exactly what happened right along with everyone else. ”
She shakes her head slowly, blond hair slipping back and forth along the back of her shoulders as she does. “I-I’m not so sure everyone sees it like that,” she murmurs.
“Listen, it was my job to come here and assess you—your mental state. Wanna know what I think? What I’m going to write in my report?”
She nods but doesn’t speak, so I continue.
“I think that you’re an extraordinary young woman who loved her sister but didn’t always like her.
That you’re grateful to have found her but sometimes resented the way she upended your life.
And that you were desperate to give her something that only you could—a family.
” I shift slightly and take the young woman’s small hand in mine, giving it a squeeze.
“I don’t know you very well. And I don’t know what happened out there.
But I’ve got good instincts, and they’re telling me you had nothing to do with Sam’s death. ”
Mary Langston stares at me for several heartbeats before shifting her focus to something on the other side of the room. Something that nobody can see except for her. “Do you ever wish it had been you?”
The question comes out of nowhere, and I don’t immediately understand the context.
“Wish what had been me?”
“Have you ever—even once, even for a single, fleeting moment—wished it had been you . . . and not her? Not Jess.”
There’s an explosion of air from my lungs.
Jesus!
First Stef, now Mary. For the second time in twelve hours, someone has managed to give me a violent physical reaction without laying so much as a finger on me.
Eyes that were wild and frantic only moments ago are cold and flat, and they’re trained on me—on every inch of my face. And they’re waiting for an answer.
Somewhere in the time it takes me to open my mouth and utter a response, it all comes flooding back. Like a towering wave that crests and breaks, catching me in its powerful undertow and dragging me—drowning me in my own memories. Not the memories of that day but the ones that came after that day.
High school, college, career, marriage—I have continued to grow and age, develop and change .
. . but not Jess. I surpassed innumerable milestones, the excitement and joy of each overshadowed by the looming presence of her absence and the excruciating volume of her silence.
For decades now, my sister has remained frozen in time, just a skinny teenager with a long, dark ponytail hanging down her back.
It will be different for Mary, but also the same. They never got to share all those childhood experiences. And now they won’t get to share most of the adult ones. They existed together, as a complete unit, for the slimmest slice of time. And it wasn’t nearly enough.
Of course she wishes it were her. She’s the one left behind to shoulder the burden of living out a life filled with question marks and regrets, blank spaces in pictures, a missing name in conversations.
She now has to live for the both of them .
. . just as I have had to do for the last twenty-three years. An honor wrapped in a burden.
“Yes.”
The single word hangs between us for what feels like a long time, the spell broken only when she reaches for a box of tissues beside her, plucks one out, and hands it to me.
I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
When Mary Langston starts to speak again, it’s with the slow, weighted, intimate tone that signals the imminent arrival of something important, something serious.
A confession? An admonition?
“Dr. Flores, I trust you. And there’s something—”
I’ll never know how she was going to finish that sentence because just then, there’s a sharp sound in the otherwise silent room—a rap on the door. We both jump, startled, as Julian Braithwaite sticks his head inside, his expression grim.
“Ladies, the detective is here with an update, and he’d like to see us. All of us.”