Bird Song (51 page)

“Oh God,” I moaned.
 
If the accident had killed Stacy, that meant that there was no Robert.
 

 
“Grace, what’s wrong?”

“Robert…” I sobbed softly, closing my eyes and curling up into a ball on the floor, the pain of him not existing more excruciating than the idea of him simply not being in my life.
 
I felt empty, hollow, my insides caving in around my wounded heart.

“Grace!” Dad shouted.

“Grace?”

I felt him shaking me, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.

“Grace, open your eyes, it’s okay.”

I shook my head, unwilling to see a world that didn’t possess the one thing in it that made everything else work.

Open your eyes, love.

I did so, but more out of shock than anything else.
 
My head was no longer against soft carpet.
 
Instead, it was pressed against cold steel.
 
Mercury eyes, liquid and brimming with concern were staring at me from the edge of the table that I had fallen asleep on.

“Robert?”

He nodded his head, his hand gently squeezing mine.
 
My eyes shifted to it and I spied the glint of silver around my finger.
 
“Oh, it’s back,” I whispered.

“It never left,” Robert said softly.

With a cry, I wrapped my arms around Robert’s neck, the sobbing that had begun on the floor in my dream crossing over into my reality, only now with relief and joy that Robert was here, that he was real, that he was still mine.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.
 
He gently pulled me away just far enough so that he could look into my eyes.
 
“Grace, what’s wrong?”

“I
dr
-dreamt that y-you weren’t r-real,” I hiccupped, my fingers digging into Robert’s shirt in an attempt to keep him from pulling me away any further.
 
“Don’t leave me.
 
Don’t ever go away again.”

He allowed me to bring myself closer, his hand pressing against the back of my head, his embrace strong and comforting.
 
“I promise, I promise you, Grace.
 
It’s okay.
 
It was just a dream, I’m here,” he cooed into my ear.
 
I nodded my head, but didn’t let him go.

A soft cough alerted me to the fact that we weren’t alone.
 
“Who’s that?” I whispered into Robert’s ear, unwilling to turn around, to leave the stronghold of Robert’s arms.

“Mr. Frey,” Robert replied.
 
“He’s here to ask you for your forgiveness, Grace.”

I lifted my head from Robert’s shoulder and looked at him in disbelief.
 
“Are you serious?”

Robert nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
I am.”

“But he nearly killed me,” I hissed.
 
“He left me to die on the side of the road, Robert.”

“Yes, he did.
 
But I told you that he needs your help, and it begins with this,” Robert insisted, pulling me away once more to turn and face the man who had nearly destroyed my life.
 
“He needs absolution, Grace.
 
You can help him by doing this.”

“How?”

“Listen to him, let him tell you about what happened.”

I looked at him with disbelief in my eyes.
 
But I already know what happened.

Robert reached for my hand and held it, giving it a gentle squeeze.
 
“He needs to do this, Grace.
 
He needs your forgiveness.
 
And you need to listen.”

“Fine,” I conceded and turned to face the man who ran me down.
 
“Tell me about what happened.”

Mr. Frey looked at me and then at Robert.
 
Seated in the chair opposite me, he seemed as confused as I did, but proceeded to tell me the same series of events that he had given to Robert, the details bringing forth different memories, each one from a different point of view to form a complete picture of what had happened to me.
 
As the story reached its culmination, the scene in my mind changed.
 
It was no longer my body on the ground.
 
As I had in my dream, it was Stacy’s body that lay broken and battered on the road as Mr. Frey drove off to escape the reality of what he had done.

I felt Robert release my hand and he turned me around to face him, his eyes searching, his mind probing as he, too, saw the image in my thoughts, leaving him perplexed and bewildered.

“Grace,” I heard behind me.
 
I turned to look at Mr. Frey, whose eyes had turned puffy and bloodshot, his nose large and red with the emotions that he had been unable to express to Robert when faced with his death.

I looked at him, took in the drastic change that had occurred since the last I had seen him, both in my own mind as well as Robert’s, and I started to see something in him that I hadn’t before.
 
In his face, I could see my father’s, aged and miserably lonely.
 
His hand bore a white line on his left ring finger, but no wedding band.
 
My hand clenched instinctively, feeling the press of the sapphire stone against my palm and relishing in its presence.
 
There were no laugh lines around his eyes, though he appeared far older than Dad, and I knew that he had no friends who could offer him the solace of friendship.

“You live a very sad life, Mr. Frey,” I told him.
 
“You ran away from your problems to keep your family safe from it, and yet they left you anyway, didn’t they?”

Robert and Mr. Frey gasped at my words, both shocked at what I had been able to discern, Robert amazed that I had learned something he hadn’t.
 
I stared at Mr. Frey and started to feel sorry for him as I thought about the girl who had died, and about Stacy, whose death in my dream felt just as real.
 
“You’ve lost everything; your wife; your children; soon your career and your freedom will be gone, too.
 
You killed that girl, and somewhere, her family is wondering the same thing that my father wondered about me.

“There is no reason on earth that would justify me forgiving you for what you did.
 
You left me to die on that road.
 
You knew who I was, knew that I had no one, and instead of taking even one moment to be the person you want me to be, you walked away.
 
You left me there, all alone, scared, broken, dying.
 
And then you let me accuse Mr.
Branke
, let him be arrested and watched as I ruined his life.
 
There is no reason why I should forgive you, Mr. Frey.
 
I shouldn’t forgive you.

“But I will.”

Mr. Frey began choking in disbelief and out of habit, I stood up to pat him on his back.
 
He looked at me with wide eyes, his hands shaking, sweat pouring down the side of his face like he had just been doused with it.
 
“Why?” he whispered, his voice cracking from the surprise.

“Because it was me,” I said softly, sitting back down in the chair across from him.
 
“It could have been someone else, someone who
would
have died, someone I care about very much, but it wasn’t.
 
For whatever reason, it was me that you hit that day, and that accident changed my life.”

Robert knelt down beside me and I felt the burn in my throat as I saw so clearly what life had been like without him in it, even if only for a blink of time.
 
His gray eyes grew dark and stormy as he saw what I did, knew what I had seen.

I blinked away some of the fresh tears that formed and took a deep breath, needing to finish what I had been brought here to do.
 
“Mr. Frey, you have my forgiveness, but what I hope for you, what I pray for you is that you can forgive yourself.
 
You have lost a lot because of what you did, and you will probably lose a lot more, but I know that you haven’t lost what’s most important—not yet.”

Mr. Frey began sobbing and though I knew that I shouldn’t, I felt a need to comfort him.
 
I placed my hand onto the table, extending it out to him, palm up.
 
He looked at it with skepticism, looked at me with confusion, but his hand slowly inched forward, and I felt it fit awkwardly into mine, the small contact opening up a floodgate of tears from both of us.

We sat there like that, hands extended, tears freely flowing until there was nothing left to give.
 
No more tears, no more confessions.
 
I felt emotionally drained when I stood up, with Robert nudging me and announcing that it was time to go.

“Thank you,” Mr. Frey whispered to me as we walked out of the room, his hand pressed against his heart in sincerity.
 
“You truly are an angel of mercy.”

I laughed nervously at his words and looked at Robert, who shook his head and pushed me forward. We walked quickly past several police officers and loiterers who didn’t seem to notice two high school students, one barefoot, haunting their halls well past midnight.

Only when we were outside did I ask him what it was that I had done, and why it had been so urgently necessary.

“You’re the angel,” he teased, but quickly grew serious as we reached the end of the sidewalk fronting the police station.
 
Without stopping or even warning me about what he was about to do, Robert pulled me into his arms and pushed up off the ground, the movement sending us into the air.

I kept my face pressed against the warm column of Robert’s neck, seeking to see nothing but him, smelling nothing but him; Mr. Frey wasn’t the only person who needed absolution.

It wasn’t long before the odor of damp, freshly mowed grass intruded in on me, breaking through the heady scent that was uniquely Robert.
 
I raised my head just enough to peek over Robert’s shoulder and see where it was that we were.
 
The white wall was unmistakable, the large, white house instantly recognizable to me.
 
“Why are we here?” my muffled voice asked into his jacket collar.

“We need to talk, and you need a place where you can yell.”

I chuckled at that.
 
“That might be true.”

“Of course it is,” he insisted.

He carried me through the doorway, the quiet only emphasizing the darkness that filled the house.
 
Once in his room, he closed the door and placed me gently onto the bed.
 
He removed his jacket and proceeded to hang it up slowly, something I had never seen him do.

“Are you stalling?” I asked, the question seeming silly for someone who had all the time in the world.

“To you it seems silly.
 
To me, it helps to keep each moment with you from ending that much sooner.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.
 
I always took for granted the fact that as slow as time seemed to travel for me, it went by at a rapid pace for him, and his movements—when they weren’t being scrutinized by those who could discern the difference—were an excellent display of that lack of appreciation for time.

“Grace, before you say anything, before we start arguing again, I want to speak to you about what happened today-”

“At the police station?”

He didn’t turn around, but I saw his head nod, the dark head moving up and down as he spoke.
 
“Yes, at the police station.
 
When you fell asleep, you dreamt…you dreamt about what your life would have been like had I never entered it-”

“Had you never existed,” I corrected.

“I will always exist, Grace, but that is neither here nor there.
 
It was explained to you that when you form a memory, it burns itself into your mind, branding you with the truth of it.
 
Memories differ from other thoughts.
 
They don’t change, even if you think they do.
 
They don’t form independently.”

“I don’t understand.”

Robert raised his arm up against the bedroom door and rested his head against it.
 
“In your dream, we had never met, you had never regained your friendship with Graham, Janice never moved in, and Stacy—Stacy was the one who ended up being killed, right?”

I nodded then looked away, feeling stupid because he wasn’t even facing me.

He sighed and continued, “You began to see things in your dream, remember things that you thought didn’t belong there, right?”

“Yes.

“Grace, those are genuine memories.
 
Those are things that are burned into your mind as though they actually happened to you.”

I sat there with my mouth ajar, the idea sounding far more absurd each time I replayed it in my head.
 
I tried to find something articulate to say, something that would contradict him without leaving any room for doubt.
 
All I could come up with was “You’re real”.

He turned around and looked at me, his eyes a dark, shadowy gray, his mouth a harsh line that hinted at anger and hurt.
 
“Do you not understand what I am telling you, Grace?
 
Memories formed by dreams are tied to those dreams, forever linked to tell you that they are not real, just visions of your subconscious—they are never independent of them.
 
Your memories have no dreams.”