In Place of Never (30 page)

I wrapped my arm around Pru’s shoulders and pulled her against my side, and then I leaned into Cross’s solid frame and smiled. Hope had first found me, three weeks ago, alone at my sister’s grave. Today, it found me surrounded by people I loved and who loved me back. Proof that hope was everywhere.

* * * *

Dad went back to church for evening service. I ordered pizza. Pru sorted Faith’s clothes into three piles. Stuff she wanted. Stuff she thought I needed and stuff she’d always hated. The last box was a donation box. I organized Faith’s art into keep and donate piles. The process was delicious and messy, thanks to the pizza and chips set in the center of our workspace.

I licked my fingers and wiped them on a napkin. “Can you believe Dad introduced himself to Cross and the Lovells after the service?”

She folded a pair of jeans with paint stains on the legs. “After the message he gave on forgiveness and not judging? I was ready for anything.”

“I’m proud of him.”

“Yeah. That was all for you. Dad was satisfied hating all Lovells equally. You wrecked everything.” She tossed a pair of socks at me.

I dodged the hit and carried another full box of art into the hallway. The overall dismantling of Faith’s room-shrine went faster than expected. After only an hour, we were down to the last few piles.

My thoughts wandered. “Can you believe Cross won again last night?”

“Oh!” Pru waved her arms and chewed frantically before swallowing. “He used Faith’s poem.” Her eyes were soft and dreamy. “How freaking amazing was that?”

I smiled. “He’s unbelievable. I wish they didn’t have to leave so fast after church for practices. I hope he comes over tonight.”

“He will.” She carried her box into the hall and balanced it on the stack. “Okay. What’s left?”

“Books.” Faith had a six-foot bookcase stuffed full of art books and literature. “The school will probably take any of these we don’t want.”

Pru ran her fingertips along the dusty shelves. “I think we should do this for Mom too. Dad left all her things exactly the same way as Faith’s.”

“Sure.” I smiled. “She’d like that.”

Pru wiped tears off her cheeks. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive Mom?”

I pressed my lips together. “It was selfish of me to blame her. Dad nailed it today, right? Forgiveness.”

“So, yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t blame her anymore, but I’m still a little pissed. She’s free of things I still cry about sometimes. You know?” I shook my head. It didn’t matter. “I forgive her. One day last fall, I realized I hadn’t obsessed over her death in a while. I guess while I was praying all that time for rest and peace, I’d started healing.”

Her eyes glossed with tears. “Yeah. Okay. Good.” She nodded and sniffed. “So, how do we do this? Box everything or look for hidden notes and pictures first?”

“What?” I laughed. “I’m sorry. Are we in a James Bond movie?”

Pru frowned. “Where do you hide your stuff? In a sock drawer?”

Huh. I didn’t have anything to hide. Except, maybe Cross, but he didn’t fit inside a book. He barely fit on the floor beside my bed when Dad ventured to the third floor. “I don’t know.”

Pru opened a paperback and shook a few snapshots from between the pages. “See.”

I turned the pictures in my fingertips. Selfies of Faith and her friends. Senior pictures of boys that weren’t Brady. Interesting.

I gathered an armload of art books and stacked them on the floor for closer inspection. A pamphlet fluttered to the ground. “God’s Will and Teen Pregnancy.”

“What?” Pru snatched it off the carpet.

I blinked, mentally caught up with what Pru had in her hands and thumbed through the other books as fast as possible. What else did she have in there? Oh, no.

“Pru.” I lifted a thin paperback between us. “Spiritual Healing After Miscarriage.”

She flopped onto the carpet. “No wonder she told you to wait for sex. Do you think those were for her?”

I skimmed the paperback. “I don’t know. She could’ve been worried about a friend.”

We opened book after book, filling boxes with dusty tomes and tattered college brochures, looking for something that might answer our questions.

Pru handed me a tiny slip of paper, removed from the pages of a Bible. A pencil sketch of an angel carrying an infant. “No. I think all these things are hers.”

Air burned through my shrinking windpipe.

Pru took the paper back. “The angel is so beautiful. The baby has no detail, just an outline.”

I rolled back against the carpet. “She couldn’t have been far along. Maybe she never had the chance to think about the baby until it was gone. I can’t imagine what that was like.” My losses were all tangible ones. Memories ate me alive, knowing there’d never be more, but to lose something…
someone
she never knew… How did anyone process that kind of loss? “I had no idea. She was hurting so much and I had no idea. How is that possible?”

“You think that’s why she broke up with Brady?”

Ugh. I turned my head for a better look at Pru. “When I told Sara over the phone that Brady was pushing Faith for sex, she laughed. I bet Sara knew they were having sex. That means Faith lied to Anton about why she and Brady broke up.”

Pru lay down beside me. “Understandable. I’m not sure I’d tell a guy I just met about something so personal.”

I crossed my arms over my middle. “She didn’t even tell me.”

Pru turned her head. Her sincere blue eyes were inches from mine. “You were fourteen. What could you do to help her or even understand?”

“I didn’t feel fourteen. I felt like one of her confidants.”

“And that was the magic of Faith. She made everyone feel special…even when she was hurting.”

I rolled onto my tummy and pressed my forehead to the ground. “Maybe Brady was pushing her for sex afterward, like nothing happened, or maybe she never told him about the miscarriage. If I got pregnant and lost the baby, I’d think I was being punished.”

Pru blew out a deep breath. “Me too. I bet the poems on her blog were about losing the baby, not Brady.”

“So she really was trying to start over, not check out.”

Pru sat up and flipped through more books. “Do you think the miscarriage was the death Nadya saw when she read Faith’s palm?”

I pushed into a seated position. “You said you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

She shrugged. “You said Nadya saw death and loss in Faith’s life, plus no future. That’s a big coincidence. She’d just lost a life literally growing inside her and then she lost hers too.”

A shiver crept over my skin. “Maybe I should wear the necklace Nadya gave me.”

“Couldn’t hurt. No way!” Pru cracked up. “Look.” She held a pencil sketch of Anton in front of her face and tipped it left and right like a goofy mask. “Faith drew him. How cool is that? He had a hundred earrings.”

A line of hoops stretched up Anton’s left ear in the drawing. Aside from that, he hadn’t changed at all, and Faith had nailed his likeness.

I grabbed my phone. “I think we should take it to him. Dad’s on stake-out duty for another hour. We can get there and get back before he comes home.”

Pru beamed. “Can I give it to him?”

“Sure.” I snapped a picture of the drawing with my phone and texted it to Cross.

“We have a present from Faith for Anton. On our way. Watch for us.”

We made excellent time on the way to the campgrounds. Pru led the way across the field along the river toward the campsite, an out-of-our-way route designed to avoid the patrols Sheriff Dobbs had warned me about and anyone guarding the festival site. Night sounds were swallowed by the roar of our river, swollen from a month of excess.

Pru looked over her shoulder toward the festival site. “Hard to believe the festival’s set up already and in a few days it’s over.” Shadows of motionless rides stretched into the sky like healing bruises.

The River Festival would end and Cross would leave. “Yeah.”

My mind circled the unbelievable possibility Faith had had a miscarriage. Yet another factor that changed everything. If she hadn’t lost her pregnancy, she wouldn’t have snuck out to party that night. She’d be here. She’d be twenty. She’d be a mother. A mother. The word bounced, surreal, impossible. Pru and I would be aunts. Dad and Mom… Mom might still be here and she’d be a grandma. To a three-year-old.

Images of Faith’s baby pictures rushed through my thoughts. Would the preschooler have looked like her? Would I have babysat and taught my niece or nephew to swim one day, something Pru never had the chance to learn? If things were different, Pru would’ve spent hours at lessons like Faith and me. We’d teach Faith’s baby all sorts of things.

A tall, narrow figure stepped in our path up ahead. A shadow stretched over his features.

I sucked air, then laughed. “Good grief.”

Pru groaned. “You scared the crap out of us, Cross.”

Brady took several long strides in our direction. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

Faith

Brady moved in a slow, deliberate arc, herding us to the river side of the field. His demeanor was strange and predatory, though, for the first time in a while, his speech and eyes were clear. Sharp. “What are you two doing out here after dark? Haven’t you heard there’s a criminal on the loose?”

Pru made a strangled sound and stepped closer to the riverbank.

I grabbed her arm. “Careful.”

Brady took another step. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“We’re on patrol.” My steady voice surprised me. Lies were easier in the face of potential danger. “Pru and I are helping Dad with his shift. We’re riding home with him soon, so we should get going.”

Brady stepped into my path, shaking his head. “You’re more like Faith than I knew. She was a liar too.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I sidestepped Brady, tugging Pru behind me, along the jagged river’s edge. One wrong step would drop us over the slick grassy ledge and land us in the rapids. Scents of mud and river water peppered the night air. Fireflies lifted off the ground behind him. They didn’t know we were in trouble. No one did.

Brady raised a giant black flashlight, like the one Sheriff Dobbs had given my dad, and slapped it against his palm. “Your dad left with my dad twenty minutes ago. The festival site’s deserted. The campers are quiet. It’s just me, you, and the river.”

Pru’s feet slipped over the grass. She latched onto my arm with a whimper.

Brady moved closer. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here. Did you come for the sideshow again? Bring Pru to initiate her into your family’s sick tradition? Yeah. Faith liked them too.”

Fear coursed through me. I couldn’t afford any wrong moves. I had Pru to think about.

A monumental epiphany cleared my addled brain. Brady couldn’t swim. Faith had teased him mercilessly. Brady Dobbs could do anything—pushups with her on his back, hit a homerun out of the ballpark, ace the SATs—but he couldn’t manage a decent doggie paddle. “Were you with Faith at the river that night? Is that why you drink so much? You feel guilty because you couldn’t save her.”

His face twisted in anger. Tears glossed his crazy eyes. He barked a short, humorless laugh. “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? You’ve been asking questions all over town. Interviewing our old friends and teachers. Sneaking the freak into your bedroom. Yeah. I saw all that. I see everything and no one notices because I’m invisible. I’m a bruise on the town’s ego, the kid who should’ve put this place on the map.”

My mouth went dry. “You’re the one who’s been following me.”

He sniffed and wiped his nose across the back of his thick, muscular arm. “I didn’t believe you’d do it. Didn’t think you’d keep pushing. I thought you’d let it go. She’s
dead
!” He screamed the final word. Spittle flew from his lips. “She’s not coming back, so let it go!” He marched forward, flashlight raised at his side, poised to swing. Like a baseball bat. I’d seen Brady hit a ball into tomorrow. I wouldn’t survive.

A quiver rocked Pru’s voice. “You were the one who hit that girl at the campgrounds.”

His steps stuttered. His gaze jumped to Pru, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I thought she was Mercy.”

I blocked Pru with an outstretched arm. “This is between you and me. Let Pru go, and we can talk as long as you want. You can tell me what happened that night, and we can both move on. There’s no need for anyone else to get hurt.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Nope.” The flashlight circled in his grip.

Pru’s feet slipped and fumbled along the ledge above the raging river. Desperation crushed my lungs. “It’s not your fault she drowned. Look at that water. No one can manage that. You can’t swim. You couldn’t have saved her.”

Ugly cries lifted behind me as Pru clutched my waist.

Shock danced over Brady’s face. A grinchy smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Faith didn’t drown. I hit her. She didn’t get back up.”

Sobs welled in my throat. “What?”

“We fought about the baby. College. Our futures. Everything. I wanted to make our relationship work, but she wanted to jump in bed with some disgusting giant from the sideshow. The sideshow! She had me right here, and she wouldn’t let me love her. What the hell was wrong with her?”

“You hit her.” The words were steam on my tongue. “You
hit
my sister.”

His head bobbed. “Yep. One little mistake. The only thing I’d ever done wrong and look where it got me? She ruined my life!”

I inched away, towing Pru behind me, one baby step at a time. “You knew about the pregnancy?”

“She said she couldn’t be with me after she lost it. She said God punished her for having sex with me before we were married. What kind of God do you serve?”

“Not that kind,” I whispered. “She was sad, Brady. She was hurting and she wasn’t thinking clearly. No one punished her. Miscarriages happen.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed and his eyes trained on the river behind Pru and me.

“Hey, look at me. You didn’t kill her. She drowned.”

Rage burned a path across his face. He took two giant steps forward, flashlight in the air. “Stop. Lying!”

I spun on Pru, arms high to block the flashlight’s blow over my head. Heavy metal crashed into my skin and fireworks of pain burst through my vision. My feet tangled in Pru’s and we tumbled over the bank. Into the river.