The Secrets We Keep (8 page)

“No, it doesn't hurt. Your hands are just cold.”

He warmed them with his breath before turning the collar of his coat up around my neck. There were four white chairs facing the coffin, like sterile beacons directing me home. I didn't want to sit in one. I didn't want anybody's focus on me. I wanted to fade into the background and watch from a distance as I made peace with my decision to become my sister.

Mom motioned for me to take the one beside my dad, and I sat down, felt the legs of the white folding chair sink into the wet ground under my weight. Alex took the seat next to me, his hand never leaving mine. Dad sat on the other side, his eyes meeting mine as he patted my hand.

“You doing okay?” Dad asked.

Not knowing how to answer, I shrugged. I was so far removed from okay that I couldn't even put a name to the mess of emotions I was feeling. Anger, pain, regret, and an overwhelming amount of guilt churned together, leaving me numb.

“It's going to be fine, Maddy,” Dad said, uttering the same reassuring words he had each morning as he left the hospital to go home and change. “We'll get through this, I promise. So long as we still have you, we can get through this.”

I hadn't seen Dad cry since that first day in the hospital, but he looked fifteen years older than I remembered. His suit was impeccable and his shoes polished, but the wrinkles around his eyes were a little too deep, his voice a little too raspy. Mom was quiet, had been since that night the nurse and Alex took me to see Maddy. Her eyes were red and her hands trembled. She caught me watching her and mouthed that she loved me as she reached across my father to smooth my hair. I did my best to smile, every broken piece of me becoming a little more jagged with the knowledge that their love was not for me, but for Maddy.

Not able to look Mom in the eyes, I turned toward the gathering crowd. I wanted them to hurry up and leave, for this whole thing to be over so I could go home and be alone.

The chairs had been set up in a semicircle, my parents and Alex and I seated at the front, my grandparents behind us. From where I sat, I could see nearly everybody, could feel their eyes watching me. Looking around, I spotted my cousins and my aunts. One uncle was quietly telling his kids to stop poking at each other. There were neighbors, our childhood babysitter, and a handful of guys from Dad's office. I could even pick out the women from Mom's book club. None of them bothered me. It made sense for them to be here, supporting my parents. It was the crowd behind them that had me squeezing Alex's hand to the point of pain.

I'd figured Jenna would come. She was Maddy's best friend and spent as much time at our house as Alex did. The rest—the field hockey team, the boys' soccer team, the two dozen kids who'd never looked twice at me before today—they bothered me.

“What are they doing here?” I asked Alex.

Alex looked confused. “What do you mean what are they doing here? It's your sister's burial service, Maddy. Why wouldn't they be here?”

“They don't know m—” I paused, swallowed hard, and corrected myself. “They didn't know Ella. I mean, with the exception of Jenna, I don't think any of them said more than two words to her. None of them. Ever.”

“That doesn't mean they don't care.”

“Yes, it does,” I fired back, remembering how Jenna kindly asked me to drive myself to school our sophomore year because being seen with me wasn't
good
for Maddy.

“They don't care about Ella. They never have!”

Alex wasn't one to swallow his own words, but I watched him do it, felt his hand twist in mine as he struggled to stay calm. “They are not here for her. They came for you, Maddy. You.”

“For me? For
me
?”

I tried to hold on to my anger. If I wasn't careful, I'd slip, let my own voice seep into my words. I blinked long and hard, then shook my head. Not here. I wouldn't lose it here.

Mom looked at me, indecision and pity warring in her eyes. The minister had stopped talking and was looking at my father for guidance. Everybody else … well, they were staring at me. They'd heard my rant, heard me tear up Alex's friends at my own burial.

My vision blurred, the whole world narrowing down to one gaping, black hole in the earth. The grave.
My
grave. I searched the crowd, looking for some way to escape. Jenna took a step toward me, but Alex waved her off. He leaned in and whispered something in my ear, my dad following suit on the other side. I don't know what either of them said; it was nothing more than jumbled words in a sea of white noise.

The second my eyes caught Josh's, I could breathe. It was as if something familiar in me clicked into place, and for the first time in over a week, I felt like me. He wasn't wearing his standard Mountain Dew T-shirt and ratty jeans. He had on a black suit and tie and what looked like uncomfortable shoes. I liked him better in T-shirts and jeans.

Kim was standing next to him, with the rest of the anime club behind them. They were shuffling their feet, looking everywhere but at me, as if itching for this whole thing to end.

Josh's eyes met mine with an intensity I didn't quite understand. He'd never looked at me like that—with such unadulterated hatred. His eyes were red, but the sheen of tears couldn't hide his feelings.

Kim reached for him and whispered something in his ear. He brushed her off and took a step farther away. I thought he was going to leave, but he didn't. He shrank into the back of the crowd where he didn't have to look at me. She followed him, tried again to tell him something before handing him a tissue. Josh took it and twisted it in his hands until it resembled confetti. I fought the urge to go over and still his hands, to throw my arms around him and thank him for being one of the few people who was here for me … for Ella.

“Maddy, sweetheart,” Dad said, his hand on my shoulder drawing my attention to him. “Why don't you let Alex or your grandmother take you home? I know the doctor thought being here would—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. I had every intention of staying, surrounded by people who couldn't care less about me as I absorbed the details of my life being memorialized, then buried away. “I'm fine. I want to stay.”

Mom caught the edge in my voice and leaned across Dad to stare at me. She wasn't angry or embarrassed by my outburst, she was … wary. Maddy never snapped at them. She'd cry, plead, and give them the silent treatment until they cracked, but she never snapped. The one who snapped was me. That was Ella.

“Maddy?” Mom's eyes roamed every inch of my body looking for something I knew she wouldn't find.

The only way my parents were able to tell us apart as babies was a small freckle I had above my right eye. That night in the hospital after I'd woken up and had no idea who I was, I caught Mom carefully peeling away the bandage. She thought I was asleep, and I didn't do anything to tell her otherwise. At first I figured she was counting my stitches or checking to make sure they weren't infected. It wasn't until hours later, after I realized who I truly was, that I figured out what she'd been doing, why she ran her fingers gently across my stitches. She was looking for that identifying mark, a telltale sign that would confirm who I was, who she wanted me to be. But Maddy's face had been cut up when she hit the windshield and … well, I now had seven stitches where that freckle once was. She could stare at that tiny spot forever; the freckle wasn't there.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's … I'm sorry.”

At a nod from my mother, the minister continued, and everybody went back to studying their shoes. I didn't make another sound, not even a sob as my mother said her last goodbyes to the coffin, turned, and walked away.

I didn't move from my seat, didn't acknowledge the pitiful stares directed my way or my father's whispered words that it was time to go. I knew my way home; I'd get there eventually.

 

12

I didn't move until the last shovelful of dirt hit level ground. I was distantly aware of Alex watching me. He'd left me there at my insistence so I could make peace with what I'd done, say goodbye to my sister alone and in my own way. With her, I'd buried myself—every memory of who I was now—six feet under with the sister I'd put there.

The last of the cemetery crew left, and I stood up, searching my dress pocket for the things I'd taken from the hospital. “I'm so sorry,” I said as I dug a small hole in the freshly turned dirt with the toe of my shoe. I'd read Alex's card a thousand times since he handed it to me. I knew he loved her, would do anything to keep her safe, and I'd do the same … for Maddy.

“I'll take good care of him,” I said as I buried the card, praying that wherever she was, she could hear me, could forgive me. “He loves you. I mean, I guess I always assumed he did, but watching him these past couple of weeks … well, he does.”

Tears burned behind my eyes. I'd hid them through the service, hadn't trusted myself to keep playing my part if I gave in to my emotions. But now, with nobody watching, I finally let them fall.

For the last few days, it had seemed like every memory I had of us as kids, every mundane detail consumed me. It was as if I was afraid that if I didn't catalogue everything from the exact date we got braces to the color of her toothbrush, then it would be lost, tiny pieces of her forgotten forever. I couldn't let that happen.

“Here, I brought this for you.” I held a small flashlight in my hand. It was Alex's. He had used it in the hospital to study at night when I was sleeping. I'd taken it before I left, intent on burying it with Maddy.

“I meant to put it in the casket, but it was already closed,” I said as I laid it on top of the dirt mound. I quickly swiped at the tears streaming down my cheeks, but it was no use. “Remember how we used to play hide-and-seek at Grandma's house?” I thought of the cobwebbed basement and dingy attic our cousins were always hiding in. We played together on the holidays as Mom did the dishes and Dad caught up with siblings he only saw twice a year.

When we were five, I hid in the laundry room closet and Maddy was in Grandma's dryer. She had the door cracked open enough so she could see, but I doubted that would give her away. No one ever thought to check the dryer.

I heard my cousin Jake laughing, that annoying cackle that meant he was about to do something mean. But that didn't surprise me; he was always mean. The sound got louder, and I tensed as I waited for him to find me. But it wasn't me he was after, it was Maddy.

Her cry sent me barreling out of the closet, fists balled and ready to hit Jake. He'd found her, but instead of yelling it to the rest of us, he'd kicked the dryer door shut and was pressing his entire weight against it, closing her in. It wasn't the small, cramped space that scared Maddy. It was the dark. Maddy was deathly afraid of the dark. Still was.

“Let her out,” I demanded. She was banging on the door, her cries tearing through my heart.

“Make me,” he taunted, and leaned further into the door, blocking my path to Maddy.

She'd stopped sobbing by then, her cries dissolving into muffled whimpers as she pleaded with Jake to open the door. I went to move around him, to push him out of the way and get to Maddy, but Jake was older and seemed twice my size. He shoved me hard, and I fell backward onto the tile floor.

I hit the closet-door handle on the way down. No blood or anything, but I remembered the bump and, later, Mom asking me a million questions like, was I tired and did I feel sick. Funny, I could still almost feel it—the pain that is, like my mind was triggering my body to recall every detail I could.

“I hate you,” I had yelled at Jake as I scrambled to my feet. That was my sister … that was a part of me he had trapped in there.

“Ooh … Ella hates me. I'm sooo scared now,” he teased back.

“Let her out or I'll get my mom.”

“Gonna run to tattle to your mommy? What's the matter, Ella? Your sister's afraid of the dark?”

He knew she was. That's why he always hid in the attic. That's why he always won.

I may have only been five, but I had on dress shoes, hard patent-leather ones. And they were pointy at that. I was going for his knee, but my balance was off and I was angry, so angry that my foot flew higher.

Jake fell sideways to the ground and curled up in a ball, his face pale and his eyes watering. The sound that came out of his mouth was awful—low, guttural, and filled with pain. But now it was my turn to taunt him, my chance to remind him not to mess with Maddy. “Maddy is my sister,” I said. “You leave her alone.”

Maddy tumbled from the dryer and ran into my arms. Her face was red and blotchy, and she was gasping through her tears.

“Mom!” Jake yelled from the bathroom floor.

“Who's the baby now?” I teased. “Look who's calling his mommy for help now.”

My aunt Helen came running up the stairs, my mom a few steps behind. Aunt Helen dropped to the floor, looking for some wound to soothe on her precious Jake. He couldn't speak, couldn't find the strength through his pain to tell her what I'd done.

“What happened?” Mom asked.

“Ella … kicked me … in … the balls,” Jake rasped out, and Maddy giggled. Her giggle brought a quick smile to my face. If she was laughing, then it meant she was okay.

“Isabella Anne Lawton—” my mom started in, but I cut her off. I wasn't going to take the blame. Jake had it coming.

“He locked Maddy in the dryer and wouldn't let her out!”

Jake got hauled home without dessert, and I couldn't watch TV that night. Maddy … well, getting stuck in the dryer was punishment enough for her giggling as Jake rolled around on the floor, groaning in pain. Needless to say, Jake was never much interested in playing hide-and-seek with us after that Thanksgiving. In fact, he'd never much wanted to have anything to do with us since then. Fine by me. It was twelve years later and I still wasn't ready to forgive him.