You forced her on her knees to try and get this information out of her.
“Am I not?” I say hoarsely.
She shakes her head. “Today… I need to be here. And I thought maybe you might need it too. I should have done this sooner, Theo. I shouldn’t have cut you off like that. I wouldn’t have…,”
“Why did you?” Something aches in my chest as I stare at her. “Why’d you push us out, Kenny?”
So many questions.
“Come on.” She tips her head in the direction of the field. “I think this is a conversation we should have there.”
My footsteps dog hers as we walk. Kennedy is slow, her feet trailing. Hanging back slightly, I watch her with a frown. Her feet almost shuffle, her back hunched. “Are you in pain?”
She straightens. “I… no.”
She’s lying. I can see it in the way she tries to turn her face from me, to hide her expression. But I follow anyway, my eyes seeing things that I didn’t see so clearly before.
Blinded by my own anger. Because every step is careful, the way she moves her body adjusting in a way that tells me she’s definitely in pain.
I reach for my phone, but I left it in the truck.
Oscar knows, whatever it is. Jake’s murmured words from the diner – from those hikers – float back to me, as if they never left. As if they haven’t haunted me since I read them for myself.
“She was in a terrible state. Catatonic. I’ve never seen injuries like it.”
We walk in silence through a copse of trees. Kenny nods at the hint of blue sky on the other side. “It’s through here.”
Maybe it would make her feel better, ease some of that fear still present under her words, to know how much time I’ve spent in this clearing. “I came up here a lot. In those weeks after.”
Not at first. The police investigation prevented it, the area cut off by tape and secured by officers that refused to let me through, even when I begged. By the time they’d gone, there was nothing left.
And according to them, no case to answer. A closed inquest followed, only my father attending despite our protests.Death by misadventure, he told us.
A tragic accident, but that never sat right with me. Not when I had a voicemail telling me the opposite.
The frown feels embedded by the time she stops at the entrance to the field. “You’re shaking.”
Badly. Her shoulders hunch forward, trembling enough that I step up to her elbow, my hand hovering. I don’t have the right to touch her. I’ve done enough damage. “Kenny?”
She folds over at the waist, her hands on her knees. “Just give me a minute.”
I glance out. It’s a beautiful place. Wildflowers spread out across the grass in bursts of color, leading up to the cliff edge opposite us. It’s a beautiful view, looking out over the mountains.
But all it makes me feel is cold. As cold as the sensation in my gut as I turn back to Kennedy. “Tell me what I can do. Please. Do you want to sit down?”
But she’s straightening, dabbing at her fucking nose with a tissue she must have tucked in her pocket. Her body stiffens. “I… no, I don’t want to sit.”
She walks ahead, getting closer to the edge than I’m comfortable with. Dread douses my stomach as I stride for her, pulling her back. “Close enough.”
That wrongness pulls at me again. Her eyes slide to mine. “I’m not going to jump.”
But she sounds as if she’s considered it. I hover beside her as she faces out across the mountains and her eyes close. She takes a deep breath. “I was going to lie to you up here. Tell you something to make you back off.”
My shoulders tense. But I bite back the anger that rises all too easily. “Why?”
That feels like the more important question. That’s… that’s the question I need the answers to, I realize. More than anything else.
I need to knowwhy.
