“I can’t— You can’t— No. No, no, no,” Josh said, pacing away from Riley.
“Give me one good reason to explain why you think you’re not good enough for me.”
Josh spun until he was facing Riley.
“Because I’m the reason my parents are dead!”
Riley was motionless, confusion covering his face.
This was it. The moment Riley walked away from Josh for good once he found out what Josh had been hiding all these years.
“How could you possibly be the reason your parents are dead? You werefive.”
“It was all my fault.” Josh’s legs gave out from under him and he sank to the floor. Riley sat right in front of him and held his shoulders. “We were on the way home and I begged for us to stop to get ice cream, so we had to drive in a different direction. If it wasn’t for me being so selfish, we wouldn’t have crossed that intersection. That car wouldn’t have hit us head-on. My parents wouldn’t have died. Their blood wouldn’t have been all over thesteering wheel or the dashboard. They’d still be here. With me.Alivewith me.”
Josh couldn’t fight the tears rushing down his cheeks, and Riley pulled him in until he was holding him on the floor, rocking him back and forth.
When the stream of tears finally began to subside, Riley pulled away so he could look him in the eyes.
“Please, listen to me when I tell you this,” Riley said, surer than Josh had ever seen him. “That is absolute bullshit.”
Josh squawked in outrage until Riley cut him off.
“Josh, you were five years old. Would you blame any other five-year-old for their parents’ death because they were taking their child somewhere in the car? It’s not your fault. It’s not your parents’ fault. It’s likely the fault of whoever hit them and…”
“And what?” Josh croaked.
“And maybe the car’s fault. Did you say their blood was all over the front of the car? What happened to the airbags?”
“I-I don’t remember seeing any airbags.”
“Let’s put a pin in that for now. Your parents are the ones who chose to take you to get ice cream. They could have easily said no—”
“Are you saying it’stheirfault?” Josh snapped.
“No, let me finish. They could have said no, but they didn’t, because they love you, like you loved them. Theonly reason they’re dead is because there was an accident. The other driver hit them. It was that person’s fault for running the light or cutting them off or whatever other reason they had.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so. And the fact that you care so much shows that you didn’t want them dead. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
The tears resumed falling, despite Josh thinking he was all out. How much longer would it take to run out? Riley grabbed him in a hug again, and Josh cried into his best friend’s shoulder.
Could it be that easy to let go of the guilt over his parents’ death? It felt wrong, somehow. For the next few minutes, Riley rocked him in his arms, whispering, “It wasn’t your fault,” over and over.
“I’m not sure if I can ever let it go,” Josh admitted, his voice muffled against Riley’s shoulder.
“How about you tell me everything you remember about that day, and we can get to the bottom of it, okay?”
Josh hadn’t gone over the details of that day with anyone since he was a kid. Leigh Anne and Eddie took him to therapy for a while, but he had always kept the guilt to himself. He didn’t want his adopted parents to find out he was to blame for killing two of their best friends, because then where would he be?
Taking a deep breath, he ran through everything hecould remember. His nightmares had kept the details fresh in his mind.
Once he was finished with the tale, he could see the gears in Riley’s head churning, or spinning, or whatever it was gears did. He had his detective face on, which meant he smelled a mystery. Josh couldn’t figure out what the mystery could be, since he’d always thought the accident was his fault.
“Would it be okay with you if I looked into this a little bit?” Riley asked.
“What do you mean?”
