She started when his phone rang on the front seat, curling even tighter in on herself as he came back to the car and answered it. She didn’t recognize the voice that came from him or the stream of hatred that spewed from his lips when he said Cal’s name. She couldn’t make out Cal’s side of the conversation, only that her brother kept telling him to stop, that nothing Cal could say would ever be enough. But then his voice changed so suddenly that she chanced a small peek through to the front seat. She could see only the side of Jason’s thigh and the knife in his hand as he slowly turned it over and agreed to meet Cal and talk in person.
She felt cold and sweaty when he started to drive again, not speeding this time, and he kept the knife open in his hand until he parked again. Rather than toss it back in the glove box, he slid it into his back pocket and kept his hand over it as he walked into the woods.
She didn’t want to watch anymore, but as the minutes passed in silence, her fear of something she didn’t even have a word for pulled her from the car and into the woods and the clearing she was too young to have ever been to yet.
The heated, raised voices she’d been expecting based on the earlier phone call weren’t there. Instead, Cal and Jason stood just feet away, talking, not fighting. Cal was the one talking with real animation, repeating an apology that she could tell he’d already tried to make before. Jason didn’t accept it right away, shaking his head and raising his empty hands whenever Cal took a step toward him. Only once did Jason lash out verbally.
“How could you take her from me like that? You always took everything else, but she was mine!”
Whatever Cal said in response was too quiet for her to hear, but the earnest way he placed his hand to his heart and kept his eyes locked on Jason made her think he was making some kind of promise. And after a minute, Jason nodded. His whole body remained stiff, but he raised one arm to clasp Cal’s back when his friend moved in to hug him.
Jason was facing away from her, so she saw him slide his free hand into his pocket and pull the knife out. She claims she heard the sound it made when the blade sprang open, though Cal didn’t jerk away, not until Jason plunged the knife into his back.
The details grew hazy after that. She remembers Cal stumbling as Jason pulled the knife free, then his whole lower body just gave out. She heard him gurgling as he collapsed facedown in the damp earth. Then she didn’t hear anything except her own silent scream as her brother followed his friend down to the ground and drove the knife in again.
Cal’s hands were digging into the earth, clawing, as Jason stabbed him a third time. Cal looked up then, caught her gaze and lifted one hand toward her before Jason’s knife came down again.
Then she screamed.
Jason saw her.
And she ran.
CHAPTER 42
Iwant to throw up. I want to throw up. I want to throw up.
My skin has gone clammy and I can’t swallow fast enough to keep splashes of bile from scalding my throat. Only it’s nothing compared to the tremors racking Laura’s slight body.
“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Not when I saw the knife, not when—”
I half expect Laura to stiffen when I move to embrace her, the way I did yesterday with Mom, but she goes willingly into my arms, like she’s been as starved for me all this time as I’ve been for her.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her, my tears falling onto her unwashed hair as hers drip onto my shirt. “It was never your fault.”
Over and over I repeat this to my sister, trying to hold still and be strong for her, to make her hear the conviction in my voice rather than the bleeding in my soul.
It could be an hour later when she stops crying, not, I’m sure, because she’s done, but because she’s too physically exhausted to shed more tears. For the past few minutes all she’s done is tremble as I stroke her hair and murmur wordless comfort. When the shaking fades but I know she’s still awake in my arms, I rest my cheek on her head and softly I say, “We need to talk to Mom and Dad.”
“No!” Laura flinches away from me, shaking her head almost violently.
I reach for her, pulling her grief-weary body back into my side with only a little resistance. “Laura, you need help.” My voice cracks on the last word. “We all need help.” I’m so gut-sickeningly ashamed that I could be so blinded to one sibling’s pain by the other’s. That I tried to guilt her for staying away from Jason when she witnessed it all.
Not the fight or blind-to-reason fit of rage I’d always tried to imagine. Not the shock and horror that trickled back to him and sent him to his knees trying to staunch the blood. Not even him running home for help when he couldn’t.
I shudder, and Laura lifts her head to look at me. “I’m afraid.”
I want to pretend I don’t understand, but I do. From the very instant I knew what Jason was being accused of, I recoiled against it, vehemently and vocally. My brother wasn’t a murderer, and woe to anyone and everyone who dared say otherwise. I was terrifying back then, especially those first few weeks, I know I was. And even after he confessed, when not even I could deny that Cal’s life had ended by Jason’s hand, a part of me still sought to minimize it. I’d been trying ever since to imagine circumstances and provocations that could drive him to kill.
And I’d ignored and suppressed anything that might so much as hint otherwise.
It was true we rarely spoke about Jason at home, but at least with Mom and me, there’d been this undercurrent of denial and sense of injustice, however little we allowed ourselves to look closely at that belief. It had grown more difficult since Heath came into my life, since I was forced to think of the true victim and not just the one I imagined Jason to be.
It’s excruciating to let go of something I clung to so fiercely for this long, but as I clutch Laura tighter to me, the pain shifts. It doesn’t lessen, I don’t know that it ever will, but it becomes distant and far removed from the flesh-and-bone girl in my arms.
“It’ll be okay,” I tell her.
Laura trails behind me like a wraith as we go downstairs and into the kitchen. She’s so silent that I have to keep looking back to make sure it’s her hand I’m holding and not just my imagination.
