“I miss him too,” she says after a few minutes of silence. “I hope you know that. I just wasn’t ready to shout it from a boat.”
The water pools around the rocks, and you step in a shallow puddle, feeling the cold soak your dirty socks. You take in what Diana says, but you also scan in a cursory way for Silas, hoping tocatch sight of his clothing, even just a blur in the woods. You don’t know what you’ll do if you see him, but you know your chances of survival increase if he shows. Even if you can talk to him, things will feel possible. Diana watches your face all the while; you can feel it.
“Do you blame me, Case?”
You instinctively look down at your feet.
“Can we please just look for Silas?” you say.
She shakes her head.
“No. I need to understand where you’re at right now. It’s been too awkward for too long.”
Whether you blame Diana is a question you try not to think about, and one you wish you could say you’ve never considered.
“No,” you finally say. “Maybe at first, but not anymore. That’s the truth.”
She looks you over and seems satisfied with your answer.
“So then you were serious earlier?” she says.
“About what?”
“You think it’syourfault.”
You’re not sure why you’re so quiet now. You were willing to list all the reasons this was true before, but now to say them out loud seems impossible. You peer through an opening in the forest, and a hint of movement quickens your pulse, but it only proves to be a bird.
“Why haven’t we seen any loons?” you ask. “Have you thought about that? I thought this was supposed to be loon central. I thought you couldn’t spit without hitting a loon up here.”
Diana stops to tie one of her yellow boot laces. And you waitpatiently while she does. When she’s finished, she walks directly in front of you and blocks your path. She looks you in the eye.
“Case,” she says. “I’m serious. Do you blame yourself for Sean’s death? Yes or no?”
“Loons are, like, the only thing I looked up before I came here,” you say. “I thought maybe I’d see one. Did you know they can fly seventy miles per hour? That seems oddly fast to me. They’re actually really beautiful.”
Diana picks up a stick. She’s not even looking in the woods anymore. She’s looking out toward the lake.
“The thing is, you don’t even know the whole story,” she says.
You turn toward her, and you feel your face going hot with anger.
“I know that I betrayed him,” you say. “I know he never did anything to me, at least not on purpose, and I betrayed him. I made everything fall apart. I tipped the first domino.”
“It’s not that simple,” she says.
She throws her stick and watches it rotate in the air and land on the water, where it floats on the choppy surface.
“What do you mean?” you say.
You both peer into the woods again, but see only the gnarly limbs of a few island trees. No counselor. No savior. No one to get you out of this conversation.
“He wasn’t who he pretended to be,” she says.
“Oh. You knew him better than me. Is that it?”
You’ve had enough therapy to know that you’re probably not angry about this specific thing. But being aware of that doesn’t help you stop it. You kick at a nearby stump, and it feels good to connect with something, to feel the jolt of pain in your toes.
“Calm down,” she says. “I’m not claiming that. But maybe just in this one way. He knew you looked up to him, so he didn’t always show you everything.”
