Kimberly McCreight - The Collide

“Sure,” he says, raising his hands helplessly. Am I? they ask.

And then suddenly, the floodgates open and Gideon’s heartbreak plows into me with such force that without thinking I reach forward and clutch his hands.

“I know, I’m sorry,” I say, looking away as tears fill his eyes. I haven’t seen Gideon cry since we were little kids. And I do not want to, especially not now. “Rachel says that Mom did it to protect us. Not the accident, that was . . . Someone really did try to run her off the road. It just wasn’t her in the car. But the staying away after, I mean. It’s been to keep us safe.”

“I should have known.” Gideon shakes his head.

“How could you have?” I say. “Who would ever have thought that—”

“There’s an envelope in your room.” He cuts me off sharply. “And if you want to know why I was in your room, looking through your stuff—I don’t have a good excuse. I went through everybody’s room in the past two weeks—Mom and Dad’s, yours. I was lonely.”

And this is so heartbreakingly true it makes my breath catch.

“What letter?” I ask.

“On your nightstand,” he says. “I didn’t open it, I swear. But I saw it there. And I thought, wow, that kind of looks like Mom’s handwriting. Of course, because I’m me and not you, I didn’t have a ‘feeling’ about anything. I was like, logic says Mom is dead. So it’s old or something . . .”

“I didn’t have a feeling either until she was standing right in front of me. I had no idea she was alive.” But that’s true only technically—I was obsessed about the accident not being an accident. Probably because some part of me knew she wasn’t dead.

“Wait.” Gideon’s eyes are wide. “You saw her? Where?”

Crap.

“Only for a second,” I say, wishing I could snatch the words back and stuff them down my throat. “She came to the detention facility just so I would know Rachel was telling me the truth.”

“Awesome,” he says. “Well, I guess we know for sure who’s the favorite child now. Not that there was any doubt before.”

“Gideon, come on, that’s not—”

“Don’t.” He looks at me hard. His hurt is already hardening around his heart. “Don’t protect her. Where the hell has she been then?”

And so I tell Gideon what I know about Mom and Rachel and what happened that last night. As I say it out loud, I realize just how little I do know.

“Where has all this rallying of the troops gotten her?” Gideon asks. “I seriously hope she has something to show for it.”

“I don’t know. We should ask Rachel. There is something else, though,” I say. And I need to get it all out, all at once. Now. “Dad knew.”

“What?” Gideon’s hurt has caught fire—it’s anger now. “Come on. Seriously?!”

Cassie’s ex-coworker has appeared at our table, recoiling from Gideon’s shouting. “You want me to come back?” she asks, giving Gideon the side-eye. Her name tag says Brittany .

“I just lost my appetite,” Gideon mutters.

“A black-and-white milk shake?” I don’t want anything, but we need to buy something so we can sit here a little longer.

Brittany narrows her eyes at me. “Hey, you’re Cassie’s friend, aren’t you?”

I nod and try to smile, but I’m not sure I actually do. “Yeah, I am. I was.”

“That sucked, what happened to her,” Brittany says.

And suddenly this feels like an opportunity. To give Gideon a chance to calm, yes, but maybe Brittany is even the reason I told Gideon I wanted to go to Holy Cow in the first place. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Brittany says, though it feels like no . I can even feel her backing away, though her feet haven’t moved.

“Were you here when she met the guy she was dating?” I’m hoping she saw something or heard something about Quentin that might help me find out who he is. Or, better yet, where he is.

“You mean Jasper?” Brittany asks. “I saw him at a party once. Cute, you know, in a jock kind of way. But Cassie didn’t meet Jasper here. They went to school together. Don’t you go to school with him, too?”

I feel a guilty pang. It’s amazing how I’ve turned Cassie and Jasper into a thing that never was. It didn’t occur to me she’d think I was talking about Jasper.

“No, not Jasper. A different guy, he had glasses. Older, cute, but in a kind of geeky way,” I say. “Cassie told me he came in here one day. That was how she met him.”

Brittany shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Cassie and I were always on shift together. Besides, Nicholas won’t let any guys over the age of thirteen hang out here unless they’re somebody’s dad. Nicholas thinks everybody is a pedophile. So I can’t see how she would have met him here.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, and I want to feel like she’s gotten it wrong. But I feel just the opposite. She’s right: Cassie didn’t meet Quentin at Holy Cow. But then, where did she meet him? And why did she lie? “Thanks anyway.”

Brittany takes a couple steps from the table, but then turns back.

“I really am sorry about what happened, you know,” she says. “Cassie was a wild girl, but I liked her.”

OUR HOUSE SMELLS exactly the same, good in that weird, old-house way. Like lavender with a hint of maple syrup. And I want to be comforted by something that familiar, but all I feel is sad. Like even the smell is just another lie.

Gideon and I sit next to each other on the couch, staring down at our mom’s sealed letter, the milk shake from Holy Cow that I drank too fast sitting heavy in my stomach. Gideon went up to get the letter for me because I still wasn’t ready to face my bedroom. Downstairs, I already feel swamped by memories. Even the good ones feel terrible, too. Maybe especially the good ones. And something about telling Gideon about our mom has made me angry all over again. I got kind of lulled into Rachel’s explanations, which ring a lot less true now that I’ve relayed them to Gideon. I mean, our dad is missing, and our mom is building some coalition? That might be noble. It might even make her feel like a hero. But we need her home, right now.

“You want me to open it?” Gideon asks after we have been sitting there a really long time.

“No, I will,” I say.

My hands tremble as I finally rip open the seal. There is too much riding on what she has to say. I already know whatever’s inside won’t be enough. How can it be? My heart sinks even more when I see it’s just a single page of notebook paper, just a few short paragraphs. Gideon and I read together.

June 17

Dear Wylie,

Rachel has hopefully explained as much as she can about what happened and why. All I can say is that I’m doing the best I can to be sure you’re safe from here on out. I have already found people to help us, including a senator—I can’t wait until you meet her. She’s amazing. There’s a neuroscientist, too (a woman), who your dad has been working with. Real people. Who are smart and committed and are willing to help.

I am sure you are angry, and I know that nothing I write here will make up for the pain I have caused you. But know that everything I did was to protect you, and because I love you.

In the meantime, Rachel will help you. I am so grateful to her. Thank God for my “old lady yoga,” as you like to call it, because if she and I hadn’t run into each other, I never would have thought to go to her that night. But she was the perfect person. Anyway, let her help you. She saved my life, literally. She knows what to do. And send my love to Gideon.

It’s even harder to read than I expected. To think of her sneaking back into the house to leave it after I saw her. To feel how stupidly desperate I am still to forgive her, to find some decent explanation. It makes me feel like such an idiot.