Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

“I’m done,” I said. “Finished. I’ll get you a letter of resignation.” Although this seemed such a stupid formality. I just wanted to walk free.

Once I was down on the street, I felt better. I watched the other New Yorkers in their spring suits and high heels carrying bags from Duane Reade and Barnes and Noble, and I thought, Okay, what now?

Nick and Michael were going rock climbing in Moab over Memorial Day weekend. Nick was going to tell him. He had to tell him because I was coming to Toronto. I wanted to travel to Canada secretly. Michael didn’t need to know yet; it would be wiser to give him time, to let him start dating again. But Nick was a straight shooter, and Michael was his brother. Nick would tell him when they were alone in the desert. Michael could yell as loudly as he wanted; he could throw punches. Nick would take them.

It was the ultimate gamble. I was afraid that was what appealed about it to Nick. He never lost at cards, but what if he lost here?

“What are you going to say?” I asked him.

“The truth,” Nick said. “That I love you. That I’ve loved you from the first second I saw you.”

I had sublet my apartment to a friend of Rhonda’s from the New School (that apartment was my baby, so I couldn’t let it go) and packed my things and arrived on my mother’s doorstep just about the same time that Michael and Nick were landing in Utah. I wasn’t doing well. I was anxious, nervous, morose. I couldn’t imagine being Nick, nor could I imagine being Michael. I tried to throw my phone away, but my mother picked it from the trash, thinking I would thank her later.

I slept most of the weekend. I hid behind Vogue; I tried to read a novel, but the story of my own life kept inserting itself in the pages. I tried to remember who I had been before meeting the Morgan brothers. Where was the happy girl who had walked into the Bowery Ballroom that October night? I tried to come up with a plan; I had always been big on making a plan and sticking to it. I would go to Toronto, leave for Tuckernuck for two weeks with my mother and sister (I would tell them then), and then return to Toronto. And if the thing turned out to be real, if I was in love, if I was happy, I would go with Nick on tour. And do what for money? Freelance? Start a novel? It sounded so cliché. It sounded so midlife crisis. I was only thirty-two.

When it happened, Nick called his parents first, me second. On the phone, his voice was calm; it was dispassionate. I didn’t understand this. I still don’t. Robin, my therapist, said he was most likely in shock.

In shock.

“Michael’s dead,” Nick said. “He fell. He woke up this morning at dawn and went climbing alone. He wasn’t harnessed properly. He fell.”

I didn’t ask. I knew. I didn’t ask.

Nick said, “I told him last night. He seemed fine with it. Angry, really fucking angry, yep, he punched a hole in the hotel wall, right through the plaster, and I thought, Okay, that’s a start. I told him the truth: We had kissed, but only kissed. I told him if I could change how I felt, I would, and I knew you would, too, but that we couldn’t change it. It was there, it existed. I had big, scary feelings for you, and you had feelings for me. Yep, he said, he understood. We went out to a bar, drank beers, did shots of tequila, ate burgers. He got drunk and I let him. Why not? He was handling it okay, he was being a really good fucking sport, a gentleman as ever. We walked back to the hotel, he asked me if I hated him because things had always come easier for him, and I said, ‘No, Mikey, I don’t hate you. That’s not what this is about, man.’

“He asked me if I hated him because of the punch he’d thrown years ago, the punch that broke my nose. That fight had been over a girl, too, a girl at school named Candace Jackson. He’d won that fight and he’d won Candace. And I said, ‘No, man, it’s not about Candace or my nose.’

“He said, ‘Okay, I believe you.’

“And then in the morning, he headed out to climb in Labyrinth by himself. It wasn’t safe to climb Labyrinth alone and he wasn’t harnessed properly.”

Nick broke down crying. “Chess,” he said. “Chess.”

“I know,” I said. “Jesus, I know.”

“I told my parents he wasn’t harnessed properly,” Nick said. “But Chess?”

“What?” I said. “What?”

“He wasn’t harnessed at all.”

Michael hadn’t died because his safety equipment failed. He had died because he went climbing without safety equipment.

The difference between these two realities, between the accidental and the intentional, was monstrous. It was the monstrous secret that now bonded me to Nick.

Chess closed the notebook. Her confession ended there. At the funeral, Nick stood on the altar and said to everyone in the church, He really loved you, Chess. He hadn’t said, I really love you, Chess. He may have felt it, Chess knew he felt it, and wherever he was-in Toronto still, or on the road somewhere-he felt it right now the way she did, like an arrow shot through her from front to back, pain, longing, love, regret. But he didn’t say it because Michael was his brother, now dead, and to say the truth out loud would be profane.

Tate took the Scout and disappeared in a cloud of dust and a spray of gravel. India and Chess sat at the picnic table while Birdie made dinner.

Chess said, “She’ll never speak to me again.”

India said, “Oh, you’ll be surprised.”

Tate missed dinner. She stayed out until sunset; she stayed out until dark. Birdie and India and Chess sat on the screened-in porch, Birdie doing her needlepoint, India doing her crossword puzzles, Chess pretending to read War and Peace, but really she was trying not to scratch her face and pretending not to listen for the car.

Chess said, “She can’t stay out all night.”

India said, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back. Getting some time away will be good for her. I’m sure she’s doing some thinking. I’m sure she regrets the things she said to you.”

But Chess knew she didn’t regret the things she’d said. She had been waiting her whole life to say them. Chess, by virtue of being who she was, had always outshone and overshadowed Tate. She had stunted Tate’s growth. But she had not done so on purpose, and she certainly hadn’t meant to pose a threat with Barrett.

Birdie sighed. “I wish Grant were here.”

Chess went to bed before Tate got home. She laid her confession on Tate’s pillow.

When Chess woke up, Tate’s bed was empty. It hadn’t been slept in and the confession was right where Chess had left it.

Chess went to the bathroom and peered out the window. The Scout was in the driveway.

Chess slipped downstairs, her heart tiptoeing. Chess was afraid of her own sister. She felt guilty for years and years of infractions, involuntary as they may have been. She wanted absolution; she needed Tate’s unconditional love, but it had been retracted. I hate you! You make me wish I had never been born! So Chess was toxic after all, as she feared when they started this trip. Chess had been slowly, silently poisoning Tate’s drinking water, polluting her atmosphere. You suck up all the air and I can’t breathe! This, Chess thought, was the awful end. She could lose Michael, she could lose Nick-they were boys-but she could not lose her sister.

When Chess got downstairs, she saw the scratchy crocheted afghan spread out over the ass-tearing green couch.