A Deadly Fall (8 page)

“Maybe just one bottle this time. Judy’s not there to drive us home,” I joked. But the real reason was that we would be sleeping under the same roof and I didn’t want to make any foolish decisions.

***

“Good morning,” Sam said when I walked into the kitchen. I had smelled coffee and it got me up.

“Morning,” I said, helping myself to a mug and pouring the coffee. “Definitely a better morning than after the last time we ate dinner together.”

“Agreed. Can I get you something to eat?”

“I’ll help myself, if that’s OK.”

“Yup. My house is your house. Eat whatever you like.”

“Thanks.” We enjoyed an easy silence as we both read our preferred news sources on our phones.

“I was thinking of going to Jack’s today,” I said when I’d read everything in the New York Times that interested me.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking up.

“Yeah. I want to know if he knew Sarah was pregnant. And I feel like I should at least try to keep in touch with him. He’s all the extended family I really have left.”

“OK. Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I should be back by lunch, though. I don’t plan to stay long.”

“Anything you want to eat?”

“Whatever there is. I’m easy,” I said, not meaning to imply anything, and hoping he didn’t take it the wrong way.

He just smiled.

***

I knocked on the door to Jack’s house.

No one answered.

And no dog barked. I wondered what had become of Casino since Sarah had died. I made a mental note to ask Sam about him when I got back if Jack wasn’t home, but I didn’t really think he’d know.

I knocked again.

Still no response from inside, so I tried the doorknob.

It was locked.

I checked under the mat, but no luck for a key.

No flower pots to look under, but I remembered the back deck being littered with them. I walked out back to check. Lucky enough I found a key under the third pot I checked. I let myself in the front door.

“Hello?” I called. Maybe Jack was in the shower and hadn’t heard me knock. “It’s Marissa,” I added, realizing that I’d just trespassed. No one answered, so I went up to the room I’d stayed in to remember what it was like to be here with Sarah.

I lay down on the bed and let myself wallow in the past. The first time I’d come here, I’d overheard an argument between Sarah and Jack. It had seemed insignificant at the time, but what if that had been the normal for their relationship rather than the exception? It had been about money.

I knew from my own litany of failed relationships that money could drive a couple apart better than any other difference. My blasé view of spending—spend what I have, and go without something if I can’t afford it—didn’t seem to mesh with anyone else I met. I didn’t spend extraordinary amounts on anything, I more often than not went without material items, but I would never skip out on the required. And if I was going to buy something, I would buy the best quality possible.

But when I’d heard Jack and Sarah arguing about money, they seemed to be coming from incredibly different points of view.

“We don’t need a TV,” Sarah had said.

“What about the Travel Channel? You love that one,” Jack countered.

“I’d rather save and see those places in person instead of from our living room.”

“But you can’t just go gallivanting all over the globe all the time. We have to work. We have to be here more often than not, so why not enjoy it while we’re here too? You see how Judy turns her back on everyone and lives just for herself, and you complain about that. But it sounds like that’s what you want.”

“It’s not the same. You just don’t get it. We don’t need a TV. We don’t need half of what we have. We could have saved and gone to Japan already, like we’ve talked about for over a year. But you need your new La-Z-Boy and your motorcycle and your three snowboards and your two bikes—”

Sarah had stopped talking suddenly. I’d gone up to bed an hour earlier so they must have thought I was asleep. They were trying to keep their voices down but the noise traveled in the old house.

“Jack, don’t you dare!” Sarah had said.

I didn’t know what she was trying to stop him from doing. I’d thought at the time maybe he was making an online purchase for the TV in question when she wanted to keep talking about it first. But now, lying on the same bed, remembering the moment, maybe that wasn’t it at all.

I stopped my reverie and got up. I didn’t know what I needed to do here without Jack to talk to, but I knew I was supposed to be here. I couldn’t shake Sarah’s death as an accident. She was always so cautious with everything she did, she would have checked the weather and seen a storm coming in. She wouldn’t have gone out if she knew the weather was going to turn bad. She wouldn’t have gone hiking if she was pregnant. She had been determined to have kids, and after the first two miscarriages, she would have been extra careful to make sure she took it easy from day one.

I needed to feel Sarah closer to me. I needed to smell her old clothes, touch the same things she’d touch so many times. I walked down the hall to the master bedroom and opened the closet.

What I found shocked me.

Jack had nothing in the closet. Everything inside belonged to Sarah. Jack had disappeared from the bedroom. Because he couldn’t stand to live in the past, so he’d moved to a different room in the house? Because he was creating a shrine for Sarah?

Sarah’s clothes hung in the closet collecting dust. It had been less than two months since her death, but her absence could be felt. Maybe more than her presence ever was for me. I’d ignored her growing up, and as adults we always lived so far apart that we made excuses not to keep in touch.

There were boxes at either end of the closet. I picked a box and brought it out. I sat on the floor and opened it.

Inside were more notebooks and journals than my students have in a year.

I’d never known Sarah to keep journals, and it felt like trespassing to open them. Even to open the box and find them. But Jack’s disappearance from the bedroom had made me more uncertain about the truth of Sarah’s death. So I took the top notebook out and opened it to the middle of the book.

January 24, 2000

I did the math in my head, Sarah was 16 and a junior in high school. This was the year she’d told me she first had sex with Jack.

Judy is so jealous. She keeps telling me to break up with Jack. But I love him. She does too, I think. Otherwise she wouldn’t be so adamant about me breaking up.

Today, when Jack and I were talking between classes—he’s so great, he walks me to every class!—Judy wouldn’t even talk to me. She sat with Lindsey at lunch. She ALWAYS sits with me and Jack.

But, whatever. She’ll get over it. This isn’t the first time she’s tried to convince me to break up with him.

I closed the book and took out a new one.

October 29, 1997

I can’t wait for tomorrow. Today at lunch, Jack asked me to go to the Halloween dance with him! Judy kept telling me he liked me, but I didn’t believe her. He had a girlfriend until last week. But we have math together and I do catch him watching me sometimes.

We haven’t decided on our costumes yet. I think we should go as dancers from the 20s—we just learned about flappers in history, and the costume would be so fun!—but he wants to go as bacon and eggs. I guess that would be OK too.

He’s so cute. I just can’t believe he asked me to the dance!

That must have been when they started out as boyfriend and girlfriend back in middle school. That felt so long ago now. A whole lifetime.

I decided I wanted to keep the box of journals. Not because I wanted to pry into my sister’s past, but because I needed something to feel like she was still with me. I didn’t even know if I’d read anymore of them, but I needed them to be with me—not with Jack or anyone else.

***

“How was your visit with Jack?” Sam asked as we sat down to a lunch he made—leftover pumpkin curry soup. I was learning he was an incredible cook, a nice change from the Lean Cuisines I was dependent on.

“Funny thing happened there,” I started.

“Oh yeah?”

“Jack’s stuff is all gone. Did he leave?”

“Huh. I hadn’t kept tabs on him, but I would have thought I’d have heard. You’re sure he’s not just traveling for work?”

“There was nothing in either of the bedrooms’ closets that belonged to him. The only stuff in the house was Sarah’s.”

“That’s really strange. So he wasn’t there either I guess.”

“No, and no dog. Whatever happened to Casino? He was Sarah’s pride and joy.”

“I’ll have to ask Judy or Allen, Krista would know. I don’t hear from Allen about Jack ever, I wonder if Krista has kept in touch with him. How did you get into the house?”

“There was a key under one of the pots on the back porch. I let myself in.”

“You’re really sure he’s not just out of town for work? Maybe he’s gone for over a month and brought a lot with him. Maybe his stuff was behind Sarah’s,” Sam persisted.

“Maybe,”  I conceded only out loud, not to myself. “But it didn’t feel like that. The house felt empty.”

“You’re used to being there with Sarah. So of course it feels empty.”

“No, this was different. It felt—closed up. Like it hasn’t had anyone there for a while. Not just Sarah. No one.”

“I’ll ask around about Jack,” Sam promised. “But in the meantime, we should make plans while you’re here to catch the tail end of the fall colors together!”

“That’d be great! Man, it’s been a long time since I was here this time of year. I was always coming out in the spring. We have colors in New York, but they seem to go much quicker. The winter is so long there!”

“Let’s go away for the weekend together before you have to go back to Ottawa,” Sam suggested.

“I’d really like that,” I said, just realizing that’s what I wanted when he proposed the option.

When I’d decided to come visit, we hadn’t talked about where I’d sleep. But when I arrived, he’d generously let me stay in my own room. Even though we’d talked almost every day since Sarah’s funeral, we’d never tried to label our relationship. I could tell Sam was keeping his distance emotionally, giving me time to decide what I wanted. At first, I’d used our time on the phone as a distraction and a connection to Sarah. But as we’d talked more, it had become so much more.

A weekend together, away from his house, away from all reminders of Sarah, with a man I was becoming increasingly interested in, would be the perfect way to spend this long weekend.

Sam – October 2009

“This is what I could find, last minute,” I said as I opened Marissa’s door for her. We’d driven two hours to the coast of Maine. There were no crowds, and lower rental prices, in the off season. We had two nights of uninterrupted time together. I had promised the fall colors, but we’d have to settle for the beach.

“This is perfect,” Marissa said, walking toward the house with a look of relaxation on her face. “I don’t think I’ve slowed down to realize how much I needed a break since Sarah died. I never spent much time with her, so I didn’t think it’d affect me the way it has.”

“She was your sister. There’s no way it wouldn’t affect you. But if you can, let’s take this time to relax—together,” I suggested. I wasn’t going to push her to ignore the reality of her sister’s death, but I wanted her to know it was an option.

“I’d like that.”

We opened the back door with the code the owner had provided me and found the key to the front door. We carried our bags into the living room, not upstairs. We hadn’t talked about sleeping arrangements yet, but I was ready to use the couch if that’s what Marissa was comfortable with.

Instead of figuring out those logistics, we walked out the other side of the house to go down to the water.

The beach was deserted. It was too cold for swimming—much too cold for swimming—and we had to wear all of the layers we’d brought, but it was worth it. Going to the beach in the fall had been a family tradition of ours. I was excited to share this tradition with Marissa.

“One time, when we were little, our parents brought Sarah and me to the beach for a week. It only happened once,” Marissa started. “I was probably 14—Sarah would have been seven. She followed me everywhere. She always did. Until I reached middle school, that was fine. But then I was ‘too cool for school’ and definitely too cool for a little sister. So I wasn’t having it that vacation. I told her there were jellyfish in the water that only liked to sting girls who were younger than ten so she wouldn’t follow me in. She was gullible. Probably because she was scared of everything. Or maybe I was the reason she was scared of everything. So I brought my boogie board into the water and starting surfing the waves with the other teenagers. I thought I could get rid of her by going with the current. But she just followed me from the beach. And then my parents asked her why she wasn’t swimming. They busted my lie pretty quickly!”