Pieces of Hope (53 page)

Something
in
Rin’s
expression led me to believe he’d had the
same effect on her. If I remembered it right, she was the same age as Finley.
They might have sat next to each other in school. Passed each other in the
hallway. Flirted back and forth. And he had a crush on her little
sister—me!
 

“I guess
you needed someone to help lift you back up,”
Rin
continued, looking up now. “You weren’t a wimpy girl—pretty sure of yourself,
I’d have to admit. But Quinn’s absence left a hole in you that no one could
fill. It was a sign of the times, I guess. Everyone was scared. I can see that
now . . .

“And
Finley Lakin, well . . . he distracted you. It was innocent enough at first,
but it quickly turned into something more. Too much chemistry. Always the
recipe for a nuclear disaster.” Her voice trailed off. Despite the fact that I
didn’t remember any of it, guilt crept steadily up on me. I could feel it breathing
down my neck.
 

She
lowered her voice. “I think the clarifying moment came when he told you he
loved you, and said that he wanted to spend all of eternity with you.”

My hand
flew sideways. In my exuberance, I nearly knocked Charlotte from the bench. “That’s what he
says now!”

Rin
nodded without enthusiasm. “Not surprising. People have
a tendency to—”

“Keep
doing the same things again and again—yes, yes, so you’ve said.”

“You
were, of course, appalled by your behavior, and planned to break it off with
him the minute you realized how deep you had gotten yourself in.” I hoped that
was true, that I’d thoroughly beaten myself up about it, and that
Rin
wasn’t telling me this to make me feel better. Then
again, it was
Rin
that I was thinking of. When had
she said anything just to make me feel better?

“Albert
Kelley told me about it later,”
Rin
said, meeting Charlotte’s eyes. “As you
 
already know, you and I weren’t exactly
close, but I overheard you a few times muttering to yourself, ‘This would kill
Quinn if he knew. Just kill him.’ But as you may have guessed, that perfect
moment never arrived, and before you had the chance to end it, Finley left for
the Aleutians.”

I forced
myself to ask it. The question hung over my head like an ominous, black cloud.
“There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”
  

Rin
nodded solemnly, and that foreboding sense of guilt
moved into my chest. “I guess we got word about a year later that they had both
been killed in action. The
Lakins
lost both their
sons, and you lost the two people you loved most in this world.” Her voice
cracked, and I turned to see her crying. “I found you, Hope. I’m the one who
found you.”

She
avoided picturing it so I couldn’t see it in her head, but I knew, just as I
knew so many things I couldn’t have known otherwise that we were nearing the
conclusion of my little tragedy. This was the thing they feared I might repeat
in this lifetime.

“I
killed myself?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“We
don’t know for sure,” Charlotte
said in a small voice. “It could have been an accident, though that would have
been surprising. You were a meticulous climber, always going on about safety
and all. The whole town searched for days.”

Tears
welled in my eyes as I experienced a pain I didn’t quite remember—the loss of
two people I loved, my untimely, perhaps accidental death—and
Rin’s
heartbreak, and the loss of a sister she never really
understood.

“How
terrible for you,
Rin
. I’m so sorry.” And truly, I
was.

“Three
weeks later,”
Rin
choked, attempting to speak between
tears, “the war in the Aleutians came to a
close and Quinn and Finley came home to Mac.”

In
stunned silence, I could only shake my head. A weight pressed heavily on my
chest. “But you just said . . .”

“Who
knows? Some sort of misidentification. They had been captured, not killed, we
were told, and they looked terrible when they got back—all gaunt and sickly.
But you were the only thing on Quinn’s mind. He couldn’t wait to find you so he
could keep his promise. He planned to marry you that very day.”
Rin’s
head dropped. Charlotte
burst into tears. “He didn’t believe you were gone until we showed him your
gravestone.”

I waited
while they composed themselves.
Rin
was incapable of
speech. She wasn’t merely crying; there was visible pain on her face.
Eventually, Charlotte
continued for her.

“Quinn
died a painful death that day. It was awful to see. I’ve never seen a person
fall apart like that. He swore he’d never love again; it was like he was
punishing himself . . . and then when Finley heard the news, he told Quinn what
had gone on between the two of you—”

“Why
would he do that? How stupid could he get?” I shouted.

In a
resigned voice, Charlotte
said, “He was so sad, Hope. We all were. The sadness filled up every little
space so that there wasn’t room for secrets anymore. And I’m sure the guilt was
overwhelming. That’s quite a burden to carry around.”
Rin
,
for once, agreed with Charlotte.

“Unbelievably,
it got worse,”
Rin
said, wiping hastily at tears that
dripped from her eyes. “Quinn refused to forgive his brother, and that set off
a violent reaction in Finley where every time he spotted Quinn, he wanted to rip
him apart. The feeling was mutual. They hated each other.”

Here was
a thin thread linking the past and the present. Suddenly, it all made
sense—their burning desire to maul each other on sight, their inexplicable animosity
. . .

“But
that’s how they behave around each other now,” I said, astonished. “They can’t
wait to rip each other’s heads off. Is it possible they’re remembering?”

“Not
consciously, no.” Charlotte
was shaking her head. “But on some level, maybe.”

“It’s
mind-boggling, isn’t it? It’s like there’s an eighty-car pile-up in my brain.”
I admitted, rubbing my aching head.

“That’s
a good one,”
Rin
agreed with a little smile. “I
couldn’t have said it better myself. It feels the same way in mine.”

We wiped
away our tears, at a loss for words, sniffling several times as we did so. A
minute later, as Charlotte
asked again, “What could be keeping them?” it came to me.

“Would
you show me what you used to look like . . .?” They balked, but I persisted,
“Come on, what can it hurt now? I already know every dirty detail.”

I knew I
had them when
Rin
said, “The girl has a point.” And
instantly,
Rin
morphed into a tall, curvy girl with a
head of thick blonde hair. She had fuller features and wide-set eyes, and when
she smiled, everything fell perfectly into place.

“You’re
a knock-out,
Rin
.”

“Edith,”
she said, grinning at me. I realized it was one of the names that had come to
mind earlier when I’d thought of names worse than Lucille.

“Oh!
Oops,” I muttered, red-faced. “Hello again, Edie.”

I turned
to Charlotte,
but she had moved off the bench and was kneeling in front of me. As she
transformed, a wheelchair appeared beneath her, and a frail, stick-thin boy
took her place. He had light brown hair, a pleasant face, and like Edie, his
smile lit up the dark night. Even so, I couldn’t stifle my gasp.

“What—what
happened to you?” I tried not to stare.

“Polio,”
Charlotte said
simply. “There was an epidemic in the forties. I contracted it a couple of
years before we became best friends.” At last, Charlotte’s recent ramblings about me made
sense. She smiled. “Like I said, I couldn’t climb, but you didn’t care.”

“I’m
sorry I was mad at you,”
Rin
blurted, morphing out of
her Edith-shell. “As if you could remember . . .”

 
But I was thinking that if I had remembered
and if I had done all the things I was supposed to do, would I still have met
Charlotte and
Rin
? Making mistakes could have been my
saving grace. But instead of saying any of that, I laughed.

“And to
think it only took you seventy years to forgive me,” I managed to say.

“Trust
me,” Charlotte
said, “
Rin
can stay mad forever! Only Cat can beat
her in that department.” Charlotte
transformed out of her Albert Kelley-shell, flipping her hair off her shoulders
in one silky movement before squeezing me in her twiggy arms.

“Easy
there, Charlotte.
I can’t breathe.” After letting me go with a quiet giggle,
Rin
gave me a long sisterly hug.

“They’re
here!” Charlotte
jumped from the bench and pointed. “They’re here!”

I
spotted them strolling in our direction, not in a hurry despite all signs
pointing to the eleventh hour.
Creesie
was in front,
flanked closely by Cat. Mac waved at me, a huge child-like grin on his face;
Gus pulled up the rear with a lovely teenaged girl on his arm.

For some
reason, she captivated me. She had long wavy brown hair, and an olive
complexion that seemed to be lit from within. She wore jeans, the kind that
belled out at the bottom, and a sunshine-yellow top that billowed out from her
body.

The four
of them greeted me with enthusiastic hugs—Mac, chuckling about some joke that
Gus had just told, repeating some silly punch line which had him doubling over;
Creesie
was back to her usual effervescent self, even
Cat looked rather happy to see me. She had probably heard that I was going
back; word travelled fast in dead circles.

Foregoing
the usual slow-poked chit-chat,
Creesie
mumbled a
giddy apology for being late, mentioning something about a special guest. Then,
extending one arm as if to part the Red Sea
(the others following in slow-motion, it seemed) the mysterious, dark-haired
girl in the bright yellow blouse walked toward me.

Something
in her warm brown eyes made me stare a little longer. Her mannerisms seemed a
little too familiar—the way her body moved, the way she held her head, straight
up and confident, and there was something in the way she smiled . . .

25
Wishes and
then Some

My heart
refused to believe it. Maybe some things really were too good to be true. Then
again, maybe my whole world was about to crash in on me, swallow me up in one
enormous, smothering wave and I just didn’t know it yet.

“Katydid,”
she finally said. “Don’t you recognize me?”

It was
her
voice . . . the one that used to
bring me such comfort, the one I’d nearly killed myself to hear one last time.

The word
almost wouldn’t form on my lips. “
Mom
?”

I was already
sobbing by the time she reached me. She wrapped me in her arms and suddenly I
was smelling her, and she was speaking soothingly into my ear as I held on
tightly—ever so tightly, fearing she might disappear in a puff of smoke, or
that I might wake up to discover this had all been a very good and terrible
dream, and I decided right then that I was never going to let her go. It would
take God himself to tear us apart. Because I would never, never let her go
again.

I held
onto her as she rocked me gently back and forth, and I heard her cooing in my
ear, telling me everything was all going to be all right, and still I kept on
crying. At some point, she ushered me over to the grizzly bear bench, and I sat
down nearly on top of her, terrified that she might go away again.

“I’ll
stay as long as you want me to,” she promised, brushing the wet hair off my
face. “I won’t leave until you say it’s okay.”

I tried
to speak, but I couldn’t. I sobbed and nodded. Some time later, I lay my head
on her shoulder as we looked absently into the crowd. In some unknown moment,
Creesie
and the others had left us alone, but I knew they
weren’t far. I planned to give a boatload of thank-you hugs the minute they
returned.

“Katydid,”
she said at last, “I’ve been worried about you.”

I
thought she sounded so normal. So mom-like.

“You’ve
been worried about
me
?” I tried to
chuckle, but my throat was doing that
I’ve-been-crying-too-hard-and-now-I-sound-like-an-idiot. “Mom, you’re the one
who’s dead. I believe Brody would refer to this as
ironical.
”

Mom got
it—Brody and his made-up words. When she was alive, she loved to laugh, and as
the sound tickled my ears, I remembered what a great laugh she had.

“You’ll
always be my funny girl.” With both arms, she gave me a tighter squeeze. “But I
have, Katydid . . . I’ve been worried about you.”

“You
have?” I straightened up so I could look into her eyes. I couldn’t believe how
much she looked like me . . . well, I looked like her. I’d never seen her at my
age except in old photos, and those didn’t really do her justice. She had zero
wrinkles.
 

“Of
course, I was worried. Did you think I’d abandoned you?”

I
thought about that for a long, sad moment.

“I did,
at first,” I admitted. “I didn’t understand the dream where you showed up. I
thought I was making you up, missing you too much. It wasn’t easy to be left
behind . . . to wonder where you were.”

“I was
right beside you,” she said softly. “Even at your accident, I was there.”

“I know.
Ethan figured it out.”

Mom
smiled again. I was sure I was imagining it, but the flash off her teeth left
me a little speechless. “Yes, Ethan. He’s something, isn’t he?” She kept smiling
at me.