Nowhere Girl (41 page)

“You don't look okay.” He nodded to my hands. I hadn't realized I was shaking.

“Pack up your house, and get out of here.” But even as I was saying it, I realized there was almost nothing downstairs. The few decorations I remembered from when we came to help with Colette—an antique mirror at the base of the stairs and an old painting of a ramshackle house—were gone. “I understand if you can't stay here, but you're not helping anyone by going to jail for a crime you didn't commit.”

“What about Patrick?”

“What about him?” I'd forgotten that he thought I was home sick.

“He's a good man and a great cop. If I leave town, he's going to put two and two together.”

I hadn't thought about that. “Maybe I can convince him that reopening Savannah's case is too hard on my family and we want him to let it go.”

He eyed me as if trying to decide if my plan was brilliant or ludicrous. “Is that really how you want to start off with him?”

“Start what with him?”

He grinned, a small glimpse of the man I'd come to know the last four months. “Your relationship.” My eyes widened. “You can't tell me you haven't noticed the way he looks at you. And I haven't even seen you together that much.”

Maybe Patrick was the reason why I didn't feel anything for Brady when we'd kissed. “Shit. I don't know. But I do know that I can't let you go down for Savannah's death. You didn't have anything to do with it.”

“But I did it.” His voice was desperate.

“No, you didn't. You loved a girl who probably didn't know how to love herself until you came along. You loved her so much you vowed to do anything she wanted. And when she took it too far, you said no. You had no way of knowing what was going to happen once you walked out that door.”

But Brady was shaking his head. “I don't want to run. I'm tired of pretending.”

“Go,” I said again. “Savannah wouldn't want you in prison.” I swallowed. “She loved you.”

“Will you hate me if I leave?”

“I'll hate you if you don't.”

Without saying a word, he came to me, held my face in his hands, and kissed me on the lips. “Thank you, Cady.” And then he was gone.

*   *   *

I stood in Brady's empty house until a strip of moonlight filtered in through the blinds. I didn't know what to do. I had no one to tell. Gabby would have kept my secret, but I couldn't burden her with that knowledge.

With nothing else to do, I finally pulled open the front door, walked past the garden of daisies, and got in my car. I tried to start it, but my hands were still shaking, and I couldn't get the key in the ignition. My phone rang in my purse, but I didn't answer it. When it rang again, I pulled it out and saw Patrick's name flash on the screen. I knew if I ignored it, he'd keep calling. Or come find me. I pressed the green
ANSWER
button, but couldn't get any words out.

“We got him,” Patrick said.

A million scenarios flashed through my head. Brady had gotten pulled over for speeding and confessed. He'd had a confrontation with the cop who patrolled the Whole Foods shopping center.

“Brady Irons walked right into the station and handed me a manifesto of his confession.”

Brady'd been planning to confess all along. He must have written his statement before I'd gotten to his house.

“He didn't do it,” I said. “I don't know what he told you, but he didn't do it. She choked herself. She was trying to do some fucked-up sex act, and she fucking strangled herself. You can't arrest him.” I was so hysterical I could barely get the words out. “Don't you see, Patrick? He didn't do it.”

 

CHAPTER

49

“Cady?” Greg asked after he'd called my name three times from the foyer and I hadn't answered. The refrigerator door was open, and I'd left the oven on. I still hadn't changed out of my clothes from the day before. He sat on the couch with me. “Are you all right?” But I couldn't answer him. “Did something happen?” Eventually, he gave up trying to get me to talk and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, hugging me in a way he hadn't in years. He put a blanket over me and called Gabby. I hadn't seen her since I'd walked in on her and David, so she had no idea what was going on, but she told David that Greg had found me almost catatonic, and David had called Patrick, who came right over. When Patrick got to our house, he and Greg disappeared into my office for a long time. When they finally came out, Greg came to me on the couch and squatted in front of me. “I'm going to leave you and Patrick to talk this through,” he said. “He's much better suited for this job.”

“You're a shrink,” I'd wanted to say, but I couldn't get the words out. “This is what you do.” And then he was gone, leaving me when I needed him most, when I needed him to wade through this quicksand with me trying to understand how something I'd been waiting for half my life now felt so wrong.

Once Greg was gone, Patrick coaxed me into taking a shower while he made me something to eat. When I came downstairs, my hair wet, in a pink T-shirt and gray sweats, he had scrambled eggs, half a cantaloupe, and a glass of orange juice on the counter waiting for me. I brought the plate to the couch and set it down on the coffee table but didn't eat. Instead, I lay down and pulled the crocheted blanket that had been Savannah's over my legs.

“This is what you've always wanted,” Patrick said in a soothing tone I imagined he used when he showed up on people's doorsteps in the middle of the night. “For this to be over.”

I sat up, dizzy with hunger and exhaustion. “That's just it.” I half laughed. “The only person responsible for Savannah's death was Savannah. I wasted so much time, so much of my life trying to avenge my sister. No wonder she never gave me more clues in those dreams I used to have.” It occurred to me then that I hadn't dreamed about her in weeks. “She wanted me to keep up this vigil for her, forever be the sun that I revolved around.” Patrick put his hand on my back but didn't speak. “Promise,” I said plainly, “you'll keep Brady out of jail. You can't arrest him, Patrick. He didn't do anything wrong.”

“The DA wants to talk to the ME again. She said if the time line matches up and the coroner can confirm that the injuries could have been self-inflicted, then they will officially rule Savannah's death an accident.”

I threw my arms around Patrick's neck. “Oh, thank God.” I hugged him hard, but he stiffened with my touch. I pulled back. “What?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

“They still have to charge him with failure to report a death.”

“Will he go to jail for that?”

Patrick dropped his eyes. “It's a misdemeanor in the fourth degree. There's no jail time. Just a fine.” He stabbed the eggs with a fork and brought them to my lips as if I were a baby he was trying to feed. I took the fork from him and put it back on the plate. “It's okay, Cady; it's over.”

“It'll never be over.”

“You finally know what really happened to Savannah. Doesn't that change everything?”

“Did you know I tried to kill myself because of her?”

“What?” He grabbed my hands as if I might do it again right then. “God, Cady, no.”

“It was about a year after she died, and I didn't want to live anymore hating my life, hating who I was without her, knowing I'd never see her again, that her case would never be solved, that some lunatic was trotting around with his wife and kids with my sister's death in the lines on his face and in the tone of his voice. Breathing was too much effort. Opening my eyes in the morning without my sister was too painful. It literally hurt to push myself through the motions of eating and talking and smiling like my fucking life was okay with me.”

In the quiet of a house I hated, I told Patrick what happened. He knew that I'd begun cutting myself after Savannah's murder, but he didn't know that when I was seventeen and it didn't ease the pain anymore, I'd begun researching, which was my custom; it was what I did best. I'd learned that slitting my wrists wasn't guaranteed, even if I made the cuts vertical and got in a hot bath to encourage circulation. And too many people survived swallowing pills. I didn't want to shoot myself; I was vain enough to want to look good, as good as I could in my size-twelve funeral dress in an open casket. And I hadn't wanted my parents to have to clean up too much. Cutting had become a friend to me. It'd comforted me, taken care of me. It took away the constant sting of my life the way a glass of wine soothed frazzled nerves. It was fitting that it serve me one last time. One Saturday night, I found out from a boy in South Dakota who called himself Leviathan that the carotid was the answer. Deep into the night, with only my laptop on for light, he wrote me that if I got the carotid just right, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes, and then the coroner would be able to stitch me up like new.

I decided to do it on a Friday. I hated Fridays, the weekend looming ahead like a big building with nothing in it. My parents were gone most Fridays, prepping the restaurant for the weekend, so I went into their medicine cabinet and took one of my father's straight razors. He was so old-fashioned.

All day during school, I thought about what I would write in my suicide note. I owed my parents that much. I couldn't have them blaming themselves for the rest of their lives. But over and over, during European history and chemistry, I could only come up with one word.
Savannah.
And then I knew. I didn't need a note. No one would wonder if I'd had a secret breakup with a boy or had failed a class. They'd all know: it was too hard to live without my sister.

The most important thing was not to give myself away. I didn't want someone catching on, calling the cops or having my parents get worried and stay home from the restaurant. I just wanted it done. The void of Savannah couldn't be filled, but it could be dismissed, annihilated. When I got off the bus, I called my mom at work to let her know I was home and doing homework. I laid out my schoolbooks on the kitchen table and went to my room.

But my mother had come back, because the pipes had frozen at the restaurant, and my father had told her to get a hairdryer so he could warm them slowly without them bursting. It had been one of the coldest winters on record in New Jersey. I was unconscious when she found me, but because my head was turned to the side, she didn't immediately see the cut. Later that night in the hospital, I overheard her talking to Dr. Bassett. She said when she put her ear to my chest to feel for a heartbeat, she smelled a metallic, tangy odor. Blood. And then she was on the phone with a 911 operator, who was telling her to use a pillowcase to put pressure on the wound. In the quiet of my hospital room, my mother told the doctor that when the paramedics got there, the look that crossed between them told her I was already dead. She begged them to save me, telling them that my twin had been murdered and she couldn't go through it again. As I was slipping away, so close to Savannah that I could smell her honey shampoo, two young-faced, well-meaning men ruined my life by saving it.

It was music that made my mother check on me. I hadn't turned on my radio; that's what gave me away. I had always said I couldn't live without music. And no matter what, I had the radio on or a CD going when I was in my room or doing homework. My high-honor grades had proven time and again that I concentrated better with background noise. But that Friday afternoon, I couldn't decide what song I wanted to be my last—something upbeat like Sugar Ray's “Every Morning” or something melancholy like Candlebox's “Far Behind.” I decided to go without. When my mom came home for the hairdryer and didn't hear any music coming from my room, some divine motherly instinct told her to get upstairs and check on me.

“So there you have it,” I said when I was done.

Patrick kissed my forehead. “Thank God your mother came home,” he said.

But it occurred to me then for the first time that it wasn't my mother. “I'm sure it was Savannah. She sent my mother back. She saved me.”

He squeezed my hand. “Savannah loved you.”

“I know. She couldn't save herself. But she saved me.” We didn't speak for a long while until finally I said, “I remember so clearly the moments before my mother found me. I was with Savannah. I could smell her perfume, and the space I was in was so bright. I remember thinking she was the sun pulling me to her.”

Patrick had tears in his eyes. He pulled me to his chest and whispered into my hair, “Savannah may be a star in the sky now, but you're the sun, Cady. You're the sun.”

 

EPILOGUE

 

I left Greg right after I'd found out about Brady. He'd gone away for three weeks and come home to a woman neither he nor I recognized. There was no drama, no hurt words; it was as if we were roommates whose lease was up and it was time for us to move on. Gabby gave up her apartment and moved in with my brother at the same time I was cleaning out my house. My parents had flown up and had helped me move. I'd called them after Brady had gone to the police. I couldn't talk because I was crying so hard, begging them to forgive me, but they'd said there was nothing to forgive. I just did what any girl who had loved her sister would have done.

David and Gabby offered me their guest room, but they were still in the early stages of their relationship, and I told them the truth when I said that I didn't think I could stand to be around that much happiness. After we split, Greg called to tell me he was seeing Annika. He didn't want me to hear it from anyone else. Although I'd suspected it for a long time, I had thought I'd be bothered by the news. That I wasn't confirmed what I already knew: I was happier without him. And in a strange way, I was happy for them. He deserved someone who would love him more than I did.