Saving Ben (29 page)

He nodded, although I couldn’t help but wonder it he was thinking about those horrible girls who’d driven Abby to a slow suicide, those bitches that belonged to this same community.

“Anyway, if you ask me, you have the perfect temporary insanity case. You were out of your mind with grief for Abby and tormented by Emma’s cruel comments about her. I’ll vouch for you.”

“You mean that? After everything that’s happened?”

“
Particularly
after everything that’s happened. Remember, I’m to blame for introducing you to Emma.” I squeezed his hand again and released it. “You’ll have to work hard, though, George. I mean really hard. And quit drinking. You need to have a clear head in order to get a handle on your grief.”

“I don’t deserve your friendship, Cat.” George buried his face in his hands. “Yours or Ben’s.”

With his back to the doorway, George couldn’t see the single-file line of people making their way down the path. Two policemen followed by Thompson and then Ben and my parents. I held up my hand to stop them from entering the boathouse, nodding once to signal that everything was okay.

“I thought we settled this years ago, Porgie. We swapped blood over it. Our friendship is unconditional.”

“I remember.” When George raised his head, I detected a hint of a smile on his lips at the bittersweet memory. He burst into tears, and the two of us cried together for all we’d lost. Friendship. Youth. Love.

The policemen huddled in the doorway, granting us our privacy for several long moments before growing impatient. They cleared their throats and shuffled their feet to let us know our time was up.

I kissed George on the cheek and whispered in his ear, promising him that everything would be okay. It was a lie, but it was one we both needed to hear.

So as not to startle George, I got up gradually and walked toward the others. With each step I took, time slowed a fraction of a second more, as if I were crossing the threshold into another era. Then, smiles of relief gave way to looks of horror—mouths dropped open and eyes grew wide. One officer stepped behind me, using his body to shield mine. I tried to turn and see what was happening behind me, but Thompson quickly pulled me toward him and held me tight.

Over Thompson’s shoulder, I saw my father and read his lips, “No, son, no.” The sound of his words was muted by the gunshot report echoing throughout the boathouse and across the water. I buried my face in Thompson’s chest and waited for the pain—ten seconds, twenty, a minute—but it never came. I felt the thumping of my heart against Thompson’s and the movement of our chests as we inhaled and exhaled in unison. Just to be sure, I blinked my eyes and cleared my throat. I was still alive. But if not me, who? I squirmed to free myself from Thompson’s arms, but he only tightened his grip more to prevent me from seeing George’s body lying in a crumpled heap in the same spot where we’d been sitting only moments earlier.

Blessy recognized the new bond developing between Mom and me and gave us the necessary room to explore it. When Thompson announced on Wednesday morning that he was heading back to Charlottesville to prepare for the new semester, Blessy begged a ride to Richmond, claiming she was needed at home to help with her sick grandchild.

On Thursday morning at eleven o’clock, we entered the Presbyterian Church in Irvington to attend our second funeral in less than a year. George’s was much the same as Abby’s. Same hymns, same minister presiding over the same tearful congregation, same multitudes packed together in the same pews. Same blue-sky day on the river.

What wasn’t the same was Mr. and Mrs. Turner’s attitude toward us. I expected awkward—I was surprised at hostile. I felt their blame when they avoided my hug and turned their backs on me to greet another friend.

“Right back at you,” I wanted to say to them. I wanted to remind them that I was merely the friend, but they were George’s parents. His problems had started well before New Year’s Eve. Hell, I’d seen the change in him even before that Labor Day weekend when he’d first met Emma. The fun-loving boy I’d known for most of my life had become too serious, too sarcastic, too intense. George’s anger had been festering for years. Emma was merely his victim, the last in a long line of bitches to torment the sister he adored.

So maybe I
was
the one who introduced George to Emma—I’m certainly capable of bearing my share of the responsibility—but let’s be reasonable here. Mr. Turner took an oath in a court of law, with his hand on a Bible no less, to uphold the truth in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Not only did he betray me, he betrayed his countrymen. Worst of all, he betrayed his family. If he’d done his job, both as a parent and as the commonwealth’s attorney, with Mr. Turner’s connections, his son would be serving a reduced sentence at a minimum-security facility for temporary insanity. Instead, George was lying in front of me, cold and alone in a mahogany box every bit as shiny and lovely as Abby’s.

Despite all the beautiful music in that church that day, the only song I heard was in my head—the sound of geese honking and waves lapping along the shores of a calm river.

There was no way Mr. and Mrs. Turner would ever share George’s last words, his suicide note, with me. I would have to be satisfied with the comfort of knowing I’d had the opportunity to tell him, during his last moments on earth, how much his friendship had meant to me.

Friday’s funeral was altogether different. Gray snowbanks lined the streets of Altoona, Pennsylvania, on our way to the Blessed Heart Catholic Church. Including our family and Emma’s mother, there were exactly fourteen people in the church, easy enough to count. The hymns were solemn and the priest spoke only a few kinds words about a girl he clearly did not know well.

I met Emma’s mother for the first time at the cemetery after the brief graveside service. Mrs. Stone was a tiny little woman, soft-spoken and socially awkward. She had been no match for her daughter’s strong will while she was alive, nor would she be for the grief that would follow Emma’s death.

Ben and I expressed our condolences and offered our apologies, and she, in turn, assured us we were not to blame. “Bad genes,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Like father, like daughter.”

Our parents made a spur-of-the-moment decision to spend the weekend in Washington, DC on our way home to Virginia. Fine by me. I was certainly in no hurry to get back to school. All I had to look forward to in Charlottesville, with the exception of Thompson, was an empty apartment full of my dead roommate’s things.

On Saturday, on their way to the Air and Space Museum, Ben and Dad dropped Mom and me in Georgetown for an afternoon of shopping in the boutiques. Our outing turned out to be the most enjoyable excursion, shopping or otherwise, we’d ever made together. We’d never done the mother/daughter thing well, but the events of the past week had delivered us to a new place, one where trust and love are accepted and returned. Murder and suicide are grown-up issues, deserving of the respect of everyone involved.

Ben and I ditched our parents after dinner on Saturday night and caught a cab over to the K Street Lounge to explore some of Washington’s nightlife. We settled in at the bar and order shooters, a lemon drop for me and tequila for him, but only one for each. We discussed the terms for a codicil to the pact we’d made all those years ago on the day we ran away to the country club. Not only would we hold true to our promise to always be there for one another when one of us felt sad or needed help, we agreed to never again let anyone or anything come between us. No man. No woman. No drugs.

Saving Ben

Copyright

Dedication

Ashley H. Farley

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Acknowledgements

Subscribe