The last part chokes me. Steals my air and burns my eyes. I’m kicking myself when I say it. I tell myself to shut up and keep her. Grab her and kiss her and tell her everything will be okay because I’ll make it okay, good, even. Tell her that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her. Lie to her with every pretty lie I have. But I can’t do it. I’ve done goodbyes before, and I can do this one, too. Somehow this one hurts worse than the others; because this one I could prevent if I wanted to, since I’m the one saying it. This goodbye comes with a choice the way none of the others ever did. And as much as I’m telling her to stay here, as much as I know she needs to stay here, I still want her to choose to come with me. To say f**k sanity and healing and closure. To say that I am the only thing she needs to be well and whole and alive. But we both know that’s not true. She’s going to say goodbye to me today and I have to let her and neither of us knows if she’s ever going to come back.
I’ve been trying to leave for twenty minutes, but neither of us knows how to say goodbye. Even now, I know that all of the words I’ve given her today haven’t been enough, because I haven’t said the one thing that needs to be said the most. And if I want to leave here without regrets, I need to know that there are no more unsaid words left to haunt me.
“Wait.” I catch her as she walks away, taking her hand and turning it over in mine, tracing the scars like I’ve done so many times before. She’s searching my face and I can almost feel her eyes reaching into mine, wondering what more there could possibly be to say.
I don’t know how to say it—after all this time, I’m not even sure that I can—but I have to break her last rule, because if she knows nothing else, I need her to know this one thing.
“I love you, Sunshine,” I tell her, before I lose my nerve. “And I don’t give a shit whether you want me to or not.”
CHAPTER 57
Emilia
I never realized that grief and self-pity weren’t the same thing. I thought grieving was what I was doing all this time I had been feeling sorry for myself, but it wasn’t. So for the first time in nearly three years, I let myself grieve.
Josh let me go. Or maybe I let him go. I’m not sure it matters. He left the day after Drew. He told me he loved me, but he wouldn’t let me say it back, because he didn’t want to hear it if I was lost to him. Then he kissed the palm of my left hand and gave it back to me and he got in his truck and he left.
I think the goodbye was harder on him, because he’s used to losing people who die, but he’s not used to losing people who walk away; and that’s what I was doing. I don’t know how long I’m going to stay. I don’t even know if I’m going to go back at all. All I know is that it’s time.
It’s time for a lot of things, even if I can’t make them happen all at once. And I’d like to, because patience has never been my thing.
I crawl into my mother’s arms in a silent apology because I don’t know the words that will ever be enough. And when I speak, I tell her what I know is true: that I hate myself, that I am so very not okay, that I am afraid I’ll feel like this forever and I don’t know what to do. And then I tell her to make the phone call. I’ll go.
I go to therapy nearly every day in the beginning. And I talk. And I talk. And I talk. And then I talk some more. And then I cry. And when I’m done crying, my parents come, and then my brother, and we try to find a way to crawl out of this hole together.
We finally found a therapist for me who doesn’t have a lot of patience, either, and has no tolerance for my crap. I kind of love her. Because let’s face it, when it comes to therapy, I don’t need a kindergarten teacher; I need a drill sergeant. She gives me homework which I actually do, and if and when I leave, we have a schedule for phone and weekend appointments. I know there really isn’t an end in sight for me with the therapy. At least not for a while.
I even tried the group thing again, but only once, because I still don’t like it. I still don’t feel better just for knowing that shitty things happen to other people, too, and so I don’t do that again. And I don’t feel bad about it.
Yesterday, I sat down at the piano, but I didn’t touch the keys. I think I’d like to keep that coffin closed. I’d like to remember that the last piece of music I played was beautiful and perfect, even if it wasn’t. I won’t even try to act like it doesn’t still kill me; my lying skills haven’t improved enough for that. I mourn it every day and I wonder if I’ll ever stop.
The nightmares haven’t come back, but I expect them every night. All the secrets and stories are spit out of my head now. Everyone knows everything, so I guess the memories have nothing to hold over me anymore. I still itch for the notebooks like a sleeping pill before bed every night, but they’re gone now. My father helped me build a fire in the fire pit in the backyard and he and my mother and Asher and I all took turns throwing them in until the smoke was burning our eyes and we could blame the tears on it. I’ll never forget the words, but I won’t write them down again either.
I don’t have the camera my mother gave me here, but we use hers, and we take more pictures than we will ever need and we try to make new memories. We spread the proofs out over the kitchen table and I show her my favorite one and she shows me hers and we print them and start a new wall together.
Aidan Richter is being held, but none of the lawyers will let me talk to him, even though he’s confessed. And maybe there really isn’t anything left to say. I’ve learned a lot about the why of Aidan Richter. About the why of what happened that day. How he came home. How he found his brother’s body. How reality became so unbearable in that moment that his mind just shattered. They say he had a psychotic break. I know that’s the defense, but I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to get it. Because I can’t excuse it. I can’t forgive it. I won’t. But my hate will never be as clearly defined again, either. Aidan Richter wasn’t prepared for the shit life threw at him any more than I was. He just broke in a very different way. I feel like everything I’ve spent the past three years believing isn’t quite as true as I thought it was. Like the glass I’ve been looking through is coated in the dust of my own perception and I haven’t seen what’s real. Because before it was black and white, evil and not. And that’s the most confusing part – figuring out what’s true.
For the nearly two years since I remembered, I’ve had a picture of evil in my head and it had his face. I spent that time planning to hurt him and feeling justified, like it was owed to me. But when I came back to Brighton for him, I wasn’t sure I could do it. So I sat in the dirt. Under the trees. In the place where he beat me. And I waited. I waited for the words. I waited for the courage. I waited to decide. But I waited too long; and he took that from me too.
I never did see him again after that day in the gallery. I never did get to make him listen. I’ll be allowed to speak at his sentencing, whenever that is. I haven’t decided if I will. I know there are still things to say, but I don’t know what they are anymore, and there are days when I miss the silence.
Sometimes I wonder whatever became of the real Russian girl who I was supposed to be that day. I wonder if she heard about what happened and if she knows what part she played in it simply by existing.
One afternoon Josh calls, and in the understatement of the century, I tell him that I’m tired of being angry.
“Then don’t be,” he says, as if this is the most logical thing on earth. And maybe it is.
“But if I’m not angry then isn’t it the same as saying it’s okay? Doesn’t it mean I’m condoning it?”
“No. It means you’re accepting it.” He takes a breath and exhales. “I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t be pissed. You should be furious. You’re entitled to every ounce of anger you have.” He stops speaking for a moment and when he starts again I can hear the tension in his voice. “You have no idea how much I want to kill him for what he did to you, and if he hadn’t been arrested, I don’t know that there is anything that would have stopped me from doing it, so don’t think that I don’t believe your hatred is justified. But you have a choice now and I’d rather you choose to be happy. And I know that that sounds stupid. Maybe it sounds like the most impossible thing in the world, but it’s still what I want. He took the f**king piano, Sunshine. He didn’t take everything. Look at your left hand. It’s probably clenched in a fist right now, isn’t it?”
I don’t need to look. It is. He knows it.
“Now open it up and let it go.”
And I do.
I think about the day I died and about the story Josh’s grandfather told and three days later I write a letter to the court for whenever they want to read it.
My name is Emilia Ward.
I have a list of nevers I started when I was fifteen. I will never be the Brighton Piano Girl again. I will never carry a child. I will never walk down the street in the middle of the afternoon without wondering if someone is waiting to kill me. I will never get back the months of my life that I spent in rehabilitation and in and out of hospitals, instead of in recitals and in and out of school. I will never get back the years I spent hating every last person in the world, including myself. I will never not know the meaning of the word pain.
I understand pain. I understand rage. Aidan Richter gave me the gift of that understanding. He understands it, too. I spent the past three years despising the person who did this to me; the person who stole my life and took my identity. I learned to despise myself in the process. I spent the last three years fortifying my rage, while he spent the last three years healing his.
I will never forget what he did to me. I will never forgive it. I will never stop hating him. Please don’t ask me to. I wish I could say that I am a big enough person; but I’m not. I will never stop mourning what he stole from me. But I can’t steal it back from him and I don’t want to anymore. I think maybe I can believe in spite of Aidan Richter; or maybe I can believe because of him. If he can heal his life, then maybe I can, too.
I can’t tell you what I believe is the appropriate punishment for him. I just don’t know. But I would like to believe in the dream of second chances. For both of us.
Nothing is perfect. It’s not even good yet. But maybe.
And after five weeks, I go home.
CHAPTER 58
Emilia
I haven’t gotten better. I’m not even close to okay. The only thing I’ve done is to decide to get better. But I think that may just be enough.
I’m trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love. I know that bad things still happen. And sometimes I still ask myself why I am alive; but now, when I ask, I have an answer.
I get back on a Sunday morning and that evening I walk into dinner at the Leighton house, unexpected, but always welcome. I can tell the music is Sarah’s and it makes me smile because I still hate it, but not her. Everyone is laughing and helping and sniping, and other than the fact that Tierney Lowell is setting the table, everything is the same.
Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn’t tell him I was coming back. He doesn’t say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I’m here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation.
“Hi—” Mrs. Leighton says, her eyes wide, when I walk into the kitchen without a stitch of black on me, carrying the same chocolate cake I brought the first time I had dinner here.