Far From You

51

NOW (JUNE)

It’s happening again.

I’ve wondered every day how it could have been different: if I had been faster, braver, if he hadn’t gone for my bad leg first, maybe I would’ve been able to stop him.

And now there’s another gun in my face and I want to be brave this time. More than anything, I want to be brave.

But I can’t stop my bad leg from folding beneath me.

I go down hard. My knees scream in protest. There’s blood in my mouth; I’ve bitten through my cheek. I can’t look anywhere but at the shotgun barrel. Can’t even focus enough to make out the blurry figure holding it. All I know is that it’s happening again and I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m not blocking Trev anymore, and the panic makes me scramble forward, toward the gun. I can’t be responsible for his dying, too.

Someone’s yelling. Something brushes against my shoulder, forcing me away from that night and back to reality. Trev’s moved past me.

“What the fuck?”

It’s Trev. Trev’s yelling. Angry and loud in a way that’s shocking, because he has the slowest fuse in the universe. Things start to sharpen, my heartbeat slowing in my ears as my eyes focus.

He takes another step until he’s completely in front of me. I want to grab his legs, yank him away. “Get that out of her face!” he yells.

“Who are you two?”

I try to focus on the voice, on the white-haired man holding the gun.

“I said put the gun down!” Trev looms in front of the man, using his height, his broad shoulders, and the strength that he won’t unleash until it’s needed. There’s no fear in his voice, ringing out clear, an unmistakable order.

It’s crazy.

It’s stupid. And I love him for it.

The man, bent, scrawny, with leathery skin and a razor-blade mouth, lowers the barrel a few inches. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

“I’m Mina Bishop’s brother. We wanted to talk about an interview she did with you a few months ago.”

The suspicion melts from the man’s face, and he lowers the gun. “Sorry ’bout that,” he croaks, wiping his forehead. “You never know, out here.” He nods toward the cage of plants. “Kids come out all the time, try to steal my medicine.”

“We’re not here to jack your weed,” Trev says as he kneels down on the ground next to me. “Soph,” he says gently, and I can see in his face how bad I must look right now. He holds his hand out, waiting for me to take it.

Both my legs shake as I get up, and I rub at my cheeks with my sleeve.

“I didn’t mean to scare you that bad, girlie,” Jack ­Dennings says to me.

“Yes, you did.”

He smiles like I’m being funny. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” he says, nodding at Trev. Trev nods back, his shoulders still tense. “What did you want to know about Mina talking with me?”

“All we want to know is what you two talked about,” Trev says.

“Jackie’s childhood. I showed Mina the trophies she won.” Jack smiles, and this time there’s sadness at the edges of his mouth. “She was a natural. Got a soccer scholarship and everything. Was gonna be the first in the family to go to college.” He taps the rifle against his leg, eyes softening. “She was my first grandchild…such a good girl.”

“And did you tell anyone Mina was interviewing people close to Jackie?”

“Nope. I don’t get into town too much these days. Though I think Matt Clarke knew about it, because that’s where Mina said she got my phone number.”

“Are you close to Matt?”

Jack Dennings spits on the ground. “Not likely. Boy wasn’t good enough for my granddaughter. He took a bad turn when his daddy left. Quit sports, started fighting, doing too many drugs. Didn’t want that for her, told her that, but she was a headstrong one, my Jackie.”

“You ever think he was responsible for Jackie going missing?” Trev asks.

Jack’s eyes narrow. “You sound like your sister,” he says.

“Did she think Matt did it?”

“Don’t know, didn’t ask.”

“Do you think he did?” I demand.

“Let me put it this way,” Jack says. “You gotta be sure, and I’m not. So Matt gets to go along, live his life.”

“And what happens if you are sure?” I can’t help but ask.

Jack Dennings smiles wide. He’s got a gap in the back of his grin, missing a few molars. “When that day comes, that boy’s gonna be bear food in the forest before his momma even misses him.”

I shudder, too on edge to stop it, because I can see how much he means it.

Because something inside me understands him.

“Okay, thanks,” Trev says. “We’ll be going now.”

“You don’t come back, you hear?” Jack orders. “Don’t be getting any ideas.”

“Your plants are safe, sir,” Trev says wryly.

He slips into the driver’s seat without asking, and I hand him the keys, not taking a deep breath until we’re on the move, driving down the highway. Trev shuts off the radio and watches me out of the corner of his eye, one hand on the wheel, the other curved out the window.

One mile. Two.

I’m drowning in the quiet.

We don’t speak the entire forty minutes it takes to get back to my house. And when he pulls up to the curb and I get out, he follows. He follows me down the driveway, through the back gate, along the raised beds he built for me, up into the tree house that he’d repaired countless times.

I scrunch myself in the corner, and he sits across from me, the silence as bruising as a hailstorm. I think about the last time I was up here with him, how I don’t regret it, even though I probably should.

There are still gingham curtains, crudely sewn, hanging from one of the windows. They flap gently in the midafternoon breeze, their lace edging ratty and yellowed.

“Do you remember when we met?” I ask him.

He looks up, startled. He rubs his thumbs over his bent knees, straightening one leg out slowly. The hem of his jeans brushes my calf.

“I do,” he says. “Mina had been talking about you for weeks. I remember being glad she’d made a friend, that she was talking and laughing instead of crying. You were so quiet at first, you held yourself so still, sort of like Mina’s opposite.” He laughs. “But you were always watching her. I knew I could count on you, that you’d help her. Looking back, I feel so stupid, not realizing the two of you…” He lets out a huff of breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “It’s weird to think she and I had the same taste in girls. Is that why she never told me?” Trev’s hands knot together. “Because of you?”

We both know the answer, but I can’t bring myself to say it. “I wanted to tell you about me,” I say instead. “But I couldn’t without telling you about her. I’m wrapped up in her, Trev. I never learned how to love anyone else because she was there and we were us. We were always just us, and I couldn’t break that without breaking me. Without breaking her.”

“She wanted to hide,” he says. “And you went along with it, because you always did.”

“She was scared,” I say, as if I need to defend her.

But I know I don’t, not to him. He’s telling the truth, too. Mina led, and I followed. She hid, and I was her shelter. She kept secrets, and I guarded them. Mina lied, and so did I. Sometimes we were downright ruthless to each other. For once, it isn’t some cotton-candy idea of her; it’s who she was, in all her maddening, heart-squeezing truth.

“What about you?” Trev asks abruptly. “Were you scared?”

“Loving her was never scary. It was never wrong. It was where I fit. But I wasn’t raised the way you two were, and she thought I had a choice. Because I didn’t like only girls. Because I had…” I can’t finish that sentence.

But he does it for me. “Because you had me.”

I nod, the only thing I can manage.

And he’s right—I had. Trev’s been waiting for me all this time. Between boyfriends, breakups, fights, and more than two years of an addiction I managed to hide until it ate me up, he’s been there, waiting. I know exactly what that kind of love requires.

Because I’d been waiting, too.

Just not for him.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders, press my forehead against his temple.

His hands cup the back of my neck; our foreheads slide together, noses brush. I know he won’t kiss me, know he’ll never make a move again. This is up to me and me alone.

I know I can’t kiss him, know I have to draw the line here and now, because I can never love him like I loved her, and he deserves that. Deserves better than me and the empty imitation I can offer.

So I swallow back the tears and the words in my throat, the ones I can’t say, that I wish I could.

If it hadn’t been her, it would have been you.