The Whys Have It Page 6

  He turns around and shoves both hands in his pockets, then takes a step toward me. All of a sudden I’m nervous, though I have no idea why. The last time I remember feeling this way was the exact moment before the policeman delivered the awful news about my sister. The feeling is irrational, inconvenient, without merit—but it’s all very familiar and it doesn’t stop my heart from pounding between my ears. Maybe I should sit down. Maybe I should stand up. I settle for leaning against the counter and try hard to breathe.

  “Can I help you?”

  He looks me in the eye. Realization washes over me. It knocks the air from my lungs and the sense from my brain and one tear leaks from my eye. And suddenly it’s not irrational at all.

  Why can’t I escape my life?

  * * *

  For what seems like the span of a thousand tense minutes, neither of us says a word. I’m stuck reliving a scene from Notting Hill—the one where the celebrity walks into an obscure small-town store, clearly out of place, and comes face-to-face with the star struck but frazzled employee who can’t think or speak or comprehend because he’s too busy trying to process and come to terms with his emotions. Except I’m Hugh Grant in this case, and Julia Roberts in male form keeps staring at me and I have no idea what to say.

  Another tear trails down my cheek and lands on my shirt.

  I don’t bother touching my face to wipe it off.

  I’m just so tired of living this nightmare.

  “Are you Samantha?” He barely manages a whisper before he clears his throat. “Samantha Dalton?” He takes a deep breath. Rocks back on his heels. Cracks a knuckle. Another one. Glances around the store. Clearly wishes to be anywhere but here.

  That makes two of us.

  “Yes.” A shaky hand comes to my throat before I can stop it. “Sam…I go by Sam.” My voice doesn’t sound right; like it’s being processed through a filter, one that alters it to mimic the sound of grief. I try not to think about it as I study him. There’s no trace of the charm he is famous for, no devil-may-care attitude, no easy grin that crosses his lips.

  “You look just like your picture.” He says it more to himself than to me. I frown at his interesting choice of words. “I looked you up on Instagram several days ago. I hope that isn’t weird.” His neck stains pink. He thinks it’s weird.

  Under any other circumstance it would be, but not this one. If there were ever rules put in place for how to react when a tour bus slams into someone’s sister and kills her, they no longer apply. Do you get angry? Get even? Get familiar by stalking each other’s social media?

  I’d be lying if I said I haven’t done the same to him.

  “So you’re Cory.” It isn’t a question. The answer is obvious, but processing this takes work. I fold and unfold my hands, look around the room and look at him. “What are you doing here?” Beside me, Hannah shifts in place. I’d forgotten she was here, but she’s curious. With Hannah curiosity trumps everything, but so does friendship. No matter what I say, she’ll back me up. “I mean, don’t you have a tour to be on?”

  He rubs his hands together and takes a hesitant step toward me. My heart becomes a fist punching, slamming, beating against my ribs. I don’t want him to touch me. Or maybe I do.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot my manners.” He holds out a hand—hesitant, far from confident—and I take it. “I’m Cory Minor. The tour ended last week, and I have four weeks off until I have to be back in the studio. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this much time to myself.” I’m the first to let go and he massages his forearm, something I gather is a nervous habit. The sleeve of his shirt comes up a bit and reveals a much larger section of his tattoo—a series of conjoined lightning bolts connected by a thin black line. I’ve seen it on posters…so many posters in my sister’s room. It’s much more impressive and intimidating in person. I study his face again. I don’t like feeling intimidated.

  “And you came here? To Springfield?” I’m trying to guess his train of thought, but I can’t even guess my own. Nothing about the past two weeks has felt real, and his presence only compounds the grief. Now my resentment has a face, up close and personal. And knowing that his face is one of the last Kassie saw…

  He blinks, a welcome interruption. “I didn’t know where else to go.” For a moment he looks unsure of himself, but then a wave of determination crosses his features; jaw set, eyes sharp, lips parted to speak. “I came to tell you I’m sorry for what happened with your sister.” He runs a shaky hand through his hair and then replaces the ball cap. “If I could redo that night…”

  “You can’t.” Tears burn behind my eyes, and I quickly turn away to keep them hidden. One tear was one thing, a stream of them is another. I reach for a basket of magnets by the register and begin to rifle through them. Keeping busy, forgetting the moment…it’s the only way I can begin to survive. Hannah slips behind the counter without saying a word. A show of support, a proverbial pat on the shoulder.

  Cory remains in place, watching for a long moment. A part of me feels sorry for him. Another part of me feels nothing at all. Unseeing, I search through magnets looking for something…anything to keep myself from crumbling. I find one with a quote from Van Gogh and flip it over in my palm. Kassie would have liked it.

  “Do you mind if—”

  A bell rings over the door and two women walk in, a toddler in tow. An excited voice asking for a gumball from the machine by the front window drowns out Cory’s question. A mother searches her purse, a quarter drops inside, a blue gumball spirals downward. I watch it, Cory watches it, Hannah watches it. And then like waking up from a trance, she jumps into action, walking away and chatting like she’s never been so happy to have a customer before.

  I set the basket down and look at Cory, feeling a shift in the moment. The tension eases a bit. At least until he speaks.

  “Do you mind if we go somewhere to talk?” he finally asks. “Even just outside? I promise I’ll only take a few minutes of your time, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

  I want him to leave me alone. I want to cry by myself. I don’t want to go anywhere, especially not with him.

  My mouth, my conscience, my curiosity…they all have other ideas.

  “Give me a second to tell Hannah, and I’ll meet you by the door.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Cory

  I write songs for a living. Long, intricate songs that tell stories of heartache and broken dreams and shattered hearts. People relate to these songs, some call them life-changing, mind altering, mood lifting. I’ve won Grammys, People’s Choice awards, songwriting awards. I have one gold record and three multi-platinum albums, each one of them framed in black and hanging in my office at home. I’m wealthy because of my words and my ability to deliver them both in a recording studio and in front of massive crowds. This has never been a problem for me. Words come as easily as breathing.

  As long as I keep them confined to music. Put me face to face with someone—anyone, including my own family—and I draw a blank. And for me, that blank quickly spirals into a desire to run. Music is easy, people are hard. I’ll take the former over the latter any day of the week. Including now.

  Every word I rehearsed on the plane is gone.

  Vanished.

  Drained.

  Sucked out of my brain like dirty bathwater swirling down an old rusty pipe and disappearing into some faraway gutter, useless and never to be seen again. I’ve searched my mind and reached into the storage space where I keep my unfailing standby phrases, but everything is empty. I can’t think of a thing to say.

  Because she led me to the park.

  Of all the places we could have gone, she drives to the one place I never wanted to see again with me following behind her in my Land Rover. When she pulled away from the curb I had a feeling, the kind of feeling that churns in your gut and slides up your esophagus in a nauseating crawl because you know. You just know what’s getting ready to happen. But there wasn’t anything I could do. You can’t complain abo
ut swing sets and murky water bad memories to a girl whose sister just died because of your deeply ingrained selfishness. You can’t cut her off in your car and demand to meet at McDonald’s instead.

  Now that we’re here, my mouth is filled with paste and my mind is layered in panic. Red panic. Black panic. Yellow panic. Wet panic. Fresh cut panic still bleeding out from a ten year old scab that never quite healed, that festered.

  I don’t remove my sunglasses as I lean against the car and look at her. Maybe they’ll hide the tension. Maybe they’ll cover up my insecurity. Maybe they’ll help me breathe.

  “So we’re here,” she says, barely above a whisper. Her voice jars me, forces me out of the past. Her hands fist her keys in a white knuckled grip. She’s as tense as I am. “What else did you want to talk about?”

  My heart pounds in my ears, but I try to make the best of it. I look up at the sky and take a deep breath, then say a quick prayer not to sound tacky.

  “I just wanted to know what she was like. Your sister, I mean. What did she look like? Can you tell me a little about her?” I toe the gravel with my shoe, bits of it landing toward Sam’s foot. I can’t explain my need to know about her—this deep persistent need that nags the back of my mind like an itch I can’t scratch. All I keep remembering is that shock of red hair. And that smile. I can’t leave without asking. Maybe by knowing a bit about her, I can move past the image of her white and lifeless body laid out on a stretcher…the image that haunts me every time I close my eyes.

  Plus the other reason I’m here…

  The stricken look on her face tells me I’ve caught her off guard. “What do you want to know?”

  I want to know everything. I need to know everything. “I don’t know. Just…were you two close?”

  Her chest rises and falls on a slow breath. “She was my best friend.”

  I process that for a moment. “Do you have any other brothers or sisters?” Silently I beg for the answer to be yes, for those pictures to be wrong. So much rides on this answer. I can’t live with myself if I have wiped out the only family this girl’s got.

  She shakes her head. Just once, but it’s enough for my guilt to rise up and multiply. “No, she was it. My mother died from melanoma ten years ago. My dad is still living, but he’s in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. I tried to tell him about Kassie, but…” Her voice catches. So does my gut. “He lives in a nursing home two blocks away from my apartment.”

  Something scalds the back of my neck and slithers down my spine. Guilt. Crushing guilt. It’s been ten years since I felt the sensation, but you never forget the burn. I reach up and try to rub it away just as a car pulls alongside us. Out of habit, I stiffen and brace myself for the click of a camera, the shout of a question. When the car slows and pulls away, I relax and look at Sam again. Her brow is pushed together as she studies me.

  “Are we okay to be standing here? What if someone sees you?”

  I lift a shoulder in resignation. “We’re okay. Trust me, if anyone had recognized me, they would have stopped, called their friends, and ambushed us.” My voice sounds matter-of-fact, like I’m listing off the symptoms of a common cold. But the paparazzi is a bit like a sickness. In the same way a cold always reveals itself in sneezing and scratchy throats—the paparazzi always stops, always screams, always invades a private moment, always sells the story.

  Sam looks at me so long I’m not sure what she’s thinking. Finally, she tells me.

  “I would hate to be you.”

  Not what I was expecting. For one second I feel the sting of offense, but then I remember who I’m talking to.

  “It’s not always bad. I don’t give it much thought anymore, really. When you’re in my position, people expect things from you. And if you don’t give them willingly, they figure out a way to get them. At this point, it’s just part of the job.”

  “Then I’m glad I just work in retail,” she says.

  It’s second-nature, the way my ego thrashes against her putdown. I didn’t used to have a problem with ego, but the longer I’ve been in this business, the bigger it has swelled and the easier it is to deflate. I roll my shoulders against the desire to make an offhanded remark. This girl isn’t my enemy; she owes me nothing.

  “So the other girl…what was her name?”

  Sam locks eyes with me. I swear I can see them flash. “Megan. Her name is Megan. She’s still alive.”

  I clear my throat against the desire to kill myself.

  “Is she getting better?”

  Sam looks over my shoulder, her gaze locked in a faraway stare. “She hasn’t changed. She’s hooked up to tubes, still on life support. The doctors aren’t too optimistic about her chances. I’m counting on her to wake up.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “If she doesn’t…”

  She doesn’t need to finish the sentence for me to understand the meaning. If she doesn’t wake up, Sam will never know what happened. There won’t be any closure. Even though closure is an ever-elusive myth that everyone reaches for but never actually grasps. I know this all too well. I’ve been chasing after it for a decade.

  “Do you know if they…” I try to think of something to distract us both from the stifling mood. “…enjoyed the concert?” As soon as the words are out I know I should have left the mood alone. I run a hand across my face and shake my head. “Don’t answer that. I’m not meaning to come across this shallow. I just…I know it’s none of my business, but sometimes…sometimes I really do feel like I get to know people in the two hours I spend with them. And the thought that one of them was hurt…” I study the ground. “I remember her, you know. I remember both of them. They were on the front row, and then I met them again after the show when—”

  “You met them?”

  I startle, only then realizing that I’ve given her hope. A look of surprise fills her face. It’s mixed with caution and dread and something that looks like fear, but the surprise outweighs them all.

  “I did. Your sister was beautiful. I remember thinking so that night. Her red hair, her giant smile. She was dancing around and so happy.” My words trail off the moment I see her tears. They fill her eyes and run down each side of her face, both beautiful and heartbreaking because she is beautiful, but also because I caused this. I caused her pain and there’s no way to make it stop. No matter how hard a person tries, sometimes you have to live with the choke-hold that grief wraps around your ability to move forward.

  But then she just stares at me. She stares at me and I know right then that I’ve messed up.

  “Why did you come here?”

  I’m caught off guard and just blink at her. I’d like to feign innocence, maybe hold up both hands in a harmless gesture. Who me? But the burning sensation at the back of my neck begins to spread toward the front. I don’t need a mirror to know that my skin is marked with red spots. There’s never an end to the guilt, never the absence of evidence.

  I rub my neck in a feeble attempt to erase it. “To check on you.”

  She shakes her head. “But the first question you asked was what my sister looked like. If you saw her, then you already knew the answer. So why did you come here?”

  “To apologize.” The words sound like a question. My phone chooses that moment to buzz from my pocket. I don’t need to check the ID to know who it is or what he wants. He told me he would text at three o’clock. He’s always on time. I know better than to keep him waiting, but this isn’t the right time to try to respond. I clear my throat and shift positions. “There’s just so much to apologize for.”

  Sam runs a hand under her eyes. “You’ve apologized. Now I need to get back to work.”

  My phone buzzes again. In this case, persistence isn’t going to pay off.

  “Don’t you need to answer that?” Sam nods toward my jeans.

  “I’ll call him back later.” I fish my wallet from my back pocket and pull out a business card, one that lists all my contact information. I ordered these last year. In that time, I only remember hand
ing out maybe six of them. “I want you to take this. Please call me if you need anything at all. My email is there as well. I’ll answer both.”

  Sam turns the card over in her hand, then slips it into her pocket. “Thanks. I doubt I’ll need it, but thank you.”

  For a long moment neither of us speaks. I listen to the loud clang of my heartbeat at the same time I wonder what she’s thinking. There’s still one last thing to ask, but I can’t think of a good way to do it. I try and try until my phone buzzes again; then I know I just need to dive in. Rip the Band-Aid. Plunge the knife. Nothing about this will be pretty, no matter how nicely I try to word it. All I wanted to do was come here and check on her, not hit her with this.

  Sal insisted. I don’t have a choice.

  “So, we’re good? I mean, there’s nothing that you need…” I pause and take a deep breath, trying to choose my words carefully. Self-loathing grips my gut, but I have to ask. If I don’t Sal will do it for me, and he won’t worry about being nice. Sam doesn’t deserve anything less than compassion. Hatred for self is a familiar feeling for me, so I hang on to it and keep talking. “Are you going to…? I mean, is there any chance that you’ll…?”

  “Call you?” Her forehead wrinkles in thought. “I already said that I doubt—”

  “No.” I’m backed into a corner, void of my usual self-confidence. When did money become more important than people? I’ve only ever cursed my job a handful of times, but now is definitely one of them. “It’s just that my manager has called a few times. He’s the one who keeps texting. And he’s wondering if you might…well…if there’s any chance you’re going to…”

  Her eyes narrow. There’s a long stretch of silence. It’s at that point I see things connect. “If there’s any chance I’m going to what?”