by Carrie Ryan
Outside lightning dances over the ocean, thunder rolling through the waves to reach shore. I watch the storm roll in for a while, tapping my fingertips against the kitchen window as my mind continues to spin.
I’m just turning to make my way back to bed when a sharp noise sounds outside. Through the darkness a figure reaches for the door. I open my mouth to scream when he looks up.
It’s Grey. My pulse hitches and then roars. I throw the latch, pulling it open. But he doesn’t come inside. Instead he wraps a hand around my wrist, pulling me into the rain.
I suck in a breath against the sudden deluge, water instantly drenching me. “What—?”
But he doesn’t let me speak. “You’re the one I’m afraid of,” he says, voice rough and insistent. “Don’t you understand? For four years I’ve tried to forget. About the Persephone. About Frances. About all of it. And you show up, bringing it all back to the surface.”
“Grey—”
He backs me against the wall, crowding close. His wet fingers slide up my cheeks to bury in my hair. “I’m drowning,” he whispers, his forehead touching against my own.
And then I don’t care about the rain. I don’t even feel it. I only know the rise and fall of his chest. The pulse in his fingertips.
I tell him a truth I didn’t even know existed until this moment. “So am I.”
His eyes search mine for a long moment. “Run away with me.”
I laugh, but it’s rueful.
“I’m serious,” he insists. “Let’s go somewhere where none of them can find us. Leave it all behind and start over.”
The heel of his palm is warm against my temple and I lean into it, turning my head to press my lips lightly against his wrist. “I can’t.”
He drops his hands, turning away in frustration. He paces across the patio, gripping the back of a chair, shoulders straining against the tension. Rain falls around him, against him. His shirt clings to his wet skin, water dropping from the hem of his shorts.
“Don’t you want to know the truth about it all? Don’t you want it to all come out?” I ask, stepping toward him.
He turns to look at me. “Is that what matters most to you?”
I open my mouth to answer, but no words come.
“I’m falling in love with you, Libby.” He says it desperately.
The words strike like a blow to the chest. There’s no way he can know just how cruel it is. How that name renders meaningless any statement attached to it. For a moment I allow myself to believe he could be telling the truth. That it could be real.
And then I touch a hand to his shoulder, gripping it like it’s the only thing keeping me from falling up into the water-filled sky. “You can’t be,” I tell him softly. “You barely know me.”
His head drops and he says nothing. And then this: “You do handstands in the pool when you think no one’s looking. When you pick up a book in a store, you stand on one foot and tuck the other against your knee while you read the first page. You close your eyes when you take the last bite of anything chocolate.”
My breath catches and he looks over at me. “You can be bitter and angry, but when you laugh . . .” He smiles. “When you laugh you completely let go.” He reaches out, grabs a tendril of my wet hair, and lets it slip through his fingers. “When you’re scared you wrap your hair around your finger.”
His eyes meet mine. “Frances did the same thing.”
And I’m sure that he must know. That, like Shepherd, there are too many tiny things that make up the uniqueness of a person and there’s no way I’ve captured all of Libby’s.
No way I’ve eradicated all of Frances’s.
Except that Grey keeps going. “But the difference between you and Frances is that you’re scared—all the time.” The statement hits so true that my gut clenches. He’s close enough that I have to tilt my head back. “And I know this because I’m scared all the time too. I just didn’t realize it until I saw the exact same thing in you.”
His lips hover, just over mine. “So when you ask me if I’m tired of being scared, my answer is yes. I’m tired of being scared of the way you make me feel. I’m tired of being scared of letting myself be in love with you. I’m tired of being scared of life.”
Then his mouth is on mine in a kiss, raw edged and hungry. There’s anger in the way his lips press against mine, the way his fingers dig against my spine, pulling me closer. My own anger responds to the call, surging within me and setting every nerve ending on fire.
His hand wraps around the back of my neck, holding me steady as he pulls away slightly. Our breath tangles a fast rhythm between us. His pupils are dangerously dark, eclipsing the deepwater blue of his eyes, as his gaze bores into me.
“Don’t you think we deserve to move on from the past?”
Somewhere inside me, Frances crashes through all the walls I’ve used to hold her back. She bursts under my skin, howling. For having her future taken from her. From being denied all these years. Until now I’d been willing to burn down my own life in order to out the truth, but now I’m not so sure.
Because I remember the moment on the Libby Too four years ago, right after I’d been rescued, when I learned that Grey was still alive. I remember how it made me feel, that perhaps in this darkness there was someone else out there, someone who understood, and maybe together we could find a spark of light.
Looking at Grey now, tasting him and breathing him in, I realize that’s what he’s been. A beacon for Frances, a way for her to reach forward—to want again.
And what she wants so desperately is to move on from the past. She wants exactly what Grey is offering. But there is only one path to that place and it involves the truth.
Not the truth about the Persephone. The truth about me.
I say the words fast, before I can stop myself. “I’m Frances.”
Silence. Even the rain stutters for a moment before resuming with a roar that matches the rush of my pulse. Grey blinks slowly, water dropping from his lashes. Then he steps back. His eyes scour me, top to bottom.
“What?” he asks, though it’s clear he heard me. He just doesn’t understand yet.
I swallow. “I’m not Libby. She died out on the life raft. When we were rescued I took her identity.” I chew my lip for a moment, waiting for him to say something.
He shoves his hands through his hair. “I don’t . . .” He turns to face the ocean and then back to me. “Frances?”
I nod, the thrill of that name on those lips. There’s such an unbearable freedom in having told him the truth. Having unleashed this last secret. I reach for him but he jerks away as though my touch were molten.
He can’t seem to find the right question, just shaking his head as he says, “What? I don’t . . . How?”
“I was an orphan and Cecil was afraid the men who attacked the Persephone would come after me,” I rush to explain. “He did it to keep me safe.” I step closer, not quite touching him. “It’s me. I’m Frances.”
There’s a flash of hunger in his eyes and that seems to pull him from his trance. He staggers back, putting distance between us. “You lied,” he whispers.
“Only because I had to,” I argue.
“The real Frances would have trusted me.” Had his words been daggers they could not have landed more sharply in my heart.
“I am the real Frances.”
But he just shakes his head. “Maybe you were Frances in the past.” His eyes sweep over me one last time. “But you’re certainly not anymore.”
He starts across the patio to the beach, his steps ragged. “Grey!” I start after him, but he holds up a hand.
“Whatever there was between us—it’s done.”
Everything inside me is sliding out of place. “Wait,” I cry, my eyes blurred with tears and rain. “Give me a chance to explain!”
He stops at the base
of the boardwalk. The way he looks at me is how I know that we’re done. Fundamentally and irrevocably. “No,” he says simply. And then he’s lost to the night and the rain. And so am I.
FORTY-NINE
Shepherd’s the one to find me outside on the patio, curled over myself as the rain continues to crash down around me. Lightning splits the sky overhead, sending thunder shuddering through my bones. Right now I would love nothing more than to be struck by it, laid low in one fell swoop.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Shepherd shouts, grabbing my elbow and hauling me to my feet.
I’m so numb emotionally that I’m not even sure how to answer. “It’s over,” I tell him.
With an arm around my shoulders, he guides me inside. “What’s over?” he asks once we’re out of the rain.
I shake my head. “All of it. I told Grey the truth. I told him who I really am.”
Shepherd sucks in a breath. “And?”
I slip out from under his touch, turning to face him. Drops of rain glisten in his hair and across his cheeks. I consider him for a moment. “Could you have ever loved me?”
He’s so taken aback by the question that he actually, physically recoils. Which should be all the answer necessary. But still, I need to hear it.
“You as Libby or you as Frances?” he asks.
“Me as me.”
To give him credit, he actually thinks about it. But after a long while, he eventually shakes his head.
It’s what I’d expected, but still it hurts. “Why not?” He squirms and I press him again. “Why not?”
“Because I could never trust you,” he eventually confesses. He braces for my response.
We stand that way for a moment until finally I nod. “That’s because you’re smart.” And the irony is that this is perhaps the most honest either of us has been with each other. I turn and start for bed.
“You never could have loved me in the first place,” he counters. “Not like that.”
I glance over my shoulder at him. “Why, because I’m incapable of love?”
He shakes his head. “Because your heart has always belonged to someone else. Just like mine.”
A bitter laugh rises up my throat like acid. “Then I guess we’re both screwed, aren’t we?”
“You can fix it, you know,” he calls after me.
I hesitate only a second, considering the possibility. But he didn’t see the way Grey looked at me. Grey’s done with me. “No,” I tell him. “I can’t. Not this time.”
When I wake, it’s close to dawn and I frown. Sitting up, I clutch the sheet as I hear the pounding from downstairs, followed by the bright peal of the doorbell. And I realize that this is what has woken me up. Something about the moment feels off, out of step—the banging on the door too urgent for the sun not to have risen yet.
Cold dread begins uncurling in my gut and I race down the stairs. When I throw open the door to find Morales standing on the porch, I’m somehow not surprised.
As though this moment were inevitable—already written and simply being played out.
“Libby,” she says with a tight nod. The whites of her eyes are red, the rims raw. “There’s been an accident.” She’s so formal the way she’s standing on the porch, rain still dusting her shoulders from her dash from the car.
A sharp wind blows across the yard, sending a wash of wet mist to surround us. Behind me, the house yawns empty and I know. Shepherd’s not here. In that way that the air shifts when it has to accommodate another body in the same space.
He’s gone.
I shake my head.
My hand clutches the edge of the door.
“May I come in?” Morales asks gently. Her eyes are broken, though, and I wonder how many times she’s had to do this. How many people she’s pulled out of bed to shatter their life.
A part of me wonders if I tell her no, will it undo any news she’s come to tell me. But if it were possible to do such a thing, I’d have figured it out long ago. If there’s one thing the Persephone taught me, it’s that the saying is true: Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true.
I step aside and Morales follows me into the living room. I gesture toward the couch but I’m too restless to sit and so I stand behind a chair, fingers gripping the back of it.
There’s no preamble. She’s not that kind of person. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,” she says. “But Shepherd was in a serious car accident earlier this morning. He’s been airlifted to MUSC up in Charleston for surgery. He’s suffered a severe head injury, and though the doctors are optimistic, they won’t know for a day or two the extent of the damage.”
With every word, the world begins to constrict around me. It becomes difficult to breathe. There has to be something I’m supposed to do here. Something I’m supposed to say. “I need to see him,” I tell her. But I take only one step toward the door before I stop.
I don’t even know if he’d want me there.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. “He can’t have visitors yet,” Morales informs me. “I’ve already asked. I’ve given them your number and told them you’re family. They’ll call when they have updates.”
It was a mistake not to sit, I recognize this now. I sink into the chair. “What happened?” I’m the one asking the question, but it feels as though the words come from someone else’s body.
“It looks like his car crashed through the guardrails on the connector to the mainland and fell into the marsh. There’s still no word on the cause, but we’re investigating.” She leans forward. Exhaustion pulls at the skin beneath her eyes. “Do you know where he might have been going?”
I think through the night before, but nothing stands out. “No, he didn’t mention anything. He was here when I went to bed.”
I pull at my hair. It’s still wet. And I have to bite my lip to keep it from trembling as I remember him finding me in the rain, bringing me inside.
Telling me that I could fix what was broken.
She nods, staying silent. Waiting for me to add more. But there’s nothing else to say. Her eyes wander across the pictures scattered across on top of the coffee table. She reaches for one and my back stiffens. In it Shepherd and Libby hang upside down from the monkey bars of a swing set.
“He’s a good kid,” she says. I nod. There’s a long stretch where we both stare at the photo. And I realize that there’s no one left to remember that moment with him.
I press my fingers against my temples, trying to keep my emotions from cracking through to the surface. Trying to hold it together.
Finally Morales sets the frame down and moves toward the door. “If you think of anything else, will you let me know? You still have my cell number?”
I nod again. She starts to let herself out but then pauses. “Shepherd’s tough—he’ll make it through this,” she reassures me. “I’ll be keeping him in my prayers.” Before she closes the door she adds, “Make sure to lock up.”
Once she’s gone, I sit silent for a moment. I’ve been so alone for so long you’d think I’d be used to it. Yet somehow the house feels too empty. Too wrong and cold.
My first instinct is to reach out—call someone to share the burden of this pain. But there’s no one. It hits home what Shepherd told me earlier tonight: that by keeping everyone at bay, I’ve made it so that there’s no one there when I need them.
Restless, I wander into the kitchen. My cell phone still sits on the table and I grab for it, intending to call MUSC and check on Shepherd. But when I swipe it open, a series of texts fills the screen.
The first is from Grey: About earlier. Can we talk? In person?
And then one from me: Yes.
Except that I never sent that. My blood runs cold.
From Grey: My dad has the place on lockdown so it can’t be nearby. There’s an all-night diner where the
connector hits 17—meet there?
Me: Leaving now.
The last message is from Grey: Thank you, Libby. You don’t know how much this means.
I close my eyes, chest tight and breathing difficult. Imagining Shepherd standing in the kitchen after I’ve gone to bed, my phone on the counter vibrating with an incoming text. Shepherd glancing at it. Deciding to answer.
Deciding it was time he faced Grey himself.
Morales’s question from earlier echoes through my head: Do you know where he might have been going?
Apparently he was going to meet Grey.
And then a horrible realization tears its way through me: No, I was the one going to meet Grey. I run to the garage, throw open the door. The car I’ve been using is missing.
Feeling weak, I brace myself against the wall, sinking until I’m sitting. In the dark of night and with all the rain, it would have been impossible to tell who was driving. And why would anyone expect someone other than me?
I’m the one they’ve been after. I’m the witness from the Persephone. I’m the one they tried to kill on the Libby Too. I’m the one who’s been making waves, stirring things up.
I curl over myself, pressing my forehead against my knees. I’m the one who was supposed to be run off the road tonight. Not Shepherd. It’s my fault Shepherd’s in the hospital. My fault he was brought into this at all.
Every life I’ve touched since jumping from the Persephone, I’ve ruined. I begin to sob, finding it difficult to breathe. The pain is too great, an undertow dragging me too deep. Already I feel Frances beginning to drown inside me. She’d broken through the surface for one last choking gasp but it wasn’t enough.
She was never strong enough for this. From the beginning it has always my job to survive. It’s what I do best. What I was made for.
A familiar heat starts at my toes, roaring up my body. Like stepping into a scalding sea it sears through me, this familiar haze of red, burning through my grief. Rage tastes like bitter fresh blood and cut grass, and it is as comforting to me as a summer afternoon.
