Even If I Fall

by Abigail Johnson

  “Is that—” one guy says. “It is. That’s the sister of the guy who...”

  “Brooke? What’s wrong?” Heath walks toward me, ignoring all the heads swiveling back and forth between us like they aren’t there. He reaches for my arm and searches my face in concern, oblivious or uncaring about the attention we’ve garnered.

  “I should have called,” I say, looking up at him. “You could have met me outside or somewhere private.” In response, his hand gently rubs my arm, comforting me when I’ve maybe never needed it more despite knowing he’s the last person I should accept comfort from.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, the plastic rustles behind me and the woman I’d spoken to comes through. Her eyes lock on mine.

  “Upset or not, you can’t just go walking through any door you please. Come on now.” She moves to the side and gestures for me to precede her back through the curtain. “I’m sorry, Heath, I tried to stop her.”

  “It’s fine, Irene,” Heath says. “She’s my—” He cuts off, glancing at me as if I know how to finish that sentence. I don’t, especially not with the rapt audience we’ve amassed.

  I recognize two guys I used to go to school with, including Eddie Leonard, one of Jason’s self-proclaimed former best friends who traded in on my family’s suffering to stretch out his fifteen minutes of fame with every reporter who came knocking. He was the one who started the rumor about Jason bashing in the car of some guy for asking out a girl he liked when they were seniors. The way he’s eyeing me now has me shifting to hide behind Heath, only to realize that only fuels the speculation of everyone around us.

  Irene takes in Heath’s hand on my arm and the way he’s subtly placed himself in front of me, and she sighs loudly. The look she gives him is almost motherly. The one she gives me isn’t exactly harsh, but it’s disapproving all the same. I realize then that by turning me away, she was trying to spare Heath from exactly this situation rather than outright shun me. And whether or not he’s aware of the repercussions that are going to rain down on him from my appearance here today, she has no doubt. “She shouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s okay,” Heath says. Irene nods, not in agreement, in resignation.

  “You can use my office.” She spares one last look at me, reproof clear in every inch of her face, before clapping everyone around us back to work.

  Heath’s hand sliding into mine startles me and pulls my attention back to him as he leads us to a door marked Irene Willis, General Manager. As soon as we’re inside and the rest of the world is shut out behind that closed door, I wrap my arms around myself and move away from his touch.

  “I’m so sorry for that.” I nod at the door and all the people on the other side of it. “I should have thought about what would happen if I showed up here where people know you.” And know who my brother is, I add silently.

  “Irene’ll understand, and I don’t care about the rest of them.” He moves toward me, his brow furrowing when I retreat farther.

  “I don’t even know why I came,” I say. “You’re the last person I should be coming to about—about—”

  A tendon in Heath’s neck jumps, but his gaze on me stays steady. “This is about your brother?”

  Looking into Heath’s gray eyes, warmth beyond anything I’ve ever felt before suffuses my body, only to leave me cold and numb the second I lower my gaze. “It’s always about my brother, isn’t it?” I force my arms down, to release even that small gesture of protection. “What we’re doing, what we’ve been doing... Heath, what are we doing?”

  “I never made you show up at that tree.” I see his booted feet come into view and I look up. He’s close enough to touch me again if he wants, and with Irene’s desk behind me, there’s no more room for me to back away. His voice is like a caress when he speaks again. “You came ’cause you wanted something from me, same as I wanted something from you. Brooke, I—”

  “It is about my brother,” I say, stopping the hand he’s started to lift to my face the only way I know how. “I told you I was going to visit him today. It’s usually my mom and me, but Laura was sick, so Mom stayed home. It was the first time I got to see Jason and talk to him by myself since...since the beginning.”

  Heath is still holding my gaze, but he’s tense now, like he’s preparing for a bomb to drop. He’s not wrong.

  “I asked him about the night, to help me understand.”

  “Brooke.” My name on his lips has never sounded so loaded, so sad. He’s warning me and pleading with me at the same time, and it makes me want to cry as I keep going. I have to tell him.

  “It’s all I think about. I have the same recurring nightmare of Jason and Cal fighting, only I can’t ever make out what they’re saying. I can’t ever see that moment where my brother—”

  “Stop!” I flinch as Heath barks the word out and squeezes his eyes shut. “You have to stop. He murdered my brother. That’s all there is, and if you keep pushing for more—” he sucks in a deep breath through his nose and lets it out “—trust me when I tell you it won’t help. Nothing helps.”

  “What does that mean?” He’s never spoken to me like this before, like he knows something I don’t, and every part of me feels alert waiting for him to explain.

  His eyes open and lock on mine. “It means that we have to stop trying to let the past control our future. It means we don’t need to keep finding excuses to see each other if that’s what we want.” He reaches for my hands. “It’s what I want.”

  Inside I’m screaming at him. He can’t want this, me, us. We would be a plague on each other, and if he needs any proof of that all I have to do is open the door and show him all the appalled faces waiting outside. Or better yet, I can take him home, introduce him to my parents and Laura and watch them recoil and flee, but not before they shatter into a million tiny pieces before our eyes.

  Will he take me to prom? Ask his mom to help him pick out a corsage for me? Will our families have barbecues together and sit side by side at Friday night football games? Will Laura want to tag along on our dates like she used to with Jason and Allison? Will he want me within a mile of him when the anniversary of Cal’s death comes around, or will the mere thought of me make him gag?

  It’s making me gag now, because I know there can be only one answer, and it has nothing to do with what I want. I slip my hands free from Heath’s. “Jason told me something today. He tried to take it back and say I was twisting his words, but he made it sound like there was somebody else there in the woods that night.”

  Heath recoils so fast that I start to reach out to catch him. The look in his eyes, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and the fists clenching at his sides all but beg me to stop, but I can’t.

  “I can’t let it go, I’ve tried and I can’t. Not until I know if—”

  “If what, Brooke? If the real murderer is still out there while your innocent brother rots in prison?”

  “No, I’m not saying he’s innocent. I know he’s not, but if it’s true that they weren’t alone—”

  “It doesn’t change anything!” He all but yells. “I don’t care if there were ten people who saw him do it. He still did it!” Heath grits his teeth. He’s trying to calm down, but it has little effect on the temper he has barely leashed. “Do you want to know why the cops never mentioned a third person? Because there wasn’t one. Your brother lured my brother to the woods that night—”

  I start shaking my head as my eyes well up. “I know what happened. I don’t need to hear—”

  “—got him drunk, and then, when Cal stumbled or turned around for some reason—”

  I shut my eyes, wishing I could shut my ears too.

  “—your brother drove a knife into my brother’s back, severing his spinal cord so that he couldn’t even try to get away!”

  My eyes snap open when Heath gr
abs my arm, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to force my attention where I don’t want it. It’s the same place he put his hand before, when he was trying to reassure me about showing up at his work. There is nothing comforting about his touch now.

  “Look at me! You think I like saying this, picturing my brother dying? He was on the ground, couldn’t even crawl away, but he was alive. They found gouge marks in the ground and dirt under his nails from his trying. Your brother is the only one who knows what Cal’s last words were. I bet they were help, and stop, and please God, and—”

  I jerk free from Heath, my eyes flashing at him. “Why are you doing this?”

  Heath’s eyes are shining. “Because it was your brother’s prints. Your brother’s knife. His—” He bites off a word and shakes his head as he tries to keep from losing it in front of me. Heath steps toward me, his voice soft now as his eyes swim with unshed tears. “That’s all I need to know. If that’s not enough for you...” He takes a step back again, and I can feel the disgust and anger he’s so long held for my brother seeping into the space between us.

  I suck in a shaky breath, wishing I could tell him whatever he needs to hear to take me back in his arms, but I can’t. Every time I blink, I picture Cal’s lifeless body, lying on the moonlit grass.

  I blink again and see my brother’s bloodied hands desperately reaching for the sink as Dad restrains him.

  I see my sister crying into a plate of cold spaghetti.

  I see Mom sobbing against the white tiles in her shower.

  I see Jason in his orange jumpsuit and the lines that fear have etched into his face.

  I see that fear swell into outright terror when I pounced on his slipup earlier.

  I see Heath’s unshed tears and the tight pull of his lips as he looks at me, except he no longer sees me—he sees all he’ll ever see: the sister of his brother’s murderer.

  When I leave Irene’s office I hold my head high even as I’m breaking inside with every step. I don’t make eye contact with any of the employees or the staring customers as I exit the grocery store. It’s clear that Heath’s voice carried, and when it reached its limit, the people nearest the office were only too glad to pass along the highlights from our conversation. The news will spread faster than a brush fire. I can’t outrun it as I head toward Daphne, chased by whispers on all sides.

  CHAPTER 31

  Mom knows exactly when visiting hours end at the prison and exactly how long it takes to get home. My phone has been ringing nonstop for the past forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes where I neither called nor answered my phone. Forty-five minutes during which time I know she’s been vividly imagining Jason’s crushing sense of abandonment because she didn’t visit him. Forty-five minutes where his breakdown was so cataclysmic that I can’t bring myself to come home and tell her about it. Forty-five minutes where anything could have happened—and in her mind most definitely did happen—to me. Forty-five minutes where I never visited Jason at all but abandoned him and the whole family.

  I come to a gradual stop at the yellow light in front of me. My phone is ringing incessantly as she punches redial the second my voice mail picks up. I glance at it each time the shrill, old-fashioned rotary ringtone I set floods the car, but my fingers don’t even twitch in its direction. I don’t know what I’d say to her or if I could hide the tears still choking my throat. I can’t look at the phone when I finally reach one shaking hand out to switch it off. I have to stop thinking about Heath. Then I have to stop thinking about what Jason said. Then I have to think of an excuse to give Mom for being late and not calling or answering my phone.

  Then I can retreat to my room and curl into my bed, and if I’m quiet, I can cry without anyone ever knowing.

  * * *

  It’s worse than I imagined when I turn past our fence and up the long, red dirt driveway to our house. Mom flings herself free from Dad’s arms and sprints down the porch steps, phone clutched in a white-knuckle grip in her hand. I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks while she’s still thirty yards away. Dad moves to the top step but no farther, eyes on me, waiting.

  I can hear Mom’s gasping sobs, and I start hurrying to meet her. I don’t have to feign the sick guilt and remorse I feel for having put her—and Dad and Laura—through this. “Mom, I’m so sorry. The screen on my phone shattered and I couldn’t answer—” The painfully tight embrace I’m expecting from her raised arm turns into an ear-ringing slap.

  “Carol!” Dad calls from the porch as my whole body half turns from the impact.

  My hand flies to my cheek, hot and pulsing under my palm as I turn back to Mom. The shock of being struck is blocking out the pain. I’ve never been hit before, not by anyone. My parents never spanked me as a child and biting was the worst Jason and Laura and I ever did to each other. For a moment it doesn’t feel real until I meet Mom’s tear-filled eyes.

  Every inch of her is shaking. She opens her trembling mouth but no words come out. I’m just as incapable of speech, but I lift my phone and show her the screen, shattered by my heel stomping and grinding into it minutes ago barely a mile from the house. Her eyes dart to it and she sucks in a shuddering breath. I can’t help but flinch when she reaches for me, but this time her arms wrap around me and her hand moves to cradle my head to hers. She’s saying something, but I can’t make out the words through her tears. I hug her back though, and I say I’m sorry over and over again, and promise her that Jason is fine, but I don’t cry.

  Dad pries her arms from me some minutes later, she lets him, but only because he transfers her grip to him. Once inside, Dad suggests that Mom go wash her face and she nods in agreement, glancing at me so that I see her tearstained face one last time. As she goes upstairs, I move into the living room, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me. I watch Dad’s eyes follow his broken wife; I can’t keep my chin from dropping to my chest.

  The floorboards creak as he walks around the couch toward me until his scuffed workboots come into my view.

  Mom may have struck me, but I’m expecting Dad’s words to level me for what I’ve done. Instead I find myself wrapped in his strong arms and held just a little too tightly.

  “You want to tell me where you’ve been?”

  “At the prison,” I say, trying not to think about how long it’s been since Dad held me.

  “You want to tell me where else you’ve been?”

  I turn my face into his faded chambray shirt to muffle my voice. “No.”

  “Brooklyn Grace.”

  I can feel the rumble of my name in his chest. He hasn’t let me go, not one inch, but he will if I don’t answer. “I didn’t feel up to driving after, so I sat in the prison parking lot for a good while.” If my face weren’t pressed up against his chest, I’d have missed the sharp inhalation he made. As it is, I feel it like it’s the closest thing to a broken heart another person can feel.

  “You can’t be doing this again. Not to your mom. Not to me.”

  I nod against his chest and I feel his hand come to rest on my head before he finally releases me.

  “Let me see your phone.”

  I’m still holding it from when I showed Mom, so I just have to lift my arm. His work-scarred, calloused hands, so much larger and capable than mine, carefully take the phone. He raises it beyond where my still lowered eyes can see.

  “Looks broken.”

  “Yes, sir.” If his next question is to ask me whether I intentionally broke it myself, my answer will be the same.

  “I’ll get you a new screen and we’ll see if that fixes it.”

  My eyes lift slowly, until I meet his, the same rich brown as Laura’s.

  His free hand rises partway, hesitates and then moves the rest of the way to gently brush my throbbing cheek with his thumb. “She shouldn’t have hit you.”

  My chin trembles. “She was worried,” I say. “About Jason. And me.�
��

  Dad shakes his head once. “No excuse.”

  Maybe not, but I still understand why she did it. I knew that from the second I walked out of the house to the second I came back, she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else besides me and Jason and the fact that she wasn’t with us. It would eat at her even while she took care of Laura. She’d probably held the phone in her hands for a long time before she gave in and called me, and then blind panic would have set in shortly after the first missed call, escalating beyond anything Dad or Laura could calm.

  There were a million things I could have done to make sure this didn’t happen, even if my phone had really been broken the whole time instead of for just the last few minutes. I could have come straight home or stopped anywhere along the way and called. Dad isn’t saying it, because my face is bright red from Mom’s hand, but he knows same as I do.

  Dad’s hand returns to his side. “Come on.”

  I follow him to the kitchen and lean against the island while he gets me a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. The first touch of cold on my overheated cheek makes me pull the bag away, but Dad gently presses my hand to rest it against my face again.

  “Your brother all right?”

  I hesitate, startled more by the question than the shock of frozen peas. I know he and Mom talk about Jason together, but never with me or Laura. I know it’s hard for him, and yet, I can’t begin to fathom what it must be like to watch your firstborn child be arrested, ultimately confess to something so unimaginably horrible and then know you might not live long enough to see that child released from prison. The guilt and grief and anger and helplessness must be overwhelming. On top of that he now has to watch Laura pull away from life more and more each day while Mom’s forced smile grows equally more fragile. It might be easier to shut Jason out of his heart too, and all this time I thought he had.