Page 26 of If Anything Happens To Me

“That I didn’t realize how serious it was when I didn’t hear back from Eloise that last day,” he said. “I figured she’d gotten tired of waiting for me to finish my paper, and went to see the owls on her own. Or got someone else to go with her.”

The police had floated those theories, too. “She didn’t go to the woods on her own,” I said. Eloise didn’t have her license yet, and she hadn’t taken her bike.

“I know that now,” Chris said. “I’m just telling you what I wondered that night.” His eyes glittered with tears. “I don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about her. And I stay away from you. I can’t see you. It’s too hard, Oli.”

“What’s too hard?” I asked.

“To see how you feel about me. If I’d been there, I could have stopped what happened to her, I could have saved her.”

For a few seconds I couldn’t reply, but then the words came pouring out. “It’s true, Chris. I thought that, too. I was really angry at you at first.”

“I was angry at myself,” he said.

“I even wondered . . .”

“If I was involved?”

I nodded, my heart pounding. I couldn’t believe I’d admitted it, but now that I was actually talking to Chris, I felt like I could be honest with him. “I’m sorry for thinking that.”

He looked down. “I don’t blame you. We all suspect everyone, even each other. Because how can we know? I hardly sleep, trying to think of clues, what we might have missed, wishing I had been there with her. Wishing you didn’t hate me.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I never did. I was just upset.” I paused. “Chris, we don’t know who did this to her. If you had been there, you might have been killed, too.”

He grimaced. “I would have fought whoever it was,” he said. “I would have saved Els.”

Els.Hearing him call her that made me take a deep breath. It showed how familiar he was with her, giving her a nickname I had never heard before.

“Oli, what do you think would have happened?” Chris asked. “With us—Els and me?”

That question was too hard to answer or even contemplate. I knew what she wanted, but that’s the thing about someone being gone: You don’t get to see the story unfold. I never got to see my sister and Chris getting together, holding hands, being a couple. I felt sad that Chris never got to see—or feel—any of that. Most of all, it broke my heart to know that Eloise was missing out on all of it.

On life.

“She liked you,” I said, and that was all I could get out.

“I know she did,” he said. “And I . . . well, multiply that however you want, and that’s how much I . . .”

He stopped talking, and then he turned and walked out of the driveway. He got into his car and started it up. Matt called his name but either Chris didn’t hear or couldn’t speak. He just drove away.

The conversation with him made the air all around me shimmer. It made me see Chris in a different way, and suddenly I felt as if Eloise had just left. As if she had walked behind him, invisible, and gotten into his car with him. I told myself they were going for a ride, that she had heard what he had said, that she was happy to know that he liked her, even more than liked her.

Els.

My dream of my sister and Chris was interrupted by Iris running back to the Jeep. She opened the back door and grabbed what was left of her sandwich. She pulled out the sliced turkey and went to kneel next to the front steps of Adalyn’s house.

Adalyn was walking around the house, calling “Esmeralda, Esmeralda,” but Iris was totally silent. She peered under the deck. Then she dangled a turkey slice, and I heard her whispering, “Here, now. That’s a girl, good girl.”

A tiny tiger cat scooted out from the darkness, into Iris’s arms, and began hungrily chomping on turkey.

“Thank you so much!” Adalyn cried as Iris handed her Esmeralda and the rest of her sandwich. “How did you know she’d be under there?”

“I think I’m part cat,” Iris said, smiling.

“You saved me. You’re definitely the cat whisperer,” Adalyn said.

“You’d better get her inside,” Iris said. “She’s quite the little adventurer.”

I gave Adalyn a quick hug and she ran up the steps, closing the door behind her. It felt so odd, and it hit me: This was my first time at her house since Eloise had died. As much as I loved Adalyn and her family, I felt shaken because it wasn’t the same. Nothing was. Nothing ever would be again.

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