Page 54 of A Thousand Broken Pieces

“Savannah,” I said and wanted to reach out and pull her into my arms. But I felt exhausted and not myself. I didn’t want to hold her the way I was feeling. Didn’t want to tarnish her with my touch. Today had shaken me. Completely. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

“It’s where she was happiest. It’s only right she rested there for eternity.” I was so damn proud of Savannah in that moment—and always. The girl I’d met in JFK would never have talked about her sister like this. She stood beside me, right now, strength in her stance and an outspoken love for the sister she cradled in her heart. And Savannah Litchfield, I found, had the biggest of hearts.

“What’s that?” I asked, voice hoarse as I pointed to the mason jar. My throat was sore, like my soul was so tired it didn’t want me to speak. But I had to. All of these feelings were bubbling inside of me, rising to the surface, begging to escape.

Savannah smiled wider. “Our Mamaw gave Poppy a jar of paper hearts before she died, one thousand of them. Each time Poppy had a kiss—an earth-shattering kiss—she was to write it down and record it. She was to collect one thousand in her lifetime.” Savannah’s hand slightly shook as she traced the outline of the jar. “When she was diagnosed with cancer, she didn’t think she would achieve it. But she did it. With her soulmate, Rune.” Savannah looked up to me. “Kiss one thousand was given on her very last breath.”

My heart fired off into a fast-paced beat. I’d never heard anything like that.

“When I used to think of Poppy, I would think of loss and pain and feel her heavy, irreplaceable absence walking beside me every day, ominous and gutting. But when Miriam asked us to paint our lost loved one and who they were to us, and how they made us feel, I couldn’t paint anything other than something beautiful.” Savannah inhaled a trembling breath. “Though her life was short, she lived big and she lived loud and never wasted a single moment, not even when she was dying. She lived life until her very last breath. She was grace personified until the end—and even beyond.”

I thought of my painting, sitting beside us in the gazebo. The blacks and reds, the void that triumphantly drank down your happiness. There was a wall behind me, and I sank down upon it, exhausted. Savannah did too, but not before running her hand through my messy hair.

I linked my hands together in my lap and stared at the cherry blossom grove, at the beauty and the uplifting colors and said, “I don’t know how to talk about that night.”

Savannah reached out and linked her arm through mine. “I’m here whenever you’re ready.”

“You have enough to deal with, Peaches. You don’t need the added weight of my trauma too.”

“It’s not heavy,” she said and squeezed my arm. “If it unburdens you, then it’s the lightest weight in the world.” She kissed my exposed bicep, and the shards of ice that had created an impenetrable armor around me melted in the exact place that her lips had touched.

I felt guilty for even contemplating laying all my trauma at her feet. But here I was, in Goa, at night, beside a dreamlike seaside with a painting that was haunting my every move, and I just needed to purge everything from my soul.

“I wanted to do it for her. But Ineededto do it for myself,”Leo’s words rang in encouragement in my mind.

“Nothing was different about that day,” I said, and my vision blurred, forcing me to relive it all in my head. “I went to practice. Then Cillian had a game that night.” I huffed an unamused laugh. “He got MVP. They won—a shutout. Cillian scored all the goals, a hat trick.” I shook my head. “He played his heart out. Now I wonder if he played so hard because he knew he would never play again. Was that his final goodbye to the team he loved so much and the fans who had supported him since starting Harvard?”

My leg bounced in nerves. I’d never talked this much in my life. It was like slicing open my heart and letting it bleed out, willingly. “At the game, I was with my parents. But afterward, I met up with my teammates. Stephan, my best friend, had been invited to a party one of the Harvard guys was throwing, next door where my brother lived off-campus.” I remembered arriving at the party, everyone celebrating. “We’d been to a hundred of them before. My brother was there, of course, but when he saw me walk in, rather than wearing the happy smile he always gave me, his eyes were stormy, and he told me to go home.”

I shook my head, like I was back there living that night. “He’d never been like that to me before. It had shocked me so much. Heneversent me home. Always stayed by my side. I just thought he must have been tired—”

My voice cut out and I choked on a sob. “Therewasa sign, Sav. AndI missed it. He’d never been like that to me, ever. He wasn’t the typical big brother growing up. He was always so good to me.” His face came to mind. He looked more like my dad than me; I had my mom’s features. But anyone could tell we were siblings. “He was a good person and was all about family. He never treated me like I was lesser than him. Hell, he never even told me to get out of his room. He didn’t send me away from the frozen pond on our property when his friends came to play hockey. He included me.Always.” I turned to Savannah and saw tears running down her face. Her bottom lip was trembling. “But he never told me he was hurting, Sav. He never told me that. Never told methemost important thing.”

I sniffed back tears and just gave in to the sadness I’d held trapped inside for too long. “He’d never sent me away before that night. But hedidthen. I should have fought him, asked why he was acting that way. I think I was too stunned. He threw a twenty in my hand and told me to run to the store and grab some snacks for the house.”

I glanced down at my hand and the palm that had held that money. “I didn’t see it at the time, but he’d wrapped his fingers around my hand when he’d put that money in my palm. Tightly. Just a few seconds longer than normal, but I can still feel it. Like a brand.” Savannah took hold of that hand and brought it to her lips, kissing me on the palm. A choked cry escaped my mouth at her touch, at her soft lips kissing that calloused, tarnished skin.

“You’re doing so well,” she said and laid her head on my shoulder. Her body heat seeped into mine, thawing some of the ice.

“I looked up into my big brother’s eyes and he said,“Keep safe, yeah, kid?”In hindsight, his voice was gravelly and stacked with emotion. I thought maybe he was just getting the flu or something. I’d told him I would. I thought he was talking about Stephan’s driving. But now I know he was talking about mylife.Christ,Savannah, that was his goodbye to me, and I didn’t even know it. That was the last time I would hear his voice or feel him touch my hand. That wasit.”

Savannah wrapped her arm around my shoulders and held me as I fell apart in the crook of her neck, my tears soaking her curly hair. “I replay that moment over and over in my head, all the time, several times a day. I see the subtle hints now. Hear the slight shake in his voice. But I didn’t see them atthe time. His window wasn’t transparent; it was thick with condensation, and I just couldn’t see through it.”

I looked at the cherry blossom flowers Savannah had painted, then the stars that hung like gems from the sky. “Stephan was with me. We were on our way to the store, when he realized he’d forgotten his wallet back at the house. He wanted to grab some food for himself, was hungry, and we didn’t have enough cash to go through a drive-through. We turned back, only to see my brother’s car roaring down the road we were on, in the opposite direction. I was so confused as to where he was going. He was meant to be at the party. But what concerned me more was the speed he was going. It was reckless. He wasneverreckless. Always calm and measured. I told Stephan to follow him. A pull in my gut was telling me something was wrong.” My teeth gritted together. I wasn’t sure I could do this last part. I wasn’t sure I could find it in me to say what happened next out loud.

“If that’s all you can say, that’s okay,” Savannah said, clearly reading me right. I pressed a kiss to her hair, then met her watery eyes. I wanted to tell this girl. I wanted to share this with her. “No one is pushing you to say more.”

I searched her face, then thought of my painting again. Ihadto tell her. I didn’t want that darkness to be my future. The truth was, I think it had already begun to take hold of me. I had come to believe that kind of darkness acted in a stealth attack. Slowly invading a soul bit by bit until it had consumed them without them even realizing. Then they were too weak to fight it off.

I sat up straighter, determined to fight the goddamn thing back. I didn’t want it to consume me. “We saw Cillian’s taillights up ahead and followed him. I was so worried about him. He was picking up more and more speed, swerving in the road as he fought to keep it on track.” I paused, fought back the lump in my throat. I breathed and whispered, “Then I watched him purposely plow headfirst into a huge, solid tree just off the road’s sharp bend.” Savannah sucked in a quick breath. I was shaking, I was shaking so badly as I was thrust back to that moment whether I wanted to be there or not.

“I jumped from Stephan’s car before he’d even stopped. And I ran for Cill. I ran faster than ever before. And when I got there, I wrenched thedriver’s side door open and saw him …” I shook my head, trying to rid myself of that image. “It was too late, Sav. He was gone.” Savannah’s arms wrapped around me tighter, and she crushed me to her chest. I fell apart. I drowned in my tears until my chest was raw and my lungs burned so much it hurt just to take in a breath.

“There were no drugs or alcohol in his system. We found out afterward that he’d disabled the airbag, Sav. Before he’d driven. The seat belt too. He made sure there was no coming back from what he intended to do.” I tried to clear my throat, but my voice was so graveled it was almost nonexistent. “I pulled him from the car … and I held him. I held his broken body until the paramedics came and they forced me to let him go.”

Racking sobs still came, refreshed and carrying just as much weight as the ones before. “I still feel him in my arms sometimes, still feel his lifeless body pulled to my chest. I tried to bring him back—CPR, pleading to God to save him—but he was gone, Savannah. He wasgone. As quick as that … and I watched him do it.”

“I’m here,” Savannah said as I dropped from the wall to the floor—she followed me down too. She held me in the gazebo beneath the stars, surrounded by painted memories of the dead, and all I saw was Cillian. So, I held her tighter. I turned my back on the painting that had reduced me tothisand fought it with all I had.

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