Page 88 of I Would Die for You

CALIFORNIA, 2011

“Cassie?” I gasp, my sister’s name feeling like sandpaper on my lips, so used to banishing her existence to the depths of my consciousness. “So, she knows you’re here?”

Zoe nods enthusiastically. “It was actually her idea to find you.”

“But how…? Why now…?” I stutter.

“After Mum died and I found the tape again, I couldn’t stop listening to your song:

“There are things I could never teach you, no matter how hard I try,

Because only you can decide how high you fly,

I can set you on your way and catch you if you fall,

But only you will know… I would die for you.”

I struggle to keep the steering wheel under control as Zoe’s angelic voice fills the car.

“But the more I listened to it,” she says, breaking off, “the more Ineeded answers. So, I lost myself in a bottomless pit of conspiracy theories, wishing I’d asked Mum more when I had the chance. But Cassie helped separate fact from fiction, though she said if I really wanted the truth, I’d have to findyou. Because only then would I be able to put the final pieces of the jigsaw together.”

“Is she here?” I find myself asking, fearing I already know the answer.

She nods, and an inexplicable anger floods my veins as I remember the way I steadfastly rejected Hannah’s protestations that her “aunt” had picked her up from school, so sure that it was an impossibility. And the accusations I threw at Brad when he said my sister had been on the phone come back to haunt me, my conscience shamed by the memory of how I would rather believe him to be having an affair than for his claim to be true.

Was it Cassie at the convention center? Had she mounted the despicable attack against the seals just to call my reputation into question? Ripping it to shreds…

“I understand whyyou’rehere,” I say. “But what doesshewant?”

Zoe shrugs her shoulders. “I think she’s been feeling much like I have since you both lost your dad. She feels angry and aggrieved that they didn’t resolve their differences before he died…”

I shake my head, shocked by my naivety. All this time, I’ve assumed they’d maintained their relationship long after mine ended. I tortured myself with picture-perfect imaginings of how they must have supported each other through the aftermath. How he walked her down the aisle. How he played grandfather to her children. But how could he have?

The letter he’d so painstakingly written comes back to haunt me, his every word etched with profound regret as he played out the consequences of his actions over and over in his mind with each letter he scrawled. What must it have taken for him to tell the truth after all this time?

“… And she doesn’t want to make the same mistake with you,” Zoe goes on, snapping me out of my maudlin reverie.

“I think it’s a little late for that,” I say.

“Well, I think she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to prove you wrong,” says Zoe, looking at me. “She’s determined to make sure that nothing remains unsaid between you.”

An intense heat consumes my entire being, crushing me with panic and claustrophobia.

“I guess she’s ultimately looking for a happy ending,” says Zoe, seemingly oblivious to my distress. “And she thinks you’re it.”

48

I take a final look back at Zoe in the car as I pull my jacket around me, tucking my shaking hands under my crossed arms. The thought of what I’m about to do is so far removed from the romanticized version I’d so often fantasized about.

All this time, I’ve laughingly convinced myself that I would finally be at peace if I could just be honest. But standing here, knowing that the person in the house that I’m now standing outside of deserves to know the truth more than anyone else, makes my heart thump through my chest.

I take a breath, suddenly aware of how deathly silent it is. The hum of the freeway can no longer be heard and even the birds seem to have stopped tweeting—or maybe they know the enormity of what’s about to happen and have flown farther afield, not brave enough to stay and watch the fallout. As I look up at the drawn curtains, imagining the person behind them, I can’t say I blame them.

I close my eyes before lifting the metal door knocker, knowing this is the last chance I have to back out. But I can’t. Thishasto be done, and if I’m not prepared to face the consequences now, I never will be.

As the door slowly opens and a head peers around it, I almost apologize and start to turn away, knowing that this man can’t possibly be the boy I loved so deeply, so profoundly, all those years ago. His skin is lined and sallow, his hair gray and thinning, and his once razor-sharp cheekbones have been lost in plump jowls.

I can’t help but be taken aback, because in all the millions of times I’d pictured this moment, he has always appeared exactly as I left him. Forever young, having never grown up and aged like everybody else. But it seems that time catches up with all of us in the end, because he can’t see who I am either, no matter how hard he tries, his brow furrowed.

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