Page 187 of Untouchable

They'd been at a lake house for a long weekend that summer when Dad had been able to get away and Mom hadn't committed them all to a vacation of church volunteering. It wasn't their lake house—a friend of a friend's, a guy Dad worked with's buddy's house, a place where they were guests.

The girls were off with Mom, back down the winding dirt roads into town picking up some necessities. Dad walked to a neighbor's down the road, drinking on a porch in front of a lazy box fan, Harp knows now—but he hadn't known at the time, not even at 17. He'd been too dull and wrapped up in his own world.

Walt wanted to swim. Harp—well, he'd been Morton then, but even when it had been his name in every venue, he'd never really felt like anything but Harp—was already tired of being at the lake house. There was no air conditioning, the mosquitoes were near-apocalyptic by the lake, and the swampy Florida heat seemed to wick energy out of Harp at every turn. He was tired of being sweaty, tired of sleeping in a strange and crowded room, tired of fighting with his sisters and receiving the brunt of Dad’s anger every time something went wrong, whether it was the charcoal not lighting or the front door being left open.

But Harp couldn't say no to Walt, and even as teenagers, they weren't supposed to swim alone.

Harp went into the muddy, murky lake with his brother, toting a big heavy float behind him—the type that you'd use to drag behind a speedboat. They didn’t have any other floats that would hold Harp comfortably, though, so he dragged the stupid thing out, sweating and swearing and grumbling that he had to take care of his little brother, yet again, even though he loved time with Walt, even though Walt always got his jokes and made the best jokes in turn.

Harp was too busy being like Dad: impatient, unhappy, taking it out on someone else.

Naturally, Harp tired of the lake quickly; Walt did not.

Walt had been annoyed that Harp was being a stick in the mud—though Walt had surely used more colorful language at the time, this is one of the parts of the memories that's gone fuzzy for Harp.

Walt met Harp’s anger with his own, and in a moment of uncharacteristic cruelty, he'd told Harp that he was always bringing everyone down, that he should get his fat ass inside and back to the bag of second hand paperbacks he'd dragged along, if being outside was such a burden.

Stung, Harp turned and headed in. He'd gone inside and done exactly what Walt suggested: fallen face-first back into his book.

They hadn't even looked for Walt until Dad came home to find Harp asleep.

Walt drowned under the unwieldy float Harp had chosen for them—a true freak accident, Walt getting tangled in the thin ropes on one side of the float and then upending it, held down by the awkward weight and shape of the inverted plaything.

With no one to help, no one watching or listening for distress, Walt had drowned in his fifteenth summer on earth, terrified and alone.

"They all held me responsible," Harp says, concluding his story. "In a way I know it's not just my fault, but it's hard to get out from under that after believing it for so many years."

* * *

Parker issilent for a long moment as he takes this all in—and it’s not just the story, and the horror of it, but also the shock of seeing such a clear, unfiltered, unedited—he assumes—look into one of the darkest days of Harp’s life.

This whole time, he’s been laying in Harp’s arms, his head against Harp’s chest, listening to how Harp’s heartbeat had sped up, feeling Harp’s muscles tense, despite the calm, almost mechanical way Harp had recounted the events of that day.

Now, though, Parker shifts, twisting so he can see Harp’s face—impassive, watching him, waiting for a response—and he realizes his own eyes are glossy with tears. He reaches up and cups Harp’s cheek in his hand.

“That’s not fair,” he whispers, and it comes out almost as a plea, somehow. It’s not fair: that Harp had been held responsible for something that was simply a hideous, horrific accident. That Harp has been living with this guilt, the weight of this, for more than half his life, haunted by the ghost of a mistake he made when he was seventeen, young and impulsive and foolish.

It’s not fair, too, how the Harpers had been ruined like that, one sibling ripped from the fabric of their family, leaving a frayed and ugly tear that could never be properly patched. How life simply was like that sometimes: unfair and uncaring and indiscriminate, taking with no regard to love or any sense of justice. How someone sweet and well-loved and full of life could have died in such a banal, ugly way—tangled up in the murky waters of a Florida lake as the mosquitos hummed overhead. How Harp had loved his brother so fiercely, and yet their last words had been trivial and cruel, so far from how they reallyfelt.

“I’m so sorry,” Parker says hoarsely.

"Thanks," Harp says, "for letting me tell you all that. I know it's kind of a conversation killer but... I don't know. Sharing with you so far hasn't let me down."

“Don’t apologize,” Parker says quickly, despite the fact that Harp hasn’t really. He leans in and kisses Harp fiercely—it’s not a sexual kiss at all, but he can’t find any other way to express the swell of emotions inside him than to press his lips to Harp and hope that somehow, Harp can understand the urgency he feels. He pulls back and looks at Harp seriously.

“You can—you can always tell me this stuff,” he says, and even as it comes out of his mouth, it sounds hokey and scripted, falling so short of what’s needed in the moment. “And—thank you. Thank you for trusting me. To tell me that.”

He wonders how many other people in Harp’s life even know. He wonders how heavy the weight of this must have become over the decades.

* * *

"Well you knowabout Cherry and you know about Walt now," Harp says. "Those are the big pieces of baggage. Everything else is... practically a matched accessory."

He feels a little raw after talking about it all. It's cathartic, though, and leagues better than the revelation about Cherry had gone. Still, two parts of him are at war: the part that wishes he could just have shut up and not unburdened himself on a weekend that's supposed to be about Parker, and the part that is immensely pleased that he has no real big secrets hidden from Parker anymore.

And he's still here, he reminds himself. In my arms.

“Oh, Harp,” Parker says, stroking Harp’s cheek again. “I wish—I wish I could take away all the bad.”

---