Page 51 of Only If You're Lucky
“And whenever it happens,” I said, staring at her in the hallway, those bright pink eyes and tear-streaked cheeks begging me not to say it, “don’t call me.”
CHAPTER 40
I wake up on Christmas morning to a text from Mr. Jefferson.
Merry Christmas, sweetie. Saw your car drive by last week.
I lie in bed, staring at the message, my own cursor taunting me to come up with something to say. Before I can make up my mind, it pings again.
Would love to see you today.
I sigh, my head sinking deep into my pillow, thinking about the last time I’d seen Eliza’s parents. It was the summer she died, the night of her funeral. Even then, I had been avoiding them, the guilt I felt over Eliza’s death rearing up like a storm surge every time I drove by their house.
I’ll never forget their faces that day, the makeup smudged heavily beneath Mrs. Jefferson’s eyes as Mr. Jefferson pushed her aroundthe room by the small of her back. Shaking hands, glumly nodding. Accepting condolences on her behalf.
“I just wish you had been there,” he said to me that night, a haggardness in his face I had never seen in him before. We were sitting on the back porch together, tie loosened around his neck, and I could smell the bourbon on his breath, warm and stale. I knew, whatever came next, he’d probably regret in the morning. “You kept her safe.”
I stayed silent, wondering if Eliza ever told him about our argument; the things we said to each other that were so hard to take back. I doubted it. She had died with her parents still thinking I was a good person, and I watched as he continued to sip, picturing myself in bed that night, staring at my phone.
“Whenever it happens, don’t call me.”
“You talked sense into her,” he continued. “She listened to you.”
“Not always,” I said, looking down at my lap. “Sometimes I think she did things specifically because I told her not to.”
“Welcome to my life.” He smiled into the distance, then turned toward me. “Was anything bothering her?” he asked at last. “Any reason you can think of why she might’ve—?”
He trailed off, like the rest of the sentence was too painful to say.
“Mr. Jefferson, you don’t think—?” I stopped, tried to wrap my mind around what he was insinuating. Finally, I spit it out. “She didn’tjump.”
“No,” he said after too long a pause. “No, of course not. But she never mentioned anything to you? Nothing seemed… wrong?”
I stayed quiet, our final conversation running through my mind.The tears in her eyes and that quiver in her voice. The betrayal leaking out of us both for reasons related, but also entirely apart.
“No,” I said at last. “I can’t think of anything.”
“And you never saw anyone giving her a hard time? Someone who might have gotten under her skin?”
“Mr. Jefferson, it was just an accident. She fell—”
“Humor me, Margot.”
I couldn’t keep looking into his eyes anymore, inflamed and unblinking, so I turned to stare into the backyard, the long dock stretching out into a darkness so dark, I couldn’t even see the end of it.
“Nobody disliked Eliza,” I said at last. “She was friends with everybody.”
He sighed, squeezing the lids of his eyes with his fingers, probably realizing how desperate he was starting to sound. How deranged. I looked at him and felt a pang of pity flare up in my chest because I knew what he was doing, what he had been doing ever since he got the call that night. Ever since he was startled awake at two in the morning, looked down at his phone, and saw Eliza’s number on the screen but heard someone else’s voice on the other end. That heavy silence, a long exhale. The sound of sirens in the distance and the words no parent is ever equipped to hear.
He was grasping at straws, blindly searching for anything and anyone to blame other than Eliza’s own recklessness. Her own stupidity.
I knew, because I was doing it, too.
“There were bruises,” he said at last, and I jerked my head toward him, a hitch in my throat that made it hard to breathe. I watched as he opened his eyes, stared into his glass. Inspecting something invisible at the bottom.
“What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
“On her wrist,” he said. “Like fingers. The coroner said they were… fresh.”
