Page 47 of The Second Chance Cinema
The moment he died, an hourglass had flipped. The harder Ellie gripped onto the fragments of him, the faster the grains of sand slid to the bottom of the glass. Memories of events together were first to fade—holidays, birthdays, bits of conversation. Next, she lost the sound of his voice. Lately, Ellie was losing the way Ben looked. Giving away his things was one of her biggest regrets. She’d thought she couldn’t handle the weight of them, but they were pieces of him. Now, she studied the same photographs over and over again, confined to a flattened version of him.
Until a few weeks ago.
Ellie had come to the cinema wanting to fill in the gaps of her memory, but she’d found something better: her brother, alive. There he was again, on a big screen. There was his cheeky smile, his Hollywood charisma, his lightning-sharp wit, the bounce in his confident gait. There was her brother in the driver’s seat right next to her, eating french fries, listening to obscure music, givingher advice. Advice she desperately needed. Why had she resisted his guidance?
And now, she’d lived through losing him for a second time and felt the full burden of it.
Green light.Go!
Drake was pulling the blanket away from her face to get a better look. “Ellie?”
The Case of the Girl in the Car Accident.
“It’s all my fault,” she said finally.
“Oh, hey. That’s not true, Ellie.” Drake moved closer. “It wasn’t your fault what happened. At all. It was a green light. You told him it was a green light … Anyone would’ve done that. The other driver is the one who ran it—”
“If I hadn’t been making such a scene,” Ellie said. “If I hadn’t taken up all his attention, he would still be here. You would meet him and know him. You would love him, Drake.”
“My heart is breaking for you.” Drake was tearing up now, too. His arms hugged her blanketed form, and she planted her head on his chest. “I had no idea you were there that night. I mean, when you told me about the accident, I should’ve put that together. Asked more questions. Or … I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Ellie.” Drake’s arms wrapped tighter around her.
Ellie’s weight gave into him. Sharing her grief was new; now she didn’t have to do the work of carrying her past by herself. Drake was proving he could handle the elements, the cold, all of her pain. So she sobbed in the empty street while Drake held her.
She described the weight of missing Ben. She shared the way the loss had pulled her family apart, slowly and painfully. And Drake didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch. He stood on the side-walk with her, in the dark, and took in every word.
21
Ellie’s renewed grief warped her sense of time. She could check out for hours, then experience seconds of remembering that felt like days. Sometimes, there were rare, blissful moments when things were normal, and she could rely on clocks again before everything came crashing back down.
Ellie barely noticed that a week had slipped by until Drake brought up the next ticket on the following Saturday afternoon. He thought they shouldn’t go back to the cinema; they could skip a visit at least, couldn’t they? Ever since they’d talked last week, the rules were still officially on pause. Ellie was quick to agree with his suggestion. Revisiting the place where she’d watched her brother die, again—and where she would soon see the ugliness that ensued with her family in the aftermath—wasn’t high on her list.
“In that case,” Drake said, “let’s take a walk.” He pulled her arms up and over her head. “I don’t think I’ve seen you move from the couch once this week.” The assumption wasn’t quite true. Ellie had moved from the couch while Drake worked, typing away at a new draft of her piece on My Mother’s Shop, which he still didn’t know about. She needed to tell him, but there wasn’t enough space inside of her to start that conversation; her mind and heart had reached their capacity for what they could handle. When Drake wasn’t home, she threw herself into her work to ignore the pain, a familiar way of coping.
“All right. Let’s get out,” Ellie agreed. There was no usefighting the suggestion. Besides, Drake had been so kind to her that week—glued to her side, missing afternoons at work. The least she could do was give in to his support. As they put their coats on, Nancy’s feet clicked toward them on the wood floor. Her eyes pleaded to join them. “We could all use some fresh air,” Ellie said, snapping the leash on Nancy’s collar.
Excitement for the holidays was blossoming outside. New lights dotted windowsills, and inflatable reindeer covered lawns draped in fresh snow. As they moved down the slick driveway to the sidewalk, Drake’s gloved hand squeezed hers. “Checking in,” he said. “How are you doing?”
She had been trying to figure that out herself. Not well was putting it too simply. “I feel like I’m riding circles around my own guilt,” Ellie admitted. “I’m on some kind of cursed unicycle.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said. “And …” They passed an older couple out for a walk. Ellie smiled at them, surrendering to how disheveled she looked. She loved their neighborhood; it was calm, but it didn’t lack movement. “I don’t want you to feel that way,” Drake told her. “I mean, you have a right to feel how you feel, but … it really wasn’t your fault.”
On a factual level, Ellie knew she was being hard on herself. The accident wasn’t entirely her fault. After all, she hadn’t run a red light. “I can’t shake the guilt from all the tiny decisions that led to what happened,” she said. “Decisions that I made. I mean, if I hadn’t called him for a ride. If we hadn’t stopped for fries. If I had charged my phone and hadn’t wasted precious time looking for his. If I hadn’t said ‘Go’ …”
Drake nodded. “Analyzing all the little things that could’ve happened differently isn’t scientific, you know? Like, it assumes we can control the future, and we can’t. This is hard for me to admit, as someone who loves planning for every error or possible outcome that could go wrong. But that’s not how life works.”
The sky was overcast, which gave all the houses a grayish tint,even though they were different hues. The last week was the first time Ellie had let Drake, or anyone, in about the accident. She’d always wondered why she struggled to share herself with others. Now she knew: the moment she started to peel herself open, her brother had died. As the years passed, this single experience had solidified into a lifelong belief. Being vulnerable was dangerous. “It feels good to let you in,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything sooner. Of what I remembered, at least.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that.” Drake pulled her hat over her ears. “It makes sense not to want to revisit the worst night of your life. Honestly, I’m surprised you wanted to go to the cinema at all, knowing that might play.”
“About that,” she started. “I took us theretosee that night. I had to see it. I couldn’t remember anything, so I spent all these years worrying. Imagining awful details. Feeling that maybe I was to blame. I needed to know for sure.”
“You didn’t remember anything?”
“Not much. Just bits and pieces,” Ellie told him. “So I had to find out what happened.”
“Are you relieved you saw it?” Drake asked.
“Not at all,” she said. “But, in a way, yes. It was time for me to face it.” The sidewalk moved down a slight slope. Ellie tightened her grip on Nancy’s leash. Beyond all the familiar homes, the city’s tall buildings poked out in the distance. A cloud hovered above the skyline, creating the illusion that the many floating floors extended into space. The limitlessness of it made Ellie uneasy, as if reality itself was bending. She needed a distraction, some levity, anything to make the grief hide out for a second.
