"I know," Marcus said., "Do you know what I thought? " Elena said, "I thought I'd done something. I I went back through every conversation we'd had in the last month trying to figure out what I did was bad enough for you to leave without saying one single word to me. "You didn't do anything," Marcus said., ""Elena, you didn't. " I know that now. " She said, "I'm telling you what I thought then. I'm telling you what I thought then. I'm telling you what a 17-year-old girl does when the person she trusted most in the world disappears overnight.
She blames herself because what's the alternative? The alternative is believing that someone she loved just didn't love her enough to say goodbye. And that's a worse thing to believe. The diner moved around them, plates clattering. The bell above the door.
A child at another table asking for more ketchup with extraordinary urgency, and none of it touched their booth. Marcus sat down his mug. "My brother got hurt," he said. The night of graduation, Darnell. He was in a fight and it was bad.
Three guys. One of them had a bat. He was in the county hospital by 11:00. Elena's expression shifted. A crack in the levelness, just small.
My mother called me and she was not. She wasn't continued. Darnell's the one she worried about most. Always had been. And I got there and it was bad enough that they were talking about surgery and my mother had no money.
And my father, you know where my father was? "Gone," Elena said quietly. Same word, Marcus said. Different man. She was quiet for a moment.
He watched her process it. Not the way people process information, inputs and outputs, but the way people process grief, which is differently in every part of the body. "Why didn't you call me? " she said., "I tried," Marcus said. She looked up at him. I tried to call you, Elena, that night from the hospital waiting room.
I called your number four times and it went to voicemail every time. I left a message. I sent you a text. I sent you three texts, Marcus. She said carefully.
"I never got them. " "I know," he said. I found out later. I know you didn't get them. What do you mean you know I didn't get them? Why didn't I get them?
This was the moment Marcus had been both moving toward and away from for 15 years. He could see it clearly now. The shape of it, the specific weight of the truth he was about to put on the table between them. He had no way of knowing how she was going to receive it. He had no way of knowing whether it would help or make it worse.
But he had promised himself in the parking lot of his apartment complex with Ranata's voice still in his ear saying be honest with her that he was going to stop burying things. "Your cousin," he said. "Briana. " Elena went very still. "What about Briana? " She had your phone. Marcus said that night you'd left it at her house after the graduation party.
She answered my call. The third one. I didn't know it was her at first. Her voice sounded different. She said, "You didn't want to talk to me.
That you'd met someone at the party and you were fine and I should. " He stopped. I was 19. I was exhausted and scared and sitting in a hospital waiting room with my mother crying next to me. And someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about told me to move on. And I He exhaled.
I was not in a place to think clearly about what was and wasn't true. Elena was not moving, not visibly breathing. Her hands around her coffee mug had gone white at the knuckles. "Briana," she said. "The word came out flat and dangerous.
The way a road is flat before a sudden drop. I don't know why she did it, Marcus said. I never confronted her. I left Cedar Falls 3 days later when Darnell was stable enough. And I didn't "I need a minute," Elena said.
Elena, I need a minute, Marcus. She said it quietly, but with complete authority, and he stopped talking immediately. She looked out the window. Her jaw was working the way it had always worked when she was trying to contain something she didn't want to display publicly. He'd seen that jaw movement across a 100 high school hallways.
He knew exactly what it meant. It meant she was furious. And she was also trying not to fall apart. 15 years, she said, still looking out the window. I know I spent 15 years thinking you chose to leave me.
I know I spent 15 years. She stopped. Started again. I dated someone for 3 years in Douglas County. Good man, decent man.
He wanted to marry me. A pause. I couldn't do it. I told myself it was the job, the hours, the logistics. But he asked me once, he said, Elena, what are you so afraid of?
And I didn't have an answer for him. I don't have an answer for him. But sitting here right now across from you, she stopped, looked back at Marcus. Her eyes were completely dry, but everything behind them was not. "I need to know something," she said.
"And I need you to tell me the truth. Because I am 35 years old, and I am past the age where I have the energy to absorb anything other than the absolute truth. " "Ask me," Marcus said. If that night had gone differently, she said, "If Darnell hadn't gotten hurt, if Brianna hadn't done what she did, if you had reached me, the real me that night at that party, what would you have said? " The diner clattered around them. Somebody's kid knocked over a glass somewhere. The bell above the door rang.