“God,” I whispered. I didn’t want to ask the next question. I could read the answer in the people in that cold, hard, bright hallway. “How bad?”
A doctor pushed through the door then, tugged at his mask. I remember every bit of detail from that moment—the clipboard in his hand, the streaks of blood on his shirt, his unshaven face like he slept there night after night. His eyes swept the room tiredly, then fixed on that corner and he walked slowly toward Trip’s parents.
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones?”
Trip’s mom looked up at him, and I saw her eyes meet his. Saw his head shake slightly. She screamed. And screamed and screamed. The sound of it piercing, shattering the brittle frame of me, over and over. They wheeled her away soon, but that sound lingered in the hallway like it would never, ever leave.
CHAPTER 30
THEY BURIED TRIP IN THE same cemetery as my dad. If I squinted, I could see my dad’s marker across the field from where I stood, feeling wooden among other wooden figures. I wondered if the cigar was still there and whether we’d add Trip to our annual visits, dropping off a Bud Light or a new football when we came.
Lots of people were there. I knew almost everyone in the first row and second and third. The four of stood near the front, side-by-side—me, Nat, Tannis, and Sarah. I held Natalie’s hand during the prayer, with Lu standing protectively behind her. I wanted to talk to Sarah, just her and me. I wanted her to look at me so I could find some spark of life in those deep, dark eyes. But her gaze skated vacantly past.
When the priest finished talking, my mom and I offered condolences to Trip’s parents. His mom was unresponsive, his dad mechanical, but affable as always.
Afterward, classmates whispered about what’d happened, the same as they’d whispered about Nat and her dad. I didn’t ask for any of it but let their gossip seep in, piling into the empty, ugly hollow of my gut.
I should have told him, I thought. Over and over and over. I couldn’t follow the train of thought long enough to figure out what I should have told him or when I could have made a difference. I knew only that I’d done something horribly, unspeakably wrong.
CHAPTER 31
TRIP’S DAD CAME BY THE house a couple of days later. Maybe it was a couple of weeks. Time did a funny thing after, some days slipping away without notice while others stretched on endlessly. He stood on the front step, twisting his gloves in his hands like he was trying to wring the life out of them. It looked like someone had done the same to him. His face was so pale and sad that I couldn’t muster even a trace of the anger I usually felt when I saw him.
He looked around the living room after I’d ushered him in, like he’d never been there. I waited, but he just kept sweeping his eyes around the room.
“My mom’s out,” I told him finally. “She’s at work.”
He started like I’d woken him, then shook his head. “I came to see you,” he said.
I waited, wondering after the silence continued if I’d have to restart him again, but finally he said slowly, “I knew your dad way back.” He looked past me, toward the back door and yard, where he used to laugh and drink with my dad about a million years ago. “Of course, you already know that.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to hear him reminisce about how it had been before it had all split apart.
Mr. Jones took a deep breath. Then his shoulders fell heavily as he exhaled. “He was a good guy. A better friend to me than I ever was to him.”
I shifted my weight subtly. “Mr. Jones, maybe we should—”
He held up a hand. “Hear me out, Riley. Please. I feel like I have to tell you. I owe it to him.” He paused. “I feel like there’s karma at work here. Payback. And I have to stop it now.”
I wanted to tell him that whatever it was, it was okay. If there was a debt, it was paid back. With interest. I wanted to plug my ears, the way you do when you’re four and your daddy is telling you he expects you to clean up the mess you made in the kitchen before he paddles your butt. But I wasn’t four anymore, and I knew that if there were something karmic at work, my part of the bargain was to listen. So I did.
“I was supposed to be hunting with him the day he died.” He saw the shock on my face and passed a hand over his forehead, trying to wipe away whatever he was feeling. “We had a fight. Had a bunch of them back then . . .” His voice caught. After a minute he continued, “Instead of being a man and hashing it out or calling him up to say I couldn’t go, I stood him up. Just didn’t show up at the lot when I was supposed to. I figured that’d show him . . .” He trailed off like he’d lost his train of thought.
“It’s okay,” I said mechanically.
That woke him up. “No! No, it’s not, Riley.” He was fighting for composure. “It’s not okay. Never okay. When Trip was doing that same thing to you, I made him fix it. You don’t just throw away your friends.”
Made Trip fix it? What did that mean? Had he sent Trip over to my house that June day before junior year? Forced him to be friends with me again? I didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t notice.
“Your dad thought there was something between me and your mom.”
I cringed, and he kept going.
“There wasn’t,” Mr. Jones said quickly. “I always thought she was gorgeous. Your mom was so . . . alive. Back then,” he added as an afterthought. “I told him that, but your dad was suspicious, always watching me—”
I had to interrupt. “Please.” I held up my hand. “These are my parents you’re talking about.” I couldn’t stand another minute of it—him and her and my dad. Trip and Sarah and me.
Mr. Jones rubbed at his forehead. “Right. I’m sorry.” I saw him glance around the room, focus on the spot by the stairs where the carpet was worn down to the flecked padding underneath. It made me want to push a chair or box or lay a sheet on top to cover it up. He looked down, realizing he was holding something. The reason he was here.
“Your dad isn’t here to provide for you,” he said, fingering the thing in his hand, a wrinkled envelope. “At least part of that is my fault. I owe him,” he continued. “And I don’t have a son to provide for anymore.” He said it dully, the words wooden, without real meaning, because if they’d had more form and life, both of us would have crumbled. He stuck the envelope out toward me. “Take it. Please.”