-Gunner-
Two days after my sister's wedding, our parents got a phone call from Carlisle relaying the message that the GPS tracker on the sailboat Maisie, Jasper, and Jett were on went dark. Three days after, the concern was posed to the Alaskan Coast Guard. Four days after, an extensive search began. Six days after, the sailboat was discovered critically damaged and sunken in a sea storm.
No bodies were ever found. It took less than a week for my sister to die.
I got the call from Dad on the sixth day. His voice sounded hollow, with a small tinge of hopefulness that it sounded like he was trying to rein it in. I knew the hope was futile, but I couldn't tell Dad that. So, I spent the phone call biting the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood. Dad took the silence as grief instead of deceit.
"Hello" and "Bye, Dad," were the only words I managed during the entire ten-minute phone call. I was crying before I realized it, tears running silently down my cheeks. Matt, my coworker, noticed before I did.
"Hey, man, you good?" He looked up from the pile of mail he was sorting. We worked together in the tiny mail room at the campus post office.
"Huh?" I asked, his voice pulling me from the buzz that had begun to fill my head. It was one thing knowing what was coming; it was another entirely for it to happen.
"You good?" Matt asked again. "You're crying, man."
Like an idiot, I raised a hand to touch my cheek, and it came away wet. Without another word to Matt, I ducked through the door and headed to the bathroom down the hall. I was crying—a lot—and it was confirmed with one look at my red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. No wonder Matt was concerned. The tears were falling hot and thick, making tracks down my face to meet at my chin and drip into the sink. Despite the tears, I felt numb. Maybe because I knew it was coming, maybe because I knew my role. I didn't know.
My fingers felt just as numb when I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Robotically, I pulled up Leah's text thread.
It happened.
And then I turned off my phone, slipped it back into my pocket, and washed my face. The cheap paper towels were scratchy on my face. Some feeling was returning, but unfortunately that feeling was nausea. I choked it down, refusing to give into it. There was no time. If I was going to get through this shift—I couldn't afford not to finish—then I needed to get myself under control. I rinsed my mouth with some water and washed my face again. That helped a little.
"I'm fine," I said as I walked back into the mail room, before Matt could hit me with another 'you good?'. We didn't know each other well despite spending twenty hours a week together. I learned something new about Matt that day, though: he wasn't one to pry. Matt and I sorted mail in silence for the rest of our joint shift, and for that I was immensely grateful.
Leah wasn't home yet when I walked in the door, but Derrick was. With my phone turned off, I didn't even know if Leah had read my message until I saw Derrick. I threw my keys on the table in the entryway; we all did that, a small nonverbal cue that someone was home. They clinked into the little strawberry-shaped, ceramic bowl Leah had found when we went thrifting for furniture soon after moving in.
Derrick came in from the living room as soon as he heard my keys. He didn't say a word, but he did catch me by my jacket sleeve before I could get it off. One tug and I was in his arms, burying my head in D's shoulder. The numbness that had gotten me through work was gone immediately, the pain releasing in a tidal wave of a sob. He didn't know that half the crying was coming from a burst of anger like I had never felt before.
I kept hearing Dad's voice, and that hollow hopefulness in his voice, and suddenly I was pissed at Maisie. I fisted Derrick's sweater in my hands, and I knew he was talking to me, but I couldn't focus on his words at all. All I knew in the moment was the white-hot anger. The fact that I had nowhere to put the anger, nothing to do with it, only made it worse. My only outlet for it were the massive sobs wrenching their way out of my throat and the hot tears soaking into D's sweater.
Derrick let me cry all over him until the wracking sobs subsided to watery breaths. The buzzing was gone from my head, replaced with a dull thumping in my temples. I felt empty, spent. My anger toward Maisie had burned itself out as quickly as it had ignited. I couldn't stay mad even if I wanted to. This was hurting Maisie, too. But I still hated the position I had been put in because of it. I pulled back from Derrick, using my sleeve to dry my face. Now that I wasn't actively sobbing, he looked so utterly at a loss as to what to do that I nearly laughed at him.
"Wanna get drunk?" Derrick had an upperclassmen friend in one of his English classes last semester. Brendan pulled for Derrick any time he wanted, which had come in handy for us when it came to parties. It was summer break now, though, and Brendan had gone back home until the fall semester. Derrick must have really thought I looked like shit if he was willing to give up the alcohol he had stashed away for break.
"Yeah, actually," I found myself saying. "Please."
Anything to get rid of the heavy weight of guilt forming in my stomach. My silence on the phone earlier was just the beginning of all the lying I would have to do to my family. I was the only one who knew that they would never find bodies, that Maisie, Jasper, and Jett were alive and well, hiding out on a private island owned by the Cullens. And I couldn't tell any of them that, of course. Not without risking exposure of not only the Cullens but Maisie, Jett, and Leah. I drowned the thoughts of how Mom and Dad would feel knowing the Southern gentleman my sister had married was actually a vampire who had been alive in the 1800's with some help from Derrick and Jack Daniels alike.
"They might find them," Derrick tried to be consoling. "People get lost at sea and survive. Surely their sailboat had life rafts and stuff."
"Yeah," I said, noncommittal, taking another long pull of the whiskey. Derrick wasn't wrong. It happened, sometimes. But not this time.
"Plus the Cullens are so rich. You know Dr. Cullen's gonna have people out there searching like crazy."
And they'll make a pretty penny for their work, but it will all be charade, I thought. "Yeah," I said again. My head felt simultaneously hollow and unbearably heavy as I nodded. "Yeah, he will."
I hoped Carlisle paid them really fucking good, these search parties being sent out after the Coast Guard came back emptyhanded.
"She learned how to swim, right? Jasper taught Maisie to swim? So, there's that, at least." Derrick was trying so hard to rationalize this, to find a way to make it so that everything was fine in the end. I took another drink, trying hard not to choke on my guilt. It wasn't just my family that I would have to lie to; here I was letting Derrick prattle on when I knew it didn't matter that whether Maisie could swim or not.
Sitting in our living room floor, the bottle of Jack Daniels only half-drunk, I already felt like I was going to throw up. That was the guilt, not the alcohol, churning my insides and turning the secrets to hot bile in my throat. I pushed myself up, using the coffee table as leverage, leaving the Jack Daniels and Derrick on the floor. Leah had made the three of us banana coconut oatmeal that morning. At eight a.m., it had been heavenly. But it was also the only think I had eaten that day, and combined with the whiskey, it burned its way back up my throat and left a sour, faintly tropical taste in my mouth.
I hadn't even made it into my own bathroom. Derrick's gray-and-blue striped shower curtain greeted me as I groaned and opened my eyes. No, definitely not my bathroom. It smelled like shaving cream and cologne, no miasma of florals that dominated mine, thanks to Leah. That absence of her scent added a new layer to my current suffering. Suddenly, I missed Leah terribly, the ache of it squeezing my chest. Would she risk leaving her shift early? I wondered. Leah was trying to secure the manager position at the coffee shop.
I drew my knees up to my chest, tucking myself into the little spot between the toilet and the bathtub. My forehead rested on my knees, and I stared unseeingly at my lap. "Fuck," I whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
How was I going to do this? How was I going to lie to Mom and Dad? To Ava? I didn't have decades of practice in all this like the Cullens. And I sure didn't have Leah's ability to school her features into a blank, unreadable mask. I can't slip up at all. One mistake and I would undo all of Maisie's careful work. I couldn't even call Maisie; she had told me her phone and Jasper's would be sunk with the sailboat. Until she called me from a new phone, I was completely severed from her.
I wasn't sure how long I sat in Derrick's bathroom, quietly losing my mind. It ended with Leah. I was so inside myself, though, that at first I thought I had imagined the smell of her perfume from my intense wish for her. Then her hand stroking my hair, the warmth of her skin sinking into my scalp. She ran her hand down the back of my neck, curving around and under my chin, gently lifting my face from the hidden burrow of my knees.
"Hey," she greeted me, rocking back on her heels. Leah was wearing one of the black long-sleeve t-shirts she used for work, and I could smell coffee on her, under the floral scent of her perfume. I hadn't even heard her come in. It was as if she had just materialized here in the bathroom with me.
"Hey," I parroted back, finding that my voice had gone thick.
"Losing your mind a little, huh?" Leah kept her voice low, empathy dripping from her words. "You're fully submerged now."
In the supernatural. She meant it, even if she didn't add it. Human though I was, the secrets were now my responsibility.
"How do you do it?" I asked. "How do you keep from messing it all up?"
At that, Leah smiled the saddest smile I had ever seen. She took my hands gently in hers and hauled me to my feet. "Not in here, huh? Derrick might want his bathroom back at some point today."
Derrick must have retreated to his bedroom. The living room was empty both of him and our alcohol. Leah led me to our own bedroom, the master suite of the apartment with an attached bathroom. It was dim in our room, the only light coming from the muted evening sunlight. Neither of us bothered to turn the lights on. Leah drew me into our bathroom and turned on the shower, I thought only to cover our voices as an extra precaution, until she unzipped my jacket for me. I hadn't even realized I never took it off when I got home.
"Go stand under the hot water for a while," she told me. "You'll feel a tiny bit better for it. Trust me."
Was this what Sue did for Leah, after her dad? I wondered, doing as Leah told me and stepping out of my shoes, chucking my clothes. Harry really did die, though. She waited until I got in the shower before slipping through the door, promising to be back.
The hot water was soothing. I stood still, letting it fall over me until the water cooled from hot to lukewarm. Out of habit more than anything, I rushed to wash myself before the water could turn frigid. The bathroom was muggy, thick with shower steam as I dried off. I left my jeans and jacket, socks and shoes all in the bathroom, only dressing in my t-shirt and boxers. Leah was waiting for me in our bedroom, the covers of our bed turned back and a steaming cup of tea on the nightstand beside my side of the bed. I climbed beneath the blankets and let Leah press the mug into my hands.
"How do you do it?" I asked her again, lifting the cup and taking a tentative sip. Lemon and mint. The heat of it spread through my chest as I swallowed, coming to rest comfortingly in my stomach. "How do you keep the lies going?"
"Carefully." She sounded rueful, but I couldn't quite make myself look at her to see her expression. Instead, I took another drink of my tea. "Tell me the public story."
"Edward called in the concerns to the Alaskan Coast Guard after Carlisle noticed that the sailboat went dark on the GPS, which is linked to Carlisle's phone, because it was his boat. Edward and Jasmine tried to call Maisie and Jasper several times but were never able to reach them. The Coast Guard found the sailboat sunken, apparently damaged in a bad sea storm. No bodies."
We were quiet in the dark of our bedroom, the only sounds our breathing and my sips of tea. After a few beats, Leah spoke again.
"And my dad died of a heart attack out of the blue. Tell yourself the public story over and over again. Tell it to me every day. Say it until it's the only answer you can think to give, until it's a reflex." I knew then that this must have been what Sue did for both Leah and Seth, for her to be so convicted and sure that this was the answer to my questions.
I reached up, laying a hand on her cheek and running my thumb over the ridge of the bone there. Leah leaned into my touch, eyes fluttering closed. Her lips tightened, downturned, and she swallowed hard. I knew all too well that the wound she carried from her father's death was only recently starting to stitch itself together and heal. Reaching behind me, I set my mug back on the nightstand. Before she could open her eyes, I kissed her. She softened under my touch. It had been months since Leah had phased, since she had cut her hair. The ends of it tickled my cheeks as she kissed me back. I pulled her down to me, guiding both of us to the mattress, and tucking her to my side.
"That worked for you and Seth?" I asked, relaxing fully for the first time that day under the comforting familiarity of her warmth, her body beside mine, her scent.
"Does anyone in La Push who doesn't strictly have to, know the truth about the wolves?" She countered, her breath tingling over my chest as she talked.
"Fair enough," I admitted. We fell quiet then. My tea sat forgotten to the right of me. More importantly, Leah was on the left. I turned to her, burrowing down beneath the blankets. It might have been summer break, but winter had kept a tight hold all through the spring and was just now letting go. Between Leah's natural heat and the insulation of the covers, not to mention the events of the day, I was growing drowsy. Still, I repeated the story one more time for Leah.
"It will get easier," she promised me, drawing me closer in the circle of her arms. I only nodded. I felt as if I should be crying again, but I had neither the tears nor the energy left. Sleep was all too welcome when it came for me.
"You don't have to go to work, dude." Derrick was wide-eyed with surprise when he found me in the kitchen, dressed and eating the re-heated omelet Leah had left for me. She was opening the shop; she had slipped out of the apartment at dawn. "We'll be fine if you need to take some days off."
I was shaking my head even before he finished his sentence, but I had to finish chewing and swallowing before I could answer him. "I wanna go."
Derrick seemed dubious, warming his own omelet in the microwave, but he was gracious enough not to press me. "Alright," he conceded. We ate in companionable melancholy. Derrick had been my best friend basically since we had moved to Forks and we had met at eleven. He knew Maisie, too. He used to teas me about having a hot sister, but I knew what he saw in her. It was what we all saw. Vibrancy, stubbornness, humor. If nothing else, Maisie had always been very much alive.
Except now she wasn't. And neither of us quite knew what to do with that information. There was solidarity in the silence, though, and that was echoed in the way Derrick waited for me in the doorway while I laced up my boots and pulled on my jacket. He walked with me to my car before going to his own a few parking spots down. He even let me pull out first, patiently following my car out of the automated gate before we parted our ways for our individual paths to work.
Going to work had been the right choice. I had a hunch the mind-numbing repetition of sorting and labeling mail would be good for me. By the time my shift was over pleasantly empty, even if my chest was not. A weight had taken up residency there. One that made it hard to talk and swallow alike. I had eaten that morning only because Leah had made the omelet. I ate that night only because Derrick walked through the doors with his arms heavy-laden with takeout bags from my favorite Chinese place.
I didn't taste the mushrooms or spinach in the omelet. I didn't taste my orange chicken or sticky rice, nor the Mexican Coke—also my favorite—Derrick had got me. Neither D nor Leah were too eager to break my silence. They let me sit, quietly plowing through my food, the two of them exchanging little work stories.
"I think I'm gonna have to go to Forks soon," I said to my takeout container. The words surprised me just as much as they did Leah and Derrick. I hadn't thought about them; they just fell out of my mouth. "To help with Ava and… stuff."
"Of course," Leah said softly, taking my hand in hers.
"Yeah, man, no problem." Derrick tried to smile at me, but it faltered and fell from his lips quickly. "We can take care of ourselves for a while, huh, Leah?"
"We'll be fine. Go when you need to, ῤíćha." If my sister weren't 'dead', I had no doubt Leah would have been teasing Derrick over his abilities to look after himself. She only squeezed my hand in emphasis of her words.
Why is this so hard, when I've known for weeks it was coming?
I got a call from Carlisle that night. It came through while Leah was in the shower, but I stepped out on the back patio when I answered for extra privacy. The night outside was that muggy kind of cold that Seattle did so well. My breath puffed, white and sluggish, before me when I answered. "Hello?"
"Gunner," Carlisle greeted, "how are you?"
"I'm, uh, doing alright. It's… a lot." Perhaps it was his tone, soft and empathetic, that had me telling the truth to the good vampire doctor of Forks.
"It requires some adjustment to get used to," he agreed mildly. "Should we expect to see you in Forks shortly?"
"I, uh, yeah. I think that's for the best, you know?" I was pacing as we talked, making rounds along the fence of our tiny yard. The earth was toiled in straight lines in the garden bed, each row carefully labeled by Leah. Here and there, little sprouts of green foreshadowed the vegetable garden we should have by high summer.
"I'm sure your family will greatly appreciate it."
I nearly said Maisie's name. I paused, just in case Derrick were to overhear, editing my words. "She," I said instead, "is okay, right?"
"Yes." Here, Carlisle's soothing doctor tone dropped, and sincerity flooded his words. "Maisie, Jasper, and Jett are safe and well on our private island. You should expect a call from her soon."
Here, I dropped my voice as quiet as I could. I knew Carlisle would still be able to hear me over the line, no matter how softly I whispered. "Could you ask her to hold off until after the… uh, funeral?" It felt inherently wrong to use that word in reference to my sister. My stomach turned and I swallowed hard, refusing to let all that Chinese food make a reappearance. "Please," I tacked on.
I don't know what Carlisle heard in my tone but he agreed readily. Relief flooded through me. Even with Leah's quizzing me—repeating the story was already a part of our daily routine—I wasn't confident in my ability to get through this if I was talking to Maisie at the same time I was mourning her. Carlisle prattled on for a bit longer, taking on that soothing doctor's tone again. I wasn't listening by that point, not really, but I must have said the right things in response because Carlisle was soon wishing me well and promising to see me soon.
Even after I disconnected the call, I stayed outside in the garden. The bricks that lined the garden bed was cold even through my jeans. It helped ground me when I focused on it. I went through the mental checklist of things I needed to do before going to Forks. Put in for time off from work. Leave rent money with D; it's coming up due on the thirty-first. Pack. Should I fly from Sea-Tac? Leah might need the car while I'm gone. I won't really need it in Forks. But flying is expensive.
I was still lost in my thoughts, weighing which would be better, when Derrick interrupted them. He threw a jacket at me, that's how I knew he was there. I jumped in surprise and caught the jacket on pure reflex alone.
"You've gone pale from cold," he said by way of explanation, shrugging his own jacket-clad shoulders. Derrick took a seat beside me on the bricks.
"I'm always pale," I argued, slipping into my jacket and zipping it up. "Ginger hair and all that."
He didn't respond to my weak attempt at a joke. Instead, he had his eyes fixed on the intermittent glimpse of stars that could be seen through the wisps of clouds moving across the sky. "I'll drive you back to Forks. I have Monday off, if that's an alright day for you."
"Monday's good." It wasn't so much an offer as a command, but I was grateful to cling to it either way. Asking Derrick for a ride back home hadn't even occurred to me. "Thanks, D."
We sat together in the quiet, damp cold until Leah got out of the shower and came looking for us. She was wearing my clothes, wet hair dripping onto my Twenty-One Pilots t-shirt. We were so close in height that Leah didn't even need to roll the waistband on my sweats when she wore them. Spotting us through the kitchen window, she waved us inside. The smell of popcorn greeted us when we stepped back inside together. Only then did I remember it was Wednesday and we had tradition to uphold. New episodes of Chopped came on every Wednesday; it was our favorite reality show, and we took bets every week on who we thought would win.
"Y'all have some losing to do, boys," Leah teased us, handing each of a bowl of popcorn. According to Seth, Leah had never said 'y'all' before dating me. Now it bled into her vocabulary every now and then. It made me smile every time. But this time, the smile fell from my face almost immediately. Smiling felt like betrayal.
It didn't go unnoticed. The mood shifted immediately, Leah's lighthearted jest getting swallowed up in sudden dourness. Derrick squeezed my arm before stepping away into the living room to turn the TV on.
"I'm fine," I promised to Leah's worried expression. I couldn't quite meet her eye. Her lips quirked into an almost-smile of their own before she kissed me. Not quite on the mouth, more so on the corner. Her compulsion to comfort me combined with her uncertainty in the moment put new cracks in my heart.
I took her hand in the kitchen and tucked her under my arm in the living room when we sat in our usual, huge armchair. Another thrift store find, it comfortably sat both me and Leah so that Derrick could always sprawl out on the futon that served as our couch.
I knew we were playing at normal that night. That awkwardness from the kitchen never quite dissipated as we watched Chopped. Still, I appreciated the effort. There was comradery and support mingled into the air as well. I would need both to bolster myself before heading to Forks.
Maisie used to be my source of such things.
The night before I left, I drew Leah to me in our bed. I wanted more than anything to be able to take her with me. We couldn't afford that, though. Losing my income for a week was already going to stretch us thin next month. Leah was already looking to take any extra shifts she could, to help make up the difference.
I need to start looking for a second job when I get back, I reminded myself before pushing all thoughts aside to kiss Leah. I forced my mind to go blank, to only focus on the feel and taste of her. Leah knew what I needed before even I realized it. She coaxed me out of my t-shirt but I caught he hands on my chest and pulled back from her.
"We don't, I mean…" I tried to frame an argument even as my body disagreed. Leah could feel it; she pressed a thigh between mine to make her point.
"It's not wrong," she whispered to me. "This is comfort, too."
I had never thought of sex that way, but realized she was right. That was what I had been going for, when I kissed her, even if I hadn't immediately realized it. I did want the comfort of her, the familiarity of her body entwined with mine. Leah needed the same. She wiggled her hands out of mine, reaching up to skim her thumb along my lips. I caught it between my teeth instead and she smiled, seeing that I understood. I sat up, bringing her with me.
She wore only an oversized t-shirt herself, nothing but her panties beneath. We didn't say another word, joining together amongst only the rustling of bedsheets and soft sighs. I clung to her with the desperate, irrational need to imprint her figure on me somehow. To inhale her scent, memorize the curve of her thigh as it gave beneath my hand.
If I couldn't take Leah with me, at least I could take the memory of her on this night.
She woke before me in the morning, kissing me softly on the mouth while I drifted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. "I love you," she whispered, running her fingers through my hair before she left. I didn't want to wake up. Accepting consciousness was accepting that I had to go to Forks. For a few minutes, I wondered how much I could push my luck with Derrick if I dragged my feet.
But Forks was over three hours away, and he would have to make a round trip so he could still go to work on Tuesday. He was doing a huge favor in driving me there. I made myself get up and throw on clothes. Derrick met me at the door. "Ready?"
"Yeah, I guess."
He didn't press me to talk more than that. We stopped to get fast food breakfast sandwiches on the way out of Seattle. A lot of the ride was quiet, like the night we sat in the garden together. The silence was comforting. I didn't know how to tell Derrick how much I appreciated it, so I hugged him tightly instead.
"Tell your parents and Ava hi for me." My childhood house was shuttered up, all the curtains drawn tight thought it was late morning when we pulled into the driveway. I didn't blame D for not wanting to disrupt the projected solitude.
"I will," I promised him. "You and Leah don't have too much fun without me."
Derrick laughed at that. "Yeah, all the deep cleaning is gonna be a blast." He hugged me again before ducking back into his car. I stood on the porch and watched Derrick's car disappear beyond the tree line at the end of the driveway. He was going to stop and see his parents on the way out, I knew. Maybe he could say to his parents what he couldn't say to me. Or maybe he and Leah would say it to each other.
I hoped so.
Only when I could no longer see D's car did I try the front door behind me. It was unlocked. I wasn't sure if this was in anticipation of my arrival or an oversight, but I locked it behind me. The house was gloomy. Not only were the curtains drawn, but the lights weren't on. I found Ava in the shadowy living room, illuminated in the soft glow of the Disney Channel. She was playing listlessly with her dolls in front of the TV.
"Hey, Ava." My voice startled her; she hadn't heard me come in. She was up in the next minute, throwing herself at me. Ava really was too big to hold anymore but I caught her any and settled her weight on my hip. "Where's Mom and Dad?"
"Mama's upstairs. She's laying down. Daddy's on the phone. He told me to stay in here." She sounded listless, not at all the vibrant kid she had always been.
"Let's go outside," I told her, suddenly suffocating in this house that no longer quite felt like home. "It's nice today."
I carried her to the trampoline in the yard and dumped her unceremoniously. Ava bounced a few times before a tentative smile stretched across her face. I tugged her shoes off and slipped off my own before climbing onto the trampoline beside her. "What's been going on around here, Ava Bug?"
At that, she shrugged. "Something bad happened." It wasn't a question. "No one tells me what, but I know its about Maisie. Dr. Cullen is here a lot. Mama doesn't talk. She just cries and 'goes for a lie down'. That's what Daddy calls it. He talks on the phone a lot. I answered it one time, because Daddy was in the bathroom, and it was Edward. He asked me about school until Daddy took the phone."
Ava's eyes were as solemn and gray as the heavy clouds overhead. "Do you know what happened?"
"Yes." I didn't see any reason to lie to her. Honestly, I was a little mad no one had explained to her. Ava was little, sure, but she was smart and keeping her in the dark obviously wasn't working. So, I told her the truth as she needed to know it. "Remember, after a wedding, the married people take a trip together? That's what Maisie and Jasper were doing, and they took Jett with them. They went on a boat trip together the day after the wedding."
She nodded; she already knew this. I nodded back, trying to stall the words I needed to say. "Sometimes there's big storms in the ocean and they can sink ships," I explained. That was all Ava needed. She was more than smart enough to put the pieces together.
"And that's what happened to Maisie." Her little voice sounded hollow as she said the words. Then her fair brows drew together, and her face crumpled. I caught her when she threw herself at me. She sobbed into my shirt, tears soaking through the fabric so that it stuck to my skin. I held her tight. My own tears started running down my cheeks. I watched them plop into her blonde hair.
Ava sobbed until she was spent. She cried herself to sleep, going limp in my arms. Getting off the trampoline with her was awkward, but I managed, and carried her into the house. Dad was in the living room by that time. He didn't comment when I came in, just watched with blank eyes as I carried Ava upstairs. I tucked her into her bed and pulled the door shut quietly behind me.
"You told her, then?" Dad asked when I was back downstairs.
"Someone needed to." I pulled at the curtains, opening them to flood the living room with the muted light from the cloudy day. "You can't just not tell her and leave her in dark rooms on top of that."
He flinched at that. I grimaced, feeling bad for snapping, but I had been right. Dad knew it, too. "I know."
"They found the boat, right? Sunken?" I waited for Dad to nod. "But not bodies. We have to accept that."
"I know," Dad said again, quieter this time. I took a good look at him for the first time. The stubble was thick on his cheeks and chin. His hair was sticking up on end, like he had been running his hands through it. Both eyes were underscored with dark, bruise-like smudges. That made me feel worse for snapping. I sighed, running a hand through my own hair.
"Listen, it's just… it's not fair to Ava, you know? She's smart. She can understand this. We shouldn't keep her out of it." I crossed my arms. It was about comfort as much as sternness. I hugged myself before going on. "Maisie wouldn't want us to baby her. She knew how smart Ava is."
"You're right," Dad agreed readily. Having Dad acquiesce to everything I said felt weird. Usually it was the other way around. I sighed again and stepped forward. Me and Ava had done a good bit of crying on the trampoline but I felt new tears welling up in my eyes. When Dad folded me into his arms, I was overcome with the sense that this was how I was held as a child. Gently, lovingly, enfolded in a space of warm safety to weather the storms of life.
It felt like living with ghosts for a week. Ava and Mom were both shadows of their usual selves. There was no more doll playing, no more Disney Channel on the TV. Ava spent all her time 'reading'—staring at the same page for several minutes before slowly turning to the next.
Mom mostly sat around. She spoke in sentence fragments to Ava, but only gave me and Dad one-word answers. The majority of the funeral preparations fell at mine, Dad's, and Esme's feet. There was a gentle deftness to the way Esme handled phone calls to the funeral parlors, inquiring about services for which there would be no bodies. As someone in the know, it was obvious this wasn't her first time arranging such a service.
Maisie's friends didn't attend her wedding, but they turned out for the funeral. There was nothing graveside, of course; can't exactly have a grave without a body. I suppose we could have gotten markers in memoriam, but Mom and Dad decided against it. We all crammed into a funeral home together instead.
Leah and Derrick came up together for the funeral. She sat with me in the family row; Derrick graciously sat with Maisie's high school friends. Jessica Stanley, Mike Newton, Lauren Mallory, Tyler Crowley, Eric Yorkie, Angela Weber. They made up an entire row themselves, all of them sniffling and wearing black. I felt bad for them, grieving under false pretenses, but I tried not to dwell on that. I focused on Leah's hand in mine instead, staring unseeingly at the slideshow of photos that had been compiled.
There was a flurry of tearful hugs and well-wishes after, but I moved through such a daze that every face blended into the next. The only one I remembered came from Alice Cullen. At first, she only laid her hand on my arm, drawing my attention to her minute frame. I dipped my head down at her beckoning, so she could whisper to me.
"You're doing a marvelous job. Maisie asked me to tell you she's proud of you." And then she kissed my cheek, so feather light I almost wasn't sure it happened. She flitted away from my side, then, drawing close to Carlisle. I started crying anew at that, letting the tears fall unhindered down my cheeks. For once, Maisie had listened to me. I hadn't heard from her since the morning after the wedding.
And I didn't hear from her, not for two weeks more. Not until I had settled into a new, hollow routine of life that didn't extend past sorting packages with Matt in mind-numbing monotony, tending our little garden, playing video games, and trying to figure out how to exist in a world without Maisie.
She wasn't dead, but she would never publicly be part of my life again. A fact I knew but did not comprehend until I got a text from an odd number saying simply: I'm gonna call in a minute. Pick up.
I was in the middle of a game of Smash Bros. with Derrick when the text came through. My fingers felt thick and clumsy as I fumbled to pause the game. "It's my mom," I lied hastily to D, shooting from the room. "I gotta answer it."
I barely had the bedroom door shut behind me when my phone started to buzz in my hand. With another clumsy display, I swiped the little call icon and pressed the phone to my ear.
"Hey, Gunner," came Maisie's voice over the line. I didn't know whether I should cry more or laugh. I ended up doing both, the two mingling into a strangled sound.
"Fuck you, Maisie."
"Okay, fair. I deserve that. You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, though." Her voice sounded scratchy. I doubted she was sick, not with her super-human, immortal status, but I did wonder at how much crying she had been doing herself.
"You're not even dead, though. I can say whatever I want about you and your bullshit."
"I don't know, I look pretty dead on paper. Jasper printed our death certificates this morning. It's the only official paperwork I own. Even my marriage certificate was fudged by Jasper's fake documents guy."
"That's fucking morbid," I told her, laughing again. It felt weird, to laugh, after how many days I had spent either numb or crying.
"Then you're gonna hate my next question. Tell me about my funeral, Gun. I'm deathly curious."
"What's the coordinates on that fancy private island? I'm gonna come kick your ass."
"As if you could. Now spill it."
Just like that, it was alright again. For the twenty minutes we spent on the phone, life felt a little better. I wanted to talk longer, but Maisie's words kept getting interrupted by yawns. She was four hours ahead of me, she said. I wondered—but didn't ask—how much she had been sleeping these days. Too soon, I let her go.
Sitting on the bedroom floor, I saved the number under Maisie's name, hiding it in plain sight. For the first time since the wedding, things felt okay again. It was done. Everything was done, and we did it without messing it up.
Everyone was safe.
Everything was okay.
