There is more than one way to drown. I’m drowning and no one even notices.
No. Merrick was not part of her after.
Without him, things would never be the same.
Interstitial
Forty-Four
Brooke
After
Seeing Merrick again. Now. I’m reliving that day from a hundred years ago.
I find refuge in the trees as I make my way outside. The fresh air quenches a thirst and I find myself drinking it in with each step away from the church and closer to the sea. It’s too far out to walk, though. I’m not dressed for a hike. There is no escape from this. I close my eyes and press my back against a tree trunk.
Hope was Amaya all along. I see her there, in a bathtub filling with her own blood.
Red Tide, I think. I’ve never been able to say the word.
“Suicide,” I say now.
One word. Three syllables. The definition of pain.
Hope didn’t slit her wrists as she had the last two times. She could never bring herself to cut deep enough to end it before she was revived. This time there was no blood, I’m told. But the goal remained the same. The outcome one she didn’t return from.
Now I see the forest for the trees. They’ve surrounded me on all sides, closing in, making it impossible for me to see anything else but my own version of this story. That’s the problem with one point of view. It stands alone in its limitations, unable to recognize the details until the end.
I’m there. In the hospital. Waiting for him to come. But I’m no longer Coral, the character I created as a way of coping with my own demons. I’m me. I am Brooke. And I’m watching the scene unfold with new eyes.
I wander the hospital halls because I can’t stand to sit in the waiting room, waiting for news they’ll never give because I’m not family. All I see is blood and a little girl tangled in a mass of hair and lifeless limbs.
I never even saw her face.
The hospital windows let in light on all sides. Even so, the place feels dark. Depressing. This is where you wait for good news, hoping you’ll be part of the small percentage who walk away from these walls smiling.
When they asked me how I knew Amaya, I didn’t even know what to say.
She’s my boyfriend’s sister?
Boyfriend. Another word that seems wrong. What is Merrick to me?
Who am I to him?
I grab a cup of tea from the cafeteria and find the elevator that leads to her floor. Every sound is heightened, every detail playing forward in slow motion.
The ding of the elevator as the doors scrape open.
The sound of my bare feet slapping linoleum.
The rush of bleach and cleaner and lemon mixing with the sterile hospital air.
The swish of a doctor’s white coat as he pursues a destination down the hall.
And there. Merrick. Sitting alone on a chair, head hanging between his knees. He’s been in this position before. The day his mom left. Just before my sister took her life. So many horrific things pushing and pulling us together.
Merrick once called it fate.
I labeled it chance. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Now I’m not so sure.
Relief and heartbreak take over. We’ve both seen too much of this. Will it never end?
I move toward him, then I stop, back away, retreat out of sight behind a vending machine.
A girl approaches him. Tall and lean and perfect. Her back toward me. A day of faceless girls, it seems. When Merrick sees her, his eyes fill with an emotion I can’t name. He stands and wraps his arms around her.
They don’t release each other for a long time.
“Are you with the Princes?”
I blink. Start. What did the nurse say?
“The Princes?” I swallow.
The nurse points toward Merrick and the girl. Neither have seen me yet.
“The Prince family,” she says. “Amaya Prince? The paramedics said you came in with her. You’re the one who called 911?”
Merrick Prince. His name triggers a memory. My sister’s voice rises from the depths.
“My prince never loved me. He never will.”
My Prince does not love me. So I tell the nurse that no, I am not with them.
And I walk out the door.
Had I waited before rushing out, I would have seen Nikki’s boyfriend and Merrick’s best friend and the same boy who came to my rescue at school. Nigel and Grim are one and the same.
Merrick would have introduced me to his friends and I would have met Amaya. I would have known who she was that first day at Fathoms and then maybe I wouldn’t have run away and tried to end it. I would have spent more time with her instead of in recovery. I would have learned their last name was Prince.
Merrick became the prince who surprised me in more ways than I could ever count.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
“Hi,” Merrick says. Such a simple word, hi. So much meaning behind it. Does he have any idea the effect he has?
“Hi.” It sounds lame coming from me.
People file out of the church now. I catch a glimpse of Merrick and Hope’s dad. He finds their mom sitting alone on a bench by a tree. He approaches her. Holds her for a few seconds before she pushes him away.
The sight moves and unsettles and surprises.
Merrick follows my gaze and one corner of his mouth lifts. “He’ll never stop chasing her.” The way he says it, I know there’s more he wants to convey.
There’s always more with him.
His eyes find mine. He searches them and for the first time ever I hear him say, “Like father, like son.” He rocks back on his heels. “Can we walk?”
I nod and fall into step beside him. We stroll through the forest in silence, the foot between us as long as a mile. I want to tell him I’m sorry about his sister, but I can’t push the cliché and not-enough words past my lips at first. Sorry seems so trivial. But what else can I say?
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Thank you. I’m sorry too.” He stops and scratches his head. His hair is longer than I remember it. He seems older. Different.
The same.
“She’d talk about you,” he says. “When she’d call. She never said your name. Only that she had a friend and my dad had been right all along. Fathoms was the right place for her. I should have seen it from the beginning.”
I set my jaw. “It didn’t change anything.”
“Yes, it did.”
“The outcome was the same. She’s gone.”
“True. But her journey was different. No matter what she chose in the end, you impacted her. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
I let his words simmer. No matter what, I know I never impacted her the way she touched me.
We talk then. I tell him about my grandmother and how she moved to assisted living after Christmas last year. “It was either go back to my dad and Jordan or settle for Fathoms. Mee-Maw set it up.”
He nods. “I’ve finally started taking college courses.”
“Do you have a major yet?”
“Counseling and family studies.”
“Good choice.” My cheeks flush and I study my shoes. “How are things with your dad?”