I felt like he was slashing me with razors. Every word out of his mouth had sliced me, too deep to hurt but not too deep to bleed.
“You little fucker,” I hissed at him.
Then he started to sob again, wailing something about wanting to know his father, wanting to go home to his mother, and how he hated me, hated me, hated me. And I saw that he was just a little boy. And then, because I’m a weakling and a fool, I started to feel bad for him.
Then, “If you’d kept your mouth shut, we’d all have been together. That was the plan.”
Another slash across my heart. I started to feel myself weaken-physically, emotionally. That drain opened up inside and everything started to pour out of me-my strength, my fight, my will to live. My world was too ugly. Why would anyone want to live there? When Luke twisted his hands away from my grip, I had no inner resources to marshal. Even the sound of Beck calling weakly from her grave wasn’t enough to put the fight back in me. It took nothing for him to flip me over and straddle my chest. Then he closed his hands around my neck and started to squeeze.
Was it true? Had my father killed my mother so that he could be with Rachel and Luke? If he’d gotten away with it, what had he planned for me?
Luke wasn’t very strong, so he wasn’t completely cutting off my air. But it still hurt, and that biological imperative to survive kicked in. I was gasping, seeing stars, and finally the lack of oxygen motivated me to start prying his little fingers from my throat. But he had a death grip.
“Luke, that’s enough.”
I wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from. But then it rang out again, louder, more stern.
“That’s enough!” It was Rachel, her voice a shout that echoed off the trees. “Let your brother go.”
He released me and I sucked in air, felt the blessed filling of my lungs, and rolled over to start coughing and coughing.
He rose to face his mother, who approached us slowly. She looked around the scene, her jaw open in naked awe. “What have you done?”
She reached for his shoulders and gave him a little shake. “What have you done?” Her voice was a shriek, an absolute wail of horror and despair.
But Luke didn’t have a chance to answer, because those distant sounds grew suddenly louder. There were voices and lights in the trees, the whopping blades of a helicopter overhead, and suddenly our clearing was filled with a bright light from above. I crawled my way over to the grave where Beck lay, and she was so still and so white at its bottom. And Langdon was lying in a dark circle of blood.
My father would have said that boys don’t cry. But I did. For the first time since my mother died, I cried my heart out.
31
Cold still clung to the region as I left my building and climbed on my bike. Even as the end of February approached, the frigid temperatures held on tight. There was no sign of warmth. The groundhog saw his shadow and quickly retreated to his burrow. There were no crocuses pushing their way up through the persistent cover of white. It was frigid and gray as I rode my bike the short distance from my new condo in town to the Coopers’ house.
I was headed to the first of three sessions we would have before the Skype conversation I’d agreed to have with my father. Dr. Cooper wanted to prepare me, to get my head straight, my questions in order. She didn’t want me to be blindsided. I’d asked her to be present for the actual conversation and she’d agreed. Isn’t it amazing how much power our parents have over us? I was afraid even of his image on a screen.
I didn’t want to go to Florida to see my father. And Dr. Cooper said I didn’t have to, that it wasn’t my responsibility to give him what he wanted. But I had questions, a lot of them. And I needed answers. So I agreed to a Skype conversation that would take place in Jones Cooper’s office, a place I would never have cause to visit again. I didn’t want to do it in my new apartment, the one I shared now with Beck, or in Dr. Cooper’s space. These were both safe havens where I was free, finally, to be myself and I wasn’t willing to give either of them over to the man who killed my mother, even if he was my father.
News interest in Beck and me had faded, though for a while we were mobbed by reporters when we left our new apartment. So I was grateful for the quiet street as I sailed down the hill. You can imagine the coverage: BAD SEED AND PSYCHO PROFESSOR KIDNAP COED! MISSING GIRL RESCUED BY CROSS-DRESSING BOYFRIEND! It was endless-we couldn’t turn on a television or pick up a newspaper without reading more of the story that was gripping the area and the country. Beck was constantly Googling us, and reading all the insane things people were writing and saying. Naturally, she thought it was a gas-or she pretended to think that, just to feel like her old self again.
But until the trials started, if they ever did, interest in us had died down. I never gave an interview, never reacted to the mob, kept my head down. I wore the same boring outfit every day, my androgyny uniform: jeans, white shirt, black peacoat, ski hat, Doc Martens. There was never an interesting picture of me to publish. And Beck behaved herself, too. Which surprised me, because I expected her to lap it up. But she was too shattered to have any fun yet. She still had nightmares, was taking an antidepressant. She’d started sessions with Dr. Cooper.
I’d left her behind, wrapped in a blanket on my couch, sulking. She didn’t want me to talk to my father, wasn’t happy with Dr. Cooper’s prep sessions either.
“What can he say to you?” she asked. “It can only set you back.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “I’ll be fine.”
But the truth was, neither of us was exactly fine. We were getting there, maybe, but it would be a while. Lynne, Beck’s mother, was staying with us until Beck seemed “more like herself.” She and Frank totally accepted us, which surprised me. But they were those type of hippie parents who tried to get behind whatever was going on. Frank was a bit aloof with me, but polite and respectful. Honestly, it’s the most you can ask of men sometimes. They’re so wound up, so buried beneath layers of “boys don’t cry,” and “pussy,” and “man up,” that they don’t even know how to feel about anything. I should know.
Me and Beck? I don’t know. It’s weird. But it’s definitely love.
“I always knew you were a boy,” she told me. “Maybe at first I thought you were a lesbian. But I never thought you were just a regular girl.”
“I never thought you were a regular girl either,” I told her. And she found that funny.
“I wanted you right away,” she’d said.
She was a little angry that I couldn’t say the same. So bound up, wound up, repressed, confused was I that I didn’t even know what I wanted, if I wanted anything at all. I was a twenty-two-year-old, mentally unstable virgin, with gender confusion. I didn’t want anyone to touch me. I didn’t even want anyone to stand too close to me. If anything, Beck’s physical presence had made me extremely uncomfortable. But, for me, maybe that ranks as attraction.
What I could tell her was that I’d always loved her, which made her happier. And it was true.
“I’d still have loved you if you were a girl,” she said. “All I see is you.”
I don’t know if that’s true for me, but I love the way Beck loves. If everyone loved like she did, the world would be a better place.
As I rode my bike through town, I was thinking about Luke, as I had every day since I learned he was my brother. They carted him off screaming that night, and I could still hear him at night after I fell asleep. IhateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhateyou, he’d yelled into the night. I didn’t know if he meant me or his mother or the world. Maybe he meant all of us.