Chapter Forty-One

When we finally returned to the hotel, I looked at my phone. There were forty messages from Miranda. I called her back.

"What the hell, Emily?" she asked instead of greeting.

I told her why we were here, about the talk today.

"What is she hoping to gain? Forgiveness?" Miranda asked. "She can go kiss my beautiful ass, she abandoned you. And I don't give a damn that she tried to hurt herself. I'll never forget those first few nights of screaming. I can still feel that sound under my skin. It was you by the way. Screaming in your sleep."

I remembered those nights, my throat was torn from the sounds that kept escaping it. I lay there at night and tried to breathe, my pillow wet from tears, my fingers squeezing the sheets as if it was the life I tried to hold on to.

"Brian says he always knew Alice would come back," Miranda said.

I smiled. Brian always made those little remarks about my future.

"He didn't tell me," I said.

I heard Miranda asking Brian why. "He says that you'd wait for it."

"No, I would not," I said.

"He doesn't believe you."

Well, he was right. Alice was one massive unfinished chapter of my life. I never had the chance to know why it all ended like it did.

A light knock on my bungalow door pulled me away from my phone.

"That's Alice," I heard Brian saying to Miranda. Miranda groaned. "Please be careful, Emily. Love you."

I ended the call and threw the phone on the bed. I didn't even have a minute to take a shower.

"What?" I said when I opened the door.

It was Alice. Brian was always right.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

"Why?"

She took a shaking breath and rubbed the back of her neck.

"I want you to know … I'm trying to explain myself. I need you to understand." She looked at me, her eyes filled with moisture. "Please."

"Okay, come in," I said and opened the door wider.

Alice held two small bottles of wine in her hand. She gave them to me, but I only shook my head. I didn't need more alcohol. And I didn't want to drink with her.

She crossed the room and went outside to the shimmering pool.

"Why are you doing this, Alice?" I asked when I sat on the chair opposite her, moving it back as far as possible. "It was so long ago. Why did you drag me here? Back into your life."

"I wanted to help you."

"Oh, yeah, help, okay."

"Please let me speak. I've prepared this speech for years."

"Go ahead," I said and gestured for her to speak, leaning back in the chair.

"Before Jake's accident, I was so in love with you, and so afraid to lose you and to hurt him. I wanted to talk to him, but I knew he was in love with you too. How could we share you? I guessed it would lead to you deciding who you wanted to be with, if anyone. It was a difficult time because I was betraying my brother, loving you, wanting to be by your side every second."

Alice dropped her head into her hands.

"After he died," she said and looked up at me. "I need you to understand me here, Emily. I was empty, a shell. I stopped existing. I could not function. I was disoriented, drugged, hurting. I could not care for myself. My parents cared for me, bathed me, fed me. I barely existed. There was no energy to deal with the world. I think now that maybe on some subconscious level I didn't want you to see me that way, but I'm lying. That living corpse could not face you. And I am so sorry for that, but I just couldn't."

Her voice was shuddering, and she swayed back and forth as she talked, streams of tears slicing her cheeks.

"I needed you to know because I still see your face as I stood by those curtains. I saw how I hurt you, but I …" Her voice finally gave way, she took a shaky breath. "I didn't do anything. And I'm so sorry."

"It was hard for me too. You must know that. But I guess I've never wanted to imagine how it was for you. I've hidden behind my grief, anger, and my broken heart for so long. I do know I could have returned too, I could have found you again," I said.

I had thought about finding her after a few years. But I had been too angry.

Alice shook her head.

"No," she said.

"No." I agreed. "How did you find your way back? Time?"

"I'm not sure I did find it. But yes, time. Do you remember that I should have started working for a big company?"

I nodded.

"They waited for me for a year. Can you believe it? But in a year nothing had changed for me. They sent me an email explaining that they had hired someone for my role." She looked dejected for a moment. "I only read that email two years later." She paused, looking at me.

Alice continued, "I picked up a brush and started painting again exactly three years after the crash. I painted Jake's face. I charged my phone for the first time in three and a half years. I opened my laptop and saw that the freelance website had changed its name after four long years. I moved to Sri Lanka five years after Jake died. I took on all projects that came—big and small—and worked my way up on the new freelance platform, one project after another. I was living in a rented bungalow deep in a small village, far from the tourist crowds, alone, finding my way back."

I took one of the two bottles she left on the table and opened it, taking a swig of dry red. It had taken her much longer than me to start living again.

"I'm sorry," I said, looking up to the sky.

Alice took the other bottle and gulped some down.

"It's so messed up, we keep apologizing to each other, while all we tried to do was survive the loss," she said quietly.

We stayed silent for a long stretch of time.

"Why Sri Lanka?" I asked.

"Do you remember Jake's favorite shirt?" she asked.

I searched my memory. There was a black T-shirt Jake always wore at home, it was faded, with a white outline of an elephant, and letters above the animal. It said Sri Lanka.

"Oh."

"People are kind here, they don't know about your past—you have a clean slate as soon as you get here. It helped. I could not stay at my parents' house anymore, not because I didn't want to. I would have lived there, in my childhood room forever. But when they spotted small signs of my awakening, they asked me to leave. They suggested going to Eastern Europe, but it would be too much, there were too many memories. So here I am."

"What about Benjamin?" I asked.

Alice turned to me, the weight of the world written all over her features. But when I asked about him, the corners of her lips raised.

"He's patient, kind, and understanding. He doesn't judge when I cry at night, he doesn't try to fix me. It's not like he's attracted to something that is broken in me, it's like under all of that he found that hidden part of me that existed before."

"Do you love him?"

Her smile faded.

"I don"t think I'm capable of loving again, in the sense you're asking. I care deeply for him, but love, it's not something I can do anymore."

I finished the small bottle in my hand and rubbed my forehead, the words echoing in the back of my memory. I had said almost the same sentence to Arthur not so long ago. I stood up and walked to the pool, looking at the blue lining.

"I'm not sure I can forgive you, but I understand," I said.

"That's all I'm asking for."

She stood up, placing the bottle on the stone floor.

"Jake knew how I felt," I said, my eyes still on the water. "That last night before he …"

I took a deep breath.

"He knew I chose you," I said quietly. "And every day for the rest of my life I'll wonder if things would have been different if he didn't know, or if I chose differently. If I went through another door that night and stayed with him. He hurt, and you hurt. But at that time it was clear to me: I wanted to be with his sister. He knew I betrayed his trust, and the next day it all ended. I didn't save him."

My last words were a whisper, but they were the truth I had learned to live with.

Alice stepped closer to me.

"It's not your fault," she said. "It was an accident. He went to that market like he did every Saturday. He would have gone anyway."

I nodded.

"I didn't see him that morning," Alice said. "I went for a run, and he was already gone when I came back. The last time I saw Jake was at the bar the evening before, the understanding was written on his face. And I just can't forgive myself that when he was driving that day, he was hurting, because of me."

We stood silent, watching the shimmering light on the walls of the pool.

"I didn't get a chance to talk to him," she said quietly.

"Me neither."

"Ben suggested that I go to therapy, and I've been doing it online for three months. It helps, the grief doesn't go away, but she helps me see that the accident was not my fault and that I just didn't have the time to make things right. And that if I could relive the night before with all the knowledge I have now, I would have acted the same. She suggested it would be good if I speak to you," Alice said.

"She suggested for you to plot all this?" I asked incredulously.

She laughed. "I guess she meant to call you, or text."

I laughed too. "It would have been easier."

"Would you have replied to me?" she asked.

I looked at her, and then back to the water.

"Of course."

"I didn't think you would."

We stood for a few more moments, the sweet sound of waves just behind the wall of greenery, the bright moon that dimmed the stars, the turquoise water at our feet.

"I'm sorry I dragged you here," Alice said, almost in a whisper.

I shrugged. "It's just a blow to my ego, the team seems happy."

"Emily, Ben loved your app. He saw me using it and asked about it. I sent him the link, he installed it, and after a week I asked if he liked it. That's what he called my insisting.

He used it for a few months and one evening he asked me what I thought about his company buying it. I said it was a great idea. I didn't persuade him or trick him. It's extremely difficult to trick Ben. You deserved it, your app is great, and your team did a great job. Please don't think that I schemed it all just to see you."

"He really liked the app?" I asked.

She laughed, the familiar notes I had forgotten. "Yes, he loved it. He would not acquire it if he thought differently."

"Thank you, I guess?"

She smiled at me, bowing her head slightly.

"Just so you know, if not for this app business, I would have called or texted you eventually," Alice said.

"Yes, therapy suggestion."

"I'm still human, Emily. Besides the guilt, grief, and the dark baggage I carry, I was simply curious how your life is."

"Fair enough," I said and smiled.

"I'd better be going," she said and turned to the door.

"Does Benjamin know who I am?" I asked.

"Not really, he knows we went to the university together, hung out a few times. He doesn't know the details of my past. The past stays in the past, he says, it's the future that matters."

I nodded. Only a person who doesn't have such horrendous events in his past can so easily brush it off.

"Good night, Alice."

She stopped, her hand on the door frame, and looked back at me.

"I'm glad you're here," she said.

After a long pause, and after I heard the click of the door, I muttered, "Me too."