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He steps toward her. Lowers his voice. “Watch it.”
That only derails her for a moment. She speaks over him to me. “Take them off.”
I do as she asks, despite Jake’s insistence. Not because I’m cowering, but out of respect for Rose. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know.
The idea makes me feel sick. I was wearing a dead girl’s shoes.
“Come on,” Jake says, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Ruby as we head inside. He wants to make sure she knows he’s not happy with the way she acted, Rose’s boots or not.
Not that she cares.
Before we disappear around the corner, I hear her scamper to them and sweep them into her arms.
“I’m so sorry,”Jake says when we’re safely locked inside the bedroom. “I’m so sorry.”
I’m perched on the edge of the bed. Still drunk. Still reeling from what happened. And a little nauseous. “It’s okay,” I say, but not very convincingly.
I understand why she’s upset, but I can’t find the words to stick up for her. I understand why Jake is upset too.
He sits beside me and pulls me into the warmth of his side. I stare blankly at my naked feet.
I feel like I should do something. Apologize. I unknowingly desecrated something of Rose’s. How does one even apologize for something like that?
“You didn’t know,” he attempts to soothe, kissing my hair, then adds, “I didn’t know. She’ll get over it.”
I’m not so sure.
“She had a harder time with Rose’s death than all of us.”
“She did?”
“She…” He almost can’t bring himself to say it. “She’s the one who found her.”
My stomach hollows. I look to him.
I know this same horror.
“Found her?”
“Yeah. She um…was in the stables.”
“What happened?” I turn to face him on the bed, but his head hangs, the rim of his hat covering his face. I gently slide it off. And the wig. Caress his cheek so he’ll look at me. Tears glisten in his eyes and my heart rips in half. What a one-eighty we’ve done since we first pulled into the driveway. “If you want to tell me.”
“She, um. She…”
I brace myself for whatever it is, but I think I already have a good idea.
“Ruby found her hanging from the rafters.”
OhmyGod. I shut my eyes against the imagery my imagination conjures—pale, fragile legs dangling. Her long hair stinging in front of her face. Face frozen with a desperate kind of relief.
I allow my head to tip forward until my forehead presses to his. “I’m so sorry, Jake,” I whisper reverently, and flinch against the memories of when I found my brother. He was lying on the dirty floor of a trailer. The needle was still sticking out of his arm. He wasn’t answering my calls. And I knew. My heart knew. But I had to go check on him anyway. “I know what that’s like.”
Jake doesn’t ask what I mean by that, just pulls me into him and holds me tight. But I don’t have to tell him. He can feel it. A wound like that is always recognizable in others. It’s a silent, open, oozing thing that no amount of medicine or sutures can put back together.
I then want to tell him about another wound. Another loss.
