If We Fly: A What If Novel Read online

  Setting them aside to take back to the cottage, I turn toward another stack of boxes labeled with my name. Inside the first box is a pile of drawing pads. I open the first one.

  Cole’s face, ten years younger and captured perfectly in time, gazes back at me. Strikingly intense eyes beneath dark brows, high cheekbones slanting toward his strong jaw and beautiful mouth with the notch just below his lower lip. The pencil drawing almost vibrates with youthful energy, every detail from the strands of his burnished hair to the dusting of stubble on his face lovingly depicted.

  The entire drawing pad contains sketches of him. I don’t even remember creating so many images of Cole, though I’m not surprised. Everything about him, from the way light fell across his hair to the flex and pull of his muscles, was art in motion. Hardly a wonder that I found him such a source of inspiration.

  My phone buzzes with a text.

  COLE: Are you at home?

  JOSIE: I’m at the house on Poppy Lane. You still at work?

  COLE: Yeah. You want to go on a date with me?

  I smile.

  JOSIE: About time you asked. Yes.

  COLE: Can I pick you up there or do you want to meet me?

  JOSIE: I’m alone. You can pick me up.

  COLE: Be there in ten minutes.

  After setting the phone down, I continue unpacking boxes until the doorbell rings. I let Cole in and indicate my dusty overalls with a grimace.

  “Depending on where you’re taking me, I need to change.”

  “We can stop at the cottage first.” He leans in to kiss me. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Sorting through the basement.” Gesturing for him to follow me, I descend the stairs again. “It’s not only Mom and Dad’s stuff, but mine too. I just found a whole sketchbook of drawings I once did of you.”

  “What are you going to do with it all?” He picks up a framed painting of an intricate, tangled forest lit by hundreds of lanterns.

  “Donate some of it.” I set another one of my boxes against the wall. “I guess I’ll get rid of a lot of my old stuff, except my artwork of course.”

  “You ever think of doing a solo show of your older paintings?” He sets the painting down and picks up another one.

  “Not really. I’ve tried painting forests and animals again, but they never come out right. I still haven’t figured out what my new aesthetic is.”

  “You’ve definitely hit a stride with the mural.”

  I heft a few more boxes to the side as a reminder to sort through them tomorrow. Behind the stack, pushed into a corner, is a legal box labelled MAYS in an unfamiliar penmanship. I pick it up and start to set it with the others when I notice the police label on the other side.

  My heart stutters.

  “What’s wrong?” Cole comes to my side, his eyebrows drawing together.

  “This is a police box. It must be the stuff from the SUV.”

  He tenses. “Josie, leave it alone.”

  I tighten my grip on the box and look at him. His expression is shuttered.

  “I can’t.”

  Cole steps away, tugging a hand through his hair. “You came here to do something good. And you’re succeeding. So how is digging into the past good?”

  “Because maybe sometimes it provides light.” I set the box on a table and take hold of the lid.

  Anxiety twists through me. I pull the lid off the box. My first glance at the contents steals my breath—my mother’s purse, a Garfield book that had belonged to Teddy, my father’s wallet, a handful of Lego mini-figures, the SUV manual, several pens, the garage door opener.

  And there, at the bottom, the wooden letter B attached to my father’s keys. The edges are splintered, the paint dirty and peeling, but it’s still intact. I close my fingers around it. Shock flares through me.

  “Hold on, they’re in my coat pocket.” My father pulled his raincoat from the restaurant’s front closet and dug into one of the pockets. He took out the keychain and handed it to me. “Thanks.”

  “Sure. Cole and I are staying over at your house tonight, if that’s okay. Easier to get you to the airport in the morning.”

  “I’ll drive.” Cole stopped beside me and extended his hand for the keys.

  My brain rebels, shutting off as if I’ve yanked out an electrical plug. A sick feeling rises to my throat. I take the keychain out of the box and lift my gaze to Cole.

  He’s watching me, his features set and his eyes starting to burn with…what? Fear? Anger?

  “I…” My mouth goes dry. “Did I give you the keys?”

  He crosses his arms, the lines of his body tensing. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

  “Cole.”

  “You always let me drive.”

  “Cole.” Panic brews in my gut, flickering into my veins like the start of a firestorm. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t remember. You’re the only person still alive who was there. I had a…I think the hallucinations I’ve been having are somehow related to my memory, that I’m…”

  His expression darkens. “What?”

  “I think I’m remembering stuff, but I can’t be sure. I thought going back to the accident site might trigger something.”

  “Did it?”

  “No.” I grip the keychain tighter, my panic intensifying. “But when I was about to cross the bridge, I had a weird sense of déjà vu, like I’d been there before. Which of course I have, but I…I felt like it was related to that night.”

  Cole studies me for a long time, his guard so thick I can’t read anything in his expression—no sorrow, no regret, no anger. It’s like he’s locked himself behind a door to keep me out.

  Oh, no. I can’t let him do this again. I can’t lose him again.

  “I need to know.” Pressing my hands to my face, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I need to know what I’m missing or I swear I’ll go insane. This…this empty space in my memory isn’t a harmless void where everything just disappears. It’s a fucking well, the deepest, darkest well you can imagine.

  “And for the past ten years, horrible, creepy things have grown out of this well. Phobias, nightmares, anxiety, resentment. I need it to stop. And the only way I know of to make it stop is to fill the well with the truth. But nothing has worked—therapy, medication, fucking acupuncture. I don’t know what else to do, and you are the only person who can help me. You’re the only one who was there. The only one who has the goddamned key.”

  I lower my trembling hands and force my gaze back to him. My heart slams against my ribs.

  He’s so tense he looks as if he’s about to crack, his mouth compressed and his eyes glittering. The color is gone from his face, leaving his eyes a bright, shocking blue.

  “God, Josie.” His voice is raspy, shaking. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I grab the back of a chair. My legs weaken. “Cole?”

  The words break from his throat like shattering glass.

  “You never gave me the keys.”

  Chapter 7

  Josie

  * * *

  The world spins, tipping me into the black, gaping well that has been hovering at my feet for years. Darkness engulfs me.

  “No, it’s okay.” I stood on tiptoe to kiss Cole’s cheek, inhaling the citrus scent of him. “I’ll drive.”

  I’ll drive. I drove.

  I. Was. Driving.

  Nausea chokes my throat, filling my mouth with bile.

  “Josie…” His features tight with despair, Cole starts toward me.

  I surge past him to the stairs, running to the open door of the bathroom. My knees crack against the tile floor. I retch into the toilet, my insides churning and my mind crushing beneath the weight of the truth.

  “Josie, please…” He closes his hands around my shoulders, lifting me upright.

  “Oh, my God.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, struggling for the strength to stand. I can’t look at him, can’t bear to see whatever is burning in his eyes—anguish, regret, pain. “It was my
fault. I killed them.”

  “No.” Desperation wrenches his voice. “No, Josie, please…”

  “And you…” I heave a breath into my aching lungs. “You…you lied to me. You lied to everyone.”

  “I...I had to.” He tightens his grip on me, and suddenly his close proximity is too much, too overwhelming, too intense. “I couldn’t stand what knowing the truth would do to you.”

  She can’t remember.

  I grab a tissue and shove him away, stumbling to the entryway. My mind is reeling. Shards of memory tumble and crash like a kaleidoscope, discordant and chaotic.

  Rain hitting the windshield. “Wild Horses.” My father’s voice….something about the Red Sox… A sudden skid, the steering wheel spinning out of my grip, pure terror. Cole’s shout, his hand closing over the wheel.

  She can’t remember.

  He hadn’t meant I was incapable of remembering because he hadn’t known I’d lost my memory. Instead his words to Nathan had been a plea, a prayer that I’d forgotten. She can’t remember. Please don’t let her remember.

  Somewhere in the depths of my unconsciousness, had I heard him? Had my brain responded and slammed a steel door down on the previous hour, locking all the horror away? Did Cole’s plea instigate the black hole in my memory?

  Bile floods my throat again. I swallow it back down, fumbling to close my shaking fingers around my backpack. My insides burn.

  “Josie, don’t go.” He grabs my wrist.

  “Let go of me.” I spin to face him and almost reel backward at the sight of him—face drained of color, the blazing blue of his eyes, the agony twisting his features. “This is why you left, isn’t it? It wasn’t because you thought I wouldn’t be able to stand being near you again. You left me because you were scared I’d find out the truth.”

  “It was both, Josie.” He strokes his thumb across the pulse pounding violently under my skin, like he’s trying to soothe a terrified animal. “I left because I never wanted you to find out. I never wanted this to happen. And if you were anywhere near me, you’d remember what I did.”

  “But you didn’t do it!” Tears spill over. “Despite what you tried to make me believe, I still wanted you. I needed you to hold me and promise me there was still light somewhere on the surface, that one day I might be able to claw my way back to it. I needed to know you were the one person in the world who wouldn’t leave. And then you fucking did.”

  “I know.” He pulls me closer, lowering his head and forcing me to look into his anguished eyes, to see the devastation etching his face. “I’m sorry. I thought it had to be the right thing, the only way to protect you. I…Christ, Josie, everything was such a fucking mess…you were barely responsive, I thought the car would go under before the police got there, and with your parents and brother trapped inside…Then they took you away, and there were the fucking body bags…I lost my mind. I was terrified of what would happen to you, if you’d even survive. The only thing I could do was take the blame and hope…pray…everyone would believe it.”

  “Including me.” I twist my arm, yanking myself from his grip. Sudden anger burns through my heart. “You wanted me to live with a fucking black hole in my brain. A thing that ate up everything good and spewed it back out like vomit.”

  “No!” He holds up his hands, a horrified darkness rising to his eyes. “I had no idea that’s what it would be like for you. I didn’t know the first damned thing about memory loss…I just knew that the truth would destroy you. And the only way I could stop that from happening was to keep it from you.”

  “It didn’t work.” I stalk toward the door. “The lie destroyed me.”

  And the truth is crushing me to pieces.

  “Josie!”

  I run. His shout follows me out the door and down the front walkway. Outside, the sunlight temporarily shocks me.

  Why is there sun? Shouldn’t the world be covered in darkness now?

  My heart jackhammers. I have to get away from him.

  “Josie, stop!”

  Cole’s heavy footsteps echo on the porch steps. He’s stronger and faster, but I’m fueled by rage and fear. Shoving open the front gate, I dart heedlessly into the street, my breath shallow. A car horn blares.

  “Josie, please!”

  I rush toward the pathway cutting through the woods, my singular thought one of escape. I’m vaguely aware of a jogger stopping, but tears blind me and my breath scrapes my throat, and my lungs are on fire, and my heart is broken…shattered…crushed beyond all hope of repair.

  A police car turns the corner, heading in the direction of our house. Just before I reach the woods, Cole’s arms close around me from behind. He hauls me back against his heaving chest.

  “Josie, I’m begging you.” His voice is jagged like a piece of rusted metal. “Please, please stop.”

  For an instant, so quick I barely recognize it, my instinct for him takes over. I collapse against his chest, let the steel strength of his arms encircle me, welcome everything I have always loved about his solid presence.

  He presses his face against my hair. Shudders wrack his body, and his devastation burns through every muscle.

  “I’m so fucking sorry.” His heart thumps heavily against my back. “If I’d known, I never would have done it. Never. But I didn’t know. I only knew that my heart was on fire, and that I’d never stop seeing your parents trapped in the backseat or the EMTs pulling them out of the car, or the fucking body bags…and then when I found out you didn’t remember, it seemed like goddamned fate that I’d done the right thing. I couldn’t stand the thought of you thinking you were to blame.”

  “I was to blame!” The cry rips from my throat, high and shrill. “I drove off the road. I killed them. It was my fault.”

  “No. Please. No…” He tightens his arms around me. “I lied so you wouldn’t tell yourself that. Because I loved you so much. I love you even more now. I’ve never stopped loving you, Josie, not for one second. All I wanted to do was protect you.”

  The confession shatters against the ice collecting around my heart. “Let go of me.”

  “Josie?”

  Nathan’s voice breaks through the screaming in my head. Cole grips me even harder, his breath rasping against my ear.

  I scrub a hand across my eyes and force myself to focus on Nathan. He’s getting out of his parked car, one hand on his gun and the other in the air. He shifts his gaze guardedly from me to Cole and back again.

  “You need some help?” he asks.

  A hysterical laugh bubbles into my throat. What a question.

  “No.” I pull myself away from Cole. Dread tenses my spine, weights my shoulders.

  Nathan narrows his eyes, shifting his hand on his gun. A couple of dog-walkers on the other side of the street stop to watch the commotion, and several people have come out onto their front porches.

  Cole backs up a step, his hands flexing. I feel him watching me, sense the plea radiating from him, but I can’t speak past the tightness in my throat.

  “Josie, are you all right?” Nathan, his face drawn and pale with concern, approaches. “You want me to call Vanessa?”

  I shake my head. Pain boils into my chest. More tears blind me.

  “I have to go.” I back away, putting my hands up. “Please don’t call anyone. Stay away, both of you.”

  I turn and run.

  * * *

  I stumble up the hill to the cottage. Dark is starting to engulf the cove. Sweat trickles down my back. I turn on all the lights, but not even the blazing high-wattage bulbs provide any comfort.

  Grasping a semblance of logical thought, I realize Nathan will still contact Vanessa about what he just witnessed. I hammer out a text to my sister that I’ll talk to her tomorrow in the hopes that she won’t come looking for me.

  Pressing my hands to my eyes, I sink onto the bed. Exhaustion and grief press down on me. Now more than ever, I’m desperate to sleep, to let the sweet oblivion stop the clawing pain.

  I’m sorry, Mo
m.

  I’m sorry, Dad.

  I’m sorry, Teddy.

  Clutching a pillow, I curl onto the bed in a tight ball. How do I not remember any of it? The lie I’ve been living had made perfect sense. Mom and Dad had been drinking champagne at their anniversary party. That’s why Cole was driving Dad’s SUV.

  I’d never questioned it. Cole was right. I always let him drive, even if we were just going to grab takeout. So why had I insisted on driving that night? Why hadn’t I given him the keys when he’d asked for them?

  Wait a minute. He’d been late to the party because he’d worked overtime and then he’d run into Professor Jamison, who’d offered him the research cruise position. Not only had he also worked the previous day, he’d been up since before dawn and hauled lobster traps for ten hours. Then he’d heard about the cruise and came to the party…I’d have known he was exhausted.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll drive.”

  Everything had been fine, though, right? I’d been tired, but I hadn’t been drinking. I wasn’t distracted. I never used my cell phone when I was driving. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I’d have trouble navigating in the storm.

  We’d be at Mom and Dad’s in twenty minutes. Then in the morning, we’d take them to the airport—likely with Cole driving—and send them off on their grand tour of Europe before we treated both Teddy and ourselves to breakfast at Waffle Castle. Teddy had been anticipating the Butter Pecan Special.

  Why in the love of God didn’t it turn out the way we’d planned?

  Because you fucked up. You did something wrong.

  No, I didn’t! I was a good driver. I wouldn’t have been speeding. I wouldn’t have done anything stupid.

  But what if I did?

  Tears flood my eyes and spill down my cheeks. The pain will break me in half. I press my face into the pillow and pray for sleep. Just an hour or two. Anything to ease the questions stabbing my brain.

  I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please let me know you don’t blame me, that you don’t think it was my fault. Mom, Dad, Teddy…please.