The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [57]
“Thanks, Connie,” he says, and lights a second cigarette. He seems to be in no hurry. I wonder if his parents are waiting, if he told them he needed a few minutes.
“You have to do something for me,” he says.
I look up at him, thinking, Anything. I’ll do anything you need me to. But I just say, “What?”
He inhales deeply. “I was thinking about you almost as soon as Kate died, thinking about how she’d died and the way it ended, thinking about how I was there and then the doctor explained every detail of what it was that killed her, why it had happened at that moment.” He pauses, and then he says, “It meant something to me, hearing all that.”
I picture Jeremy standing in a hospital hallway, a doctor talking to him, trying to make Kate’s death make sense.
“Connelly, you have to know. You’re sixteen years old and something happened when you were a baby that you couldn’t have understood, but you’re old enough now. Your mother botched it up, and now you have to demand that she do it better.”
“I have to demand that she do it better?”
“Yes.” He nods, and I can tell that he’s given this some thought, that he came up with the phrase “demand that she do it better” some time before and has been waiting to say it to me.
“You have to tell her that she was wrong to keep you in the dark this long and you can forgive her now, but she has to tell you the truth.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jeremy looks down at me, not impatiently, but maybe he’s wondering why it’s taking me so long to figure out what he means. “Ask your mother. Just ask her. All this figuring it out, trying to find out—it’s bullshit. It’s beside the point. You should find out from your mother, not because I got some doctor to break his confidence. It’s your business, Connelly; it’s your history, and it’s time for your mother to tell you. So ask her.”
“Ask her what?” I say, truly confused.
“Connelly, are you listening to me?” Jeremy tosses away his cigarette, puts his hands on my shoulders, and looks right at me, and hard. “You have to go home right now and ask your mother how your father died. I can’t imagine how lost I would feel if all I knew was that Kate had died and I didn’t know what it was that killed her. Can you imagine? Just being told that my sister died without any kind of explanation?” Jeremy’s voice catches for a second. He takes a breath and continues, “Cancer, car accident, whatever it was, it’s making you who you are, so you need to know what it is. It matters, Connelly. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. It gives sense to it.”
“I can’t ask her,” I say, and twist out of his hands. The lump that’s been in my throat since Kate died begins to rise.
“Why?”
I shake my head. “I can’t. You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I can’t, I can’t.” I heave the words with my breath. The lump in my throat hurts so much, I can’t catch my breath. I begin to cry, and I really didn’t think I could cry any more today.
Jeremy takes my hand. “Explain it to me.”
I don’t know what to say. It seems wrong that he should be comforting me. But I understand: even though my father died years ago, I am only beginning to mourn him now, just like Jeremy is only beginning to mourn Kate. And Jeremy knows that, even if I didn’t.
“Explain it to me,” he repeats.
“It would hurt her. You don’t know. I can’t do that to her.”
“Connelly, you have to.”
“You don’t know.” My face is soaking wet again. “I asked her once, just once, and nothing has ever been the same. I’ve never been able to just—I don’t know—get into her bed and watch TV. She couldn’t even hug me after Kate died.”
“Maybe you need to just get this out of the way, then, Connelly. Maybe then you can even have your mother back.”
“It’s been too long. I can’t. Questions—questions like that are too much. They ruin everything.”
“No they don’t. It’s the exact opposite.”
I shake my head. I can’t. He can’t make me.
“You can do it, Connelly,” he says, like he knows what I’m thinking. “You can and you have to.”
I don’t say anything. He sounds so positive that he