The Truth of Letting Go Read online

  Ezra pulls over, parking at the back of a shopping center parking lot. “We have to wait this out,” he says, leaning his arms over the steering wheel as he watches the rain come down. “It’s hard enough driving this thing in good weather.”

  “No worries,” Cece says from the kitchen. She’s traded out her notebook for her laptop. “That coffee shop on the corner has incredible Wi-Fi reach. I’m going to look up Thomas’s alias and try to find him.”

  Ezra and I exchange a look.

  “We need to talk about what just happened,” I say. Since Ezra’s confession a little while ago, I’ve felt like I’m drifting through a reality that doesn’t make sense anymore. Life is tumbling along and I’m floating outside of it, at risk of being swept away. How can I hold onto what I know to be true, that Thomas is dead, when there are real life clues telling me he might still be alive? This goes way beyond the realm of taking care of Cece.

  “I agree,” Cece says, not looking up from her computer. “Lilah owes me an apology.”

  “I owe you what?” In the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t raise my voice. I should stay calm. But the back of my mind has gone on a break right now. “If anything, you owe me some gratitude for even taking you here. I risked everything leaving the house for you and your stupid mission.”

  Ezra says my name but I ignore him. Cece just makes this little one shouldered shrug, barely looking at me from over her computer screen. “We know Thomas is alive, so this mission wasn’t stupid at all.”

  My teeth grind together until stars sprinkle across my vision. My mom will kill me dead if she finds out what I’ve done. This has to stop. It has to end now, or my future won’t be college and a career and a family, but an epic grounding that lasts until I’m shuttled into a retirement home. “We don’t know that, Cece. All you have are a handful of coincidences. We’re going home. You can research all you want from the safety of our house.”

  The rain pours all around us, panging off the metal walls and making the entire space seem under attack. Cece jumps to her feet. “We’re not going home until we have my brother!”

  “Well, too bad because you’re not in charge here.” I’m sounding exactly like my mother but maybe that’s what we need. Clearly, being nice hasn’t helped our situation at all. “I’m in charge of keeping you safe until my parents return and I’m making us go home.”

  Cece’s whole body seems to vibrate, stemming from the fists clutched at her side. I’ve never seen her like this, but I’m not about to back down now. I’m still the responsible one here. Cece’s lips curl into a grimace. “Maybe I’ll call Aunt Carol right now and tell her where we are.”

  Fear rockets through my body. Deflect. “That would hurt both of us.”

  She laughs. “You think I care about Aunt Carol’s repercussions when my brother is alive?”

  I throw my hands in the air. “Of course not! Why would you care about anything but yourself? I actually have friends and a life back at home. I’m not some shut in who spends all her time in a fantasy world obsessing over dead people.” The floor creaks as Ezra approaches behind me. I feel his hand, strong and firm when it grips my arm, but I’m too wound up to let him stop me. “I risked everything just to make you happy. But when it’s time to return to the real world, to real life, you want to ruin mine by calling my mother? Seems like you owe me an apology.”

  Cece slams her laptop shut. “You think I want to be a so-called weirdo with no life? Going through day by day having someone watch my every move?” Her voice cracks. “Yeah, I’m bipolar and dependent on medication, but I’m also the recipient of a college scholarship for business school, and I have a four point oh grade average. I am more than just one part of my personality. I have hobbies, and emotions, and dreams.”

  She takes her notebook and slides it under her shirt and then she shoves into me with her shoulder, and heads straight for the door.

  “Cece,” Ezra says. I don’t say anything because the lump in my throat is suddenly in the way. I had no idea her grades were that good. I didn’t know about the scholarship. It’s never once crossed my mind that Cece might have dreams, too.

  “I’m getting coffee,” she snaps. “Don’t follow me.”

  And then she’s gone, walking through the rain toward the coffee shop with the good Wi-Fi. I watch her, drenched to the bone, until she disappears through the door.

  My chest falls. “That was bad,” I say, looking at Ezra, whose shocked expression hasn’t faded since we were at the car dealership.

  “Yeah,” he says, shoving his hands in his back pockets. “That was bad.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I can’t take my eyes off the coffee shop. I study each person coming and going, making sure one of them isn’t my cousin in some disguise trying to get out of here. The rain is heavier now, seemingly pouring in waves from the sky instead of mere rain drops.

  Ezra’s knees face mine as we sit in the front seats of the Winnebago. I’m leaning on my elbow, watching the coffee shop through his driver’s side window. The rain is hitting us from the passenger side, so this is the only clear view. It’s also a view of Ezra’s ridiculously handsome profile, but I’m trying not to notice that.

  His shoe slides across the floorboard and taps the toe of my Converse. “What happened between you two?”

  “What do you mean?” I say, talking louder than usual because the storm raises the sound level by a thousand decibels in here.

  “You and Cece used to be best friends,” he says, looking up at me from under a stray clump of his hair. “Then I don’t see you for a few years and it’s like you’re strangers. Or worse—you act like her mother now.”

  I shrug, still watching the coffee shop. “Cece went completely crazy after Thomas died. It was like she was drunk when she hadn’t been drinking at all. She would run away and get brought home by the police because she’d done something stupid like take off her pants and dive into the mall fountain, thinking it was funny.”

  “Wow,” he says.

  “Yeah, then it got worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I press my lips together. The past is kind of personal, but I do trust Ezra. He’d have no reason to betray us and seeing as how he’s been projecting this sort of big brother love on Cece since we started this thing, I decide to tell him everything.

  “She’d slip into a depression and wouldn’t leave her room for days. She attempted suicide—” I swallow, the memory of finding Cece that day is too much to bear. Especially right now. “She went to a mental illness facility for a few weeks and when we came home, nothing was the same.”

  Ezra looks down at his lap while he processes. “We should have stayed in touch. I could have used your friendship after my mom died. Sometimes I thought about reaching out, but we weren’t exactly best friends back then.”

  I can’t help but smile, even if the very act hurts my insides. “We would have been there if we’d known. I’m sorry we didn’t. Cece could have used you, too. Mom just sent us to therapy over and over until someone suggested that Cece might have real depression, not just the depression you get over losing your whole family, but the medically diagnosed kind.”

  I draw a circle in the dust on the dash. It’s been so long since I’ve let myself remember those days, the dark ages in our family’s history. I’ve shoved aside the ache that came with the unbelievable loss, and focused on the aftermath of therapy and how much I hated it. Instead of allowing my heart to feel ripped in half, I closed it up with a straight spine, hands folded in my lap, and perfect answers for our therapist. I said everything I need to say to sound “normal” so that my parents wouldn’t have two crazy children to worry about. And it worked.

  Things were bad when Cece’s parents died, but they got so much worse after Thomas went missing. As I recall the memories, a raw pain expands in my chest. I feel Ezra’s gaze on me, his curiosity pouring all around us. He was Thomas’s best friend and a huge part of our childhood. I guess he deserves to know every
thing, no matter how dark.

  “She went to a doctor and was diagnosed as bipolar. She’s always been a little unique I guess, but she got really weird after that. The meds they put her on made her a zombie. I kept living my normal life and she was now this weird quiet person. We grew apart.”

  I’ve been staring at Ezra this whole time, but I hadn’t realized it until I blink and see his forehead crinkle in the middle while he watches me. I flinch and avert my gaze.

  “Mom had her hopping to different doctors and different meds for a few years until they found something that made her highs a little lower and her lows a little higher. She was still up and down, like on one Christmas, she went all manic and burned every present in the fire pit in the back yard, ranting that Thomas couldn’t be here so no one deserved happiness.”

  Ezra’s eyes get big, but he doesn’t say anything, just taps my foot with his again. I stare at our matching Converse shoes, his black and worn, mine still crisp and new. “She didn’t leave her room for like three weeks after that Christmas. We were fourteen. I just kind of let her do her own thing and I did mine. We hardly talked at all until last weekend when my parents left and she wanted to go see her old house.”

  “Everything changed after Thomas died,” Ezra says. He tilts his head. “Or didn’t die. Whatever.”

  I am so not ready to talk about the insane possibility that Thomas might actually be alive, living under some fake name cobbled together from a video game. “What changed with you over the years?” I say lightly, kicking his shoe. “Besides all those muscles?”

  He grins, a bashful look that suits him well. “Everything, I guess. Everything changed.”

  “You want to elaborate?” I ask, poking his shoe with the toe of mine. “Since apparently this is share our feelings time.”

  He smiles back at me, but his eyes are shadowed with something dark. He watches the rain crash against the windshield. “I took the job at the park on my sixteenth birthday. I started saving for a car, college, you know whatever. After Mom died, Dad started drinking. He spends all his money the second he gets it. Last year when I went to enroll at the community college, I realized my damn bank account was overdrawn. Dad went on a bender, found my debit card in my sock drawer and drained the account. He apologized a lot, but that doesn’t fix things. Up until that point, I’d only put my money into this RV and that savings account.”

  He lowers his chin to his chest, then brushes the hair out of his eyes. “So now here I am, nineteen, and a year behind everyone else I graduated with.” He taps the steering wheel. “This RV is going to be mine by August. I’m still working on my dad to sign the title to me, but he’ll come around. He owes it to me.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I say. The coffee shop door opens and a man with a red umbrella walks out. I shift my gaze back to Ezra. “A year behind isn’t that big of a deal. You’ll get where you want to be.”

  He nods once. “I might not even go. I like landscaping. Rolando and I are talking about starting our own business.”

  “Awesome.” The rain lets up a little, and two girls in short shorts make a mad dash into the building. Still no sign of Cece and it’s been half an hour.

  Ezra leans back in his driver’s seat, propping his feet up on the dash. “Now tell me something sad about you so I don’t feel so stupid.”

  I consider the question. “Next year I’ll be in college to be a teacher, and I’d rather eat a bag of rusty nails than be a teacher.”

  “Then why study it?”

  I shrug. “Because it’s my life path. It’s been marked out for me since freshman year when my stupid career aptitude test came back inconclusive and Mom decided I’d be wonderful at following in her footsteps.”

  “So your mom wants the best for you,” Ezra says with a lazy grin. “That’s not even close to being sad enough. Try again.”

  Losing half your family as a teenager is enough sadness for a lifetime, but I know he’s trying to lighten the mood so I bite back a sarcastic comment. I decide to play along. “There’s not much to say. My life is—organized. Mom keeps us in therapy to nip any problems the second they form. I have some nice friends and I make good grades. No boyfriend—but—” I look up and my cheeks flush. “I’m so not talking about that with you.”

  He grins and drops his gaze. “Anyhow,” I say, wishing I hadn’t brought up that subject. “My life isn’t sad. It’s just…routine.”

  “You should find a way to break out of all that routine every now and then.”

  I throw my arms up, gesturing around us. “What does it look like I’m doing right now?”

  “Okay, Monroe. I’ll give you that. You’ve managed to break one rule in your life. Kudos.”

  I roll my eyes. “When do you think we should go get Cece?”

  He glances back at the coffee shop. “Give her a little while. She’s probably still nursing that coffee.”

  I lean back in my chair, watching the rain drops splash on the windshield and then make their jagged journey down to the hood. The storm is finally letting up, but the dark clouds are all around us for as far as I can see.

  “Hey, Lilah?” Ezra says, his voice low. “I don’t know if we’ll find Thomas on this trip, but we need to find a way to get you and Cece back together. You’re family. You need each other.”

  I feel like telling him that I’ve already figured that part out for myself. Instead, my eyes widen as the fear I’d been holding tucked away in the deepest part of my heart unfolds. “Ezra,” I say, my voice breaking. “There’s one sad thing I haven’t told anyone.”

  He leans forward, his brows pulled together. “What is it?”

  I cover my face with my hands and take a deep breath. “I don’t want Thomas to be alive.”

  Ezra’s dark eyes harden and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why?”

  I chew on my thumbnail. “If he’s alive, that means I’m the only one who gave up on him. You and Cece never did. What kind of person does that make me?”

  “It makes you practical, I guess.” His lips press together and I get the feeling he’s judging me. “You’ve always been the reasonable one who refuses to dream a little, who would never in a million years go chasing an impossibility.”

  “You say that like being reasonable is a bad thing.”

  “In this case, it is.” Ezra leans back in his seat. The ice in his voice feels like a punch in the face.

  “Why are you being a jerk?” I ask, recoiling away from him.

  “You should ask yourself that question,” Ezra says. He points toward the coffee shop. “That girl would do anything for you and yet you treat her like a child. She used to play all the games you wanted to play, watch all the movies you wanted to watch—” He chuckles sarcastically and then runs a hand down his face. “Cece is the most loyal person on the planet and you’ve just tossed her to the side like you’re better than she is now.” He meets my gaze, that judgmental look in his eyes now replaced with pity. “You say you feel bad about not believing her? Maybe you should feel bad.”

  “Ezra…”

  He shakes his head, then stands up, towering over me in the front of the RV. “Lilah, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick here. But your cousin is one of the nicest people on the planet. Stop acting like it’s such a chore to help her out this one time. You have no idea what I’d do to get my best friend back.” He points outside. “Yours is right there, still breathing. Stop pushing her away.”

  It’s Ezra who convinces Cece to come back onto the RV after the rain has let up. It’s Ezra that gets a smile from her after she settles into her place at the kitchen table, looking a little ragged from the rain but altogether okay. I’m sitting directly across from her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me right away. Her clothes are mostly dried but her hair is still in a wet braid hanging over her shoulder. She smells faintly like coffee.

  Ezra leans his back against the mini fridge on the opposite side of the walkway. His eyes meet mine and it’s obvious
we both don’t know what to do.

  It really sucks because I was hoping he’d sweet talk Cece into letting us go home.

  Cece traces the fake woodgrain pattern on the counter. “They have really good coffee in there,” she says to no one. “The scones could be a better flavor, though.” She looks up at me. “I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?”

  “There’s another bag of Combos in the pantry,” I say. “And half a bag leftover from the ones we ate earlier.”

  She blanches. “I mean real food. I need a balanced meal if I’m going to sit through four more hours of driving.” She taps the countertop. “Any good restaurants around here? I’m craving chicken fried steak.”

  “So you’re on board with going home?” I say the words carefully. My toes curl into my socks as I brace for whatever will come next.

  “You’re the bosslady,” she says with a snort. “The one who likes to keep reminding us that she’s in charge of this whole vehicle. Isn’t that where you’re taking us next?”

  Yes, I think. But it’s not as easy as saying that. I need to distract her and get her on board with going home. And then I need to spend the remaining four days we have convincing Cece to never ever tell my parents what we did. A terrifying sense in my gut tells me it might be easier to find Thomas alive than to convince her to keep her mouth shut for eternity.

  “Do you mind?” Ezra says, nodding to the space next to me. I slide closer to the wall and he slips into the bench, bringing his soapy scent with him. “I’m hungry too, so let’s make this fast,” he says, lacing his fingers together on top of the table. “So far we have clues that mean Thomas might not have died and that he’s actually still alive.”

  Cece watches him with a seriousness she used to get when we were kids and she’d become obsessed with a new craft or a toy. Ezra glances at me, and I nod for him to continue. “We have a fake name used to purchase his dream car, and that same car was at your old house. Plus, the fake name sounds like something he’d pick. That’s a hell of a lot of reason to be suspicious. So I say we get dinner, then go back home, and if you two will agree to it, I’ll break the news to your parents. I’ll pretend that I set out on this journey myself and I found the clues. Once they hear about it, they’ll believe you and help us look for him and Lilah won’t have to give herself an aneurism from worrying so hard.”