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“You didn’t have to, because that’s what friends do, but it’s getting old and I’m growing up.”
“Claire, wait,” Shannon called after me. “Don’t go. Let’s just sit down and talk this out.”
“No, you can talk to her. I need to not be near her right now, Shan,” I called over my shoulder as I made a beeline for the exit. Because if I didn’t get away from our friend, I would explode. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
25
I’m Always Okay
GIBSIE
What would be going too far is telling him that Peter Biggs saved the wrong child from the water that day.
The wrong child drowned.
The wrong child was saved.
Body rigid, I sat in the driver’s seat of my car, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes staring into the past as I fought against the wave of memories threatening to drown me.
Lizzie hit the nail on the head with everything she said—and everything she didn’t say. The bare bones of it came down to the fact that Bethany died that day when it should have been me.
Lizzie didn’t say anything I didn’t already know.
Wrong.
Wrong.
I was all fucking wrong!
My sister had fallen overboard because of me.
Because I’d been teasing her with a stupid toy laser that I’d snagged that morning from a lucky dip bag.
I could have just let her play with the damn laser. It wasn’t even a good one. Just a cheapie I could have replaced in the pound shop for 50p. I’d made enough money that day. Over two hundred pounds in the cards I’d opened. Cards that had meant so much to me that morning only to mean nothing at all that night. I could have given Beth a turn. I could have bought her a lucky dip bag of her own. But I didn’t.
No, because I decided to show off with Hugh instead.
I didn’t have to shine the red laser at the dolphin chasing the boat, and I did.
I did that.
Me.
When she fell overboard chasing the stupid red light, protective brotherly instincts caused me to jump straight in after her. I didn’t think about what I was doing, or the fact that I couldn’t swim. I didn’t realize the danger I was putting my entire family in. I just saw my sister go overboard and reacted on instinct.
If I had used my brain and stayed in the boat, Dad would have been able to pull Bethany to safety without the distraction or exhaustion of trying to save me, too. Instead, I made the biggest mistake of my life and, in turn, caused the death of not only my baby sister, but my father, too.
It was, by far, the worst day of my life because I knew that I was responsible. I was responsible for my sister falling overboard. I was responsible for my father exhausting himself in the water trying to keep two children afloat. I was the one who slipped out of his arms, causing him to let go of Bethany.
Me.
I missed my dad to the point where it was hard to breathe sometimes, and I often felt like I was still in the water with him. At night, I thought a lot about how his hand felt the last time it had touched mine. His grip. His touch. The cold. The slippery feeling as he let go and I was forced to the surface. That was it. He went under and I went up. It wasn’t fair. He was a better person than I could ever be.
As for Bethany? I tried not to think about her at all. The pain was too severe. When I let her enter my mind, when I unleash the memories of my beautiful toddler sister to play on loop in my head like some black-and-white movie from the fifties, the guilt trip that followed left me paralyzed in bed for days.
If I had one wish in life, it would be to go back in time. To have the ability to change the course of that day. To go back and refuse point-blank to get on that fucking boat. To throw away that goddamn lucky-dip laser.
To change the past so that I could fix the present and make a future worth remembering.
