Bear’s tears came faster. “And you. She was taking you.”
Amir reached for my hand. If Bear noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I told her not to go. But she left anyway. She walked out onto the back porch and down the stairs and she was crying and then you were crying. I said, ‘Mama, let me hold Merrow,’ and she did because I was good at getting you to stop crying. I always made you laugh.”
I stared at him. I had no memory of Bear ever making me laugh. I had only the memories of his hatred for me. But I had no memory of Bear as a ten-year-old boy. I could not picture myself in his arms. I could not imagine his face smiling into mine. I could not imagine him loving me. The person he was describing was not the Bear that I knew.
“She handed you to me. She said she would be back soon. I looked down at you and tried to get you to laugh, but that day you just kept crying and crying. When I looked up, she was far away, walking toward the cliff, and then she was gone.”
“Oh, Bear. You saw her fall?”
“She didn’t fall. She just kept walking until there was nowhere left to walk.”
I had never really considered exactly what our mother’s death had done to my brother. I had not had time to know her, but Bear had had ten years with her. My father had told me that my mother was magnetic, that once you met her you could not imagine life without her, that her smile warmed its lucky recipient from hair to heel. Bear had known our mother, really known her, and he had watched her walk away. He had known, somewhere deep inside himself, where she was going, and he had saved me. But he had not been able to save her. He’d lived with that guilt his whole life. As long as I’d known him, he had never been anything but unhappy. He had never had a single friend. He had no one, and I had my love for the sea and the earth and my animals. And I had Amir.
If one of the kids at Learning Together had told me this story, I would have had all the sympathy in the world for what he had been through. I would have forgiven him for any crime.
“Thank you,” I told Bear. “Thank you for saving your baby sister. You were a good brother.”
He sucked in a big breath that seemed to rattle his entire body. And then he stumbled closer to the edge of the cliff. He steadied himself and moved away from the edge, eyeing me.
“I don’t want you to worry about where you’re going to live,” I said. “You can have my third of Horseshoe Cliff. This land is yours every bit as much as it is mine and Amir’s.”
Bear released a laugh that dissolved into a hacking coughthat sounded unnervingly like my father’s. “You think I want this piece of shit land? I don’t! Never have. This land never brought our family anything but trouble. Good riddance!” He threw his hands toward the sky and when he did his leg slid out from under him, pushing into a piece of earth that was suddenly not there. A strangled cry hung in the sky—it might have belonged to any of us—and then Bear was gone.
I sprang to the edge of the cliff. Amir yelled my name. There was Bear: his hands clutching the side of the cliff, his feet scrambling for a hold. I dropped to my stomach and wrapped my hands around his forearms. “I have you,” I said, though my heart thundered in my ears. My brother’s eyes were round with fear. Earth crumbled out from under him and tumbled down forty feet to the beach below. Amir was beside me then, reaching his long, strong arms toward Bear. At the sight of him, Bear’s face twisted, curdling like wasted milk.
“Let me go,” he said in a low growl. “Don’t touch me.”
Amir immediately released him. Bear shuddered a few inches down the side of the cliff, his arms sliding through my hands. I grabbed his wrists. A line of red bloomed on his chin where his face scraped the cliff.
I yelled for Amir to help, but Amir did not move. “Look at me,” I begged him.
Amir’s face churned with a terrible mix of anger and pain and love. I did not want to ask him to save his abuser, but I had no choice. Bear slipped another inch in my hands. I gasped as I slid forward with him, dragging my toes against the ground behind me. My nails sunk into Bear’s skin. His head saggeddown onto his chest, and I worried he was on the verge of passing out.
“Don’t do it for him,” I said to Amir. “Do it for me. Please.”
The anger on Amir’s face was replaced, almost immediately, with resolve. He reached down again and grabbed Bear’s forearms.
“No,” Bear groaned, rearing his head. “Let me go. Let me go!” He began to struggle against Amir’s grip, but I knew that Amir would not let him go now. Together, we yanked Bear up and over the edge of the cliff even with him thrashing and cursing us. We fell into a pile together, breathing heavily. Bear rolled away, muttering a stream of hateful curses. He managed to stand. Streaks of blood webbed his chin and arms. He stared out at the sea, his chest rising and falling violently. My heart pounded. He could jump off the edge of the cliff whenever he chose.
“Bear—”
He looked down at me as though he did not recognize me, but his eyes were the same green-brown color as mine, as our mother’s. “Leave me alone,” he said. He turned away from us, and from the sea, and began a meandering path back toward the road.
Amir put his arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him.
“Your poor mother,” he said.
“I don’t remember any of that. I was just a baby, but still... I wish I could remember the last time she held me.” In the distance, a gull floated on the water, bobbing up and down as the sea moved below him, carrying him steadily away from thespot where he’d landed. “She must have been in so much pain. I’m sure she walked off in search of peace. I can’t imagine being Bear... seeing that...”
“It’s hard to imagine that he was once a little boy.”
“If he hadn’t stepped in, my mother might have brought me over that cliff with her.” I looked at Amir. It was impossible to think that I might have lost the chance to meet him. My mother had given me life, but my brother had insisted that I keep it.
“So all this time I have owed Bear everything,” Amir said. With his eyes on mine, a molten sort of warmth spread through me. I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it, too. We had always been like this—our thoughts were not identical, but they were symbiotic, each one of us drawing inspiration, joy, and hope from the other. My passion felt deeper when I was with him, my appreciation for and connection to the natural world more profound.
“All these years,” I murmured wonderingly, “I really thought you were watching me. I could feel you there.”
Amir’s hands moved to the sides of my face. “You felt me near you because I never left you, Merrow,” he said. “I was always with you, just as you were with me.”
My eyes filled with tears. I knew that I could not marry Will. I loved Amir. I had always loved Amir. Sitting beside him on that cliff, with the sea tumbling below us and the wind in my hair, my entire being felt alive with my love for him. I did not want to go another day without knowing where he was, without feeling the heat of his skin against mine.
Amir moved to kiss me, and though my body wanted desperately to meet him in that kiss, I managed to shake my head. “I have to tell Will,” I said. “He deserves it... and we do, too. I was always made to feel so ashamed of how I felt about you when we were younger, and I don’t want shame to ever come near my feelings for you again. I want to be with you, wholly, without anything hanging over us.”
I knew that Will would be hurt whether or not I kissed Amir. I had betrayed him already in far more meaningful ways. But it would be hard enough to face Will without the memory of Amir’s kiss playing in my mind.
“I hate the thought of waiting another second,” Amir said. “But I will. I’ll wait as long as you need me to wait.”
