I had thought that I wasn’t going to say anything to him, that I had as little to say to him as he had to say to me the past few years, but I suddenly break.
“How could you let me have the procedure the first time? You fought for Caleb to have a choice, but you didn’t do the same for me. Why? Why did you just give up on me? Even if I agreed to it, you had to know that it wasn’t really what I wanted. You didn’t eventry.”
“I fought your mother on it for a long time.”
“Obviously, it wasn’t long enough. Obviously, you gaveup.”
“I…I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if she was right—if you did sink to a place so deep you couldn’t recover,” he says.So he agreed with her that I wasn’t strong enough, that I couldn’t deal with losing Rory.“I also somehow convinced myself that by walking away, by leaving, I was having no part in it. I wasn’t complicit in the lie.”
Tears are stinging my eyes now. “But you were! You lied to me for years and years.”I am a big sister. “Was” or “am”? What is the word for things you were and no longer are but always willbe?
“I know,” Dad says, and he seems on the verge of tears himself. “I realize that now. And not just for Rory, Addie, but for letting you believe you weren’t strong enough. By doing what we did…by me letting it happen, your mother and I were the first ones to tell you that. And eventually you told yourself that, too; you believed it. But it wasn’t—isn’t—true.”
He sighs now. “I’ve lived with depression all my life, Addie, and I don’t have the words to describe how difficult that life can be. It’s notjustsadness. For me, at least. Some days it’s a combination of the worst things I’ve ever felt in my life—fear, sadness, apathy, loneliness, sorrow, restlessness, hopelessness. And some days it’s absolutely nothing—empty, turned out, like my brain doesn’t even turn on. I don’t know if you will live or would have lived the same life, but I couldn’t take seeing you at eleven, seeing you now, and wondering if I’ve passed that on to you—my inability to deal with pain.”
I look at him and glance away again, still fighting tears.
“But you are dealing with it,” I say quietly after a moment. “You lost Rory and you lost Mom and you haven’t given up. Why didn’t you think you’d given me that part of you, too?”
He pauses, then nods. He’s leaning forward in his seat, driving slowly on the slippery road.
“While you were asleep, I was talking to Dr. Overton and he was telling me how experiences reshape the brain. Whether it’s depression or joy or love, you can see how they physically reform someone’s mind. By taking away the first tragedy you ever went through, we also erased the way your mind was learning to face it. Sure, maybe you were learning too slowly for us, maybe you needed more help and counseling or medication, but your brain was rewiring to deal with that pain, and we prevented it. So when this thing with Zach happened, your first instinct, even without knowing it, was to remove the source, not to cope with it.
“Addie, letting you believe that you weren’t strong enough was one thing—and it was wrong—but the biggest lie is that there are things that aren’t survivable. That there are things notworthsurviving. I never, ever want you to believe that. That you can’t keep going or that you can’t overcome the thing you’re facing.” He pauses. “I’m sorry that I had a hand in teaching you that.”
My eyes are completely cloudy now, but I shrug. “I had a choice a second time, remember? And I chose it again.”
“Well, today you had a choice a third time, and you chose to move forward. I hope you keep doing that.”
I blink at him.Move forward.Just a few hours ago, I thought that meant erasing every moment after the bus crash, but now I realize it means leaving the past behind.Choosingto leave it, to move on, instead of living like it didn’t exist.
There is a difference.
And it means there’s something I have to do.
AFTER
January
The front of Zach’s house is covered in snow and nearly indistinguishable from all the others on this street. Which is why I’m glad for Katy’s presence in my passenger seat, directingme.
It took some convincing for my mom to let me take thecar.
“This was the scene of the crime,” Katy whispers as we walk up the driveway. “Where we found them.”
“Oh,” I say, looking around, but there’s not a trace of recollection. The disappointment only lasts a millisecond before it is overshadowed by the task ahead, the reason we’re here.
I ring the doorbell, and after a few seconds, we hear footsteps getting closer and then the door is flung open. For the briefest moment, I think it’s Zach. Maybe even Memory Zach, because this boy is younger, shorter, and skinnier than the Zach I talked with yesterday. But then his eyes widen and the boy grins, a different smile from any in Zach’s collection.
“Well,hello, ladies.”
“You’re repulsive, Kevin,” Katy spits before I can work out who this is and why he is here.
“Is Zach around?” I ask, and Kevin’s eyes wander back to me. He knows me. Some version of me knows him.
“Zach! Addie’s at the door!” he yells, eyes still fixed on me. “Thought you hated him now?” He smirks, and I realize he doesn’t know about the splice, the erasure. To Zach’s little brother, we had a completely normal breakup.
When Zach comes out to meet us, his eyes are wide with surprise.
