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I frowned and touched his shoulder gently. “Frost. There’s no way you could’ve disappointed him. No matter how you turned out, he was still your father. Even if he didn’t understand you, he still loved you.”
“It’s not just that, though. Sometimes…sometimes I feel like he blamed me.”
“Blamed you? For what?”
Frost sighed deeply, mournfully, and reached into his pocket. I frowned and watched as he produced a thin silver chain, upon which hung a tiny locket in the shape of a silver heart. My eyebrows drew together in sorrow as I made the connection. This was what he wore around his neck, what he had been clutching at the funeral. Reverently, he lowered it into my palm. “Go on. Open it,” he muttered, his voice cracking.
I did. Inside the locket was a tiny photo that I had to squint to make out. It was of a younger Frost and a girl that had to be about sixteen, maybe seventeen. After a moment, I realized with a shock that Frost was not much physically younger in the photo, but far less broken. He looked like an idealistic rookie cop. He and the girl looked remarkably alike. “That’s you…”
“With my sister. Anastasia.”
I tried to catch his eye, but he just stared into space.
Frost swallowed hard, then sighed again, still not looking at me. “That photo was taken a few weeks before she died.”
“How?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know.
“Car accident. I was in the front seat, next to her. Trina was in the back. Anna was driving, but it wasn’t her fault. I still remember like it was yesterday,” he narrated, eyes glossing over in remembrance. “She had her car stereo going, just like always. It was playing that song Trina danced to.Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again. Anna lovedThe Phantom of the Opera.”
Frost bit his lip. “She was singing along to the music and going through an intersection. At the last second, she saw it coming and screamed my name. Caleb. I don’t know what she meant to say, but she never finished. That’s why I can’t stand my first name anymore. Not even Justin knows that the reason I hate my first name is because of her. Every time I hear that, ‘Caleb’, it’s like I can hear her screaming again. A drunk driver ran a red and T-boned us. He hit the driver’s side…hither. We spun out and went into the ditch. Rolled over a couple times. We finally landed upside-down. I was still conscious, just barely. Trina was in shock, but okay. I looked over at Anna and tried to ask if she was alright. I kept telling her to wake up, but she didn’t.”
I shut my eyes and turned away in grief.
“She didn’t wake up,” Frost whispered, nearly inaudibly as a single sob escaped him finally. “That locket…she always wore it. All the time. I gave it to her for her birthday a few years earlier and she’d just put in that new picture. She thought it was good luck.”
Frost turned to me, finally meeting my gaze. He smiled wryly, a single tear sliding over his cheek as he whispered, “She forgot to wear it that day.”
I slid over to him, wrapping him in a tight hug, folding him into my arms. “It’s okay, Frost. It’s okay. She’s a lot better off than we are now, so you can’t be sorry for her. And it’s not your fault. There’s no way your dad could’ve blamed you. I can assure you of that.”
“That’s not true, Poe.”
I pulled back just slightly, frowning seriously, so I could see his face. The single tear still trickled silently over his cheeks, but now his countenance was dominated by a horrible haunted look. “Poe, I made a terrible mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
He shuddered slightly and his eyes glazed over, as though he were seeing something truly horrific not for the first time and not for the last. “There was a girl I dated. Not long, but long enough to let her…she was insane. She was being treated for all kinds of psychiatric problems. She was…hateful and cruel. When I ended it, she just smiled this…awful, malicious grin. She said I’d regret it, that no one could take anything from her and get away with it. The next day, Anna was dead.”
My eyes widened in horror. “Frost, that can’t be…it must be a coincidence. There’s no way…”
He looked at me, then, his eyes as cold as ice. “The driver had a name I recognized. He was in group therapy with her. Suicidal.” We both sat there, staring at each other and seeing something else for a long time. Then, Frost finished, “She never admitted it. When we arrested her, she punched a bystander hard enough to nearly knock him out trying to escape. After that, she just started laughing. She didn’t stop laughing until she’d been in holding a whole day. We finally got her for battery of the bystander and resisting arrest, but nothing more. She just got out of jail a few weeks ago.”
I stared into those eyes of molten ice and I saw the things he had seen. His sister bleeding to death in a crushed car. His ex-girlfriend laughing like a maniac, her eyes wild and saucer-like. The notice that she had been released. I shivered and leaned in to hug him. He didn’t meet me as he normally did, but didn’t pull back or fight me either, so I held him for a seemingly endless stretch of time, wishing we were both less broken, less haunted.
Almost inaudibly, Frost whispered, “Do you believe in angels?”
“Angels?”
Frost nodded against my shoulder. “Yeah. Not with halos and wings, though. Angels in people, you know?” At this, his eyes of molten ice met mine desperately, showing anguish, and pleading. “You’ve been there for me, Poe. Let me return the favor. Let me help you.”
My eyebrows creased in confusion and fear at what he was going to ask. “What do you mean, Frost?”
“What did Mr. Aaron do to you?”
For a long time, I just stared up into those eyes that looked so like shattered blue glass and concentrated on the warmth of his arms around me. Finally, I answered, “He had an affair. When I found out and accused him, he hated me and wouldn’t forgive me. I was only fourteen.” I bowed my head and bit my lip hard enough that I tasted blood. “I remember walking down the hallway when I got home from school, seeing the door ajar, pushing it open just slightly. He threw me down the stairs, just like he did in November. And then he did this to me.” With a shaking hand, I reached up to push my hair away from the side of my neck, revealing the raised white scar. It was small, but impossible to overlook or miscomprehend. It was a trio of lines, the letter ‘A’ carved into my skin. I could hear Frost’s teeth grind together in anger, but I didn’t meet his gaze. I allowed my hair to fall forward again and let my head fall into my hand wearily. “To make matters worse, the neighbor he had the affair with was a wealthy married woman with a daughter in my class. Nina Faucett was the daughter…she found out about the affair when we were twelve and kind of…lost her mind.” Frost’s breath seemed to catch in his throat and his chest didn’t rise or fall for some time, as though he was deeply disturbed by something I had said. “She’d always been keen on making me miserable. She gave me the ‘orphan’ nickname. But after that, she had no soul and no mercy. She destroyed any hope I had for picking up the pieces of my life. I didn’t know why she was so cruel to me until junior year when we got into a fistfight and it…slipped out between punches. Shortly after that, she got this guy…” I choked on the name and decided to bypass it. “She got this guy to date me. He was…terrible to me. There was nothing worse she could’ve possibly done.”
Frost touched my hand gently. “What did he do to you?”
“I can’t tell you now. I don’t have it in me.”
