Tell Becca not to be mad at me and tell her I listened all those times we talked but she doesn’t get it either. She doesn’t understand what it feels like to wash and wash and wash and never feel clean.
So I’m going to the only place that can make me clean, crystal clear, fresh and clean.
You don’t be mad at me either, Brody. Please try to understand.
Tell Mom and Dad, Max and Becca I love them, okay?
And I love you too.
xoxo Mins
“It’s a suicide note,” Becca whispered but I knew that. I knew it. I knew it reading it and I knew it because I’d stopped breathing and I knew it because I’d read one before and I knew it because that grip on my insides felt like a vice and I felt that before too. “She talked about it to me, I asked her to go see someone.” Becca’s voice dropped to nearly nothing. “She promised she would.”
“We got boys high and low lookin’ for her,” Jeff put in and his voice sounded tight.
I felt Mom, Steve and Cotton had gotten close but they stayed quiet, correctly reading the atmosphere.
I didn’t look at anyone. I was simply staring at the note still held up in Max’s hand.
“Fuck!” Brody hissed. “She was okay last night, laughin’, eatin’, drinkin’ –”
“Crystal clear and fresh,” I whispered, cutting Brody off.
“What?” Max asked and I watched the note disappear as his hand dropped away and his body turned to me as his arm curled me to his front.
I looked up into Max’s handsome face wearing a replica of Brody’s stony concern. “Crystal clear and fresh,” I repeated. “She said that to me when I was giving her a facial. She used those words to describe someplace she really likes, someplace on the river. She said the water was always clear there, you could always see right down to the bottom. Crystal clear and –”
“Holling’s Bend,” Max said, his neck twisting to look at Brody and then he suddenly let me go and he was running.
Not thinking, I ran with him, Brody did too, around the house and up the incline toward the barn.
Brody was yelling as he ran. “Jeff, take the road, scan the river as you go!”
They pulled ahead and I watched Max yank open the barn door on a mighty heave and disappear inside. I ran into the cold darkness to see him squatting in front of an open cupboard door. He twisted a knob on a safe, pulled it open and I saw some keys hanging inside. He grabbed a set, turned and tossed them to Brody. Brody caught them and ran to an ATV. Max grabbed another set and ran to the other ATV.
He got on and, as he was slipping the key into the ignition, I climbed on behind him.
He twisted and clipped, “Nina.”
“Go!” I yelled. “Go, go, go!”
He delayed no further, twisted back, started the ATV, turned sharply in the barn and shot out behind Brody.
Max either was more experienced on the ATV or knew the terrain better, maybe both, but even with me holding tight to his waist, we passed Brody. The wind, chill on the ATV and me not wearing a jacket, whipped our bodies and hair and we were going fast, too fast, scary fast and I didn’t notice.
The wheels left earth as we flew over a rise then landed with a bone-jarring thud which made me glad I was holding onto Max for dear life. We barreled down it, heading toward the narrow, now muddy track running the side of the river that Max and I took on the snowmobile.
My heart in my throat hammering uncontrollably, I scanned the river as it flew by at our sides.
My eyes were on the river but my mind was on Mindy putting her hand to my window and giving me that funny, little smile. That funny, little smile I was too stupid, stupid, stupidly drunk to read. Max had asked me to take it easy on the drink, he’d told me she had bad moments, I’d even bloody seen them. But did I listen, did I read the signs, signs I’d seen but didn’t read before with Charlie?
No. No, I didn’t.
Then we neared the bend and I saw her. Max did too.
“God f**king dammit,” he clipped and even with the wind, I heard the alarm and anger clear in his gravelly voice.
He hadn’t stopped the ATV when I jumped off and started running straight to the steep incline that fell down to the river.