Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,79

and so did everyone else. We managed to hold off during the church service and the graveside ceremony, but back at the house, aside from the dark suits and dresses, the wake would have been indistinguishable from a Super Bowl party.

Pete had been distant since the accident. Girl crying had always freaked him out, and every sober minute, I was crying and sick with blame. Pete was inadequate to the task of convincing me otherwise.

Billy had gotten in a fight defending my honor, and then thrown out of the house over that fight and died.

Lisa felt no guilt, and for this I hated her.

I sat at the wake, sipping a Miller, watching her talking to her boyfriend and smiling. If she hadn’t made him leave, he wouldn’t be dead.

It was ill-advised of me to tell her this, I realize now. And “tell” isn’t the right word. “Scream semicoherently” is closer to the truth.

But it was not one of Pete’s more sensitive moments when he got between us and took Lisa’s side, telling me in front of everyone—at my brother’s funeral—that I was being a crazy bitch.

Lisa started crying then, clung to Pete’s arm, and turned in to his chest. He wrapped his arm around her and left me, his grieving girlfriend, to stand alone in a circle of gaping mourners.

My mother missed all this. She was in the kitchen, having thrown herself into cooking and hostessing. My dad was out back with the older men, talking baseball and trying not to think about why he was wearing a tie.

On Monday I took a bus to Grand Rapids, renting the first apartment I could manage with my savings, temping as an office worker until I found my job at JinxCorp.

Pete and I reconciled more or less, supposedly. He sent a dozen roses with an apology note, which I assume his sister scripted for him. To say it was out of character doesn’t even come close.

I broke up with him by e-mail a few months later, already screwing other people on my own nights out. He took up with Lisa eventually, after loudly complaining to anyone who would listen how “cold” I’d been.

In the story of our couplehood back home, I became the villain, the one who took off for the big city and cruelly disposed of my hick boyfriend, the one that I was expected to marry. Not to mention I abandoned my grieving parents.

My mother reminds me occasionally that Pete is single again, and asks about me all the time. Pete has no children, she likes to say. Pete is your own age. Pete has a good job working on campus at Michigan State. Being a custodian is honorable work, she tells me, as if I’d ever said otherwise.

In the version I’m telling Mallory, I just say we had a fight at the funeral and broke up.

Mallory stands up and gestures for me to do the same. I stand as well, and she wraps her arms around me.

This is surreal.

But it’s kind of sweet, too, and maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the aftershock from spilling this story, but a few tears spill out before I can stop them.

She sets me back and makes as if to wipe off my face, but I flinch away and do it myself.

She turns from me to refill her glass at the counter. “You know, hon,” she says, getting another glass down from the cupboard, “you don’t have to punish yourself. You were both young, just kids, really, you and Billy. You didn’t do anything wrong. Billy didn’t either, did he? You are way too hard on yourself, and I don’t know if that’s your personality, or if Michael did that to you with his expectations, which believe me, I know are impossible. But we’ve been through hell today. The girls are fine. It’s late. Have a drink to unwind so you can sleep.” She turns to face me, one hand on her hip, head tipped at a sympathetic angle. “Because, sweetie, you look awful.”

I laugh, feeling a little dizzy. I settle back into my chair. The lack of sleep crashes on me then, like the ceiling falling in. But mentally I’m sharply alert, my mind skipping from one thing to another: Billy, Michael, Pete, Dylan, all the men who have complicated my life.

Mallory pushes a glass of Jack and Coke across the table. “Go on. After what you’ve been through? You deserve it.”

I reach out my hand and stroke the cool side of the