Tess Sharpe - Far From You

Mr. Wells’s lips press together tight, then disappear as he scans the three pages I’ve given him. “This is…” He looks up. “This was Mina’s work?”

I nod.

“Is there more?” he asks.

“No,” I say. It comes out of my mouth, all instinct. I slip into that part of me that can bullshit so easily. It knocks too close to the addicted pieces, the ones I’ve beaten into submission, and I can feel them stir.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but Mina never brought Jackie up. And she would have if she was interested in the case. It was one of the first stories I covered for the paper. I suppose she just never got around to it?”

I think about Mina saving the articles on Jackie’s disappearance. No way she wouldn’t have noticed that Wells had written a lot of them. “Maybe,” I say. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to know.” I get up off the stool, leaning on his desk to keep my balance. “Did you have any theories?”

“About Jackie?” Mr. Wells leans back in his chair, threading his hands to cradle his head as he thinks. “The detective in charge was convinced it was the boyfriend.”

“What about you?”

Mr. Wells grins, his enthusiasm over an old story almost infectious. It reminds me of Mina, of the hunger in her, to know…to tell. “Sam James is a good detective—” he starts.

“Detective James was in charge of Jackie’s case?” I interrupt.

“He was,” Mr. Wells says, frowning.

“Right,” I say quickly. “Anyway, sorry. You were saying? About Jackie?”

“Matthew Clarke is a solid suspect,” Mr. Wells says.

“But you don’t think he did it.”

“Can’t really say. It’s a decent theory, considering the lack of motive elsewhere, but the evidence just isn’t there.”

“Did Matt have a motive?”

“You’re awfully interested in this,” Mr. Wells says.

I shrug. “I guess I just thought…it was important to Mina, you know? Working here, for you. She was always talking about how much she learned from you. I thought maybe if I did some research on the stuff Mina was doing, it’d help me, I dunno, move on. It’s been hard, since, you know…” I trail off, resisting the urge to widen my eyes, because that’d be pushing it.

Mr. Wells sets the copy of Mina’s notes on the desk, his expression softening. “I understand,” he says. “Look, the ­Dennings case, it’s a dead story. Whatever happened to that girl, it’s doubtful that after all this time it’ll ever be known. That’s the nature of things. You’re better off just letting it go.”

I nod, like I’m agreeing with him instead of searching for a way to bust both cases wide open. “I should get home,” I say. “Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. I appreciate it.”

I’m almost out of his cube when he stops me. “Sophie, what happened at Booker’s Point that night?”

I look back at him over my shoulder, and it’s there again, that gleam in his eyes that reminds me of Mina. She’d had that look that night. She’d been practically vibrating from it, the excitement humming beneath her skin, close enough to the truth to taste it.

“Off the record?” I ask, because I’m not stupid.

He grins approvingly. This guy has to have all his girl interns wanting to jump him. Probably some of the guys, too. “I’d prefer a comment on the record.”

“I’m sure you would,” I say. “Thanks again for your time.”

I don’t turn around to confirm it, but I can tell he’s watching me the entire time I walk away.

TWO YEARS AGO (FIFTEEN YEARS OLD)

I dig in the dirt, making small furrows. “Will you hand me that flat?” I point to the seedlings I nursed under fluorescent lights for weeks, waiting until they were strong enough to transplant. I was pretty proud of them; they were the first I���d grown under the lights Dad had bought for my birthday.

Mina sets her book down and gets up off the wicker chair so she can move the flat closer to me. She balances delicately on the edge of the redwood bed, eyeing the soil suspiciously. “What are these going to be, again?”

“Tomatoes.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble for tomatoes,” Mina says. “Couldn’t you just get the plants at the garden center? Or one of those plastic upside-down-hanging planters to put them in?”

“These are different. They’re purple.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I ordered the seeds specially.”

Mina beams. “You could’ve just gotten me flowers.”

I set a seedling carefully into the dirt. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“We can make purple pasta sauce,” she suggests.

“As long as you’re doing the cooking.”

“Oh, come on—remember that vegetable soup you tried to make? There was only a teeny tiny fire that time. You’re getting better.”

“I think I’ll stick to what I’m good at.” I dig a third hole, lift another seedling out of the tray, and set the fragile roots into their new home.

“Aren’t you glad I made you get a hobby?” Mina asks, grinning. “When you become a world-famous botanist, I can say I’m responsible whenever I brag about you.”

“I think out of the two of us, you’re going to end up being the world-famous one,” I say, laughing.

“Well, that goes without saying,” Mina answers. “I’ll make sure to thank you when I win my Pulitzer.”

“I’m honored.”

Mina goes back to her chair and book, and I go back to my tomatoes. She flaps the neck of her tank top back and forth. “It’s so hot,” she complains.

I grind my good knee into the dirt, spacing the seedlings evenly apart, neat rows of three across, four down. “The twentieth’s coming up,” I say finally. “You okay?”

Mina shrugs, eyes glued to the page. The sun beats down my back, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far.

For a moment, I think that’s all I’m going to get out of her. But then she looks up at me. “I’m going to spend the day with Mom and Trev. She wants to go to Dad’s grave in the morning.”

“Do you…do you go out there a lot?” I ask. I’m curious, all of a sudden, and she seems willing to actually talk about it for once. I know that Mr. Bishop is buried in Harper’s Bluff, that he grew up here and that’s the main reason they moved back after his death. And the only reason I know that is the first time Mina and I got drunk, she’d slurred it out against my shoulder and cried and didn’t—or just maybe wouldn’t—remember the next morning.

“Sometimes,” Mina says. “I like to go and talk to him. It makes me feel closer. Like, I don’t know, maybe it’s easier for him to check on me there.”

“Check on you from heaven?” I ask, and I don’t mean it to be there, but there’s skepticism in my voice.

Mina frowns, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Of course, from heaven,” she says. “What—you don’t believe in it?”

I look away, shy under her scrutiny. We’ve never talked about this. I’ve avoided the subject. Mina isn’t devout like her mom, but she’s someone who believes. Who goes to Mass when her mom asks her to and wears the little golden crucifix that her dad gave her.

And I am me. I would’ve lost my faith after the crash, if I’d had any to lose.

“Not really.” I won’t lie about this when I’m already hiding more urgent things from her: the crushed-up pills and the dirty straws, the need for numbness that eats more of me up each day. She’s starting to notice how often I nod off in class. I make excuses, but she’s watching me closer.

I brush the dirt off my hands, standing up to find her staring at me like I’ve declared the sky is green. “Soph, you have to believe in heaven.”

“Why?” I ask.

“You just…you have to. What do you think happens when we die, then?”

“I don’t think anything happens,” I say. “I think this is it. All we get. And when we’re gone, we’re gone.”

She shifts in her chair, and the unhappy curve of her lips makes me wish I’d never answered the way I did. “That’s a crappy way to think. Why would you want to believe that?”

I’m quiet for a moment, rubbing my fingers against my knee, tracing the scar by memory. I can feel the bumps of the screws that lay under my skin through the material. “I don’t know. It’s just what I think.”

“It’s horrible,” Mina says.

“Why does it matter? I’m not an expert.”

“It matters,” she says.

“What, are you worried that I won’t end up there if there is a heaven?” I ask.

“Yes!”

I can’t stop the smile that stretches across my face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mina says angrily. “Like you think it’s cute or something. My dad missed everything, all of my and Trev’s lives. The idea that he’s here still, that he’s keeping an eye on us? That’s not cute—that’s faith.”

“Hey.” I reach out to grasp her hands. She doesn’t pull away, even though my fingers are still dirty. “I didn’t mean…I’m—I’m glad it makes you feel better. But I don’t have that in me. It doesn’t make me right or you wrong, it’s just how it is.”

“You have to believe in something,” Mina protests.

I squeeze her hands and she grips mine back, tight, like I’m going to disappear any second.

“I believe in you,” I say.

NOW (JUNE)

Trev’s late by almost twenty minutes. I’ve almost given up hope he’ll show when the doorbell rings. My parents are out on their weekly date night, so I let him in the house and we stand awkwardly in the foyer for a moment. I don’t know what to say to him now that he knows.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I say.

He follows me up the stairs, and I pause at the top, my back aching at the injection points. When we get to my room, he hovers in the doorway as I walk over to my desk and sit down.