Shauna turns away, unable to look at me as I try to remember, as I start to understand.
“But I saw him,” I say.
“He was still alive.”
I couldn’t look at his face. I didn’t question it when she told me he was dead.
“What did you do?” I ask, dizzy with hope and terror.
She exhales and closes her eyes.
“After you left,” she says, her voice barely a whisper, “he spluttered. Not just once. He did it three or four times, and I was so scared I didn’t even think. I pushed and pulled and kicked him into the pool.”
I put my hands to my face, almost afraid to believe her.
“I stood at the edge of the pool and I watched him sink,” she says, “and I stayed there until I was sure he was dead.”
None of this seems real, not the scale of Shauna’s deception nor the haggard shape of her in the bed.
“I was going to work out a story when Melissa arrived and I let her take over.”
The syllables of her name spasm to life inside me, as if they might bear the weight of this betrayal instead.
“Melissa?” I say. “She made you do it?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, what happened then? We agreed we were going to say he slipped and fell.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after we left. I just went along with whatever my dad said, and then it was too late.”
“Even though you knew I could be convicted for it?”
“I couldn’t do it,” she cries, “I couldn’t testify.”
“But you let me believe I killed him.”
Shauna closes her eyes and wraps her arms around her shaking body, the breath shivering in and out of her.
“All this time,” I say, “I’ve been haunted by what I thought I did, and you didn’t think I deserved to know the truth? Did you ever think of me at all?”
“Yes,” she cries. “I never stopped thinking about you.”
There’s a rap at the door and Carla swoops in and stands between us like a shield.
“I think you should leave,” she says.
I don’t wait to be asked twice. I gather myself and march across the landing and down the stairs. I make it out the front door and I’m almost at the gate when the legs go from under me and I fall to my knees, shaking and sobbing onto the weed-punctured paving. There’s nothing I can do to stop the onslaught, wave after wave of attack and release. A lifetime of sorrow for the eighteen-year-old girl who never stood a chance.
I can’t quite grasp what’s been stolen from me, my link to the past, my faith in the future. I never had the easy composure of an ordinary life, but I could have got there, if I’d had absolution. The grit and gravel pierce my hands and graze my knees and I don’t care who sees my bruised and bloodied grief, not even when I hear the footsteps and see the shadow of the figure standing over me.
“Please come back,” says Carla. “Shauna’s sorry. I’m sorry.”
I sit up on my haunches, dust the dirt from my hands and look back at the frayed facade of a once-proud place, the weather-bowed sash windows, veiled and forlorn. And behind them, the one person who can help me, the only one who can close the door on the events of that night.
SHAUNA’S TEAR-STAINED FACE IMPLORES ME as I stand over her bed, arms folded against the rapid beat of my heart.
“I tried so hard to find a way to tell you,” she says. “You have to believe me.”
It would be so easy, but I don’t know what to believe anymore.
“Please,” she continues, “I’ll do anything to make it up to you. I’ve had to live with what I did and now I’m going to have to die with it.”
I search the hollows of her eyes and find nothing but a planet of regret.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She says nothing, just shakes her head slowly.
“Is that what all this is?” I gesture to the equipment.
“Yes,” she says. “Dialysis.”
I stare at the equipment, the numbers and colors on the monitor, the blood rushing through the tubes, the swellings on her arm at the access points.
“But you’ll get better? You’re still young.”
“Oh, Lou,” she says. “I’m not going to lie to you anymore. All those years of starving myself, I have some serious heart issues too.”
I stare at the ceiling, hands on hips, trying to make sense of what’s been given and taken away from me.
“There must be something you can do,” I say as tears blur my eyes. Shauna’s crying too and I don’t know which of us to pity most. All I ever wanted was her mercy and now I see that’s what she wants from me too. And as much as I wish I could walk out of here and take my forgiveness with me, I know I can’t carry the weight of it for the rest of my life.
“There is something I want to do,” says Shauna, wiping away her tears. “Since Ronan’s lawsuit, I know for sure that I’m ready to tell the full story. Everything he did and exactly how Highfield enabled him.”
And that’s when I know what my choice is: to hold a broken teenage girl responsible for a desperate decision or to seek justice for all of us.