IN THE END, I TOLD my parents the truth.
Most of it.
I told them about Anna and Charlie. About how both Lily and Charlie had, in their own way, been angry with her, and how Charlie had drugged her. Told her to fly.
I told them about Nick too. That she was going to see him, that his house was where it happened. That he knew nothing about it, though, and I wanted it to stay that way if possible. Because I didn’t know what you could do with that, knowing that someone died trying to get to you. Some things only hurt to learn about, and they don’t change anything.
I didn’t tell them about the bar, the birth control, or the photo. She wouldn’t have wanted them to know any of that—and they didn’t need to have what happened between her and Charlie spelled out in bold type or to know exactly how lost and trapped she’d felt. I didn’t think it was like the box, hiding stuff they had a right to see, hiding it because I wanted to keep it for my own. This was different. This was something I was doing for them. And for Anna.
I’D THOUGHT FINDING OUT WHO Anna was going to see that night, finding out what happened, would give me a way to understand what had happened between the two of us—how a chasm had opened without my realizing it. Instead, what I found was Charlie and Nick. Charlie, who only saw her as someone to control—and Nick, who’d wanted to know her but never really had the chance.
She’d put on the dress, put on the perfume, for Nick. The birth control had been for Charlie. And her poem…I didn’t know. Maybe she’d thought she loved Charlie at one point, or maybe it had simply been a poem about no one in particular—just some pretty words on a page.
All I knew for certain was that there should’ve been a different ending to that night. And now I knew how it actually should’ve gone.
I could imagine it; I could see it clearly:
Anna in her purple dress, all the buttons attached, getting out of the car—arriving exactly when Nick was expecting Brian to show up. She is clear-eyed and calm. She stands outside Nick’s house and looks up, up to his window. She finds a stone and throws it gently. And then she waits. Waits beneath his window, sure that soon he’ll open it and smile down at her, surprised but happy. That he’ll mouth for her to wait right there, that he’ll be right down.
That was how I pictured it. That was how it would have been.