Later that night, I riffle through the phone book in bed, paging through the L’s. My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears, and my index finger, which I draw down the list of names I come across, is shaking. It’s a long shot. But I have to try. I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t at least try.
“Hello?” She picks up on the third ring.
“Is this . . .” I clear my throat. “Is this Jenny Locke?”
“Yes.” A pause. “Are you selling something? Because if you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”
“No, I’m not selling anything.”
“Who is this, then?”
I swallow hard, force my voice to steady itself. “This is Bird, Jenny. Bird Connolly? From when we shared the—”
“I ’member.” She cuts me off, inhales sharply. Starts to say something, and then retreats, as if collecting her thoughts. Then: “I saw you on the news. With James and all that.”
“Yeah.”
Silence. I press my fingers against the wildflower print on my quilt, as if the blooms themselves will bleed courage into my skin. “I know it’s been a long time, Jenny. And this might seem really crazy, bringing it up after so many years, but James told me some things that I was hoping to talk to you about.”
Silence.
“Jenny?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s about that night,” I say. “When Charlie came over?”
“Listen, I really didn’t see anything. Actually, I thought you guys were just having make-up sex.” She says this so quickly, an edge of defense so apparent in her voice, that I almost hang up. But then I remember James’s words: Maybe she was just too scared to go back there.
I want to move past this. I do. But the only way I can move past it is to force Charlie to take responsibility for his actions. To stand up for myself the way I should have that day in his hospital room. Or even in the district attorney’s office, when they were asking me for the real story behind James and Charlie. After I come clean, I can move on. After that, I think I can forgive.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “But you did hear me screaming, didn’t you, Jenny? You did hear me saying ‘no’ over and over again. Didn’t you?”
Silence.
“Jenny?”
Silence.
“Jenny. I don’t blame you for not doing anything that night. I was too scared to do anything either. I let it go because I felt guilty that I even let him inside in the first place, because I knew he was drunk and I didn’t even really want to see him. I didn’t call the police, I didn’t report it. I didn’t do anything because I blamed myself. I had a baby, and I never told anyone that he came from a rape. But I’m not the same person that I was back then, Jenny. And I want to hold Charlie accountable now for what he did to me. I want to press rape charges against him. My probation officer told me that there’s a ten-year statute of limitations when it comes to rape charges in our state. So I still have time. But I need your help. James is the only other person who witnessed what happened that night, and he’s gone. You’re all I’ve got, Jenny. And I’m asking for your help. I’m asking you to help me make things right. For me. And my son.”
There is a soft intake of breath, tremulous and frail as a cloud. “You know, I’ve been waiting for five years to run into you somewhere,” Jenny says finally, “to see you across the street, or in the Laundromat. I guess in the back of my head, I always knew this day would come. It’s like what they say: what goes around comes around.”
“I’m not trying to punish you, Jenny. Really, I’m not. That’s not what this is about here. I just can’t do it without you.”
“I was just going to pop in that night,” she says. “Literally. For, like, two seconds. And then I ran into James just as I was about to head upstairs to the apartment to grab something, and he looked like a nervous wreck so I stayed there for a minute and talked to him, and he told me he was trying to work up the nerve to go ask you out.”
I close my eyes, thinking of it.
“I told him he had to do it, that we all knew he was crazy about you . . .” Jenny’s voice fades a little; she knows the futility of going down this road, too. “Anyway, he said he would, and I ran upstairs. James knew my boyfriend, who was sitting there in the car, waiting for me, so he stayed downstairs for another minute to talk to him.”
I bite my lip, close my eyes, pray for her to finish.
“Anyway, I opened the door, and I heard . . .” She inhales shakily. Clears her throat. “I heard you screaming. I did. Oh God, Bird, I’m so sorry. I heard you saying ‘no’ and . . . I don’t know what happened. I mean, I knew what was happening, or at least I thought I did, but I just couldn’t move.” Her voice rises to a whine on the last word, and then breaks into a sob. “And then James came up. . .”
“I know.” I nod, all the pieces fitting together suddenly. All of it making sense. All of it culminating, finally, into something I can hold on to. Something I can believe in. “He told me.”
“He pushed past me as soon as he heard you . . .” Jenny says. “And I was so relieved that someone else was there, that he’d come, that I just bolted.” She cries quietly. “I’ve thought about it every day since it happened, Bird. I’m so sorry. God, I’m just so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“You tell me when and where,” Jenny says. I can hear her blowing her nose over the phone. “When and where, Bird. I’ll be there.”
AN UNUSUAL WARM front blows in at the end of May, getting so hot at certain points of the day that it is uncomfortable to be outside for long periods of time. Ma puts fans in all the downstairs windows and lets them run all night long. I pull out Angus’s summer clothes and, much to his delight, allow him to sleep in his underwear. The air is still thick with humidity when I visit James’s grave for the first time, and it hovers over everything like an evaporating skin. By the time I reach the corner of the cemetery where the groundskeeper directed me, my arms are slick with perspiration, the small hairs on my neck damp as seaweed.
His headstone is smaller than I expected, just a rough, rectangular slab, flush with the ground. My heart speeds up as I kneel down next to it and sit back on my heels. It is still unfathomable that he is gone, still just as painful. His absence is like a physical hole in the world.
I reach out and trail my fingers over the engraved letters: JAMES WILLIAM RITTENHOUSE. Once, and then again. And then, because it is what I would do if he were sitting next to me, I stretch out on my back and tell him about Angus’s magic sneakers, and how he wears them to bed at night. I tell him about the last, nearly miraculous conversation with Ma in the kitchen, and the phone call with Jenny and how, despite my nearly suffocating fear of the impending trial, I am going to push through, see it all the way to the end, no matter what happens. And I tell him that because he loved me, I am a different person now. Stronger. More hopeful. A woman.
It is not until I get up to leave that I feel the first few drops of rain. The wind is blowing, too, and the leaves overhead make a soft rustling sound. I inhale deeply as the earthy, metallic scent drifts up from the ground and close my eyes. It will be difficult, continuing on without him. And I will miss him every day.
But he will not be so far.
He will be here, in every stir of the branches before a rain, inside all the tumultuous fallings from heaven thereafter.