Even Death Won't Do Us Part

Chapter 13

Fifteen minutes later , I'm pulling up to his house, my entire body buzzing. All the windows are dark , but the big , bright front door light is switched on, and there's Peter, standing out on the walkway, rubbing his hands together.

I step onto the grass, ice crystals crunch beneath my feet. I can just barely make out his face. "Baby," he says, all warm breath in the cold air. Baby is not even something he calls me. "Are you okay? What's going on? Tell me."

He starts to pull me toward him and for a second I almost let him. I am ashamed at how desperately I wanted to be held, to feel a body against mine, letting me know that everything, even anything, is okay.

I step back and hold my hands up.

"You were with Auburn," I say. This is the first time I've actually said her name to him in a year.

"What do you mean?" He is whispering. "Did you have a bad dream or something?"

I shake my head. "You were with her in real life on New Year's Eve." I can barely even get the words out.

"You're scaring me, Lil. Because I don't have any idea what you're talking about..."

I take out my phone, dial voice mail, and hold it out on speaker. "Listen."

Message received...There's Auburn. Hey, L, it's me your old pal... I watch the numbers on the timer tick by. At nine seconds, she stops talking to me. I can feel Peter staring at me. I don't look up. "What's this..." Peter starts.

I say, "It's coming."

At the forty third second, the voices start again. Auburn : I'm going to tell... Then the shouting. Only when the message finally finishes and I shut off my phone do I look up.

"I don't understand what that is," Peter says quietly.

"That was a voice mail she left me the day before she died," I say. "And that's you in the background."My voice is cold. Hard. He's never heard me sound like this before.

I wonder how he is going to begin to explain this. I'm scared to hear what he will say next. I'm scared not to hear it too.

But he stands there, completely silent. Finally, he lets out a long, heavy sigh that puffs white in the air. "Please tell me you're not serious," he says. He's using that gentle, concerned tone again.

"I'm very serious," I say.

"The random yelling in the background that you can barely make out? That's supposed to be me ?" He doesn't sound angry, just hurt and so honestly confused that I'm starting to feel confused too.

Back at home I was so certain. And that certainly filled my belly with fire. But out here in the cold night...

"It's not me," Peter says. "Have you slept at all since yesterday morning? Have you been eating? I get being really, insanely upset. Believe me, I do..." He pauses and looks up, like he's waiting for me to to think about what he's saying.

And the truth is, I haven't slept much. I've hardly eaten anything. But how can I eat when Auburn is dead? How can I sleep when whoever did this to her was out there?

"We were still in Illinois then," Peter says. "I wasn't even back from vacation yet." He almost sounds sorry to say this, sorry to have to make me face how completely wrong I'm suddenly realising I am.

Because with all that adrenaline coursing through my veins, I forgot all about the vacation he just got back from, the snow globe that he bought me , and the time line of everything--the entire rest of the world, really, and how it works and what makes sense. I hold the phone to my ear again, play the message again. And this time the shouts sound like... nothing. No one I know. That person could be anyone.