“River’s age.” Tears welled in Leah’s eyes, and she put her hand on his. “I can’t imagine what it would feel like if he’d taken his own life.”
“That’s just it. We don’t think Ash was trying to kill herself. If the pills she’d bought had been ecstasy, she probably would have survived. But someone sold her bad shit.” He’d tracked down and taken care of that asshole, too. “The autopsy showed lethal levels of PMA, a more toxic drug that takes longer to feel its effects. We think that’s why she took so many pills. I was the one who found her.”
“Ohmygod. Tank.” She leaned against his side. “I’m so sorry.”
“I should have pushed her to talk to me earlier that night.”
“Did you know she was upset?”
“No, but my family had gotten together for dinner and she’d asked if I could hang out with her the next day. She said she wanted to talk about school. But she didn’t seem particularly upset. I tried to get her to tell me what was up, but she was late to meet Bethany. I texted her later that night, and when she didn’t respond, I didn’t think too much of it. They weren’t the kind of girls who went looking for trouble. But when she didn’t get back to me by two in the morning, I got worried and went to my parents’ house to check on her. She always got back to me, even if it was hours later.” Bile rose in his throat, and he closed his eyes for a second to try to pull himself together. He trained his gaze on the concrete between his feet and said, “I tried to revive her, but…” He shook his head.
“That’s why I felt that suffocating feeling coming from you,” she said, full of wonder.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain, but you know how I tried to avoid you before the accident?”
“Yeah, I thought maybe I reminded you of someone who had hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I’m oddly intuitive. Before the accident, every time our eyes met, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like you were suffocating, but it affected me and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what to make of it. Now I know I was feeling your grief. You’re still trying to breathe for Ashley.” She put her hand over his. “I’m so sorry that you lost your sister and that I was afraid of what I felt. You must think about that night a lot for me to feel it so strongly.”
“I think about it every day.”
She touched his right hand, stopping him from rubbing the B-E-N-T tattoos on the fingers of his left hand, and said, “What does that mean? Bent?”
“It was one of the last things Ashley said to me. When I tried to get her to talk to me, she said not to worry, she was bent, not broken, and that it could wait until the next day.” He gritted his teeth. “If only I’d gone to check on her earlier, I could have saved her.”
“But you couldn’t have known what she had planned. If I’ve learned one thing from raising River, it’s that you can’t blame yourself for other people’s choices.”
He was pretty damn good at blaming himself, but he didn’t need to go there. Especially when the rest of what she’d said was so important. “You raised River?”
“Mm-hm. Our father was an electrician. He worked full time and picked up extra work at night whenever he could. He was working at a factory in the middle of the night when an electrical fire broke out and he was killed. I was eighteen and River was thirteen. You know how I said I was oddly intuitive? The night he died, my father came to me in a dream and told me to take care of River. I woke up in tears, begging him to come back. The police showed up to notify us a little while later.”
“Jesus, that’s awful. But it says a lot about the connection you had with your father. Have you had other dreams like that?”
“Yeah. When I was little, I had one about River’s mom before she left us. I told my dad she was leaving and never coming back. She was gone two days later.”
“Damn.”
“I’ve had a lot of those dreams. Stupid things, about school or work, and big things like knowing I was going to have a boy and two girls in my future.”
“River and the girls,” he said, astonished.
She nodded.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like to know things like that before they happen. Did you know about the accident?”
“No, or I never would have let him leave that night.”
Now it was his turn to take her hand. “I’m sorry I asked. It must have been rough mourning your father and suddenly raising your brother.” Rough sounded too mild, but he wasn’t great with words. He laced their fingers together and held her hand between both of his.
“We were devastated. We were our father’s world, and he was ours. He would have moved heaven and earth for us. He worked a lot to make ends meet, so I’d been pretty much raising River since he was little. I graduated high school early so I could be home when River was out of school, and I worked at a music shop when he was in school. I never minded, though. I loved working, and I’d have done anything for River and my dad. It was just the way our family worked out. But it was hard after our dad died. He had a small life insurance policy, which covered his burial and helped for a little while financially, but we missed him so much.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “I still miss him, and now I miss them both.”
Tank put his arm around her, pulling her closer. “I’d love to hear about them, if you’re up to it. What was your father’s name?”
She looked at him with a small smile. “You’re the first person who has asked me that because you want to know and not for some form or legal reason.” Her face brightened. “You know what? Come inside. I have some pictures I can show you while I tell you about him.”
He followed her in, and she said, “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
She pulled the girls’ bedroom door most of the way closed and went into her bedroom, returning a minute later with a shoebox.
She sat beside him on the couch and opened the box. “These were my dad’s pictures. I haven’t looked at them in a long time.” She withdrew a picture of her sitting on her father’s shoulders; her wild mane looked even thicker around her young face. “My dad’s name was Leonard, but everyone called him Leo. I always knew he was a great father, but after raising River and the girls, I have a new appreciation for just how amazing he was to have raised us alone. He believed in all the right things—family. Hard work. Laughter. Helping others, and he instilled that in us, too.”
“How old were you in this picture?”
“Four. Junie’s age. We were at a picnic for his work. I remember they had one of those bounce houses for the kids and a clown making ice cream sundaes. Most of the other parents were mingling, but my dad stayed with me the whole time.”
“Let me see that.” He took a closer look at the picture, noting the light in their eyes, and the similarities he’d noticed in the picture of them in the girls’ room. “God you were cute, Lee.”
“Thanks.” She put the picture back in the box and took out a few more. She was older in them, a skinny little thing, all elbows and knees, standing beside a tiny bicycle. “These were taken when he taught me to ride a bike. One of our neighbors took the ones where my dad is helping me.” She pointed to the apartment complex in the background. “And that’s our balcony where we lived until I was eight. Then we rented a little house.”