All Our Yesterdays (38 page)

He turns the gun and points it at his own face, lifting it toward his mouth. The doctor and I both realize what he’s planning to do at the same moment. I scream, and the doctor lunges up at him, one last-ditch effort to save his life. It’s too late. The doctor hits James just as he pulls the trigger.

James collapses in a heap, and I drag myself to his side. He’s still alive; the presence of the doctor, who’s fallen to the floor in silent horror, is proof of that. The doctor didn’t stop James, but he did manage to move the gun enough that the shot missed the vital part of his brain. The bullet shattered his cheekbone, but his eyes are still open. All the doctor did was ensure that James’s death would be lingering and painful, and the fact that he’ll die for it, too, gives me no comfort.

I grab James’s hand and press it to my cheek, my tears falling onto his face. “I love you, too. You’re a
good
person.”

His eyes stay fixed on mine, and maybe I’m only seeing what I want to see, but I think I see peace in them. Slowly, his eyes close. Terror seizes me as I wait to drift away the same way Finn did. I never wanted to die, and I fear there will be nothing but blackness and aloneness wherever I go. I cling to the idea that Finn might be there, waiting for me.

But nothing happens. He’s unconscious but still breathing shallowly. Either James’s tenuous hold on life has weakened the doctor or he’s just given up, because he’s sitting very still and staring blankly ahead. It won’t be long now, but I have a few last moments. I lay James’s head on the floor gently and kiss his forehead.

Then I crawl back to Marina, who is still tied in her chair, sobbing and shaking, her eyes shut. A feeling of profound tranquility comes over me as I look at her.

“James?” she says. “E-Em?
Anybody?
”

I smooth the hair back from her face and work calmly on the knots that hold her.

“Shh,” I say. “Everything’s all right now. Listen carefully.”

I tell her she’s beautiful and perfect and she’s going to be okay. I tell her she doesn’t need to change herself to fit in with shallow girls or to matter to someone. I tell her everything I wish I had ever known. I tell her I love her, and I realize as I say it that I love me, too.

On the floor, James exhales his last breath.

And then so do I.

Thirty-Nine

Marina

I jerk awake. I don’t remember falling asleep, but my dreams were full of running and screaming and fear. I sink back against my pillows in relief, stretching against the smooth sheets.

The doorbell rings downstairs, and I glance at the clock. It’s not even nine in the morning yet. James wanted to go for breakfast and he’s always early, but this is
ridiculous
.

“I’ll get it!” I yell to Luz.

I stand and sway on my feet from the sudden rush of blood to my head. I feel heavy and foggy, and the tattered edges of my dreams keep brushing against my mind. I grab for them but come up with empty hands. In fact, now that I think about it, the last couple of days are a blur. I remember James in a tux, Nate’s beautiful speech at that fund-raiser, and stupid Finn Abbott tagging along with us everywhere. I remember James asking me to breakfast, and vowing that I would tell him how I felt before the pancakes were finished, but everything else is a muddle.

“I love you, James,” I whisper, practicing the words. God, it sounds stupid.

I trot down the stairs to the front door and throw it wide open. I have a joke about James’s chronic earliness already on my lips, but I stop short.

“Congressman,” I say. “Hi.”

Nate looks so much like James, the same fine, strong features and humble tilt of the head. He looks up at me slowly, heaviness pulling down the corners of his mouth and his eyes puffy and red.

Somehow, I don’t even have to ask.

Forty

Marina

I don’t understand it. I can’t. The James I knew had plans. He’d been happy. He’d smiled at me and asked me to breakfast just hours before driving to his parents’ old cottage on the Chesapeake and taking his life. It doesn’t make any sense.

I guess you can never really know what’s going on inside another person.

But as I cried long into that first night after Nate told me what happened, the little bits and pieces of James that never seemed quite right—the sudden flares of temper, the intensity in his eyes when he would say the world needed to be changed, the way it sometimes seemed like the slightest pressure would crack him in two—began to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle, painting a different picture of the boy I thought I’d known so well. One more frail and damaged than I’d realized. Nate thinks he never got over their parents’ deaths. He’d been in therapy for it for years, starting after the breakdown he’d had the day of their funeral. I never knew about that; he never told me.

At the funeral, I stand between Nate and Finn Abbott. I’ve spent the last two days in bed sobbing and screaming, and I have no tears left for today. I’m empty, like I died right along with James. I lean against Finn because I’m not sure I can stand on my own and glare at the sun for daring to shine today. It should be like the movies, all dark, drizzly rain and black umbrellas stretching into the distance. But the crowd at the graveside is a small one, only the people who had really known and loved James. The circus was left back at the church.

As the minister speaks, my mind slips away from where we are, the casket and the flowers and the hole in the ground. I think of the stacks of notebooks from James’s room that Nate gave me because he couldn’t bear to see the work James had loved so much go into a storage container somewhere. Burning tears—I guess I have some left after all—cut through the numbness shrouding me as I remember the first time James ever told me about his work. The memory rises up in front of me, as fresh and untouched as if I were reliving it.

“Marina!” My eyes are glazing over as I try to listen politely to the chatter of my mother’s friends when I hear someone hiss my name. “Marina! Hey!”

A hand closes around my wrist, and I turn to find James—gangly and awkward, not yet grown into his height—behind me. He pulls me away, and we slip through the crowd of guests, each clutching a wineglass and a little plate of hors d’oeuvres. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Sorry, Mom was making me talk to those women on the board at the symphony with her. I think she just wanted to show me off.” I look down at the party dress Mom dragged me to Neiman’s to buy and forced me to wear to the Shaws’ annual Christmas party. It’s silver and beaded at the top, and objectively it’s probably a beautiful thing, but it makes me feel like Mom’s Debutante Barbie.

“Look what I swiped from the kitchen when the caterers weren’t looking,” James says, brandishing a half-empty bottle of champagne. “Let’s get out of here.”

He pulls me up the stairs onto the darkened second floor, and I find I can’t resist him. He takes me into the library and closes the door behind us, wedging a doorstop underneath the crack to stop anyone else from coming in. He flops down onto the leather sofa, and I sit more carefully beside him, resting my head back against the cushion and studying him as he rubs his eyes with both hands.

“I don’t know why Nate insists on throwing this damn party every year,” he says. “I know for a fact he hates it as much as I do.”

“It’s kind of a nice tradition, though, isn’t it?” I say, even though I’m sure I hate the Shaws’ Christmas party more than anyone. “Your dad would be happy he was keeping it up.”

“Yeah, I guess he would.” James takes a swig from the bottle and tries to hide his grimace at the taste. “It wouldn’t really be Christmas without the party to dread, would it?”

I smile. “Or stupid dresses to wear.”

“I know you don’t like it, but you look pretty.”

My tongue feels suddenly too big for my mouth. The light in the room seems to change, and James looks different to me. More perfect. My breathing goes shallow, and I look down at my hands to hide the strange feeling washing over me.

“Yeah, right,” I say, forcing a laugh. “I look like some senator’s wife trying to show up her friends. I look like my
mother
.”

“Hey, your mother is a fine-looking lady.”

“Ugh, gross!”

I shove his shoulder and he laughs, and for a while we pass the champagne bottle back and forth. I’ve never seen James drink before; I don’t think he ever has. But there’s a shadow in his eyes, and he throws back the bottle like it could chase whatever those dark thoughts are away. I play along, even though I only take tiny sips of champagne and sometimes just press the bottle to my closed lips. Soon it’s nearly empty, and James is loose and open, sprawled across the couch with one hand brushing my leg, and his smile gone messy and wide.

“I’m going to fix everything, you know,” he says.

I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I just say, “Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” He closes his eyes. “I’ve been talking to this professor at Johns Hopkins about my work, and he’s going to mentor me.”

His words are starting to run together, and his breathing has slowed. I lean toward him and pat his cheek.

“Don’t go to sleep, James!” I whisper. “Then I’ll have to go back to the party!”

He cracks one eye open. “M’not sleeping.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.” He sits up straighter. “I’m going to figure out time, and then I’m going to fix things.”

“What things?”

“Everything. I’m going to change the world.” The shadow in his eyes returns. “I’ll make sure Mom and Dad never get in that car.”

I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. My eyes stray to the wall, where in this same room two years ago, James threw a lamp in a blind rage that left a deep scratch in the plaster. It’s gone now, long since patched up and painted over, the evidence erased so easily.

“James . . .” I whisper.

“Everything will be different then,” he says, eyes closing as he rests his head on my shoulder. “I’ll make everything right. I’ll make everything better.”

The first handful of dirt hits the coffin and brings me back to the present. James was going to make everything better, but now he’ll never get the chance.

I start to cry, and Finn the Idiot takes my hand. It should feel strange and uncomfortable, but for some reason it doesn’t. It actually feels . . . nice. I lean against the solid warmth of him, and he gives my fingers a squeeze.

I’m suddenly very scared. Not of the explosion, which defies my comprehension, but of what I’ll have to do when it’s all over. Of what this is all for.

You have to kill him.

Either Finn senses my fear or he feels it himself, because he puts his hands on my cheeks, lifting my eyes up to his.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says, the words barely audible above the roar.

But then things get very quiet, for me at least. Somehow I find silence in Finn’s dark blue eyes. God, how did I survive so long in that cell without being able to see those eyes?

I’m hit with a crashing realization. Something so obvious, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it until now. My heart breaks and spills white-hot misery into my body.

“Finn,” I say, “if we can do it, if we change things, I’ll never fall in love with you. And you’ll never fall in love with me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he says, pressing his forehead to mine. “I think I was in love with you long before any of this started.”

I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cry. “Really?”

“Really.” He presses a sweet kiss to my lips. “There’s always hope for us.”

I squeeze Finn’s hand back, and my eyes fall closed. I feel something like the whisper of a touch to my face. Deep from the back of my mind, a voice that sounds a lot like my own speaks to me like a memory, telling me I’m strong and loved and that everything is going to be okay.

And, for some strange reason, I believe it.

Acknowledgments

I must have been very good in a past life to end up surrounded by so many smart, supportive, and wonderful people, without whom I wouldn’t be here.

First I want to thank my incredible agent Diana Fox. I don’t know what possessed her to take me on as a client, but she made me the writer I am today, told me to write this book when I didn’t think I should, and was instrumental in making it what it is. Thank you, Diana, for being such a great teacher, advocate, and friend.

Then there’s my fantastic editor Emily Meehan, who saw and understood exactly what I was trying to do with this book and helped me make it happen. She and the entire team at Disney-Hyperion have been huge champions of
All Our Yesterdays
, and I don’t have the words to thank these incredible people enough: Laura Schreiber, Lizzy Mason, Dina Sherman, Holly Nagel, Elke Villa, Stephanie Lurie, Marci Senders, Kate Ritchey, and everyone else at Disney-Hyperion.

I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my amazing foreign rights agent Betty Anne Crawford, whose support and advice has gone above and beyond the call; film rights manager extraordinaire Pouya Shahbazian, who works magic; Fox Literary’s Brynn Arenz and Rachael Stein for their invaluable perspectives on the manuscript; and my indefatigable publicists Julie Schoerke, Marissa DeCuir Curnutte, and the JSK Communications team, who believed so much in this book and did so much to keep me from losing my mind.