“Dad, I thought you were mad at me. I thought you thought Mom had left because I was such a difficult child. You told AuntJessie on the phone that if I hadn’t been so painfully shy, Mom would still be here...”
“Oh, Kansas.” Now he looks like he wants to give me a hug. “You weren’t really difficult. You were shy, yes, and I didn’t know how to deal with you sometimes.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his pajama bottoms. “Your Mom met William Sparks in your therapist’s waiting room. He was there with his niece, helping his sister since she was unavailable. He was visiting from the West Coast.”
“Mom wha...” My jaw drops. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
He brushes his sleep-ruffled curls off his forehead. “I didn’t want you to blame yourself. I had no way of knowing that you were listening in on the phone. You’re not supposed to eavesdrop, are you?”
I smile guiltily as he winks at me. Yes, I can smile again, but it still hurts. It feels a bit like I’m wearing a hard plaster mask that my muscles have to fight.
“I liked the blonde hair,” Dad admits now, shifting from one foot to the other. “It looked less like her.”
“You still miss her.” Once again, I think of River, and my throat becomes tight and hot, as if I’d swallowed a freshly roasted chestnut. “Dad, she left us and never contacted us. You shouldn’t miss someone like that. She let us all down.” River, on the other hand...
“I know. But sometimes the mind and heart disagree.” He takes his hands out of his pockets. “A hot chocolate with extra cream?” he asks, opening the kitchen cupboard.
I am miserable and terribly lonely. I hardly eat anything, but I don’t want to curb his renewed caring because it’s the only way he can show me what I mean to him. “Sure,” I say and nod eagerly, even though everything inside me is raw and hollow.
Dad puts the kettle on.
I turn to the kitchen, window and for an instant, I believe I see River standing behind the pane in the cold night, resting his forehead against the glass and winking at me, but that’s impossible.
Tears well in my eyes again.
The day before yesterday, Arizona and I watched all the recordings of Demons ’N Saints’ live concerts. I wanted to see River in action, not just in one of the photos on my phone that I know almost by heart. I took most of them when I knew he was Chester’s brother. Every now and then, I took a photo of the two of us.
River, however, has nothing in common with Asher Blackwell in any of the photos. Asher Blackwell is a stranger to me. Even his voice didn’t sound like River's during the live concerts, as I had hoped. Only now and then, during a fleeting gesture as he ran his hand through his hair or in a smile, did I recognize River behind all that makeup. And those moments—those flashes of love in my heart—were a thousand times worse than the moments when he was a stranger to me. Their current album is now all over the charts. All the songs they should have played at the concerts. An entire nation is mourning.
Dad pours the hot water into the two mugs with heart-shaped handles that James gave Arizona and me for our twelfth birthday. He meticulously stirs the chocolate powder and then puts a huge dollop of whipped cream on top.
“Drink,” he says and presses a mug into my hand. He avoids my gaze—I don’t think he can watch me cry without it physically hurting him. “It’s good after such a cold night,” he adds. “I don’t understand what the point is, but you do.”
“To sleep down here?” I ask. I sniff the steaming drink, but my stomach turns. Food and I still don’t really get along. When I eat, it’s only because I know I need strength. I glance out thewindow into the darkness again. River isn’t out there—I know that—but I can’t stop waiting for him. It is completely crazy.
The first snowflakes drift by—thick flakes like cotton balls or glittering white stars. Snow-star-flurries. Nightlight-flakes. Sky-tear-crystals.
My heart clenches. “I think if I sit here long enough, maybe he’ll come back,” I reply quietly, a deep wave of sadness sweeping over me. “Then I’ll be the first to see him...”
Dad looks concerned. “Oh, Kans...”
“Did you know that River slept on June’s grave for a year?”
“No.” My dad relaxes his shoulders by rolling them around. “Why did he do that?”
“He couldn’t let go of her. He said it was his fault that she killed herself.”
“No one is solely to blame for something like that. I hope you know that.”
Yes, I understand it now. River’s words helped me.There was nothing in the world that you could have done to stop it. He didn’t want me to hold on to him, so now I have to let him go—a little bit more every day.
Dad looks at me, and something strange happens to his eyes. They glitter with moisture in the dim kitchen light. “It must have been so bad for you. Kansas, we still haven’t talked about what happened that day when...”
“I talked to Arizona; it’s okay,” I reply evasively. River did all that for me. He gave me my sister back. And James. Last weekend, we rode our old bikes out to the oil refinery and marveled at the green glow of the steel towers and pipelines until dawn. We even climbed and balanced on the adjacent unused site. It was almost like it used to be. If only there wasn’t always that wrenching pain in my chest and I didn’t have to think about River every time. About his crooked smile and his smoky voice, about the tenderheyand his irresistiblebaby. Sometimes,I imagine he’s with me, wrapping his arms around me and whispering a hundred beautiful words in my ear. Then I smell his breath—that mixture of caramel-sweet Jack Daniel’s and a freshness that tastes like freedom. During those moments, when I miss him so much, I feel like I die a bit. I long for the feeling of the slackline under my bare feet and the wind on my face. I want to run lines with him between the firs again, escape through blue-green rivers, and discover the feeling of love. I want to put myself in danger and feel safe again, just to experience the intensity of life. I want to make love to him, to feel him as deeply as I did back in Las Vegas.
Damn it, I just want him back.
The paradox is that he never really existed. I loved someone who didn’t exist. It’s as if I had fallen in love with a phantom or a character from a fairy tale. River McFarley was merely a projection of River’s own desires—how he wanted to be. The eternal savior, always in a good mood. Daring and bold. He wanted to pay off Tanner Davenport’s debt, but in his dark hours, Tanner was always with him.
Tears are streaming down my cheeks again and dripping into the cream on my cocoa. “I miss him, Dad,” I choke out as I set the cup down because the cocoa is spilling over. “I miss him so much that everything hurts. Sometimes, I feel like I can hardly breathe because I miss him so much...”
