But Holden knew me well enough not to keep making me talk. After a few moments, he stood. Pulled me up with him. We began to walk down the other side of Strawberry Fields. “My advice, for what it’s worth?” he said after a few more silent moments. “Let go of all that. These lost weeks are only a ripple across your life line. How could they be equal to the amount of effort you put into worrying about them?”
“Right. I know.” I nodded; I was resigned to the fact that nobody could truly understand. The kindness and the pep talks from Holden, Rachel, my parents—they were all so incredibly well-intentioned, and came from such a place of yearning for me to be better. But in my heart, I knew my friends and family were trying to solve a darkness that there was no way for them to mark, let alone dig into. “And I’m in good shape, considering,” I told Holden instead. “I know I’m lucky. I’m obsessed with what I’ve lost. But the whole reason I want to be in this world, living my life, is because I know the value of what I got to keep.”
“That’s the Ember I know.” He stopped, rubbed the pad of his thumb across my chin. “But there’s no answer in that accident. There’s nothing there, actually. You’ll only make yourself unhappy if you keep looking back. So why don’t you start to build up new memorable moments? Like today. Right? Today was amazing.” Then he brushed my bangs away to touch the scar. And then, to my surprise, he kissed it.
I flinched. “Don’t.”
“It’s a badge of courage. It’s who you are now.”
“Not yet I’m not.” I ducked my head and turned away.
Horribly, somehow I could feel right in that odd, painful moment the wrench that Kai hadn’t called, and that he wasn’t going to. It was very likely he had a girlfriend. Or maybe he just plain wasn’t interested enough in me. Beyond the spontaneous, electric combustion that seemed to happen during these chance meet-ups, there was no place for me in that guy’s life.
At the next corner, I reached into my jeans pocket to toss the matchbook into one of the park’s giant steel trash baskets. How silly to be so sentimental. Kai hadn’t given this to me as some kind of romantic keepsake. I didn’t need any reminder of a night that held no logic or meaning.
Holden was right. Let go. Some things were better off forgotten. Be the moment. Live in beauty. Seize today. Except that wasn’t exactly how it worked. Life wasn’t as easy as messages on coffee mugs sold in hospital gift shops, and I should know—I had a shelf of them.
At the last minute, with the basket in clear sight, the matchbook stayed in my hand.
15
It’s Your Pandora Moment
“Hey, Mom, where are my accident clothes?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You know what. From February, from the bridge. The hospital people have to give you those things.”
“Oh, Ember.”
Mom looked so crestfallen that I returned my attention to the pot. Not exactly a happier view. The polenta looked like sludge, dense enough to bind bricks. Mom and Dad were both waiting at the kitchen table, set for three. But now, with this new topic, it was as if I’d lit a flare. We’d been discussing Dad’s golf handicap, right before. Which had been a breezier topic.
But I pressed on; I had to. “I want my biker boots back. People keep telling me about them. How I wore them every day. But I can’t find them. They’re not in my closet, or in the coat closet, or the winter clothes closet. I must have been wearing something on my feet that night, right? So I’m guessing it was those boots.”
“Ember, please. Lower your voice.” Mom took a sip of her wine. I pressed my lips together, then ladled out my sautéed button mushrooms and served the dish to the table. At least the mushrooms would sneakily disguise my polenta issues. “And you’ll just have to give me some time to think about where I put those things.”
“The boots have got to be here. I know you, Mom.” I went to the drawer for the serving spoons. “You’re two parts neatnik and one part hoarder.”
Dad smiled. “The girl’s got your number, Nat.”
“I didn’t want to start rummaging around in the basement and messing stuff up,” I continued, “but I bet they’re in one of the bins, somewhere between the Christmas tree lights bin and the summer patio cushions bin, and probably with an ‘Ember—car accident’ label.”
Dad let out a whoop of laughter, but Mom looked perplexed. “It’s hard to say exactly where I put—”
“Come on, Natalie. You absolutely know you stored them down in the basement.” Dad swept a hand through the air as if swatting a fly. “If you want those things back, Embie, they’re yours. I think it’s actually a plastic bag on that back shelf near the ski poles. And I’ll bring it up after dinner.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Though I sensed Dad’s forced casualness, and Mom’s silent discontent. But how could I not be curious? What boots had the power to bug Tom? What kind of jacket would Lissa Mandrup covet?
After Holden had dropped me off this afternoon, I’d gone through all of the upstairs closets with a fine-tooth comb. No boots, and definitely no style of jacket that Lissa ever would have wanted to buy off me.
I cut the polenta into slabs as thick as pound cake, as Mom refilled her glass. “Thank you, Ember.” Though she refrained from saying “This looks delicious”—assumedly because it didn’t—as she shifted forward to serve herself a precise, mathematical square. “Did you and Holden have a nice day?”
“We did.” I sat up, spine arched and ready to field the Holden questions.
“He’s become a real man,” said Dad. “He wears college well. Matter of fact, I’d like to see Holden coming around here again.”
“Will he be?” asked Mom.
“Sure. I mean, why not? We’re still good friends,” I answered.
“Good friends doesn’t count for much if he starts dating someone else,” said Mom. “And he’s a lovely young man. Holden Wilde would be the One That Got Away, I’m afraid.”
“And I bet he does pretty well with the ladies,” Dad added.
I nodded in absent agreement. So parenty. “He’s become a real man” and “the one that got away” and “does well with the ladies”—those were just the kind of dorky Mom-and-Dad-style lines that I might repeat to Holden later, so we could crack up. Holden and I shared a long-standing private joke that my parents’ approval had always worked just a tad bit against him. And it wasn’t completely untrue, either—though I never would have admitted it.