The Sea of Tranquility(103)
Author: Katja Millay

For the nearly two years since I remembered, I’ve had a picture of evil in my head and it had his face. I spent that time planning to hurt him and feeling justified, like it was owed to me. But when I came back to Brighton for him, I wasn’t sure I could do it. So I sat in the dirt. Under the trees. In the place where he beat me. And I waited. I waited for the words. I waited for the courage. I waited to decide. But I waited too long; and he took that from me too.

I never did see him again after that day in the gallery. I never did get to make him listen. I’ll be allowed to speak at his sentencing, whenever that is. I haven’t decided if I will. I know there are still things to say, but I don’t know what they are anymore, and there are days when I miss the silence.

Sometimes I wonder whatever became of the real Russian girl who I was supposed to be that day. I wonder if she heard about what happened and if she knows what part she played in it simply by existing.

***

One afternoon Josh calls, and in the understatement of the century, I tell him that I’m tired of being angry.

“Then don’t be,” he says, as if this is the most logical thing on earth. And maybe it is.

“But if I’m not angry then isn’t it the same as saying it’s okay? Doesn’t it mean I’m condoning it?”

“No. It means you’re accepting it.” He takes a breath and exhales. “I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t be pissed. You should be furious. You’re entitled to every ounce of anger you have.” He stops speaking for a moment and when he starts again I can hear the tension in his voice. “You have no idea how much I want to kill him for what he did to you, and if he hadn’t been arrested, I don’t know that there is anything that would have stopped me from doing it, so don’t think that I don’t believe your hatred is justified. But you have a choice now and I’d rather you choose to be happy. And I know that that sounds stupid. Maybe it sounds like the most impossible thing in the world, but it’s still what I want. He took the f**king piano, Sunshine. He didn’t take everything. Look at your left hand. It’s probably clenched in a fist right now, isn’t it?”

I don’t need to look. It is. He knows it.

“Now open it up and let it go.”

And I do.

***

I think about the day I died and about the story Josh’s grandfather told and three days later I write a letter to the court for whenever they want to read it.

My name is Emilia Ward.

I have a list of nevers I started when I was fifteen. I will never be the Brighton Piano Girl again. I will never carry a child. I will never walk down the street in the middle of the afternoon without wondering if someone is waiting to kill me. I will never get back the months of my life that I spent in rehabilitation and in and out of hospitals, instead of in recitals and in and out of school. I will never get back the years I spent hating every last person in the world, including myself. I will never not know the meaning of the word pain.

I understand pain. I understand rage. Aidan Richter gave me the gift of that understanding. He understands it, too. I spent the past three years despising the person who did this to me; the person who stole my life and took my identity. I learned to despise myself in the process. I spent the last three years fortifying my rage, while he spent the last three years healing his.

I will never forget what he did to me. I will never forgive it. I will never stop hating him. Please don’t ask me to. I wish I could say that I am a big enough person; but I’m not. I will never stop mourning what he stole from me. But I can’t steal it back from him and I don’t want to anymore. I think maybe I can believe in spite of Aidan Richter; or maybe I can believe because of him. If he can heal his life, then maybe I can, too.

I can’t tell you what I believe is the appropriate punishment for him. I just don’t know. But I would like to believe in the dream of second chances. For both of us.

***

Nothing is perfect. It’s not even good yet. But maybe.

***

And after five weeks, I go home.

CHAPTER 58

Emilia

I haven’t gotten better. I’m not even close to okay. The only thing I’ve done is to decide to get better. But I think that may just be enough.

I’m trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love. I know that bad things still happen. And sometimes I still ask myself why I am alive; but now, when I ask, I have an answer.

***

I get back on a Sunday morning and that evening I walk into dinner at the Leighton house, unexpected, but always welcome. I can tell the music is Sarah’s and it makes me smile because I still hate it, but not her. Everyone is laughing and helping and sniping, and other than the fact that Tierney Lowell is setting the table, everything is the same.

Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn’t tell him I was coming back. He doesn’t say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I’m here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation.

“Hi‌—‌” Mrs. Leighton says, her eyes wide, when I walk into the kitchen without a stitch of black on me, carrying the same chocolate cake I brought the first time I had dinner here.

“Emilia,” I fill the pause, because everyone is still trying to figure out what to call me. Except maybe Josh, who’s always known.

“Emilia,” she says, and hugs me. “You have a beautiful voice.”

And maybe some things aren’t the same.

***

“Answer me something,” Josh says, a month after I’ve gotten back. I’m in the chair in his garage and I’m doing homework, not woodworking, because I may never catch up. I could go inside and study in the air conditioning, but I love this place. And being out here, breathing sawdust in Josh Bennett’s garage with him, is worth any amount of sweat.

“I’ve answered everything, Josh. I don’t think there are any questions left to ask.”

“Just one,” he says, laying down a screwdriver and coming over to lean against the workbench opposite me. He pushes his boots out far enough so that they just touch mine.

I close the book and try not to smile at him, because I know what’s coming. It’s the question I’ve been waiting for him to ask since the day I got lost and ended up at his house in the middle of the night, before he even knew what the question was.