All That We Carried Read online

  Olivia watched him disappear into the trees, then squatted down to rummage through Melanie’s pack again even though she knew there was nothing else in there. A moment later she heard footsteps coming up the path.

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, all right?” she said without looking up.

  “Well, excuse me,” came Melanie’s voice. “I was just coming to see if you needed any help.”

  Olivia stood. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you. I thought you were Josh.”

  “Oh.” Melanie glanced at the full clothesline. “Do you need any help?”

  “No. All done.”

  “Okay.”

  They stared awkwardly at each other for a moment.

  “Hey, did you see my phone anywhere?” Melanie said.

  Olivia pointed to the rock. “I didn’t try to power it on. It needs to dry out first.”

  “My journal!” Melanie snatched up the book and cast Olivia a suspicious glance.

  “I didn’t read it. It’s unreadable anyway.”

  Melanie opened it and frantically flipped through the pages. “No! No, no, no!”

  “I’m sorry, Mel.”

  “I had something really important recorded in this one.” She sat down hard on the rock. “Now it’s gone. All of what happened, all I felt about it.”

  Olivia said nothing, and she especially did not say that this wouldn’t have happened if Melanie had put the journal in a plastic bag as directed.

  Melanie dropped the journal on the ground and put her face in her hands.

  Olivia sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. “You still know it happened though, right?” she tried. “You still know how you felt.”

  “Right now, maybe. But what about twenty years from now? I’m not going to remember it as clearly.”

  “Gosh. Twenty years? What’s so important you want to remember it perfectly twenty years from now?”

  Melanie’s teary eyes met hers for just a moment, then she looked at the journal on the ground. “Nothing.” She straightened her back and stared out at the lake, her limp curls blown back from her blotchy face by the wind. “This trip sucks.”

  Olivia laughed. “Yes. Yes it does.” She rubbed Melanie’s back. “But we’re going to finish it anyway. Who knows? Maybe it’ll get better.”

  “It’s gotta be all uphill from here, right?”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, literally it’s basically all uphill from here because Lake Superior is the lowest elevation in the park.”

  “Oh, Ollie,” Melanie said, giving her a half-playful shove. “You’re the worst sometimes.”

  Olivia smiled. “I know. It’s an art, really—exasperating people.” She stood up. “Speaking of which, did you see Josh when you came out here?”

  “No. You exasperated him?”

  “Other way around. He’s apparently imperturbable.”

  “What were you two talking about?”

  “This and that. How I’m too concerned about being prepared for every contingency and how I’m suppressing evidence of a god to fit my own agenda. Your standard light conversational fare for someone you’ve just met.”

  Melanie laughed. “I swear I didn’t put him up to that.”

  “Right.”

  “Honestly. I’m just glad you weren’t out here talking about me.”

  “Oh, Melanie. You’re not as interesting a topic of conversation as you think you are.” She pulled Melanie to her feet and handed her the food bag from her pack. “Come on. Let’s go eat dinner. We can come back for this stuff later.”

  They started up the path.

  “First thing I’m going to eat when we get out of these woods is a giant burrito smothered in cheese and sour cream,” Olivia said.

  “That actually does sound kind of good,” Melanie admitted.

  “Well, get your own. I’m not sharing.”

  twenty-two

  MELANIE PICKED THROUGH the contents of her food bag. When she’d chosen this stuff at the grocery store, she’d been excited to eat it. Now it was just a random jumble of disparate items that had no business being in the same bag. Like the weird off-brand Halloween candy left, sad and unloved, in a plastic pumpkin come December. Not one thing looked like it could satisfy her hunger. These were snacks, not meals. She’d just been snacking all this time. She needed something substantial.

  Next to her the firelight flickered across the pale pink flesh of the trout on Olivia’s makeshift pita-bread plate. Josh had caught and grilled up two small fish: one for Olivia and one for himself. When he’d extracted the pita bread from the bag in his pack, Melanie noted there were only five pieces. That would leave only three after tonight, and Josh had said he was staying in the woods at least one more night, with a long hike back to the car after that. She couldn’t very well ask him for a piece. So she sat silently by the fire, muscling down another protein bar and wishing she was in her kitchen at home.

  Nothing was going right. She’d been a fool to think a ten-year rift could be solved in just a few days. To think that Olivia’s heart of stone would soften if she could just say the right words and pull on the right heartstrings. Nothing short of a divine act could make that happen.

  Now her journal, her backup plan, was destroyed. If she was going to tell Olivia about what was going on in her life, she’d have to say it out loud. And even though she’d practiced saying it in the bathroom mirror in the days leading up to this trip, she was never confident she’d be able to get the words out of her throat when the time came.

  Melanie felt herself slipping into a pit, like she’d slipped on those rocks in the river. She was going down, not into cold, rushing water but into a still, dank darkness she knew all too well. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on something else. The cool air at her back. The heat from the fire on her face. The feel of the ground beneath her feet. The sound of leaves dropping from the trees. The physical world. But the most physical thing she felt at that moment was still the gnawing hunger in her gut.

  All at once she became aware of Josh standing beside her, extending a pita that cradled several large chunks of cooked fish.

  “What? No,” she said by reflex. “I’m—”

  “You’re hungry,” Josh said.

  “I have plenty.”

  “So do I.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Then you won’t have enough.”

  “I always have enough, and then some,” he said, offering it again to her.

  This time Melanie took it. She knew these fish were not her parents. She’d always known it, she realized. They had not come back as animals of some kind, or even other people. She knew it as plainly as she knew that it would never be the right time to tell Olivia about Justin. That she just needed to get it over with. She lifted the fish to her mouth and took a bite, savoring the taste, remembering the big family meals they’d had with their parents. Then she swallowed it down and stared hard at the fire.

  “Justin asked me to marry him.”

  She winced as she said it, as though expecting a blow. But nothing happened. Nothing was said. She risked a glance at her sister. Olivia was staring at her. Glaring at her. Lips slightly parted, fire dancing in her eyes.

  “I haven’t told him anything yet.”

  Melanie didn’t want to hear the kinds of things Olivia was undoubtedly lining up in her brain to shout out at any moment. All of the anger that was building up inside of her. Even so, she wished she’d get it over with. The silence was somehow worse.

  “I said I needed to talk to you first.”

  At that, Olivia stood up and threw the pita bread with the fish to the ground. “You’re sick,” she spit out. “You’re seriously sick. How have you let him gaslight you like this? Are you out of your mind? Or are you just stupid?”

  Olivia’s words fell like hailstones on Melanie’s battered spirit, and she felt herself shrinking beneath them.

  “What am I supposed to say to you right now?” Olivia continued. “What did you think I w
ould say? ‘Oh, hey, that’s great, sis, congratulations, when’s the big day’? ‘If only Dad was alive so he could walk you down the aisle’?” Her voice rose another register. “He’s the reason Dad will never walk you down the aisle! He’s the reason Mom will never cry joyful tears on your wedding day! He’s the reason I couldn’t stand to talk to you or even look at you for the past ten years! And now you’re going to marry him?”

  “I didn’t say I was going to—”

  “The fact that you’re close enough to him that he would even dream of asking you that question—it’s just unbelievable! I knew you moved up there to be near him. I knew it! I knew where he went when he left Rockford. And then a couple months later you move up there too and you think I’m not going to figure it out?”

  Olivia took a few sharp steps away from the fire, then turned around and came back, stopping at Melanie’s feet, looming over her like a vulture over a deer carcass on the side of the road.

  “If you thought I was done with you before, you have no idea what you’re in for now. When I get into my car in Indian River, that will be the last time you see me. Ever. Understand? I don’t want to have anything to do with you ever again.”

  Olivia stalked off to the tent and zipped herself up into it. Melanie crumpled. Hot tears stung her chapped cheeks. Her breath came in choking gasps. She felt the pita bread with the fish on it being removed from her hand. Josh settled down next to her on the log and put an arm around her shoulders. It felt like her heart was imploding, like it was being sucked in on itself until it was a single small, hard piece of gravel stuck in the wall of her chest.

  How was it that this was both exactly what she’d expected and yet simultaneously so much worse? How could she have imagined for one moment that Olivia would give her a chance to explain herself? To explain that no one in the world understood her as well as Justin did. That no one knew her sorrow like he did. That he was so, so sorry for the pain he had caused in both their lives. That he’d agonized over it. That he’d considered suicide, even going so far as to plan it out and write a note. That he credited her forgiveness with stopping him from taking his own life. That he’d finally found his peace with God and realized that his life was still worth something. That while he could never undo what he had done, he could move forward.

  But Olivia would never listen to all of that. She didn’t want to forgive. She’d wanted him to stand trial all those years ago for manslaughter, but no one else in the family agreed. No charges were filed, and she’d never forgiven them for it.

  Slowly, Melanie ran out of tears. She wiped her eyes and nose on the sleeve of Olivia’s jacket, only realizing then that she was wearing it. She looked up at Josh, embarrassed by how long she had been in his arms, embarrassed by the spectacle he’d just witnessed, feeling she owed him some sort of explanation but knowing she didn’t have the energy to offer one.

  He rubbed her upper arm and let out a breath. “You want to borrow my hammock tonight?”

  In spite of herself, Melanie managed a laugh. “Yes.” She sniffed. “But no. Of course not.”

  “Why ‘of course not’?”

  “Then you’d have nowhere to sleep.”

  “I’d sleep in the tent.”

  “With Olivia?”

  “Presumably, yes.” Josh stood and tossed the remains of Olivia’s discarded food into the fire. “I think at this point, between the two of us, she’d rather have me in there, right?”

  Melanie stood. “I guess.” She brushed off the back of her pants.

  Josh reached for her food bag. “I’ll take care of all of this. Why don’t you head down to the beach and see if your stuff is dry?” He fished a compact flashlight out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

  Wrong, Melanie thought. Things were clearly already as dark as they could get.

  She started down the path that led to the lake, still trying to regulate her breathing after her sob session. It had been six months or more since she’d cried that big for that long, and at the moment she was having trouble recalling what the last one was all about. With her journal destroyed, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever remember.

  Why hadn’t she listened and put everything in plastic bags as instructed? Why was Olivia always right? Was she right about Justin too? She certainly knew him better than Melanie did. All of the personal revelations over the years—about his family issues, his problems in school, his years of dabbling in drugs—Olivia had already known all of it and never divulged any of it to Melanie. She’d kept Justin’s secrets for him. It was what best friends did, after all.

  When they’d found out that it had been Justin driving the other car, Melanie expected Olivia to show at least some concern for him. Instead, she’d burned him out of her life for good, just as it seemed she was now ready to do to her own sister. How could Melanie ever hope to have a relationship with someone who allowed no room for mistakes, no room for repentance?

  The rocky shoreline of Lake Superior was littered with blobs of black and gray and blue. Her clothes, blown off the line and now strewn along the beach. She crisscrossed the stones, snatching up pants and shirts and sports bras, hoping she’d manage to get it all, hoping that a hiker would not stumble upon a pair of her underwear at some later date. The task took her far enough afield that she lost track of the clothesline and the large flat rock that held her journal and the pieces of her cell phone.

  She scanned the trees for the line of rope. When would she ever stop getting herself lost?

  Her arms full of clothes, she stumbled over the wave-rounded stones, willing herself in the right direction. Or what she thought might be the right direction. It did cross her mind that if she were out here long enough, Josh would eventually come looking and find her. But she didn’t want to be found. She wanted to find her own way.

  What she needed was to start thinking like Olivia. She stopped walking. The wind blew her limp hair across her face, and she noted the direction. If her clothes had been blown off the line, that was the direction they would have gone, and she’d already gathered them all up, so she started walking the other way down the beach, sticking near the trees, scanning up and down. Twenty or so yards ahead a flash of white caught her eye. The ink-stained pages of her journal flapping in the wind.

  She quickened her pace. There was her phone in pieces on the rock, the clothesline hanging rather limp between two trees, and her pack, blending in with the general brownish-green of a nearly denuded shrub. She folded her clothes haphazardly with no regard for what was clean and what was dirty. At this point in the hike, did it really matter? The second a clean article of clothing touched her body, it would be dirty. She zipped up the pack and put her cell phone back together but resisted the urge to try powering it up. Maybe tomorrow.

  Lastly, she picked up her journal. The pages were mostly dry but so wrinkled she couldn’t close the book all the way. Was it even worth taking? Melanie almost left it on the rock before remembering Olivia’s reaction to the trash in the fire ring and her “leave no trace” rule. She’d bring it with her and find some appropriate way to dispose of it later.

  She sat down on the rock and stared out at the lake. The wind was dying down and the sky was dimming. Melanie hugged herself tightly against the cold. What would it be like to see Olivia the next morning? Would she even talk to her? Look at her? Would Josh have to be their go-between and mediator for the rest of the hike? That at least might make things tolerable. Then there’d be the long, agonizing drive back to Olivia’s car.

  And after that? Nothing? If she told Justin yes, certainly. But what if she told him no? Could Olivia get over the fact that she’d even considered marrying him? She’d have to choose: Justin or her sister. Or had she already lost her sister for good?

  Melanie stood up. It was time to get back to the campsite.

  She was buckling the straps of her pack when she noticed something being pushed up onto the shore by the waves. More trash. She picked it out of the water,
turned it over, and laughed out loud. The Universe certainly had a sense of humor.

  twenty-three

  OLIVIA HAD ENTERED a nightmare and couldn’t wake up.

  Justin? Justin Navarro? Did the man have some sort of sick fascination with destroying her? If he’d followed Melanie to Petoskey, she’d have to say the answer was a definite yes. But it was Melanie who had followed him. He must have manipulated her somehow. Starting with the day of the funeral when he’d shown up at the cemetery in a new car that had to be driven by someone else because his license had been suspended. A day he knew she would be vulnerable to emotional exploitation. But marriage? That was too far. That was sick and twisted and spiteful. It was clearly designed to hurt her.

  Olivia knew the accident had been just that—an accident. Unplanned. Unfortunate. But Justin knew her well enough to know she’d have no sympathy for him. Who could?

  Melanie.

  Simple, trusting Melanie. If he couldn’t have Olivia, he’d have Melanie.

  “He’s your oldest friend,” Melanie had said that horrible day when she’d called to tell Olivia she’d forgiven Justin. “Don’t you think he’s sorry?”

  “Sorry? Sorry is something you say when you miss someone’s birthday or shut a door in their face! Sorry is for breaches of etiquette, not manslaughter!” she’d screamed at the phone as her college roommate looked on, eyes wide and jaw slack. “You can’t be friends with someone after they kill your parents!”

  And now ten years later she was forced to have the same basic conversation. Marriage? How could Melanie do this to her? To the memory of their parents, which she so obviously tried to honor in the most ridiculous ways. Or was that all a ruse? Just a way for her to get sympathy and attention from other people? How often had she trotted out her personal grief in front of her followers and subscribers so she could get their thumbs-ups and their trite little messages of fake encouragement?

  Olivia felt like she was going to throw up, though there was nothing in her stomach to come out. She hadn’t had a chance to take one bite of Josh’s fish before Melanie sprang this insanity on her. Now they were out there together. Melanie undoubtedly crying, Josh undoubtedly offering a shoulder to cry on. And what did she have? Why should Melanie get comfort while she got nothing?