Free The Secrets We Keep by Trisha Leaver Page B

even a sob as my mother said her last goodbyes to the coffin, turned, and walked away.
    I didn’t move from my seat, didn’t acknowledge the pitiful stares directed my way or my father’s whispered words that it was time to go. I knew my way home; I’d get there eventually.

 
    12
    I didn’t move until the last shovelful of dirt hit level ground. I was distantly aware of Alex watching me. He’d left me there at my insistence so I could make peace with what I’d done, say goodbye to my sister alone and in my own way. With her, I’d buried myself—every memory of who I was now—six feet under with the sister I’d put there.
    The last of the cemetery crew left, and I stood up, searching my dress pocket for the things I’d taken from the hospital. “I’m so sorry,” I said as I dug a small hole in the freshly turned dirt with the toe of my shoe. I’d read Alex’s card a thousand times since he handed it to me. I knew he loved her, would do anything to keep her safe, and I’d do the same … for Maddy.
    â€œI’ll take good care of him,” I said as I buried the card, praying that wherever she was, she could hear me, could forgive me. “He loves you. I mean, I guess I always assumed he did, but watching him these past couple of weeks … well, he does.”
    Tears burned behind my eyes. I’d hid them through the service, hadn’t trusted myself to keep playing my part if I gave in to my emotions. But now, with nobody watching, I finally let them fall.
    For the last few days, it had seemed like every memory I had of us as kids, every mundane detail consumed me. It was as if I was afraid that if I didn’t catalogue everything from the exact date we got braces to the color of her toothbrush, then it would be lost, tiny pieces of her forgotten forever. I couldn’t let that happen.
    â€œHere, I brought this for you.” I held a small flashlight in my hand. It was Alex’s. He had used it in the hospital to study at night when I was sleeping. I’d taken it before I left, intent on burying it with Maddy.
    â€œI meant to put it in the casket, but it was already closed,” I said as I laid it on top of the dirt mound. I quickly swiped at the tears streaming down my cheeks, but it was no use. “Remember how we used to play hide-and-seek at Grandma’s house?” I thought of the cobwebbed basement and dingy attic our cousins were always hiding in. We played together on the holidays as Mom did the dishes and Dad caught up with siblings he only saw twice a year.
    When we were five, I hid in the laundry room closet and Maddy was in Grandma’s dryer. She had the door cracked open enough so she could see, but I doubted that would give her away. No one ever thought to check the dryer.
    I heard my cousin Jake laughing, that annoying cackle that meant he was about to do something mean. But that didn’t surprise me; he was always mean. The sound got louder, and I tensed as I waited for him to find me. But it wasn’t me he was after, it was Maddy.
    Her cry sent me barreling out of the closet, fists balled and ready to hit Jake. He’d found her, but instead of yelling it to the rest of us, he’d kicked the dryer door shut and was pressing his entire weight against it, closing her in. It wasn’t the small, cramped space that scared Maddy. It was the dark. Maddy was deathly afraid of the dark. Still was.
    â€œLet her out,” I demanded. She was banging on the door, her cries tearing through my heart.
    â€œMake me,” he taunted, and leaned further into the door, blocking my path to Maddy.
    She’d stopped sobbing by then, her cries dissolving into muffled whimpers as she pleaded with Jake to open the door. I went to move around him, to push him out of the way and get to Maddy, but Jake was older and seemed twice my size. He shoved me hard, and I fell backward onto the tile