Free The Dream Runner by Kerry Schafer

white, now darkened to gold.
    "Are you ready to listen?" he asked, still not looking my way. He bent down to pick up a stone, hefted it, dropped it, and selected another. The muscle in his arm bunched and released as he sent it off in one smooth motion so that it skimmed low over the water, touched, skipped, touched again. I counted eight skips before it finally sank.
    By then I had a stone of my own and let it go. Without even trying we fell into the old competition. Mine skipped six times. His next only made five and mine, the last, didn't skip at all. Just splashed and sank. Tears blurred my vision and I couldn't hold back a sob.
    "You've gotta know this, J," he said. "Words can't ever say how sorry I am. You're not the only one hurt by what I did. You. Your father. Mine. This whole town took a hit, losing him like that."
    He threw another stone, still smooth and flawless, as though it had no weight and was meant to fly. "I—" His voice broke and he never did say what was on his mind in that moment.
    As for me, the tears wouldn't stop, and despite the fact that they were pretty near blinding me by now, I was seeing a whole lot of things I didn't want to see.
    The ambulance, the police cars, sirens wailing, lights flashing. Men in uniform scurrying around like ants, too late to accomplish any good. My father is under the water somewhere. I know he's dead. If they drag him up he'll just have to be buried all over again, this time in the dirt.
    Wrapped in a blanket, shivering and struggling to catch my breath, I watch them put the cuffs on Will. He's soaking wet and covered in blood and his whole body is shaking with the cold or shock or maybe the realization of what he's done. The cops see it, too, and they're gentle with him. For just an instant his eyes come up as they lead him by me and I see a pain there that surpasses mine. As they put him in the car and take him away, I feel like I'm drowning all over again. He is the last person left in the world who still loves me.
    And I love him, in that space of time before I let the rage take me. I love him with all I am.
    "J?"
    I realized he'd been talking and I hadn't heard a word. It was hard to speak around the tears, but I managed to find my voice. "Sorry, I got lost in a memory there for a minute."
    "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I've waited ten years to tell you that. Somehow I thought it might change something, for you. For me, or us." He threw another stone, and this time there was no skipping, just a full-scale release of energy. It splashed, way out in the lake. "Guess it doesn't really change anything at all."
    I thought about the nightmare, trapped in the very walls of my house, and about my need to start cleaning up my own messes. And so I told him the thing I should have told him ten years ago. It took me two starts to get the words out—I'd had them locked up inside me for so long.
    "He was dying anyway."
    Will's arm stopped in the middle of a stone-throwing arc. He stood statue still, not even breathing. I couldn’t look at his face. Guilt choked me, squeezing my throat like a giant fist and the rest of the words came out strangled, distorted.
    "He had cancer, far gone. Only a couple of months to live."
    The stone dropped onto the gravel with a little clatter. Will turned toward me and I almost ran away, but I grabbed a struggling breath and made myself look into his eyes. They made me think of rain on a window, rain on the lake. More grey than blue now, all the light quenched.
    "And you let me think…"
    All of my anger seemed like nothing more than a childish tantrum. We'd both had a drink on board that night, our first experiment with beer, but by the time Will got behind the wheel it had pretty much worn off. The truth was, it was late, it was dark, it was raining. And when we came around that corner there was a cow in the road. Will swerved to miss the cow.
    I would have done the same.
    I'd alienated the last person in the world who