Page 46 of Tell Me Softly

There she was, in her waterlogged Cinderella costume. How she’d smiled a few hours ago when she’d unwrapped it and asked Mom to help her put it on, so she could be a princess for a day.

The ambulance wailed as it pulled off onto the roadside.

I looked up and saw two paramedics hurrying down with a red trauma bag.

The first thing they did was take out a pair of scissors and cut open her dress.

That’s when I started to cry. It wasn’t her motionless chest, wasn’t her limp body lying on the cold ground—it was seeing that costume she had wanted so badly get destroyed.

“Please don’t let her die,” my mother said desperately, tears streaming down her face.

They did all they could.

For twenty minutes of sheer agony, of panic I can’t even describe, they tried.

And when they stopped, there was a weird sense of relief. They were leaving her alone , I thought. They’d stopped touching her, pushing down on her chest, trying to blow air into her lungs. That’s how out of it I was. If they leave her alone, she’ll be OK , I told myself.

One of the medics looked over at my mother.

At the same time, someone shouted from far away: my father.

He was running down the hill toward us. His vocal cords must have torn as he fell before her on the ground.

My mother was too lost in grief to notice him.

Her precious blond-haired, green-eyed girl was gone.

I felt a hand grab mine. Almost unconsciously, I squeezed it. It was my brother. He helped me up; he pulled me in close. And all I could think to do was take him away from there. Away from the tragedy, from death, from that little girl we’d never see growing up.

I held his hand, and we ran away.

***

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I slowed down and saw her through the windshield.

“What the…?” I said, passing her, then glanced again in the rearview mirror. I put the car in reverse, backed up, and cracked the window. “Kamila, what in the hell are you doing here?”

She turned and stopped. I got out and ran over to her.

“What are you doing?!” I asked again.

Her hair was soaked and clinging to her. Her clothes were soaked too. She was dragging her bike along behind her.

“Thiago?” she said, shouting to be heard over the rain.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” I shouted.

I grabbed her arm and jerked her away. She dropped her bike, but I didn’t care.

Only once she was safe in the car did I go back for it, pulling the quick-release lever to take off the front wheel so it would fit in the back seat of my car.

By the time I was in the driver’s seat again, I was starting to wonder if we were in the middle of a hurricane.

I’d never seen rain like that before in my life.

As I put the car in drive, I shouted, “Kami, I asked you something. Can you answer me, please?”

But she just stared straight ahead.

“Kamila…” I said more softly. I could tell something was wrong. When we reached an area where I could pull over, I parked and asked her again: “Kam…”

She turned before I could finish and asked, “Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me?”

Her cheeks were glowing, her body shaking from the cold.

I turned on the heat and tried not to stare at her.

I couldn’t because my feelings were too much for me just then.

It was the anniversary of the day we’d said goodbye to my sister eight years ago.

The day I fell with her off that very same bridge, the day I nearly lost my brother and mother too. The day everything changed forever.

Because I didn’t just lose my sister.

I lost myself.

If none of that had happened, my sister would be twelve now. Almost the same age I was when I lost her.

And yet, strangely, the pain I’d been feeling as the date approached––that bitter pain that ate into my muscles, my bones, my entire body––lessened slightly in Kam’s presence.

She was a woman now, and maybe it was time to recognize that she had grown up, that she wasn’t the little girl I had blamed for ruining my life, my mother’s life, my brother’s, my father’s…

I remembered telling her at the funeral, “I said to keep your mouth shut.”

Her father had brought her, and I remember feeling confused that my mother had held him tight as she cried her eyes out, watching the little coffin being lowered into the ground at the Carsville cemetery.

“I’m so sorry,” Kam had said, her face red from crying nonstop.

“This was your fault,” I’d told her. “You know that, right?” I was standing so close to her that no one else could hear.

Kam had had her hair in pigtails—just like Lucy had a few days before, when she was still breathing. I hated seeing her like that, her clothing so neat, her hair perfect. My sister used to copy her—she adored her, she used to talk about how she wished she had a big sister like Kam.

“This is your fault,” I’d screamed, and shoved her to the ground.

No one had seen it but my brother, and of course he’d come running over to protect her.

“Leave her alone!” he’d shouted. “You’re the one who couldn’t get Lucy out in time. If you’d have just tried harder, she’d still be here.”

I’d frozen.

It was true.

And the pain of that memory would come back to me every night for the rest of my life.

I looked up again at Kam, that beautiful girl I had missed every day since I left Carsville, that girl whose smile I dreamed of and whom I tortured myself over because I knew I was supposed to hate her.

I had tried––I had cultivated my rage like a garden, but I couldn’t anymore.

I couldn’t keep lying to myself about how much she’d meant to me.

“Can you forgive me?” I asked.

She blinked. She didn’t seem to understand what I meant.

“What?” she asked, taking a few seconds to absorb my words.

Outside, the rain plunked against the roof and the windshield.

“I never should have blamed you,” I admitted.

It was hard for me to say that aloud. But my sister had died because of a chain of circumstances of which Kami had been one small part.

None of us could have known what was going to happen that afternoon, and if we’d had the chance, every one of us would have done whatever we could to save her.

My father cheated on my mother with her best friend.

I asked a little girl not to tell what she’d seen.

Kam told her father.

Her father lost his cool at a child’s birthday party.

My mother hit the bridge going three times the speed limit.

A deer crossed the road.

I didn’t make sure everyone’s seat belt was unbuckled before I broke the glass.

I could go on. I could keep adding to the list, and it would never end.

I felt Kam’s hand on my cheek, and I shivered.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said quietly.

“Sure, I guess…” I said, still not capable of looking at her.

“But that wouldn’t have changed the situation.

It was my fault, Kam. I couldn’t get to her in time.

I couldn’t hold my breath long enough. She never had a chance…

” I heard my voice cracking. “I blamed you because it was easy. Because I thought maybe that way, I wouldn’t have to blame myself. ”

“Thiago, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.” I looked over finally and into her big brown eyes.

“Sometimes bad things just happen to good people, even though they don’t deserve them.

Sometimes life knocks us down and reminds us that it’s the boss, that it can do what it wants with us, that everything can end in a minute.

And that’s why we have to live, Thiago. Live to the maximum.

You can’t blame yourself or anyone else for what happened to Lucy. You just need to live…”

“Live?” I looked at her damp hair, the lines on her face, the curve of her pink lips. “Why do I deserve to live when she can’t?”

“Because life isn’t fair,” she responded, spilling a single tear. I reached up and stopped it from dripping down her neck. “And you should live. For your sister. Forgive yourself. Forgive everyone else and live.”

I looked at that finger with the tear gleaming on its tip, brought it to my mouth, savored it…and it did give me the desire to live again. It gave me a feeling of possibility I never thought I’d know again.

We sat there in silence, listening to the rain and the thunder overhead…listening to each other’s heartbeats and breathing.

“Tell me something,” I said then. “Did you ever like me more than my brother?”

Kam looked confused, uncomfortable. But I wasn’t going to let her wiggle out of it.

I cupped her cheek and pulled her close to me.

“Tell me,” I said. I needed that response.

More than I’d ever needed anything. I needed that response to begin again, to trust people, to believe that maybe, just maybe, life still had some happiness in store for me.

“Tell me softly, and I promise that will be reason enough for me to start over again.”

Kam tried to look down, but I wouldn’t let her…

“Tell me, Kam…please. I need you to.”

“It was always you, Thiago,” she said. “It always was, it is, and it always will be.”

And then, without hesitating, I kissed her.