Read Online Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Garret Freymann-Weyr
Tags: General, Family, Juvenile Fiction, Suicide, Social Issues, Emotions & Feelings, Stepfamilies, Social Themes
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worth the argument.
Clare has a small TV that she uses to watch the news and, also, movies when she can't sleep. I do watch at friends' houses, of course, but the half-hour of anything I want on Raphael's wide, thin TV is still a thrill for me. As I flip through my math notes, I hope I haven't asked him something he doesn't want to think about.
"It would be nice if she'd had a specific reason," Raphael says. "Because otherwise one of us missed a chance to see that she was slipping away."
"Da and Clare act like her killing herself was in her personality or something."
"They're not wrong," Raphael says. "But what makes this time hard is how well she hid what she was doing."
What makes this time hard is that it worked. She died.
"She hid it all," he says. "And yet everything was there for us to see after the fact."
"What was there?" I ask.
Did he get a note I don't know about?
"She met with her lawyer, closed an account at the bank, and saw a lot of people," Raphael says. "But we didn't know how all the pieces would add up."
Rebecca's plan. The thing we all examine and stare at like a piece of modern art. What does it mean? What on earth does it mean? This is not a fun question outside of a museum.
"But who makes a plan without a reason?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says.
"There has to have been a reason. A good reason," I say. "And we're not seeing it. The way we didn't see obvious signs of her plan."
"Maybe," he says.
I suppose I was hoping Raphael would have an idea about how to start discovering Rebecca's reason. Or that he would know something I couldn't begin to guess. I go back to math, wishing for the umpteenth time that algebra didn't involve quite so many word problems. It's worse than physics.
When my two hours are up, Raphael puts down the journal he's been reading and asks, "What's your pick tonight?"
I like repeats of old black-and-white TV shows and Raphael likes a fake news show, but I don't get half of what makes it funny.
"You can decide," I say.
"Leila, about signs," he says. "And why Rebecca did it."
He pauses as if to consider what he wants to say.
"Often the very things we think of as signs are simply the things that we wish were true."
"And that makes them fake?" I ask.
"No, because what we wish for is real," he says. "But what they lead us to is, at best, unreliable."
"And at worst?"
He smiles. "That probably depends on what we're wishing for."
Based on what I can tell, Raphael's wish isn't, as family rumor says, to love my sister. It's to keep Clare safe from any and all harm. His desire to protect her is almost something you can touch. I wonder what unreliable things he sees, and how he knows which ones to trust.
If I want to uncover Rebecca's hidden story, then I need to follow the signs she's left. The unreliable as well as the true. I'll start with the man I saw when my sister was still alive. He's also been left behind and could possibly be a sign. If he's a fake one, at least it's a place to begin.
Ten
R EBECCA KEPT A DATEBOOK , which now sits on her desk, next to her laptop. She called it
my boss.
In it was her schedule, reminder notes, and lists. It's my initial idea to go through this book, looking for the name of the man I last saw my sister with.
Da and Clare (and probably the police) have been all over Rebecca's computer and file cabinets. And they used her address book, which Rebecca had had since college, to notify friends. If they went through her datebook, it wouldn't have been because they were looking for this man whose name I don't know.
Other than information I don't have, I'm not sure what I'm looking for. But I'm convinced I'll know it when it finds me. I open the datebook and flip immediately to October. I see my tutor on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm looking for a day late enough in October for it to have been dark by five.
I scan through the Tuesdays and Thursdays, and bang, there it is. October 23. In Rebecca's small, square-shaped handwriting:
Order
Clare has a small TV that she uses to watch the news and, also, movies when she can't sleep. I do watch at friends' houses, of course, but the half-hour of anything I want on Raphael's wide, thin TV is still a thrill for me. As I flip through my math notes, I hope I haven't asked him something he doesn't want to think about.
"It would be nice if she'd had a specific reason," Raphael says. "Because otherwise one of us missed a chance to see that she was slipping away."
"Da and Clare act like her killing herself was in her personality or something."
"They're not wrong," Raphael says. "But what makes this time hard is how well she hid what she was doing."
What makes this time hard is that it worked. She died.
"She hid it all," he says. "And yet everything was there for us to see after the fact."
"What was there?" I ask.
Did he get a note I don't know about?
"She met with her lawyer, closed an account at the bank, and saw a lot of people," Raphael says. "But we didn't know how all the pieces would add up."
Rebecca's plan. The thing we all examine and stare at like a piece of modern art. What does it mean? What on earth does it mean? This is not a fun question outside of a museum.
"But who makes a plan without a reason?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says.
"There has to have been a reason. A good reason," I say. "And we're not seeing it. The way we didn't see obvious signs of her plan."
"Maybe," he says.
I suppose I was hoping Raphael would have an idea about how to start discovering Rebecca's reason. Or that he would know something I couldn't begin to guess. I go back to math, wishing for the umpteenth time that algebra didn't involve quite so many word problems. It's worse than physics.
When my two hours are up, Raphael puts down the journal he's been reading and asks, "What's your pick tonight?"
I like repeats of old black-and-white TV shows and Raphael likes a fake news show, but I don't get half of what makes it funny.
"You can decide," I say.
"Leila, about signs," he says. "And why Rebecca did it."
He pauses as if to consider what he wants to say.
"Often the very things we think of as signs are simply the things that we wish were true."
"And that makes them fake?" I ask.
"No, because what we wish for is real," he says. "But what they lead us to is, at best, unreliable."
"And at worst?"
He smiles. "That probably depends on what we're wishing for."
Based on what I can tell, Raphael's wish isn't, as family rumor says, to love my sister. It's to keep Clare safe from any and all harm. His desire to protect her is almost something you can touch. I wonder what unreliable things he sees, and how he knows which ones to trust.
If I want to uncover Rebecca's hidden story, then I need to follow the signs she's left. The unreliable as well as the true. I'll start with the man I saw when my sister was still alive. He's also been left behind and could possibly be a sign. If he's a fake one, at least it's a place to begin.
Ten
R EBECCA KEPT A DATEBOOK , which now sits on her desk, next to her laptop. She called it
my boss.
In it was her schedule, reminder notes, and lists. It's my initial idea to go through this book, looking for the name of the man I last saw my sister with.
Da and Clare (and probably the police) have been all over Rebecca's computer and file cabinets. And they used her address book, which Rebecca had had since college, to notify friends. If they went through her datebook, it wouldn't have been because they were looking for this man whose name I don't know.
Other than information I don't have, I'm not sure what I'm looking for. But I'm convinced I'll know it when it finds me. I open the datebook and flip immediately to October. I see my tutor on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm looking for a day late enough in October for it to have been dark by five.
I scan through the Tuesdays and Thursdays, and bang, there it is. October 23. In Rebecca's small, square-shaped handwriting:
Order
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