Read Online The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy - Free Book Online Page B

was. When he came back, it wasn’t about her any longer. He saw Gant in a new harsh light. He went on two more trips like that during high school, and he wanted to return to Guatemala after graduation. He wanted to spend his whole gap year digging wells and volunteering on a village farm. He probably would have spent forever there if our parents had approved.
    Diane went pale and left the room whenever Ben talked about traveling after graduation, so it fell to Dad to try and talk him out of it. “What’s the matter with studying abroad at university?” Dad intoned. “I’ll send you and Lana to Paris to visit the Louvre if you want another stamp in your passport. But Central America? To dig a hole and plant some beans?”
    Dad and Diane wanted Ben to find himself at college, like a normal kid , on the campus of Dad’s alma mater. But Ben was stubborn and wouldn’t give up on the idea. The difference between where he’d been in Central America and where we lived was big. The comparison made us look like jerks with our flavored bottled water and designer wellies. I remember the day after he got home from that first trip, he stood stock-still in front of our open refrigerator. “There’s brie in the cheese drawer,” I said, watching his back, “baguettes in the pantry.”
    He turned at me abruptly; he looked angry. “It’s hard to worry about landfills or where your trash ends up floating when you have a million flavors of bottled water to choose from.” Up until then, Ben had been smitten with Gant. He saw only the forests, sound, hiking trails, and beaches. We had our adventures. Then: the freshman trip. The change in Ben was immediate. Gant’s magic had been washed away.
    So when Dad refused to pay for the time abroad after graduation, Ben valeted cars at the club and worked at the farmers’ market, selling organic preserves for Swisher Farm. It took six months to earn enough to leave for three months. Ben and Maggie dated off and on for those months, and they were bad ones. There were loud public fights.
    Maggie was furious that Ben didn’t want her to come to Central America. They weren’t speaking when I dropped Ben off at the airport on March 1. At some point between March 1 and June 3, when I picked Ben up, he’d decided to end it with her for good. He was through with Maggie. He’d rethought college and he was ready to do what Dad and Diane hoped he would. He drove over and broke it off with Maggie that very night, right before his welcome-home dinner.
    It wasn’t the first time. Depending on your source, Maggie and Ben had broken up twelve or fifteen times. But this time was different. It would stick. Ben hadn’t spoken to her once in the three months he’d been gone. She must have known she was losing him. I heard the desperation and anger in her voice when she showed up the night Ben was murdered. See, unlike the police, I don’t suspect Maggie of only arranging to have a friend ready to take Ben’s wallet and car. I think she wanted to hurt him. Why else did she drive us away? Why didn’t she leap from the car and stop it from going too far? If she knew the man, she could have saved Ben.
    I may feel guilty that I didn’t see Maggie coming, but for the first time since Ben, I don’t feel as though he’s completely lost. Before Ben died, our house always felt full. Days at home meant Ben and me on the window seat in my bedroom, taking turns reading aloud; scouring for summer provisions to stock the Mira ’s aluminum chest; abreast on the couch in the media room, sharing the same perspectiveof the movie on the projection screen. Ben had a theory about that. He thought that most people see the world too differently to love each other, and that a lot of that difference is perspective. If we sat side by side, then we’d at least perceive things in the same way. It was literal and silly