The Favorite Child by Cathryn Grant

Author:Cathryn Grant [Grant, Cathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

25

When I reached the edge of the garden, Jake and Collette were on the front porch. Jake was yelling, telling me to stop screaming. I wanted to scream that he was yelling as loudly as I was.

“She’s dead. Sunday’s dead. I saw her. She washed up onto the beach.” I sobbed and doubled over as the grief ripped through me again. He grabbed me and held me, pulling my head close to his chest. “Shh. It’s okay. Let’s go take a look.”

He took one of my arms, and Collette went to my other side. They steered me back to the narrow path through the beach grass and out to the footpath.

“It’s faster if we—”

“You can’t be cutting across uneven ground like that,” Collette said. “What if you’d fallen?”

“We have to get her. It was faster.”

Collette stroked my arm. “If she’s dead, faster won’t—”

“If?”

Jake squeezed my arm. “Let’s go see.”

I heard Michael behind us, calling my name, but Jake and Collette continued moving quickly, and I didn’t want to wait for him. He’d have to catch up.

Finally, we reached the point where I’d seen her. I pointed to the slab of rock, tears pouring out of me again, blurring my eyesight as they had before, until all I could make out was her white dress in the growing darkness.

After a moment Jake spoke softly, but his voice was tight. “Did you push her?”

I wrenched away from him. “No! Why would you say that? No, I didn’t push her.” I began crying harder, if that was possible.

“How did you know she would be there?” Collette asked.

“What?”

“This is so far from the house. And totally random. Out of the entire coastline, how did you know to look down right at this point and see her? It looks like you pushed her.” Jake pulled me to him. “It’s okay. We’ll—”

I wrestled within his grip, twisting around, going nowhere. “Let go of me! I didn’t push her!”

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Now Michael was beside me, pulling me away from Jake, who released me easily into Michael’s arms. Jake took a few steps away.

Michael held me close. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Look. Look down there. She’s dead. I knew something had happened to her, but no one would listen.”

He let go of me and moved carefully toward the edge of the cliff, looking back at me several times. He looked worried that I might rush up to him without warning, perhaps run too close and fall over myself, in some crazed attempt to reach Sunday. He glanced down at the shore. I saw the shock burn through his body as he quickly looked away. He shuddered and took a step back. He came to me and wrapped his arms around me again.

“Why wouldn’t anyone listen?” I wailed. “Maybe we could have found her. Maybe she didn’t die right away. If we’d tried harder to look for her, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Okay. Maybe a lot of things can happen. You need to calm down,” Collette said.

“She’s dead! Do you even care?”

“Of course I care! But we can’t go blaming ourselves.

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