“You don’t need me. You have Jack, you have your parents.”

“I don’t have my parents. You know what they’re like, never there, and when they’re actually there, they don’t give a shit. Or worse, they blow up at each other and drag everyone into it. They throw around divorce like it means nothing.”

Elise glanced out at the hallway, where my mother was, and my face flushed with embarrassment. I knew what she was saying with that simple flick of her eye. There my mother was, here when I called.

“You’re right,” I said quietly. “It’s not the same, you’re right.”

She turned away, staring out of the window at the hospital parking lot.

“But I do need you, Elise,” I said, touching her wrist softly, trying to pull her back toward me. “Just as much as you need me.” We were soulmates, we were forever, and somehow I’d wandered off that path.

“That’s just not true,” she said, voice growing distressed. “Don’t lie to me, Remy. Don’t ever lie to me. You’re never around. I have to beg, really beg, to get a glimpse of you. School’s one week away and you didn’t have time for me all summer.” Her voice cracked with anger, with pain. “Bottom line, you don’t need me.”

“I do,” I said desperately. “I do.”

“You won’t even answer when I call.”

Her words landed like a punch to the stomach and I could no longer breathe. Her eyes cut into me, revealing the terrible truth. I’d failed her, I’d failed us.

“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m so sorry.”

I knew the words weren’t enough, could never be enough.

• • •

Trauma has a gravity of its own and it’ll never, ever let you go. In some ways we are still trapped in the orbit of that night. In some ways, that night is the real beginning to this story.

MONDAY // AUGUST 28 // DAY 353

48.

So there it is. The truth about that night. My failure to keep her safe. The night that haunts me, the one captured in Elise’s police file.

I’m sorry, Elise, I think.

Detective Ward seems to examine me carefully. She had all the facts of the case in that folder, but never the entire story. Not until now. Only me, Elise, and Jack ever knew the truth about that night—that I was with him when she called, that I purposefully ignored her cries for help. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what she went through. What her father did is absolutely despicable,” Detective Ward says. “It’s clear that you’re devastated too, that you feel responsible in some way, but I want you to know that it wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m her best friend,” I say, looking at her like she’s lost her mind. “I’m the only one she has.”

“The person responsible for what happened is her father and her father alone. Not her. And not you.”