Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 19

Presence

Not sure what this story is? The synopsis is available here.

Catch up on chapter 18 here.

Dad stares at Meghan, wide-eyed and silent. No one says anything. Noise from the living room writes over everything like the soundtrack to the wrong movie.

“How — ” I ask as I put on my boots.

Meghan kneels beside me and starts to tie the laces. I stiffen. I’m not her kid and I don’t need her help. But she whispers while she works. “Pills. Your dad’s convinced it was an accidental overdose but… something was off with Brennan that whole year.”

I don’t know what to say, so I mumble a “thank you” for the lacing but mostly for the information as I stand up.

The kids’ shouts swallow me as I step into the dark. They’re throwing snowballs at one another, but I can only tell by the slaps of snow against down jackets and the laughter. I can’t see a thing.

If Brennan died just after Christmas, it explains so much, from how people have treated me this whole trip, to how much alcohol it’s taken them to get through the day. Maybe even why they kept it so much of a secret. I don’t think boys in my family are allowed to have the kinds of feelings that would lead them to suicide. A bittersweet wave of relief washes over me. The last few days have been punctuated with question after question and finally I know something.

Yet I can’t process it near my family. It’s why I crunch through the snow, flashlight on my phone glaring off the snow in front of me, until I knock at the back door of Grayson’s house.

When footsteps shuffle toward me, I’m suddenly aware of what I’m doing, out here alone after dinner on a holiday, begging for someone else’s family to let me in. I turn, ready to go back and deal with my own family instead of intruding on Grayson’s, but his mom calls out to me.

“Adaya? Is that you?”

The porch light feels like a spotlight as I turn around, heating my face and drawing too much attention to me. “Yeah. But I wasn’t going to stay. I’ll just — ”

“Come inside. It’s freezing out there.”

“I’m sure you have family things going on tonight.”

She smiles and ushers me closer. “Nothing we can’t invite you to join. All that’s left is a cutthroat game of Scrabble and White Christmas. None of that nonsense. Quit letting the heat out.”

I can’t argue with her any longer, so I step in and remove my outerwear. Grayson watches me from the kitchen in this half sort of way, like he doesn’t want it to be obvious he is, and I’m acutely aware that the last time I saw him, he asked to kiss me. I wonder if his mom knows. I hope she doesn’t.

“Merry Christmas, Adaya,” he says when I reach him.

The hope in his voice hurts. “No it isn’t.”

He’d moved closer, like he was about to hug me, but he takes a step back instead and rests a hand on my arm. “It… isn’t?”

I shake my head. There’s no point in hiding this. His mom probably knows anyway, and Taylor and Courtney aren’t listening, but my words don’t work right now. Not for this. I don’t think I can say it out loud. “Just a sec.” I pull my phone from my pocket and open a notes app.

Brennan overdosed on pills a few days after Christmas one year. There’s more reasons it’s not been a great day, but this is the important one.

Without giving myself time to overthink it, I turn my phone around. Grayson reads incredibly fast, then wraps his arms around me and hugs me. I don’t know how long we embrace, just that it’s probably too long. Noticeably so. But I don’t care. It’s telling me all the things I need to hear but can’t ask for, like how I’m safe here, and I don’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to. As he pulls away, he says, “What do you need most right now? To talk about it or a distraction?”

“A distraction. Please. It’s why… it’s why I’m here.”

Grayson immediately goes all-in on the distraction by raising an eyebrow at me and glancing at my lips.

The smile on my face surprises me. I figured it would be a lot longer before I smiled again. “That’s not what I mean. Scrabble and White Christmas, like your mom said. I’d like that.”

“Those are great, but first, I, uh, got you something. If you want to open it now.”

I bite at my lower lip, hands in the pockets of my jeans. “I didn’t get you anything. I didn’t think — ”

“Don’t worry about it. This was a last-minute thing.” He walks out of the kitchen, leading me into a large living room, with a Christmas tree no less than 12 feet tall taking up the whole wall of windows looking out onto the snow. At the top shines the brightest, biggest star I’ve ever seen on a tree, casting lights onto the walls and ceiling like a chandelier. Everything about it is magnificent. He grabs a small present from under the tree and we sit on the floor against a wall, where the lights shimmer on us and make me feel like I’m on a stage.

“This is going to sound weird,” he says before handing it to me, “but I actually got this for your grandma before she — ”

My stomach turns cartwheels inside of me. Opening presents that weren’t intended for me hasn’t gone well today. “And you’re giving it to me instead?”

“Like I said, I know it sounds weird. If you’d rather not… I just thought…”

I don’t know if it’s a good idea. But hope lights his eyes — or maybe it’s just the star — and I want to make him happy. With a careful finger under the tape, I slide open the wrapping paper and pull out a simple box. Inside is a piece of printer paper folded neatly, and nothing else.

I shouldn’t be so excited, but already this is miles and miles closer to a gift for me than anything I experienced with my own family. I unfold it and turn it over, the whole time both praying he knows me and scared he knows me better than my own family.

Concert tickets for December 27, when I’m still here. I tremble and the paper rattles in my hands.

“It wouldn’t be just the two of us. My whole family has tickets, but I bought one for your grandma, and then — I don’t want to sit by her empty chair.”

The words he meant to make me feel better cut deep instead. It’s still about the holes my family left behind. Holes I know I can’t fill. “Is that all? Just to sit where she would have?”

“No. I want you there. I would — it would be better with you there.”

“I, um, what kind of concert were you planning to take my grandmother to?”

Grayson doesn’t answer. His mom comes over and sits down between us, right on the floor. “You haven’t told Adaya the story? You should.” But she doesn’t pause long enough to give him the chance. “Zoe Harris did the soundtrack for — what was it?”

Grayson sighs, his posture slumping. “She scored an indie game. I doubt you would’ve heard of it, Adaya. Wasn’t even all that good, but the music pulled you in, you know? I kept playing just to hear it.”

“He wrote to her when he finished the game — ”

“Mom, don’t — ”

I put my hand on Grayson’s knee. “Please? I want to know.”

His mom talks over him before Grayson has a word out. “It was such a sweet email, how her music inspired him to want to do the same thing one day.”

Questions pile out of me too fast. I want to know everything about him. Learning about Grayson is the best possible distraction from everything else I’ve learned today. “You want to compose for video games? Have you tried? Was that piece you wrote a score for something?”

His eyes search mine, then look briefly at his mom. “The sonata was for a video game concept,” he says.

“And it was such a good song, too,” his mom says to me. She’s so close her vibrant sweater touches the sleeve of my own shirt. “Did you hear it? I have it on my phone somewhere.”

While she pulls out her phone, Grayson’s shoulders hunch forward. Harmony plops down beside him, head in his lap, and he twirls a finger through her fur. He’s on the other side of his mom and I can’t reach to pet her, too. “Mom,” he says to Harmony, “Don’t bother her with that stuff. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear it.”

“I do, though,” I say. I’m trying to respect his privacy, but I sneak a peek at his mom’s phone to see if she has it ready. “It wouldn’t be a bother.”

In fact, music might be helpful right now. I know I’ve buried things about Brennan I’d be better off feeling, and sometimes I can be the audience I crave: the one who feels things because the music demands it.

“And I want to play Scrabble. I’ll get the board.” He stands up, jumps over Harmony, and turns the corner.

All I wanted was to know him better. Leave it to me to push too hard and push him away instead. I don’t know what to say. I think he wants me to apologize, but for what? Caring?

Grayson comes back with the board and sets it down on the coffee table, knees up and spread wide, arms across them. He doesn’t invite us to join him, just sits there. I still don’t know what to say.

Taylor comes in with a cup in her hand and sets it down in front of me. “Apple cider?”

It doesn’t ease the tension, but at least drinking it gives me something to do. We still haven’t been invited into the game yet, though. After a few sips settle inside my stomach, I look at Grayson. “Is the game ready? Or — should I go home?”

“You can stay.” He puts on a smile, but it’s a cutout and it doesn’t belong to him. “So I can add ‘beat Adaya at Scrabble’ to my profile.”

I text my dad and stay through the game and the movie even though Grayson hardly says a word to me. He beats me at Scrabble, technically, but he comes in second to my third. When the movie starts, we sit on different couches.

“I should get home,” I say as the credits roll.

Grayson walks with me to the back door where my outerwear waits.

“Thanks for the present,” I say while I tug on my jacket.

He looks at the floor. “Yeah. You’re welcome. I hope you’ll like the concert.”

“I trust your taste in music, Grayson. I’m sure I will. Should I look her up on Spotify before?”

“Nah, I want you to hear it live.” There, finally, talking about music, is the Grayson I lost hours ago. Sincere. Excited.

I tug my beanie over my ears and wrap a scarf one more time around my neck. “Have a merry Christmas, Grayson. I’m sure we’ll text tomorrow.”

Then that Grayson is gone again, quickly as he showed up. “Maybe. I usually keep my phone off on Christmas. Have a safe walk.”

He opens the door and I step back out into the storm.

By the time I’ve made it back to my grandmother’s, children are asleep, curled in their parents’ laps. Movies have changed from newer kid-friendly ones to older ones clearly chosen by their parents. Five different times, I open my phone to text Riley or Mom, but I can’t find my way in to this conversation.

Midnight approaches. Parents, soberer now, drag pajama-clad children into cars, some yawning, some fully asleep. The oldest, Everly, smiles, her face full of anticipation. The idea of a midnight service is magical all by itself to her, like it once was to me.

Only Dad and I take his truck. I wrap a heavy coat over a sweater over a base layer and I wonder if I’m protecting myself against the weather or the people. Dad doesn’t say a word at first. His eyes are rimmed red, like he’s been crying. Or maybe he’s still drunk enough that I should be driving. I won’t, though.

Christmas music spills through the speakers in the car, but like always with Dad, this music gets between us. Neither of us is thinking about Jesus, anyway.

“You must have been shocked,” I say.

Dad completely takes his eyes off the road to look at me. My whole body tenses, waiting for the worst, but he drives as smoothly as ever. “By what?”

Now that I’ve started asking, I’m scared. But I can’t back out of this conversation, not when such a huge part of me burns with the need to know. “When — what happened with my brother. When he died.”

Some deep voice croons about Jesus’ birth through the radio. Dad cuts over it. “What else would I be? We didn’t have a clue that our fifteen-year-old kid wanted to… do what he did.”

His last sentence makes me brace myself against the door. No wonder I remind everyone of Brennan now. “He was fifteen?”

Our headlights pierce the road. Snow falls in huge, fluffy flakes, each one small and peaceful, the whole of them combining into a monster ready to devour me. How can something so wonderful be the thing we’re terrified of, too?

“I’m not ready to talk about this,” Dad says.

“If you aren’t ready now, will you ever be? I can’t imagine not talking about it for, what, twenty years?” I overestimate.

“Seventeen.” Immediately. It was right there waiting for him to say.

“I just want to know who he is. I want to know what his voice sounded like, and his favorite TV show, and if he would’ve picked fights with me or been the best hugger, if he would have protected me. What you loved about him. What made him choose — ”

“And I don’t want to tell you.” There’s so much hurt in his voice. I don’t remember him ever protecting my space like this.

“He died seventeen years ago,” I say, figuring something out. “It will be seventeen years ago in a few days?”

“Yeah. December 27.”

I wonder if he realizes I’m old enough to do the math. Brennan died one year and nine months before I was born, to the day. Which means they were so upset around the first anniversary of my brother’s death that they decided to replace him.

The music grows in an orchestral crescendo through the speakers. Relief and understanding well up inside of me, triumph in a minor key. Of course.

I’m a replacement.

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