2 Chapter 2

“No,” Steven said.

“Right. Not me, not you, not Gloria. I’m going to reach toward you again, and you’re going to let Gloria take my hand this time, okay?”

“Maybe. Maybe…yeah.” Steven looked down, though he still had a death grip on his wife’s wrist, so tight the skin had gone from red to white there. “Maybe,” he said again.

“Come on, Steven.” I asked at least four more times, until the sudden blare of sirens raised the tension a million fold. Somehow, someone had known what was happening and had called the cops. Long before the days of teens with cellphones, it definitely hadn’t been Dougie or me. “It’s all going to be over in a minute,” I said, just as my hand started to quiver even more, from muscle strain, holding it out so long, and also anxiety. “End it now.”

“I’ll end it, all right.”

The moment Steven leaned forward, signaling his intent to jump, I flew into action, too, never giving a moment’s thought to the fact my red cape was back at home in my old toy box. I grabbed Gloria’s arm and spun her around toward Dougie and the baby. Though she ended up on her knees, landing hard, and then skidding, at least she was on solid ground.

“Hang on, Steven!”

When Steven’s foot slipped again, I grabbed on to a nearby sapling, and then reached for him. The tree was tall but skinny, flaccid, bendable, not right for offering stability at all. “Fuck!”

“Jesus, Justice!” Dougie cursed, too. Gloria gasped.

“Let me go. Let me die.” Steven and I met eye to eye, as he begged me to release him, and I did everything in my power not to, slipping and grappling to keep us both from plummeting thirty feet down onto rocks even rougher, sharper, and deadlier than those now spilling over the side.

“No way you’re taking the easy way out.” I wanted Steven Leary punished.

“Yeah, I am,” Steven said. “It’s me or us.”

“Not happening.”

He looked right at me. “Do the world a favor.”

“Nope.”

“It’s either just me, or me and you.”

“None of the above.”

“Wanna bet?” Steven Leary tried to make good on his threat. He twisted, flung himself, almost six feet and close to two hundred pounds, I’d have bet, to one side.

“Fucker!”

But as he jerked left, somehow, miraculously, I managed to flail myself to the right, taking us both to a narrow flat precipice, where luckily, the skinniest but mightiest sapling had enough root to hold my weight and his.

Barely wide enough for two sets of feet, at least the ledge was stable, once we both stopped rocking to collapse against the mountainous fa?ade from which it came. Gloria was still sobbing by the time the first cop car arrived. Though I’d expected a struggle, once we’d taken a series of sideways steps to safety, where the roadway ran parallel to the water, Steven slid down the trunk of a sturdy, thick poplar, and hadn’t moved since. Bleeding from a deep scrape on his arm, he was stoic as he sat on the ground staring straight ahead.

“You could have been killed!” my father told me at the end of it all. “What would possess you to get in the middle of something like this?”

“I asked myself what you would do, Dad.”

“I would have let him fall,” my father claimed.

“No. You would have made sure he was alive to be held accountable.”

“Damned teenagers.” My father held me tighter than I had held on to Gloria up on the rocks. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

I looked over at Dougie, trying to fluff his stupid hair, of all things, which was sweaty, matted, and totally limp. Dougie was obsessed with his hair. “Nope.”

What a frigging liar I was.

I’d vowed from the start to reclaim the rocks, the stream, and nature in all its glory as a happy place, one where I could exist without thinking of Steven and Gloria, maybe without thinking at all, but just being. Dougie and were back there a million times that summer and over the next one. We’d lie in the water and just stare up into the blue for hours, quickly looking away if our eyes ever wandered down, then sideways to meet.

“I love you, Justy.” The words seemed to come out of nowhere, but deep down, I knew they had been building over time.