Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Edgar couldn’t look away from Poe. How had he missed this?
“At the time, it confused me, because I still didn’t get what was happening or that it wasn’t something that happened to other people. I think maybe when you’re that age, you don’t really experience time the same as when you’re older and everything’s settled in. Time seemed unclear to me then, so it took me a while to understand that what I was seeing wasn’t happening in the present. Lots of times, if it was strangers I touched, I’d never see them again. So I never knew what I’d seen.”
“When do you think you really knew for sure what was happening?” Allie asked.
Poe’s eyes darted to Edgar’s and then quickly away. “Um. I dunno if you wanna know.”
“What? Of course we want to know,” Allie insisted. The baby yawned hugely, less insistent.
But it was Edgar that Poe was facing. Even as he heard himself say, “Tell us,” his stomach flipped. Like his body knew what Poe was going to say before it heard him.
“One night,” Poe said, voice a bit rough, “Antoine and Cameron were sleeping over.”
Edgar swallowed, willing his body to regulate itself.
“We were all sleeping out in the living room by the air conditioner, and we’d watched Blood Mansion before going to bed. I was scared of the big mirror over the mantel because of the way the lady comes out of there in the movie. Anyway, I was huddled close to you and Antoine because I was freaked. And that night, I had a dream where, uh, a boy drowned. And just at the end, right before I woke up, I realized it was Antoine.”
Poe was hugging himself. “Eddie, I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was real or that it would happen soon. I hardly even remembered it a few minutes after I woke up. Mama started making pancakes, and I just—”
His fists and jaw were clenched.
“Then that day—the day he—I had a strange sense of déjà vu the whole time and didn’t know why. But when it happened. When he was slipping under.” Poe choked on his words. “I realized it was his shirt. The striped one. It was in my dream. All of a sudden, it was exactly the moment from my dream.”
Outside, a man was yelling, and a bus passed by. Inside, no one moved or made a sound.
Then a noise escaped Poe. A strangled sound that had once been a sob before it had been twisted by years of guilt into a plea.
“I didn’t know,” he begged, voice gone as small as a little boy. “I swear. Please, please, believe me. If I’d known it was real, I would have stopped him. I wouldn’t have let him go in the water; please, you guys, you have to believe me.” He put his head in his hands. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I’m so damn sorry. It’s my fault, I know that, but it was an accident.”
Allie handed the baby to Edgar and knelt next to Poe. She wrapped her arms around him carefully. He jerked away.
“I’m not gonna touch you. Just your jacket. Okay?”
Poe slumped, the effort he’d been putting into staying remote and on guard only revealed when he let it go. Allie hugged him tight. Then she pulled back and looked at him.
“It’s not your fault,” she said fiercely.
Poe looked at Edgar then, and there was something familiar in his eyes. He’d seen flashes of it for years and years, but it had been hidden behind bravado, aggression, and a biting sense of humor. But now those had been stripped away, and Edgar could identify the emotion at the core: shame. Shame and the desire for an absolution he didn’t think he deserved.
Fuck.
Edgar’s mind was reeling from Poe’s revelations, but although he had a million questions, there was one thing more important than all the rest.
“It wasn’t your fault, Poe.”
“Obviously,” Allie vehemently agreed. “He’s exactly right.”
“Because it was mine.”
“Uh, nope, pause. Disregard. He is not exactly right.” She took the baby back from Edgar as if his wrongness might infect them. “What the hell is wrong with both of you? Antoine drowned. It was a horrible, tragic thing, but it was an accident. Everyone said it was an accident. There was nothing any of us could’ve done.”
Jamie put a hand on Edgar’s lower back. It was a steady pressure that said, I’m here if you need me.
Edgar squeezed his eyes shut. Apparently this was the evening for the baring of family secrets.
“I liked him. Had a crush on him.”
“Duh,” said Poe, as Allie snorted.
“You knew?” Edgar asked.
“You used to watch him all the time. You’d smile like a huge goon whenever you saw him,” Poe said.
Apparently someone was feeling better.
Edgar scowled. “Yeah, well, I was trying not to do precisely that when he fucking drowned.”