Waking Olivia(43)

The story is awful, but it's the photo that it hurts to look at  –   Olivia, tiny and smiling beside her mother, who looked very much like  Olivia does now. She was stabbed forty-two times. Olivia ran nearly four  miles in the dark and was found unconscious the next day, still  bleeding from the wound on her back.

The night running. The scar on her back. The way she seems to black out  when she's attacked. If I'd even tried to guess at the source, I'd never  have come up with something quite this awful.



I call the nursing home once more. This time, I don't ask for Olivia's  grandmother. I ask for her grandmother's next-of-kin, who turns out to  be a sister. Olivia's great-aunt, I suppose. I should have thought of it  before. Olivia was only sixteen when her grandmother was admitted.  There's no way she'd have had the wherewithal or the funds to fly her  grandmother to Florida and get her help.

And if this great-aunt helped Olivia's grandmother, she sure as shit  should have helped Olivia too. I hate her before she's even picked up  the phone. I hate her more after she has.

I explain the situation and the woman immediately launches into a tirade  against Olivia. "Well, it might have been nice if that girl could have  told the police back then, wouldn't it?" she explodes.

"She didn't remember anything until just now," I snap. "She's still under the impression that her parents abandoned her."

She clucks her tongue again. "That stupid story. Anya let her keep  believing it, but let me tell you, I'd have put a stop to it right away.  She knew good and well what happened. She nearly bled to death. You  don't just forget something like that."                       
       
           


///
       

"What story?" I ask.

"Oh. Olivia'd get so hysterical when people spoke about it that everyone  finally gave up. You couldn't even say ‘died' around her. So Anya  started saying ‘when your mother went away' and they left it at that."

I'm so out of my depth at this point it feels like I'll never surface.  I'm pretty sure I could have an MD and a Ph.D. and this whole thing  would still be beyond me.

"Is there anyone else I can speak to? I assume Olivia must have lived  with someone else, at least in high school, if her grandmother's been  sick for a while."

There is defensiveness in her silence. "You understand I couldn't take  her in," she finally says. "I'm too old to be raising someone,  ‘specially someone troubled like that."

"Yes," I say impatiently. "So who did she live with?"

"She just stayed in the house by herself. She was fine. Anya had been  sick for a long time and Olivia was used to taking care of both of them.  She was better off on her own anyway."

I slam the phone down and sit at my desk after we hang up, staring out  the window without seeing anything. It's so much worse than anything I  could have imagined. There have been times in my life when I wasn't sure  how to fix something. But now? I'm not sure I can.

From the very start, I had this urge to protect her, and that urge  should have warned me away. I wanted to be the one to save her, and  instead, I've opened up this well that might just destroy her.

It's time to come clean before I do more damage.



It would be impossible for Peter's face to be more wary than it is when  he opens his door. "Didn't expect to see you on a Saturday morning," he  says, stepping aside for me to walk in.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. "But I'm pretty sure this can't wait."

I tell him about Olivia's night running and the nightmare she had last  night. I tell him what I learned from the police and how I've been  keeping her from running, which leads to the somewhat obvious fact that  Olivia and I have been sleeping under the same roof.

"Will," he groans, rubbing his eyes. "I'm gonna pretend you didn't just say that, okay?"

"Look, I had to tell you. Her problems are bigger than my job. I can't just abandon her right now."

"I know that," he says. "Which is why you can't say what you just did.  Because if you tell me you're sleeping under the same roof, I have to  tell you to stop, and we both know you're not gonna. So I'm going to  pretend you never said it."

He says he'll ask around for the name of a professional. Not the idiot  at the health center, but someone actually equipped to deal with this  situation. "And in the meantime, just stay the course. She's got the  Cooper Invitational next weekend. Let's just get her through that."

"This doesn't seem like the kind of thing we should be keeping from her," I say.

Peter shakes his head. "That girl's had nothing but bad breaks in her  life. She isn't asking anyone for the truth, but she is asking for a  chance to make a name for herself. And if she wins next week we can make  that happen. I say we do whatever we need to do so she gets her shot."





62





Olivia



They are all bizarrely careful with me, as if I'm made of paper. It's  sweet but irritating, a constant reminder of what happened, of what they  know about me and what I now know about myself.

I helped bury my brother, and I'm not sure how culpable I am. If I've  forgotten this, what else have I forgotten? My head feels like the  creepy basement of a haunted house-best left unexplored, evil lurking in  all the dark corners. Will, especially, is distant and guarded.  Solicitous and yet wary of me at the same time. Probably because he's  thinking exactly what I am: what else have I done? Who else have I hurt?  No wonder he won't ask me to wait until graduation.

When Brendan leaves for school on Sunday, I insist on going home too.  Will made his decision. I'd rather rip the Band-Aid off now than spend  the next week or month fearing it.



Over the next week, the whole team still practices together, but only  three of us even have a reason to train until after winter break is over  and it's obvious. Most of the team is phoning it in and just barely.  Will doesn't look at me once without guilt on his face, and I don't look  at him once without seeing what I will never have. That same  ambivalence I felt the morning of the last meet, as if nothing matters  and nothing ever will, still weighs me down. Running was once everything  because I'd never had anything better. And I still don't have anything  better, regardless of what I might have hoped, so I really need to pull  it together by Sunday.                       
       
           


///
       



Erin shows up at my apartment on Friday to send me off.

"Here," she says, handing me a bag. "These are good luck cookies."

"What makes them good luck?"

"Nothing, but it was either that or my good luck underwear, and I figured you didn't want that."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that good luck underwear is non-transferable."

She gives me a hug. "We love you whether you win or not, Finn. Keep it in mind this time, okay?"



There are nine of us flying to Wyoming for the Cooper. Peter with Dan  Brofton, Marcus Phipps, and a kid they call Rooster. He probably has a  real name but I'm not sure what it is. On the women's side is Will, me,  Nicole, Betsy, and Dorothy. I'd feel guilty about the expense except  there's actually a regulation that requires a female chaperone, so all  of Dorothy's costs are covered by the program.

We arrive in Cheyenne late Saturday afternoon and are given our room assignments. I'm with Dorothy, of course.

"Still need a babysitter I see," mocks Betsy. "Right up until the last minute."

"It seems to work for her, though," says Dorothy pointedly, "since she  came in first the last time I roomed with her. Maybe I should chaperone  everyone."

Damn, I laugh to myself. Dorothy has claws. No wonder we get along so well.

We all eat together. Peter and Dorothy sit at one end of the table. They  talk easily, eat off each other's plates without asking. They seem like  they've been together forever.

"Who out of this handsome bunch are your kids?" the waitress asks them.

Peter grins. "All of ‘em."

A question, confusion, crosses Will's face then. A moment of insight he  blinks away. For someone who's normally pretty perceptive, he's  shockingly slow to pick up on this. That or he just refuses to.

After Dorothy lies down, I go to the other bed in his room and stretch  out. He seems to be doing his level best to pretend I'm not even here  and it pisses me off.

"It's the last meet," I say, rolling to face him. "You gonna miss me?" My tone is playful, but my meaning is not.

He glances at me, his eyes darting over my body before they return to my face. "Your shirt is riding up," he says hoarsely.

I glance down and shrug. "I'm sure two inches of skin won't kill you.  Answer the question." I run my finger over my lip and thrill at how  avidly he watches the motion. The way his eyes turn feral before he  looks away.