Goodbye Earl(102)

Esme and Leo moved to sit on opposite sides of the hospital bed with her and held her hands.

“How do you feel? What do you need?” Esme asked, crying too. She flicked her dark hair out of her face.

“I feel like I want to go home,” Rosemarie said.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll take you home,” Leo said.

The door opened and the rest of RACK came in, her parents too. Rune was behind them with his sunglasses on top of his head and a bag of food.

“Are there too many people in this room?” her mom asked.

Rosemarie shook her head and held her aching arms out wide enough for all of them.

*



When Rosemarie was released and her parents took her home, Esme and Leo were there too. When she returned to Leo’s, Esme came with them. Kasey wanted Rosemarie at the farmhouse, and that was the plan for next week. Once she could muster up the energy, she and Leo sang together in his kitchen, and she finally told Esme about the album they’d been recording. The cover songs and the three songs they’d written together.

Rosemarie took some of the pills Ambrose had called in for her but refused to follow the label directions. She took the pills with wine instead of water and made a mental note to take them every other day instead of once a day. It was enough to get Esme off her back. Esme was a control freak about her dying, and Leo was much more laid-back about it because he knew there was no point in arguing with her; he knew her better, full stop, since they’d had more time together.

She wished she and Esme could have more time together.

She wished she and Leo could have more time together too.

She wanted more time with Ada. And Caroline. And Kasey.

She’d had a peace about killing Trey ever since they decided to do it, and even now with the investigation still open, Rosemarie found that her brain couldn’t hold on to worrying about it, like the floors of her mind had been slicked with grease. She wouldn’t be alive long enough to face any real consequences, and she’d do all she could to make sure the other girls would be okay. She prayed continuously that things would right themselves properly and for it all to be over soon so Caro and her baby could be free from it. So Ada and Kasey could relax.

Rosemarie wanted more time with her parents. And Rune.

Everyone she’d ever known and loved.

She’d been so nervous about Leo and Esme meeting because she didn’t want Esme to be jealous of Leo and she didn’t want Leo to be intimidated by Esme, but now that she’d seen them together, she wanted them to stay connected, even after she was gone. Be friends forever. She wanted them to text each other at Christmas and on their birthdays or randomly when something reminded them of the other, or of her.

It was one way she’d stay alive.

*



Leo and Esme sat on the floor and Rosemarie lay on the couch with Basie the night they listened to their album for the first time together in its entirety. They shared a bottle of wine and passed around the organic weed her dad grew in the greenhouse in their backyard, which was something that Ambrose had actually said she should do—and that, she agreed with. They got stoned and talked and cried, and instead of feeling like everything was ending, there were cracks in the black when Rosemarie felt brand-new. Like she’d just been born. A second wind for a shortened life.



On that afternoon Leo sat outside of the police station reading and waiting for her, she’d told him the truth about what they did to Trey. Leo listened patiently, not nearly as freaked out as he could’ve been, telling her that he understood why they did it and promising he’d never say a word. He told her that his ex-wife, Annie, was engaged and pregnant and he had conflicting feelings about it. She mentioned that his confession was nothing compared to murder, and they laughed. They laughed about these huge, dark things that were stored up in their hearts because it was what they did. It was who they were.

She also told Leo that, heaven forbid, if the Foxberrys wanted to come after the girls once Rosemarie was gone…if things got really bad and it looked like the girls could get in trouble, that it’d be okay for him to tell the police Rosemarie killed Trey on her own. A crime of passion—she drugged him and hit him with a rock for what he did to Caroline. It was her alone. Leave the girls out of it. Leo said it wouldn’t come to that, and Rosemarie didn’t think it would. Ada, Caroline, and Kasey would be so mad at her for it and probably wouldn’t let Leo do it anyway, but she still made him promise. With pinkies and everything—no takebacks.



When Leo asked her again what she wanted to name the album, she said Roses in Space because that was where she felt like she was, listening to it in Leo’s living room. Later, she and Leo and Esme crawled into Leo’s big bed together with Rosemarie in the middle and Basie at their feet, sleeping with the surround-sound crickets singing loud. Strong and steady as their three human heartbeats for now, before they were two.





2017


49





From: [email protected]

To: [email protected], [email protected],

[email protected]

Subject: Over Noodles



Hello you beauties!

So y’all already know Esme and I met at the dog park right after I adopted Willie to give him a little love in the last year or so of his life. I couldn’t imagine a break from traveling and feeding people for the nonprofit and being in Seattle for more than a year without the comfort of a dog. Even when I was in Costa Rica after high school, Leopold and I found a puppy and fed and loved it while we were there. And in Paris, Mélanie and I “adopted” a long-haired chihuahua we brought in from the rain sometimes and fed it French dog treats made of honey and coconuts.