We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(69)

“But he wouldn’t want police,” says Tatum. “Over and over, when he first got sick, he told us that he never wanted anyone to see him weakened. Never. He didn’t want visitors. He didn’t want to go anywhere and he was suspicious of everyone.”

“Even Gabe?”

“As of about six months ago, yes. He stopped talking to Gabe. I promise you, Matilda. Kingsley would never want his dementia in the news, never want it known on the island. He hates authority figures and regulatory institutions. We should find him on our own if we possibly can.”

“And if we can’t?”

Tatum sighs. “If we can’t, like if we know he’s gone off the property or he takes a vehicle, we’ll call the police. Okay?”

“Okay.”

When we reach the top of the driveway, we can hear voices on the pool deck, so we head in that direction. When we’re near, Meer comes running toward us. His face is a mask of horror. He throws his arms around me, and I realize he is crying. He’s much taller than I am, but he buries his face in my shoulder and holds on tight.

“What happened?” I whisper. “Meer, my brother. What happened?”

He cannot answer.

Tatum is off, running up the steps to the pool deck. I can see Brock and June standing there, their silhouettes against the starlit sky.

“What happened?” I ask again.

“Go away!” barks June. “Matilda, you should leave, now.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” I ask. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Wherever you went before,” she snaps. “Just go. Meer, make her go.”

“No, Mom,” says Meer, still sobbing into my neck. “Stop saying that.”

Up on the deck, Tatum puts his hand over his face and staggers back a few steps.

June grabs Tatum’s arm urgently. “Make her leave. She’s been in our business too long. She let him out.” She points at me and stamps her foot. “It’s Matilda’s fault. Not mine. Not ours. None of you boys. It’s her fault, and what happens next is not her concern.”

“Shhhh,” says Brock, kindly. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Meer lets out an anguished moan. “What is it?” I ask him again.

“He wanted out. All the time, he wanted out,” Meer whispers. “He used to beg me but I wouldn’t let him. But I could have set him free, almost any day. I thought about it, just like you did.”

I remember Kingsley saying Meer didn’t always shoot the bolt. “Did you find him?” I whisper back. “Did he get hurt?”

Meer’s answer is muffled. His face is pressed in my hair. “It’s not your fault. Nothing is. You did what I wanted to do.”

“What happened?”

“June found him.” Meer lifts his head and wipes his eyes. “We found him but he’s dead.”





62


I hold my brother’s hand and we walk together slowly up the steps to the pool deck.

Kingsley is face down in the swimming pool. His arms drift out from his sides. His shoes are still on. His gray hair floats around his head, stringy. His shirt is wet and transparent.

He is drowned.

Our father,

who painted me on a raft at the mercy of a raging ocean, he has found

a watery grave

in his own backyard.

He’ll never again wield that paintbrush, using it to create worlds, plot escapes, wreak vengeance, and right wrongs. Never. Never.

I will not get to know him, not even the demented shell of a person who has been living in that tower. To know him was the thing I wanted most in the world, but I’ll never know him any better than I do at this moment.

Kingsley will never explain to me who I am.

He lost track of who he was, himself.



* * *



—

June is speaking quietly to Meer, sitting on the edge of the pool, cross-legged. Staring at the body. She is wet from the waist down, her indigo trousers clinging to her legs. The lower half of her long braids is wet. Her eyes are blank as she talks to her son, never looking at Meer but fixing her eyes on Kingsley with intense concentration, as if looking at a work of art she’s trying to understand.

Brock is also wet from the waist down. He takes me and Tatum to sit on the edge of the deck, our backs to the other two. “Tell us what happened,” I say. “If you can.”

“Of course,” he says. “A hundred percent.”

But he doesn’t, exactly.

“I was over by the picnic table, searching, you know? And I didn’t know where you all were, and I was calling for Kingsley in a friendly way, telling him I was worried about him and I wanted to keep him safe. Then I heard June make a noise. Not a scream, but like something was wrong.”

“We must have been down at the end of the driveway then,” says Tatum.

“So I ran to where the noise was and I found June in the pool. The leaves were all around her, and Kingsley was there, face down like you saw him. June saw me and she said, ‘I can’t roll him over, I can’t roll him over.’ Because she was in above her waist and he’s so much bigger than she is. She couldn’t manage it. I jumped into the pool and waded out to them as fast as I could. I was going to flip Kingsley—but it was too late. I heaved a couple times and I could tell he was just a weight, nowhere near conscious. So I…” Brock stops talking and rubs his forehead with a shaking hand. “I tipped his head to one side, and his mouth was wide open and full of water. I felt for a pulse on his neck. And there was absolutely nothing. He had to have been face down in the water for a bunch of minutes before I got to him. He was. Just. Gone.” He straightens his back and shakes his head as if to clear it. “I’m so— This is so severely rotten.”