Page 125 of Never Forget
Bryce's attorney put a hand on his arm.
"Mr. Montgomery?— "
Bryce waved him off. The attorney sat back.
"Jamie, you were already doing so well in New York. Why would you want to stay in Havensworth?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm running for Solicitor. You're a journalist who has history with me. You have to see the position that put me in."
"So you set my house on fire."
"I needed you to have a reason to go."
Bryce turned his head to me.
"Sam. I heard you turned down the college offer. That's a shame."
I didn't answer.
"That application took some work, you know." He almost smiled. "Paperwork like that doesn't put itself together."
The room went quiet.
It took me a second. Amber. The application. The acceptance letter she'd handed Jamie in the Harris Teeter parking lot with my name on a signature I hadn't written. She hadn't done it alone. Bryce had put her up to it. If I'd left Havensworth, Jamie wouldn't have stayed.
Jamie's hand found mine on her knee.
She signed the agreement. She didn't look at him when she did it. She read the pages, signed where her lawyer pointed, and slid it back.
Ten years ago I'd held her behind the library stacks while she cried about what this man had done to her. Today she'd sat across from him and asked him why. Looked him in the eye while he answered and didn't flinch.
Then she stood, and we left.
We didn't speak until we were through the lobby and out on the sidewalk.
Jamie stopped on the pavement. Turned to me.
"Thank you. For being here."
"Always."
She leaned her forehead against my chest. I put my arms around her and held her there.
Sunday afternoon.
We had the picnic blanket, the cooler with sandwiches and lemonade, Rosie's file of stories, and the small watering can Jamie kept in the trunk for the plants at the base of the stone. Rosie knew where to put the blanket. She'd known for months.She spread it out at the same angle every time, a few feet from the headstone, where she could see both Jack and Sarah.
Jack Donovan. Beloved husband, father, brother. World's Greatest Brother.Sarah Donovan, beside him.
Jamie crouched at the base of the stone and pulled the weeds she always pulled. A few crabgrass runners. A dandelion that had come up since last time. Her hands moved without her thinking about them. She'd done this enough that her hands remembered the shape of the stone.
Rosie unpacked her file on the blanket.
"This one is first," she said. She held up a drawing. "This is the airplane from New York. Do you see the angel wings in the clouds?"
She walked us through it. One drawing at a time. The airplane. The taxi driver with the caterpillar mustache. The carousel in the park. The pillow fort we'd built in the living room. The blue couch from the Carolina Furniture Depot. Me with the guitar, sitting on the couch, Rosie spinning with her arms out.
She saved one for last.
"This is our family."
