The Next Thing on My List Read Free

was still tender and purple and swollen.
    We eventually wound our way back to where we’d started, a short distance from my car. “I’m parked right here,” I said.

    He walked me the rest of the way. I had my keys in one hand, my other reaching for the door handle, when he said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
    Rats. So close, and yet.
    “Of course not.”

    “It’s just that you were the last person with Marissa.”

    Alarms sounded in my head as he continued, “My parents and I have the details on the accident, but the one thing we can’t figure out is why wasn’t she buckled? She always wore her seat belt. It didn’t make any sense. I hate to bother you with it, but it’s been driving us crazy.”

    There you had it. I was going to have to reveal her final moments. Granted, I could say I didn’t know, but that seemed crueler than the truth.
    “She was getting a recipe for me from her purse.”

    “A recipe?”

    “For a taco soup.”

    “A recipe.” He ran a hand along the back of his neck. “That’d be my sister.”

    His expression was so disappointed that I added, “It sounded quite tasty.”

    “I’m sure it did.”

    Oh, why didn’t I lie? Tell him that she’d been telling me how she adored her family-especially that brother of hers?
    “Sorry it wasn’t something better,” I said lamely.

    “It’s okay. I’m not sure what I was expecting. It’s only that ‘”  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, leaning against my car. “There’s so much I don’t know-that I never will. That’s what keeps you up at night. It’s not only that you miss them. It’s the regret that you didn’t ask the big questions while they were still here.”

     He looked over toward where her grave sat and then continued. “A few weeks before she died, Marissa and I were at my parents’ house for dinner. We were outside, goofing around, playing a little one-on-one. I asked her how her life was different since she’d lost the weight-besides the fact that she could now whup my ass at basketball. She told me she had so many things she wanted to do. And she sounded so excited that I’d asked her what kinds of things. But then my mom called us for dinner, one thing led to another, and I never got around to following up. I mean, what was the big hurry, you know? We had all the time in the world.”

    Oh God. My insides bubbled and frothed as he spoke.
    Returning the list wouldn’t have been unkind. It was wrong to keep it, especially now that this perfectly nice guy standing in front of me had been grieving all the more because of my selfishness.

    “Um actually,” I ventured, not sure what to say, but feeling I had to say something. “There was one more thing. She had a list.” When he didn’t respond right away, I blurted, “Your sister had written a list of things she wanted to do by her twenty-fifth birthday. I have it.”

    His eyes shifted to meet mine, and-brrrr-did the temperature just drop fifty degrees? Because the look in them was icier than I could have ever imagined. “You kept it? There was a list and you kept it?”

    Well, when he put it that way
    “I had to,” I said defensively.

    “Why?”

    Why indeed? Panic was setting in when, luckily, I thought of a lie so brilliant that it felt as if it were the truth.
    “Because I’m completing the list for her.”

    The change in his face was like one of those square puzzles where you can move the pieces around to form a picture-it hadn’t settled yet, and since I didn’t know what it was going to be, I kept talking. “I figured since Marissa couldn’t do it for herself, well& it’s only right that it be me. I was the one driving when the accident happened. I feel responsible.”

    And there it was: The coldness had melted and was replaced with an expression I couldn’t quite read but I knew that I liked. It lifted me up and floated me skyward. I was no longer June Parker, accidental murderess and borderline slacker. I