The Confession

  ***

  “OK, on the count of three,” Steve said, “we jump.”

  I peered over the edge of the bluff. Twenty feet below was the James River, all green and cold-looking. I had no idea twenty feet could look like a thousand.

  “You go first,” I said.

  Steve laughed. “Yeah, right, I’ve heard that before.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, really. You jump, I jump. Promise.”

  Steve was thirteen. I was eleven. Parents say they don’t have favorites, but some do. My mom did anyway. Steve was her favorite by a mile.

  “We’ll hold hands,” Steve said. “It’ll be like in the movies.”

  I looked back to the river. It now seemed greener, colder and much farther below us than before.

  “I don’t know,” I whined. “What if we hit a log or something?”

  “C’mon, you big chicken!” he laughed. “We’re not gonna hit anything but water!”

  Mom loved my brother because he was an underdog. Born prematurely, he weighed a little over two pounds at birth. Steve’s lungs were so tiny that he literally had to fight for every breath he took. He was a fighter, Mom said. My brave little fighter.

  I was not a fighter. I was a chicken.

  “Are you gonna jump or not?” Steve goaded one last time.

  I stepped to the bluff’s edge, closed my eyes, and took in a really, really deep breath.

  “OK, on the count of three,” Steve said. “One, two…”

  Before he finished the countdown, however, I jumped backward. I just couldn’t do it.

  That’s when the worst thing that could have happened, happened: Steve grabbed my wrist.

  If only he hadn’t grabbed my wrist.

  Oh, how I wish he hadn’t done that.

  I yanked my arm free, then for some unknown reason, I did the unthinkable – I pushed him. It was instinct. I didn’t mean for him to fall.

  But he did fall.

  Sideways off the bluff onto the rocks below.

  And the look on his face as he fell – that wonderfully tan and beautiful face – haunts me to this day.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I cried the day of the accident. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to…”

  But it didn’t matter. The day her favorite child died, my mother’s heart closed up like a fist. I could see it in her eyes. I could see it in her face. She was dead to me. Dead to the world.