“How did he take that?”
“I’m not giving him much of a choice, but he seemed okay. Concerned. He has a lot of questions, but I told him I’m not telling him anything until I get there.”
My lips turn down as I stare at the floor. It’s like a hole has opened up below me and I’m falling. Sawyer’s doing what he needs to do, and I hate the ramifications for me. He’s leaving, there’s no way for him to know for how long, and for all I know, he’s leaving forever.
It’s what people do when they leave this town—they don’t look back.
I inhale deeply and force my head up. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“I hope so. None of it feels good so maybe that means I’m on the right path. God knows I’ve been doing too many things that feel good for too long and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere worth going.”
I lean forward and nudge his shoulder. “What about me?”
Sawyer smiles, a real one, the type that touches his eyes. “You have been one of the most difficult situations in my life. I expect you to turn right and instead you walk on your hands going backward. Under your yearbook photo, your senior quote needs to be ‘unpredictable.’”
I laugh, so does he, and then he lets go of one of my hands to cup my face. “I am so in love with you.”
“Same,” I whisper as my heart is breaking. He’s leaving, and once he’s gone, he’ll let go.
Sawyer leans forward, brushes his lips against mine and my heart flutters into overtime. So much so that I’m dizzy and feel like I’m floating on air. I’m in the happiest of places that I will ever be.
He rests his forehead against mine. “I finished Evelyn’s diary.”
“What did you think?”
“When I started, I thought it was going to be nothing but gloom and doom. She was given a life-threatening diagnosis, but then she still had this energy bursting off the pages. She got down, she was homesick, and she got sad. But overall, she was happy.”
Surprised by his answer, I edge back a little and meet his eyes. “She was.”
“It makes me look at this place differently.” Sawyer scans the walls.
“It does.” For me, the old TB hospital has been a mystery, but not the type of mystery that most people believe. “Makes you wonder how many people who stayed here to cure also had their first kiss, met the loves of their lives, made best friends and had moments of laughter. All people focus on is the bad things that happened. Yes, people died, but there are people who tried to live a full life while they were here. There are people who got well enough to leave and live their lives away from here. We’ve talked so much about residual hauntings and that they’re all bad. Makes you wonder if there are residual hauntings that are good. Surely the good ones would be more powerful than the bad.”
Sawyer lets go of me and walks toward the large window opening and peers inside. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately—about me, Mom, Lucy and Dad, about what everyone wants from me and about myself as an addict and how I need to change. Until recently, I never thought of myself as an enabler, but I am. I’ve spent years bending and twisting myself to make people happy. First my dad after the divorce, then Mom, then Lucy and then teachers, friends and coaches. There’s only been one time in my life when I’ve ever felt like me and not a shadow of the person I thought people needed me to be and that is with you.”
Sawyer looks at me then, the love and sadness on his face so powerful that it’s a battle to not weep.
“I love how you live,” Sawyer says, but there’s something in how he says it that makes me feel like he’s about to drop something heavy. Something not good.
I blink because Glory said I wasn’t living. She said I was dying slowly.
“Being around you is exactly what I needed,” he says. “To see how you live life your way even though the world tells you it’s wrong has given me courage. It’s helped me in seeing that I’m an enabler to the people in my life because all of my decisions are based upon making everyone else happy in that moment, and not doing what’s best for me or best for them.”
I feel like Sawyer and I are standing near the edge of a cliff, but instead of both of us walking away from the edge, it’s like we’re teetering and one of us may fall. The sick sloshing in my stomach warns that it might be me.
“You asked me once if I believe ghosts are real, if residual hauntings are real.”
“I did,” I whisper.
“I didn’t, but now I do.”
I hold my breath, waiting for the fall.
“I’ve been making the same damn decisions based upon the same damn moment for years. Dad’s request that I live with Mom, the burden of responsibility on my shoulders, and Mom’s tears at night. I was eleven and those ghosts have haunted me every second of every day. Who knows, maybe the sage did work and it exorcised my ghosts. I’m not enabling anymore. No ghost, no residual haunting is going to make my decisions anymore. I’m going to be thinking about my best interests and the best interests of those I care for—even if those decisions aren’t what makes them happy.”
I swallow. “That’s good.”
He nods, then turns to fully face me. “I love you, Veronica, and I love how you love life.”
The “but” hangs precariously in the air. The cold wind blowing through the trees and the empty hospital make me shake. I pull Dad’s jacket tighter around myself.
“How did you get Evelyn’s diary?” he asks.
“My mother found it and gave it to me.”
Sawyer nudges the loose stone of the window with his shoe. “Why do you think she gave it to you?”
“So I wouldn’t feel alone in my diagnosis.” Even though Evelyn and I don’t have the same thing, we both faced the same fate at a young age. “You read the diary. Evelyn was in a TB hospital and lived life to the fullest.”
“Yes,” Sawyer agrees. “But she also was fighting her disease. My question to you, Veronica, is why can’t you live life and fight the tumor at the same time?”
“Because it’s a fight I can’t win,” I snap.
“So Evelyn thought she could win hers? Over 110,000 people died every year in the US from TB in the 1900s. In 1918 there was an influenza pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans. You read her diary entries. Evelyn talked about the flu spreading through the hospital. How many people did she say good-bye to? How many were sent home?”
“They could have gotten better.”
“You’ve researched this hospital, same as I have. They tried to send people who were beyond hope to die at home. And think of the friend Evelyn would go and visit at a different part of the hospital, how terrible she said he looked. Evelyn was surrounded by death, a fight she had to know she probably wouldn’t win and still she fought. She doesn’t die at the end of the diary. She was living. Why won’t you do the same?”
I’m stunned silent.
“Why?” Sawyer pushes. “You say you admire her, you say you read her diary so you wouldn’t feel alone, you say your mom gave it to you for a purpose and I’m asking why you’re giving up.”
“I told you, I won’t die like my mom.”
“Fine, but maybe you should try living like her first before you decide on dying. I didn’t know your mom, but I know you and I’ve met your dad and I’m betting your mom lived a life that was like no other.”
I tremble. Not from the cold, but from how his truth strikes me deeply.
“Does your dad know you think the tumor is growing?” Sawyer asks quietly.
“Don’t you dare tell him. That’s my decision. Not yours. You told me your deepest secret and I would have never betrayed you like that.”
Sawyer sadly shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe not, but maybe it should have never been a secret to begin with. Keeping Mom’s secret didn’t help anyone. Keeping mine hasn’t helped, either.”
“But how does telling anyone help if that person doesn’t want help?” I challenge and immediately regret my words. “It’ll be different with your mom.”
&nbs
p; Sawyer winces like he’s in pain. “It could be different with you.”
My soul literally shatters.
“I love you, Veronica, and I’m not enabling anyone anymore.”
“You have never enabled me.”
“I haven’t,” he admits. “But if you ask me to keep your secret when it’s best that I don’t, I am enabling you.”
I straighten, my chin held high, like I’m a wounded animal being threatened. “Are you going to tell my dad?”
“I’ve got my own bad news I have to share with my own father,” Sawyer says.
It’s not a yes or a no, and my stomach twists. For him. For me. “Where does this leave us? With you leaving? With my dad in the dark about my tumor growing?”
“You should tell your dad. Even if you still decide not to fight the tumor, I’m telling you that secrets only hurt, not help.”
“My situation isn’t the same as yours.”
“A secret is a secret.”
Nausea races through me. “What’s going to happen between us? Are we done?”
Sawyer walks toward me. My heart beating with each of his steps. He doesn’t stop until he’s close, very close. So close that his heat envelops me.
In the moonlight, Sawyer is beautiful. Heartbreakingly so. He looks down at me. Eyes filled with love and sorrow. My heart skips when his fingers brush along my cheek. “I remember the night I saw you up here. Standing on the window ledge, staring down at me with no fear. A blond halo of curls. A stare that could strike down the strongest of men. Beauty given by a god. Like some sort of apparition there to tell me that my world would never be the same.”
“In a bad way?” I whisper as he places a hand on the curve of my waist. His touch makes it hard to think, to breathe.
“In the best way.”
I turn my head toward his touch, kiss his hand, and he pulls my body into his. We melt together. As if out of the billions of people in the world, and stars in sky, the two of us were made perfectly for one another.
“Can we just stay this way?” I whisper. “Just like this? Forever?”
“I wish we could. If we did, I’d be the happiest man.” Sawyer combs his fingers through my hair. The pull gentle and comforting.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Sawyer says in a hushed tone, as if a lullaby, “we’re not done, but the decision’s more yours than mine. I’m not going to enable you on this. You tell your dad about your tumor growing and I’m yours. I’m not saying you have to change your mind on how you handle your tumor, but I’m not doing secrets. Someone once told me loving you requires sacrifice. They’re right. I want to be with you, you want to be with me, but giving in now to be happy just for a few months isn’t enough. I want more, and I want you to want more, too.”
Sawyer’s fingers slip to my chin, he lifts my head and brushes his lips to mine.
And then as if he didn’t just absolutely crush me, hadn’t become such a needed fixture in my life, Sawyer lets me go and leaves. Feeling weak, I lean my back against the cold stone wall for support. I shake from head to toe, not from the dropping air temperature, but due to the cold welling up inside me.
“Veronica?” Miguel asks from the corner and flashes the light of his cell in my direction. “Are you okay?”
I swallow then try to nod, but fail.
“Tell me when you’re ready to head back,” he says. “I’m with you, and Sylvia’s with Sawyer now. We don’t want anyone to be alone.”
Alone. Faint footsteps from inside the hospital and I immediately turn my head to the sound. There’s a shadow and I squint as it comes closer. With every centimeter forward, the shadow solidifies and my pulse picks up speed. I know that white dress, I know that blond hair, and I jump at how Mom’s face is now that of an expressionless porcelain doll.
She shouldn’t look like that. She shouldn’t be here. She is tethered to the house. She shouldn’t be anywhere but there.
“Veronica?” Miguel steps closer. “What’s wrong?”
Miguel said he didn’t want me to be alone. For years, I haven’t been alone. Not really. Not when so many ghosts have haunted me, but now, I know nothing for sure other than I need to go home and I need to go home now.
SAWYER
Thursday November 7: PEACE. Weight 119 lb.
Great day today, alright, Diary. About dinner time, when we were all in the dining room, Benny Nabel announced that the Armistice with Germany had been signed. Then what a celebration we did have! We marched way over to the Pryor singing and cheering and then the boys came back behind us. At supper we had another parade. The West Wing fellows being the Kaiser.
After supper we had our entertainment in the MacDonald Solarium.
November 7, 1918—Armistice Day—the end of World War I. Evelyn was battling tuberculosis, the Spanish flu was devastating the US and the world, and this all happened while a war was being waged.
Then there was peace.
Is peace possible?
Lucy’s sound asleep as I pull into a spot in front of Dad’s condo. I place the car into park and glance in the rearview mirror at my sister. I hear all the time on TV and in the movies that kids are resilient. Question is: why should they have to be?
Maybe this is what should happen before anyone becomes a parent—I (insert name) agree that when I become a parent, I therefore understand that my children’s needs come first. That for at least eighteen years, it’s not about me. It’s about them.
Doesn’t seem that complicated, right? Not when you look at eighteen years in the grand scheme of a hundred. But adults don’t do that. They like to play dress-up with their kid for a year or two, maybe be excited when they play a sport or land the role in the school play, but then after the hour is up and the pictures are taken for the sake of “making a memory,” they declare that they need to find themselves when they figure out kids are hard.
Adults see children as toys or a solution to a problem, instead of a hard commitment. I don’t think carrying a sack of flour at school is going to impress upon anyone what it’s like to listen to my sister scream night after night in fear.
Maybe I’m bitter. No, I know I am, and I guess that’s one of the many things I’ll need to work on. Right after I tell my dad he’s stuck with us for possibly a lot longer than he would have ever intended.
My cell pings for maybe the hundredth time in the past hour—all from Mom. All an indication she’s drunk.
Mom: Please come home. This is all a misunderstanding.
Mom: Please. I don’t want to be alone.
Mom: Sawyer, I need you here.
Mom: Please respond to me, Sawyer.
Mom: I love you. Do you not love me anymore?
That’s the problem—I do. I don’t know how to reply, and guilt settles in. Is it my job to help her see she’s an alcoholic?
Lucy shifts in her seat and her eyelids flutter open. She looks at me. I watch her. My job, right now, is to take care of her.
Light flashes from the porch as Dad opens his front door. He steps out and his very pregnant girlfriend stands at the door, holding it open. I think of Veronica unwilling to enter a house without permission, feeling that she was death, she was hurt, and that people should think twice before allowing her into their lives.
Maybe Dad should be scared of me and Lucy. Trouble seems to follow us. I exit the car and my father stops in front of me. Concern oozes from him. “What’s going on? Your mom has been calling me nonstop.”
Great. “Have you answered?”
“I did. Once. But she didn’t make any sense.”
I rub my eyes then start for the backseat, but Dad gets there first. “I’ll get her.”
I feel helpless as Dad extracts Lucy. She doesn’t automatically wrap her arms around him, instead looks at me for approval. Should she trust him? I don’t know, but right now he’s our safest bet. I nod and she apprehensively leans into him, her exhaustion winning out.
Dad carries her into the house while I bring in our bags. I try to
say a warm, “Hi,” to Tory as she lets me in. I then follow Dad up the stairs. What was once the baby’s room now has two twin beds complete with pillows and comforters.
I stop short as my brain stops working. “Where’s the crib?”
“Our room,” Dad says as he pulls back the covers then lays Lucy on the bed.
“The baby will be fine with us in there when he’s born,” Tory says from the hallway.
Dad tucks Lucy in and mumbles some comforting words. She’s so tired that she automatically rolls into a ball and closes her eyes. I wish anything was that easy for me. I back out of the room, Dad does the same, leaving the door halfway open. We return to the living room, and he and I stare at each other like we’re strangers who pass by each other on the way to class. Someone we know, but don’t.
“Would you like something to drink?” Tory asks.
I don’t, but she wants to do something so I accept. She leaves, and Dad sighs heavily before dropping into a chair. I sit on the couch and decide to be honest. “I’ve been mad at you for a while.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I had anywhere else to go.”
“I know that, too.” He meets my eyes, and I want to look away but don’t. “But you’re welcome here, and we want you here. I know I’ve messed up in the past, but I’m ready to be the dad you need now. Whatever it is, you’re my son, and we’ll figure it out.”
I don’t believe him. There are too many years of missed visits between us. Too much heartache of me choosing Mom’s side. But he has welcomed me and Lucy in. Odds are, he has paid his child support on the fifteenth and thirtieth every month. “I’m sorry for showing up like this. You aren’t going to like what I have to say.”
Dad rolls his neck. “What’s your mom done, Sawyer?”
“When I tell you, I’m not going to play this game anymore. The game where I tell you something about Mom, you blame her for everything and I’m stuck in the middle. I don’t like it when she does it with you. I’ve always hated the game, and I’m the one who’s been on the losing end of it. I tell you what’s happening, and you work with me, not against me.”
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