by L. G. Davis
I can’t believe he’s had all this money lying around and never once offered to help me with the bills, only because he wanted to make me suffer. But being angry with him right now won’t get me anywhere. In spite of his imperfections, I want him back in my life. And this time, we’ll make it work. I’ll never turn my back on him again. I’ll let him heal at home.
With my hand still on the cash, I think of his expression when I saw him yesterday morning. He had looked so defeated, as though he had given up the fight. Had he given up life as a whole?
If anything happens to him, I’d be the person responsible yet again. For the second time in his life, I made the wrong decision.
Unsure what to do with the money, I close the lid and push the box back under the bed. As soon as I put the mattress back in place, the sound of the front door closing vibrates through the walls.
Maybe it’s him. My heart leaps, but crashes again when I hear Thalia’s voice coming down the hall. Within seconds, she fills Ryan’s doorway.
“Sweetheart, how are you?” She drops a bag filled with folders to the floor and rushes to my side, puts her arms around me. “I couldn’t go to work without finding out how you’re doing.”
“I told you on the phone.” I pull away.
“I could hear in your voice that you’re not fine. You don’t have to pretend in front of me.” She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and goes to sit on the bed. I’m glad I’ve hidden the box of cash since I don’t have answers to questions she might ask about the money.
I sit next to her, my hands wedged between my knees. “I’m so worried, Thalia. I don’t know what to do. I searched everywhere. I even called the rehab facility.” I catch my breath. “No one has seen him.”
“What are the cops saying?”
“Nothing yet.” I rub my sore eyes. “I can’t believe he just disappeared into thin air like that. How’s it even possible? This is a small town.”
“I know,” Thalia says in a quiet tone. “Yesterday evening, I also drove around, looking for him, but nothing.”
“You think he could have left town?” I search Thalia’s face for answers she doesn’t have. “But where would he go? Why would he leave without saying goodbye?” A tear rolls down my cheek. “I thought we were at a good place, finally.”
“What about the note?” Thalia asks cautiously.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but I don’t think he’s dead. He might be in trouble.” My mind wanders to the money under the bed. What if it belongs to someone else, someone dangerous, someone who hurt Ryan?
I want to discuss the money with Thalia, but something inside stops me. I wouldn’t want to put Ryan in any more trouble than he might already be in. If the cash is stolen, and he returns home, he could end up in jail. The cops would question anyone who knows him. Telling Thalia about the money would put her in a difficult position.
“How did you get into the apartment, anyway?” I ask.
“You gave me an emergency key last year, remember? I thought it might be time to use it.”
“Yeah, I forgot.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears.
“Did you even get any sleep?”
“How could I? When I close my eyes, I see Ryan, the way he had looked the last time I saw him.”
“You really don’t believe there’s a possibility he could have—”
“Killed himself?” I shake my head. “I ... I just don’t feel it.”
Thalia watches me for a long time, but before she can respond, the doorbell rings.
“DID YOU FIND HIM?” I ask before the police officer and his partner—a burly man with a handlebar mustache and bushy eyebrows—have a chance to step through the door.
“You may want to have a seat, Ms. Wilson.”
“Why? What did you find out?” I wrap my arms around my body as my pulse skyrockets.
“Can we come in?”
I don’t respond, just stare at him, waiting for answers.
“Please, come in.” Thalia appears at my side and opens the door wider. I don’t say anything as she takes my hand and leads me to the living room where she helps me sit on the couch. She offers the cops a place to sit as well, then excuses herself to go and prepare coffee.
“Tell me,” I say in a whisper. I need to know the truth, however much it hurts.
Officer Sawyer runs the palm of his hand down his thigh, then lift his eyes to meet mine. “I’m afraid we don’t have good news.”
“Is he ...?” The words die on my tongue.
“We found his wheelchair on a deserted area of the beach. He was nowhere near it.”
I swallow hard and lift my chin. “How do you know ... How do you know it’s his wheelchair?”
He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a photo, the one I had given him yesterday of Ryan in his wheelchair. “It’s this exact one. Only without him in it. But we also found this at the edge of the water.” He pulls out another photo and hands it to me. I clutch on to it with trembling hands.
“His shoes?” I stare at the picture, blinking away the moisture in my eyes. I don’t look up when Thalia returns to the living room and places the tray on the coffee table.
“One of them.” Officer Sawyer accepts his coffee from Thalia and thanks her, then continues, “We were unable to find the other shoe.”
Bile rises up in my throat when the coffee smell makes its way to me.
I want to tell the cops it’s not his shoe but I would be lying. Ryan always wore the same red sneakers, a pair I bought him last Christmas.
“Ms. Wilson, can you confirm that that’s one of your brother’s shoes?”
I bite my lip and nod. “But, where is he?” In my mind’s eye, the horror image of Ryan pushing his wheelchair through beach sand and then throwing himself out of it to crawl into the sea, makes me sick to my stomach.
“Unfortunately, that’s a question we can’t answer ... yet.” Officer Sawyer takes a swig of coffee. “But our team is looking into it as we speak. I’m sorry to say this, but I think you should prepare yourself for the worst.”
“He’s not dead.” I look from Officer Sawyer to his partner, desperate for one of them to believe me. “I know my brother is alive.”
Officer Sawyer drinks more coffee, and when he lowers the cup, I notice the sweat on the tip of his nose. “Ms. Wilson, what if your brother lied to you?”
I swipe a hand across my cheek. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying that the wheelchair was found a distance from the water. Could it be he was able to walk himself into the sea?”
My mouth drops. “I don’t know what you are implying, officer, but no. My brother couldn’t walk.”
Thalia lowers herself beside me and takes my hand. I don’t like what I see in her eyes. “Paige, think about it. Maybe that’s why you sometimes felt watched when you were out with Dylan. He could have followed you around.”
I don’t answer because I don’t want anything they’re implying to be true.
After everyone leaves and I’m left alone, I get a call from Dylan. He asks to come and see me, but I tell him I need to be alone to process the information I received.
I spend the night in Ryan’s room, staring at the black ceiling, thinking about what the officer said.
No. Ryan wouldn’t do that to me. He was cruel, but surely not that cruel.
CHAPTER 20
Thalia places a hand on my shoulder. “Ready?”
“Will I ever be?” Her features are distorted by the tears filling my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Paige.”
“So am I.” I bite back tears. “I can’t believe he’s not coming back.”
“Yeah, me too.” Thalia zips up the back of my plain, black cotton dress.
It’s no secret she didn’t care much for Ryan, but I can see in her eyes that she shares my pain. As a true friend, she was desperate for him to be found for my sake.
Hand in hand, we step out of Ryan’s room and I close the door behind us
. I’ve been sleeping there for three weeks now, surrounded by darkness. But I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep in there again after today, after what I’m about to do.
The police say they did everything they could to find Ryan, combing the coast and even searching in nearby towns. They only managed to find his second shoe, not far away from where they’d found the first.
Every day, I’d held on to the hope that every time I called them, they’d have some good news for me. They never did. Each time I hung up the phone, my heart broke a little more.
Last week, Officer Sawyer urged me to face the possibility that Ryan might not be coming back home. I’m sure what he really wanted to say was that I should come to terms with the fact that he might be dead. I lashed out at him and hung up the phone, but after a night spent drenching my pillow with tears, I woke up feeling more distant from Ryan than ever before.
Two days later, I forced myself to say goodbye even if it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I’ll never stop hoping he will one day show up at my doorstep as he used to do before the accident, but if I want to keep myself from going insane, I’ll have to find some kind of peace.
Before leaving the house, I release Thalia’s hand and enter the living room. My gaze lands on the space between the couch and the TV, the spot where Ryan’s wheelchair used to be parked.
My hand covers my chest as pain blooms in my heart. I’m desperate to hear the sounds and noises I used to hate, desperate to smell the scents that used to disgust me. But nothing is left of Ryan except the bad memories that I hold on to as though they are good. They’re all I have of him.
I don’t care how many times they tell me it’s not my fault he’s gone. I don’t believe them.
My decision to send him to rehab was not only for him but also for my own selfish reasons. I’d wanted my life back. Even with all the pain he’d caused me, I can’t imagine a life without him. My world had revolved around trying everything I could to make his life comfortable. With his departure, all that’s left is a black, empty hole inside my heart.
“Paige,” Thalia whispers and I turned to follow her out of the living room. In the entrance hall, I catch sight of my face in the small round mirror hanging on the wall. I hardly recognize myself. My hair, in a limp ponytail, looks lifeless. My skin is pale like it hasn’t been touched by the sun in months, and the bags underneath my eyes are proof of the sleepless nights behind me.
“Let’s go, sweetie,” Thalia says, brushing my arm. “Dylan is waiting.”
I nod and pick up a basket filled with white rose petals I’d left by the door.
As kids, Ryan and I had neighbors with a white rose garden. We used to love watching them bloom. Sometimes, Ryan would steal a few blooms to bring home to me. It didn’t matter how often he was punished by my mother for doing so. He did it anyway because he delighted in the way they cheered me up.
It takes us less than twenty minutes to get from the apartment to the dock closest to where Ryan’s shoes were found.
Dylan is on the deck of his boat, khaki linen trousers and white shirt flapping in the early morning breeze, hair teased by the wind.
The boat is pearly white, with the name Baxter in gold and black letters on one side. It’s the same boat I’d been on a couple of times in the past days as Dylan helped me sweep the ocean for my brother, the same boat that always brought us back to land empty-handed.
“Come here, my love,” Dylan says when we step onto the boat.
Thalia takes the basket from me and I walk into the arms of the man who has stood by me every day since Ryan disappeared.
I tighten my arms around him, breathe in his masculine scent before it’s stolen by the wind, and bury my face into his shoulders while blinking back tears.
After we break our embrace, he kisses me softly and goes to man the boat.
I’m grateful for the fact that both Thalia and Dylan don’t try to involve me in a conversation. They leave me to stand on the side of the boat, holding on to the railing, my ponytail being swung by the wind from side to side, water spraying onto my face.
They understand that I need to be alone to grieve in the only way I can. Dylan keeps going, waiting for me to tell him to stop. I have no idea where we’re going, but if the police were unable to find Ryan, he must be somewhere deep in the ocean.
Finally, I hear a cough behind me and turn around.
“Let’s stop here,” I call over the rush of the wind. Dylan doesn’t seem to have heard me, so Thalia taps him on the shoulder. He glances back at me for confirmation.
I nod and he slows down until the boat is bobbing back and forth on the water.
Thalia hands me the basket of rose petals. I grip the handle with one hand and reach into it with the other, curling my fingers around a handful of blooms. Swallowing the sob inside my throat, I lean over the railing and open my fingers one by one. The fragile petals fall into the water like snowflakes and drift away to nowhere.
“Goodbye, Ryan,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
I grab hold of another handful of silky petals and release them onto the surface of the water. They look so crisp and innocent, breathtaking as they float away. Too beautiful to be used as a sign of death.
Right now, as I stand here facing the empty sea, my body feels cold. For the first time since Ryan disappeared, I feel as though he really is dead. The pain of loss is almost physical. It hurts that I never got the chance to say goodbye in person. It hurts not to be able to touch his hand and to hug him for the last time.
But he left behind a clear message. He wanted to punish me.
After I’ve said my goodbyes to Ryan, Thalia appears next to me and also says goodbye to him. Dylan says goodbye, too, even though he didn’t know Ryan.
With the empty basket, I collapse onto a padded bench. I’m not crying, but my cheeks are burning as though fire has been lit beneath my skin.
Thalia and Dylan stand nearby, still giving me a moment to digest everything that’s happened, to gather myself before stepping back into my life, a life without Ryan in it, a life I don’t know how to live. Where do I even go from here? Where do I start?
Finally, I find the strength to let Dylan and Thalia back in.
“Why don’t you both come with me?” Dylan says, when we leave the boat and approach our cars. “Let me take you to lunch.”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I won’t be able to keep anything down.”
“What do you feel like doing?” Thalia squeezes my hand.
“I feel like going home ... Being alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, my love.” Dylan slides an arm around my waist. “What happened today was heartbreaking for you. Let’s help you get through the next couple of hours.”
“There’s nothing you can do for me.”
How can I explain to them how it feels to wake up each day feeling like I’m holding a flame inside my chest?
Right now, I’m a burden to both of them. For the past few weeks, after work, Thalia came straight to my apartment to see how I’m doing. On most days she found Dylan there, doing his best to make me feel better. It’s selfish of me to put their lives on hold.
Thalia will always be my friend, and if the tables were turned, I’d do the same for her. But when it comes to Dylan, I don’t know if it’s fair for me to keep him in my life when I don’t even know how to breathe. He lost his own father not too long ago, but my pain is overshadowing his.
Every time I ask him when he will return to New York, he changes the subject. His businesses need him there. I know he’s only in Corlake because of me. That’s not fair, and I intend on telling him that tonight.
Even though I’m going through a hard time, my feelings for Dylan have increased. I sense that he feels the same way. If he leaves for New York, I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll be back. And if he doesn’t come back, we were never meant to be, after all.
Dylan’s phone rings before he has the chance to
talk me out of going home alone. He raises his hand to excuse himself and walks away from us toward his car. His face is toward us as he speaks, his eyebrows drawn, his free hand curled into a fist.
“He sounds like he’s involved in an argument.” Thalia wraps her arms around her. “What do you think it’s about?”
“Apparently his father’s businesses are causing him more trouble than he anticipated.” Every time I’ve been with him this past week, endless calls came in, each of them leaving his face flushed with color.
I tried asking what’s going on, but he kept saying it’s nothing he can’t handle and that we should focus on me instead of him.
But now that I’ve said goodbye to Ryan, it’s time for Dylan to make time for his own problems. He’s been focused on me for long enough. Maybe with him gone for a while, I can have a chance to try and fix myself up.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Thalia pulls me close.
“No, I’m not. But I’ll learn to be.” I rest my head on her shoulder. “I have to.”
CHAPTER 21
“Oh, boy, I’ve forgotten how much energy it takes to move.” I tape shut a box filled with books, all of them belonging to Ryan.
I was surprised to find them in the back of his van. I don’t remember the last time I saw him reading a book. But what hurts the most is that many are focused on how to overcome depression. In the end, no amount of information in the world could save him. I couldn’t save him, either.
He’s been gone for six weeks now, and I’m still not at the place where I can say he’s dead. I don’t know if that will ever change.
There are times I wonder if he’s really gone because I’d be walking down the street and get the same overwhelming feeling that I’m being watched. But when I look over my shoulder, he’s never there. So, I tell myself my mind is playing tricks on me and take the next step.
I still have the money he left behind. I’ve thought of handing it over to the police, in case it was stolen, but I can’t get myself to do that.
Last week, I went as far as driving to the police station only to turn back. I’ve kept the money well hidden in a kitchen cabinet ever since. I’ll deal with it later, after I move.