by Lang, Alice
Henry was waiting for him at his apartment with a bottle of fifteen-year-old whiskey. Henry said nothing as he handed him a glass full of amber liquid. Patrick downed it in one go and handed the empty glass, asking for more.
“I lost her,” he said when he was on his third one.
“You’ll get her back,” Henry said and took a sip of his own. He was already on his third one too. This was probably the only time where Patrick would beat him in drinking as his sadness seemed to absorb the alcohol rather than his body.
“What if I can’t?”
“The Patrick I know would never let that happen.”
Patrick had given one stiff laugh before it turned into a loud, almost maniac like howl. Henry never thought that love would made his brother lose himself like this. His heart ached to see him in this much pain.
“The thing is Henry; I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I can do or should do anymore. I couldn’t make mom and dad stay together. I keep messing with your life. I ruin other people’s happiness and now, I can’t convince the one person who matters to me the most stay. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”
And so Patrick cried on Henry’s shoulder that night, which Henry gladly lend him. Patrick had always tried to be strong for everyone around him and Henry always believe that the ones who cried wasn’t weak. They’d just been so strong for so long that they faltered and let out the strength they had been carrying for a long time.
The next day, Patrick wasn’t there to wave her off, they had already said their goodbyes. He just walked past her apartment building and winced when he noticed the ‘apartment available’ sign. He came close to going inside, putting down a deposit and renting it himself. Anything to never be reminded that her rooms were now empty.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Get on with it, I haven’t got all day.”
Patrick wanted to punch Henry so badly he might end up punching himself instead. He could not punch the person in front of him because he still valued his life. That damn brother of his had left him in the middle of dinner with her… Jane Hunt.
It started with a call from his brother in the middle of his usual sulking afternoon. He said he wanted to arrange a dinner with Patrick to cheer him up. Patrick didn’t want to go, didn’t want to be cheered up. Besides, food wasn’t as tasty as it should be since she left. It tasted like paper and ash now, tasteless and dry.
The energy that used to thrive within him was drained away every time he turned his gaze upon the empty desk across from him. Henry just dragged him out of the room one day and threatened to strap him down in a chair if he had to.
Twenty minutes after he ordered the food, or he should say that Henry handled everything, Jane Hunt walked in and sat right opposite of him. He glared at Henry with eyes full of accusation and utter betrayal. This was Henry’s idea of cheering him up? Making him talk with one person he didn’t want to talk to the most. But before Patrick could utter one more word, Henry disappeared into thin air like some phantom ghost of the night.
As much as he wanted to walk away, Patrick wouldn’t, not in front of Jane. He would not be the first one to give up when it came to him and his sister. Their first ten minutes was in total utter deadly silence. Jane just quietly ordered her favorite ribs while Patrick sulked in his mind.
“If you didn’t have anything to say, I’ll just finish this and go,” she finally said after another half hour had passed. Henry was still MIA, so they had eaten their dinner without him.
“Why are you here?”
“Henry called me and told me what happened. He said you’ve been depressed and could use some sisterly love.”
Damn that brother of his. He would get him back for this.
“That is none of your concern. I’ll be just fine.”
“I don’t think that calling in sick for three days straight and moping around the room is equal to being fine.”
He really was going to kill Henry, sharing such personal details, giving her perfect ammunition against him. Things were bad enough as it was.
Back at the office, things had gone back to where it was before Sarah first came. He became the topic of the gossip bowl again and was once again avoided. Some said that he was playing around her and that he was jealous of her skills. How dare they? They knew nothing about Sarah or their relationship.
“Again, why do you care?”
Jane put down her fork and knife down beside her plate. She let out a huge sigh. It was probably the first time they look at each other since the start of the dinner.
“Can’t I be worried about by dear little brother?”
Patrick felt a sudden rush of blood flowing into his face at her words. Little brother indeed. The little brother she abandoned so long ago, the little brother she kept at an emotional distance now. She hadn’t earned the right to be concerned.
“Like how you cared for me, or Henry, or even mom when you left?”
Jane’s normally poker face twisted at the insult; he could also see a tad of hurt. They had an unspoken agreement never to discuss their parent's divorce, it had become almost a taboo in their family. Both children had chosen to stay with their respective parents, and none of them felt the need to address why. But today, Patrick was just too tired, too sick and annoyed to be toyed with anymore.
“Oh, are we going to bring that up now?” Jane spoke in a tone he hadn’t heard for a long time, a tone she used whenever she was about to use her authority. He had heard it countless time when she fought with Henry when they were little.
“I don’t know since we are going to have a sibling talk, let’s start with that. Why should I listen to you? Actually, why should you be here at all? You weren’t there for me, or Henry or Mom. Even if you knew that he was the one that started this. He was the one that was unfaithful.”
Patrick knew he wasn’t just re-opening old wounds. He was digging into the fresh scars that were still raw exposed from his recent heartbreak.
“So, you think mom was the only person who ended up hurt from their divorce? That’s simple thinking, Patrick. Simple thinking that keeps you stuck emotionally like a little boy. You’ll never move past it until you grow up.” Patrick was grinding his teeth while she spoke. Jane was still treating him like a kid.
“I’m judging from what I see and from what I heard. He used me as an excuse to betray her.”
“Then you didn’t look hard enough.” Jane knew something that Patrick seemed to be missing. She held the final trump card for this storytelling.
“The woman you saw that day wasn’t just someone he met. She was his first love. She was the girl dad promised to marry before he met mom. In fact, they were together since high school. They went to university together, graduated together. Until one day, she moved away because of her family problem. Debts, I think.”
“You are finding excuse for them.” Jane was making his father and that woman seem like a fairy tale story. Patrick refused to fall for it. There was no excuse for his actions toward him or his mom.
“If you would open up your mind and listen, you’ll see I’m trying to share both sides of this story. Can you at least be open for a minute?”
To get the lecture over with, he nodded.
“When dad meet her again, it was like a dream come true. He knew it was too late; he had already married mom, had a family with her. But, it seems he couldn’t stay away, the love he’d tried to suppress for so long came to the surface. He wanted one more time with her. But one time wasn’t enough.”
“That still doesn’t justify what he did.” He refused to let some love story erase the wrongness of the person who destroyed his trust.
“I’m not saying that what he did was right. I’m saying that there was a story behind it,” Jane finished her side- or more of his father’s side of the argument. “The wrong ones didn’t have to feel like they were right, Patrick. I think that you of all people should know that.”
So Henry did tell her everything afte
r all. Then why bother to ask him for details? Jane was trying to read him again with her questions. What did she want this time? To rub more salt in his wounds?
“If I were to put this story into a hundred thousand word script for some romantic movie, people would say that dad belonged to Rahna and not mom. That they were fated to be together. But that’s not it, Patrick. I’ll have you know that after the divorce, dad never saw her again.”
Patrick whipped his head up to look at Jane in surprise. He was actually quite shocked. For all his life, he thought the reason his dad divorced his mom was because he wanted to be with that woman. So why didn’t he?
“And why him? Why not stay with mom? Even if he didn’t marry her, what he did was still wrong. Your choice was selfish-”
“Don’t you dare say it, Patrick Greenburg!” He knew half of the people in the restaurant were looking at them when Jane raised her voice. It was the first time he saw Jane snap, ever. “Don’t you dare say that my choice is selfish because if I am, I would have stayed with none of them.”
Patrick couldn’t speak. His mouth froze as the word stopped at the tip of his tongue, feeling threatened by Jane’s words. He swallowed those words back as he saw rage in Jane’s eyes.
“I wanted to be selfish and just take the opportunity to run away from everything. I wanted just to start a new life somewhere like a teenager and her stupid young dream of starting her own life with a backpack. If I had been selfish, I would now own a restaurant and be a chef as I’d always wanted to. I wouldn’t have stuck with a depressed father who pressured me into following his footsteps. I would have ran, lived my own life. But I didn’t.”
Patrick remembered it. He remembered once that Jane’s dream was to open a restaurant because she loved cooking. He wasn’t sure if used to love was a more appropriate term. He remembered the cookies she always baked on Sunday and how she would always demand everyone give them a taste.
“I love mom, just like you and Henry, but she and I would never get along. We are just too different.” She took a sip of her water, then wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“I knew what lay before me when I chose to go with dad. But do you really want to know why? He had no one left. Mom had you and Henry. But dad… he had no one. Mom wasn’t the only one that was hurt from this, Pat.”
They were all scarred from it, the whole family. Each one of them lost something on that day. Patrick lost his trust in others. Henry lost his innocence. Mom and Dad lost their love, and Jane lost her dream.
“I never wanted to work in this company. At first, I felt sick sitting on that chair. Now, I’m just numb. I can’t even remember that young girl dream I used to have anymore. So when you said that what I did was selfish, Patrick, I always considered that choice to be the most selfless choice I had made in my life.”
Patrick was amazed. In all these years, he’d never know how much pain his sister had endured. He had assumed so much, assumed it wrongly it seemed. What else had he gotten wrong?
He kept everyone, even his family at arm’s length. He never thought of reconciled with Jane before because he always thought she never cared for them. But since Sarah, oh sweet Sarah, made him open up to everything, he started to listen to those he pushed away. While it was eye opening, he felt something was stinging him at the same time. How had he been so blind to Jane’s choice?
“I’m sorry.” He had been saying that word so much lately. The mistakes he never wanted to admit seemed to fly back into him one by one. Patrick wasn’t really a perfectionist. He was just a man who held an illusion that he wasn’t wrong for such a long time.
“Don’t we all, Patrick?” her voice was back to normal. The soft tone that she used with her cool and calm demeanor. “And now what will you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Sarah. What is your next move?” Patrick could only shake his head. He was waiting for Sarah to come back. She said she needed time, and he would give her time. He didn’t have any moves left to play when all he could do was wait for her. And waiting was such a painful feeling because he didn’t know how long it would be.
“There is no next move. She said that she needed time, so I have to give it to her.”
“So you are just going to sit down and wait like a good boy? You both are hopeless.” Jane took a quick sip of her wine, looking at Patrick with a look of irritation. It made his eyebrows twitch in annoyance, too.
“For all I know, the relationship between and Sarah and I could be over. I broke her trust.”
“Then regain it.” Jane made it sound so easy. Trust wasn’t something that could be built so easily. Patrick knew that because it took him a long time to trust someone again.
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I didn’t say that it would be easy. Jesus, are you really that dense? If you continue to mope like this, you will end up like Mom and Dad.” Patrick swore Jane just pulled a muscle in his brain and a vein somewhere on his forehead popped. She always spoke in riddles and retorted him instead of talking straight. This was one of the reasons why he hated speaking with her.
“What do you know about love, Jane?” He doubted someone like Jane would understand what it was like to love someone and lose them. He had never seen her with anyone, not that he saw her much. He never heard anything from Henry concerning her love life either.
Jane looked at him with blank eyes, a look of sorrow he’d never seen her wear before. She tugged at the silver chain she always wore. She pulled her necklace up to reveal a silver ring hanging loosely on that thin necklace. The size of the ring was too large for Jane’s finger. It looked more like a man’s size. Realization hit Patrick like an oncoming train.
“He passed away days after we exchange our vows. Not that I didn’t expect it.” Patrick had never seen her wear a ring. If she did get married then, it couldn’t have been a big ceremony. Jane was the center of media attention anyway, so nothing escaped nosy journalists. He was amazed she had been able to keep her secret.
“I knew from the start that he didn’t have long. He refused to get married at first, saying I only married him out of pity. ” She laughed, a sound he wasn’t used to hearing from her. “Then I just smacked his head and said that I would take him no matter what he is or if he already had one foot in the grave. It was a short one year, but it was a happy one.”
The ring was so heavy with memories of lost love that it threatened to break the thin chain. Jane hid it back behind her clothes, next to her heart where it belonged.
The man she married was already sick with a terminal illness when she met him. She knew that if she loved this man, tragedy only awaited her at the end of this road. But Edmund was a good man. He managed to capture her ice cold heart even though he knew it was going to break her. He tried to refuse her love at first, saying that their love was doomed. He even doubted that she loved him once. But in the end, Jane and Edmund knew they could never deny their feelings, no matter how much time they had together.
“It happened a few years after I finished my master’s degree. He was a good man. We knew that we didn’t have much time together which was probably why that year, was the best year in my life.”
“I feel sorry for him… and you.” Patrick could only look away in total shame and regret for saying those mean things to Jane. He had always known Jane was strong, but he was looking at her with new eyes now. She had had the courage to love a man, even in the face of losing him. He wondered how she was able to bear the painful memories.
“I’m not. I understood his pain. I admired his tolerance, his will to live as long as he could. I would take everything that he could give to me… even his death. That is what love meant to me. Not to love forever but to love as long as your heart is beating.”
Today, Patrick knew two new things about his sister. One was that she was one of the most selfless people he ever knew. Another was that she wasn’t a lone wolf as everyone believed. She just loved someone so much that she could never find th
e heart for someone new. She was strong… just like his mom.
“If you stay here and mope around like an idiot, you will lose Sarah. It’s not time that you two need. It’s a reminder. Remind yourself and each other why you love each other. Unlike me and Ed, you two have time. When you realize that, you will never end up like Mom and Dad.”
Okay, he admitted that instead of punching the hell out of Henry, he owed that guy a big thank you. The time he’d just spent with his sister was more valuable than gold. He rose up and was about to fish out the payment for the dinner before Jane waved her hand.
“Go, you have an early flight to catch.”
Another thing he learned that night was that he was glad to have a sister like Jane.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Opportunity and greatness, she said. She didn’t mention mundane and miserable.
Sarah remembered her mundane jobs when she first set foot into a lawyer’s career path. Her first few years in this same building were her overture, her prologue. This was where she started to work her way up. Until she was transferred, that is. When she left, she never expected to be back here ever again.
Susanna was wrong when she said that opportunity awaits here. It was dull and boring, and her patience was worn very thin. She was the center of gossip in this office too, with much rumor being bounced around about why she was back so soon. She closed her ears to it all, just stayed in her office and worked the best she could.
Nothing has changed in Richmond since the day that she left. There was nothing for her here.
The only thing that changed was Sarah herself. She discovered that Patrick left a parting gift for her: a very well written letter of recommendation. She got everything that she wished for, a promotion, a raised, and her own private office with a proper steel name plate. What she didn’t get was a partner like everyone else.
The clicking of the mouse and the sound of the keyboard stroke was the only sound she could hear every day. There were occasional knocks on her door when she was informed that her client was there to see her.