“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” How could she have kept this to herself?
“And watch the look of annoyance come over your face? No, thanks.”
“What look of annoyance?” My voice raises incrementally. I’m pissed.
“Uh, the one on your face right now.” Harper answer is flippant, like this is no big deal.
“You deserve the look right now.” My tone is stern, intense. What if she had told me? Would I have realized I loved Ethan a long time ago?
Harper shrugs as though the topic already bores her. “Okay,” she agrees. Too quickly.
“You should have told me.”
Harper holds her hands up in a defensive position. “Fine, fine. I should have told you. But I would’ve lost my friend to a guy. I need you to be my wingwoman. My partner in crime. Not coupled up the way you are now.” Her top lip curls.
Why is my relationship so distasteful? She's the one going on date after date, trying to find the man who puts all other men to shame. And not for the sake of love, either.
I stay quiet when the server appears and drops off the check.
“This is really your fault, you know.” Harper tosses her hair over her shoulder, her tone calm. “You made it clear you believed there was nothing more than friendship coming from your side.”
I already feel bad enough about what I’ve been putting Ethan through for ten years. I don’t need to be told yet again, so I ignore her.
“Are you ready to leave?” I pull cash from my purse and toss it on the check.
“Yes.” Harper grabs her purse too. “If I tuck my chin to my chest, will you give me a good shove to the back so I can roll out of here?” She points to her stomach and puffs air into her cheeks.
We climb in Harper’s car and head to the mall. Harper wants a new dress for work, and she’s talking about how her closet needs a refresh. I’m finding it hard to pay attention.
I wish I knew what Ethan was doing at this very moment. I picture a barren desert, Ethan’s combat boots, and his smile. I want him so much. My heart feels the yearning like a physical ache.
Harper continues to prattle on about the type of fabric she wants, but her voice fades into the music coming from her car stereo. I pretend to listen, nodding my head sporadically.
I stare at the brake lights in front of us, but what I really see are Ethan’s eyes and the intensity that burns behind them when he looks at me.
Two hundred and two more days to go.
10
Ethan
I’ve been in this hellhole for two months. Playing superheroes and bad guys was the highlight of my day when I was a kid. My pretend games didn’t include men who wanted to blow me up. Last week, that happened to a guy I knew from basic. I saw him that morning at breakfast. Everything seemed normal, just like every day…just like today. And then…well, armored Humvee’s can only provide so much protection when a civilian steps in front of you wearing a bomb.
Shit has been getting really bad over here. Today’s mission has me nervous. I want to protect my country. And I’m not afraid to die. I’m just afraid to be without Kate. And to leave Kate without me. Life won’t be that cruel. We’re meant to be. The lucky ones.
I’d feel worse if we were going by vehicle. Orders are to meet at the helicopter. It’s unusual for us to fly, and there have been whispers all morning about the reason. I don’t care. If I’m in a bird, I’m safe from suicide bombers. It isn’t until I arrive at our meeting point that I learn what we’re doing today. Aerial scout, he said. Which makes me wonder what is coming up that requires an aerial scout.
Me and nine other men strap into our seats. The helicopter’s blades are a loud thump thump thump. Soon we’re in the sky. I look down at the craggy rocks and sand. The landscape is just as ugly from the air. Desolate and forsaken.
We’re fifteen minutes in, cruising over a rocky mountain, when a deafening sound blasts through the helicopter. My body slams against my seat. Pain spreads through the back of my head. I try to focus on the pilot, but fuzzy spots cloud my vision.
Through the cursing and yelling around me I make out the pilot’s words. “We’ve been hit.”
And then comes the second blast. The sound is all around me, filling my throbbing head. The chopper shudders, throwing me back again. Sharp pain ricochets through my jaw as my teeth crack together. Thank God Nick isn't with me. He needs to do what I asked of him. We can’t both die or else—
The helicopter bounces, and it’s like being in a ride at a fair. Twisting, shaking, turning. I know what’s below us.
We won’t make it.
I won’t make it.
Katie girl, I love you. I’m sorry. I won’t come for you. I love you.
The helicopter drops. The screams of men fills my ears.
I love you Katie.
The free fall continues.
I love you Katie.
Spinning. Just a few seconds from impact. My eyes squeeze shut, and I see pictures of the life I was supposed to have. Kate in a white gown, smiling. Kate holding an infant in her arms. Kate, gray haired and wrinkled, blowing out the candles on my birthday cake. She looks up at me, her face radiating with happiness.
Her lips are moving.
I love you too.
Impact.
11
Kate
Frantic pounding.
Where is it coming from?
Awareness creeps into the bookstore my dream-self is standing in. The loud noise rolls through the bookshelves, and I look around in irritation to see who's creating it.
More pounding.
My eyes open. No more bookstore. Just my dark room. I glance at the clock. Two a.m. Saturday night…or, Sunday morning. More banging.
My covers fly back. My feet hit the soft carpet, and I stumble but keep moving forward. I smack the wall on my way to the front door, and the overhead light in the kitchen comes on. I blink twice at its intensity. The knocking that's more like banging continues. I’m almost afraid to answer it. In my heart I know this isn’t good. People don’t bang on doors at this hour with good news.
My heart beats a furious, thumping rhythm in my chest.
I spare a quick glance down at my cell phone as I hurry past the little table in the hallway. The face glows with notifications. Six missed calls. My steps stutter, and I grab the wall to keep from falling.
I reach the door and fight the lock with shaking fingers. The three seconds of time my fumbling costs me feels like an hour. The lock makes a loud clicking sound as it finally slides out of the way. The pounding cuts off when I open the door.
A man is half-standing, half-sagging against the doorframe. Zane.
His face, twisted almost grotesquely in agony, looks past my head. His eyes are glazed over.
My heart falters. An icy hand claws at it, gripping it with tenacious strength. The hairs on my arms stand upright, and my whole body is tense, waiting. My brain refuses to consider the one thing Zane and I have in common, the single factor that would send him drowning in anguish to my door.
“What?” It’s a desperate cry. I reach without thinking, my hands on his shoulders.
He stays silent. His mouth hangs open like he wants to speak, but no sound comes out.
His silence angers me. The icy hand in my chest is reaching out to other parts of my body, having already had its way with my heart.
I glare into his face, my hands still on his shoulders. I shake him once, hard.
“Speak,” I yell, the terror I feel making my voice shrill.
Finally, he’s moved into action. Tears pour from his eyes.
“Ethan,” Zane chokes out. He lets out a guttural cry after he says my best friend's name. “Ethan’s dead.”
My limbs are shallow. My chest is empty. I’m weightless. This is a joke.
I can’t live in a world without Ethan. And I’m still alive. So Ethan must be too.
Anguished cries stream from my throbbing throat. Finally I find words.
&nbs
p; “You’re lying,” I scream.
Deny, deny, deny. Bent fingers bunch the fabric of his shirt.
“I’m not.” Zane’s hands cover mine. “His helicopter was shot down in the mountains. Every person aboard is dead. I tried calling you. Evie tried calling you. You didn’t answer.”
I can’t… I won’t… My Ethan… No.
I think I’m crying but I don’t really know.
I think I’m breathing but I don’t really know.
My life, my future, my Ethan. Gone.
Zane’s chest catches my collapsing head. The air from my sobs fills my lungs and pushes against my throat.
This pain… It’s new. Pain I’ve never felt before.
It’s massive, consuming, a foul black liquid coursing through my body and filling me. It’s all I can feel.
I want it to take me away.
There’s a heavy weight on my chest. It pushes me down. Ethan’s face looms behind my closed eyes. His bright smile, the look of absolute love in his eyes, the last thing he’d said to me. I’ll be home soon, and then we can be together. I love you, Katie.
The blackness comes, opening up a hole, beckoning me. I go to it. Anything, anything, to take away the pain that rolls over me, wave after relentless wave.
My knees are weak, then everything is dark.
***
My mother’s here. I smell thyme and onions. Polenta soup. It’s the same thing she made for me after my dad died.
I open my eyes. And then I wish I hadn’t. At least with my eyes closed, I can pretend Zane didn’t come to my apartment in the middle of the night. I glance at the clock. Twelve hours ago.
“Sweetheart?”
My mother's voice, so thick with her concern. I turn my head to it.
“What?” My own voice, so frail and meek.
She stands in the doorway. “I made food for you. You need to eat. You haven’t eaten a thing all day.”
“Not hungry,” I mumble. Ethan is dead.
She frowns. “You need sustenance, honey. You need food to live.”
I stare at her, my face blank. Ethan. Is. DEAD. I want to shriek at her, at God, at the whole damn world.
I roll over and bury my face in my pillow. I listen to my mother’s retreating footsteps. I don’t want your soup. I don’t want anything.
I remember what happened. I fainted. And then I woke up on the couch, and the pain was so sharp, I was sure there was a knife inside my body, stabbing my heart from within. Then I fainted again.
Now I'm in my bed, and the pain isn't stabbing me. It's different, more like a choking black fog. It fills my insides, billowing out into all the fissures and hidden corners of my body.
I can’t breathe.
The sobs choke me again.
My heavy head lifts from the pillow, and I force myself to slow down, taking tiny breaths whenever I can fit them in.
When I get up to go to the bathroom, I hear Harper talking to my mom.
“I just can’t believe she passed out like that. I barely caught her head before it hit the ground. I didn’t even know what was happening, I’d just come from my room and saw her and Zane, then she was falling.” Harper sounds amazed and proud of herself.
“Well, I’m certainly glad you got to her in time.” My mother’s voice sounds dull. She’s devastated too. And yet she’s here, tending to me.
I want to tell her thank you, but I’m overcome by exhaustion. My eyes throb. The sobbing and emotional distress have emptied me.
I leave the bathroom and crawl back into bed. Fervently I pray for the blackness that took me away last night. Soon I’m watching the onyx curtain fall over my mind, and then it’s dark again.
***
My mother stays until it’s late, hovering, watching, waiting for me to be human. Harper keeps coming into my room and prattles on about useless, unimportant things. In my mind I tell her to get the hell out, but my mouth stays shut.
When I wake up Monday morning, I call my boss to let her know I need time off.
“Lynn, something terrible has happened. I’m going to need some personal time to deal with it.” I want to hit myself for using those words. Deal with it. Deal with it? My world is broken. Shattered pieces of the life I knew surround me. How could something like that ever be dealt with?
“When will you be back?” Lynn asks. Her voice is all business. I fumble for my answer.
“I don't know,” I whisper haltingly.
She clears her throat loudly into the phone. “Why don't you take this week off? Come back next Monday.”
It strikes me as a bizarre suggestion, one I would laugh at if I could remember how to take a laugh from my chest and move it up through my throat.
One week. Just seven days and suddenly, I’ll be a functioning part of society again?
My sigh into the phone is just as loud as hers. “Two weeks, Lynn. I need two weeks.”
My voice is in my ears, and it doesn’t sound like me. Hot anger rips through my chest. I hate the words coming out of my mouth. I hate the reason I have to ask for time off.
“All right.” Lynn doesn’t hesitate.
I end the call without waiting for her to respond.
My thumb rubs over the smooth, cold glass, gliding over my background picture. I’m smiling, and Ethan is looking at me.
I want to hurl my phone at the wall. My hand raises above my shoulder. But I don’t do it. This phone is a link to Ethan. To pictures, text messages, and emails.
I fall and let my bed catch me.
Lynn wanted me to come back in a week. I blink up at the ceiling, wondering how she could think of work when Ethan is dead. This world is not the same anymore. Can’t she feel it too? Can’t everyone feel this loss?
But the clock keeps ticking. Each minute passes at the same pace.
Not for me. My clock stopped ticking when Ethan stopped breathing.
***
I’ve lived six days in a world without Ethan.
I hate this world.
This world is evil, a seductress who entices with promises of true love and then curls her pointed fingernails and stabs the hopeful hearts placed in her wicked palm.
Six days without a future.
Six days inside a mind filled with terrible, scary thoughts. And a million questions.
What happened in his final seconds?
Did he have time to say goodbye to someone?
Did he pray?
Did he know what was happening to him?
Did he think of me?
And then comes the realization that I’m even asking these questions at all, and oh, my God, Ethan’s dead.
Six days in this bed. I hate these watercolor floral sheets. Too bright. Garish. But Ethan laid on them with me.
I shower every day, but only to please Harper. If she weren’t pulling me from bed and shoving me under the running water, I’d lie under my sheets and keep praying for God to kill me.
I don’t say any of this to Harper. She wouldn’t understand. She talks about normalcy and getting back to a routine. You’ve been knocked down but you need to get right back up. It’s exactly what my father would have said. Sorry, Dad. Kate can’t Master this.
I stare at Harper and say nothing. I let her pull me from bed and walk me to the shower. She thinks she knows.
She knows nothing.
Pain doesn't wash away. The bubbles disappear down the drain but the hurt is on the inside, devouring me.
The hot water runs out, and I'm on my knees, sobbing silently with my face pressed into the tile floor. This is normal now. When I get out, Harper is there, assessing me.
“Why are you shaking?” Her eyes squint, her question more of an accusation. “I made sure your water was hot.”
“It ran out.”
“And did you get out?” Her tone is patronizing.
“Yes.” Lie. I push past her.
“Your mom is bringing over dinner. She’s worried about you.”
“Why?” I ask, dropping my towel t
o the ground.
Harper doesn’t bat an eye. She’s used to this by now. On day one when I dropped my towel, she gasped. Old Kate liked privacy. New Kate doesn’t care about anything anymore.
I pull on underwear. Harper hands me the bra hanging from my desk chair.
“I told her you haven’t been eating.”
I have no desire for food. I lie in bed, smelling the frozen dinners Harper makes, and my stomach turns.
Harper sighs. “She’ll be here soon.”
I nod, pulling my head through a white T-shirt. Ethan’s shirt. Left in secret in my room on the day he last left Phoenix, a note attached. When you wore this shirt, I knew you had feelings for me. I’ve worn it every day since he died.
“Why don’t you put on something else?” Harper pulls open a drawer and looks through my pajamas.
“I’m good.” I climb back under my covers.
“Did you hear me say your mom will be here soon?”
I nod.
Harper’s exhale is a long, annoyed sound.
I keep my back to her until I hear the door fall into the frame.
My mom arrives a few minutes later, food in hand. She doesn’t leave the food in the kitchen this time.
“Sweetie? I brought you dinner.” She holds out the casserole dish.
“No, thank you.”
“Kate, you’ve got to eat.” Her voice is gentle, but there’s a stern edge to it.
No, I don’t.
I don’t say anything, and she walks out. She’s back quickly with a plate full of food. I roll over to face the wall.
“I’m going to put this on your nightstand. You have to get hungry sometime.”
The plate bangs down onto the wood. The tinny sound of silverware follows. The bed moves under me, and my mom touches my shoulder.
“Can you roll over please?”
I do as she asks.
Her eyes fill with worry as she takes me in. She scratches her neck, like she’s trying to cover up her unease at the sight of her heartbroken daughter.
The Day He Went Away Page 9