by M. Leighton
Accept maybe there was.
I saw a face.
Or thought I saw. The doctors told me it was impossible, told me that I lost my sight almost immediately because of the severity of my head injury. They think my “vision” was a product of the concussion and swelling of my brain.
But what if they were wrong?
What if the last face I saw was Levi’s? What if the face that haunted me for the first few months when I couldn’t see a thing was his?
What are the chances? What is the likelihood that he, of all people, is the same person who was there the night my world was shattered? What are the odds that his face was the last thing I saw, and that now I’d be falling in love with him?
I don’t need a statistician to tell me the odds are astronomical.
Unless he already knew who I was.
Unless he sought me out.
My heart sputters to an uncomfortable stop for a breath, a single shaky breath, before it picks back up its beat again.
Oh Jesus!
Oh God, oh God, oh God!
I slide off the stool, but my legs are like butter, and they only slightly break my fall as I slither to the floor.
What if, what if, what if?
I force myself to my feet, holding to things for support as I head into the living room where Levi left my luggage parked. My purse is there as well, and my phone with it.
I dig it out and speak at it. “Siri, call Levi.”
I hear her respond that she’s calling Levi, followed by the musical boop, boop, boop of numbers being dialed. It rings and rings, but there is no answer.
I call again, but hear only the husky tones of Levi’s words on his voice mail.
My heart is fluttering erratically in my chest, a panicked cadence that makes me feel short of breath.
This can’t be.
Surely this can’t be.
She’s lying. She’s mistaken. She’s insane. She’s…monstrous.
I jump, gasping in shock when the teapot shrieks its readiness into the stillness. In my emotional frenzy, I’d forgotten all about it.
I make my way unsteadily to the kitchen, scrambling to remove it from the heat, my hands shaking as I do.
I jump a second time when I hear a loud knock at the door. My pulse hammers in my veins. Normally, I’d be leery of answering the door by myself, with Cherelyn gone, at this time of night. It’s after midnight, for God’s sake.
But this time I’m not.
The twisting of my stomach tells me that it’s Levi, and that he’s here because something is wrong.
Something like he was outed.
There’s no other explanation. I know it in that deep and hollow space inside me that housed the hope of everything Levi represented.
Last night it was full.
Now it feels empty.
Tears are already filling my eyes when I press my forehead to the door. “Wh-who is it?”
“It’s me,” comes the familiar voice.
I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle my sob.
It’s Levi. He’s here. And the sound of his voice, so different than it’s sounded every day before now, tells me that it’s true. It’s laced with guilt, years of guilt that runs soul deep.
I snap open the locks and pull open the door, my chest heaving with all the emotion I’m trying to control. It’s clawing at me, scratching and pulling, trying to drag me under. It’s all I can do to keep my head above the drowning force of it.
“Do you know?” he asks without preamble.
My mouth is as dry as desert sand, my tongue sticking to the roof.
“Please tell me it’s not true.”
My lips want to beg him to tell me it’s not true, but a part of me knows he can’t. He won’t.
Because it is.
His pause is long. Sad. Telling.
“Can I come in and explain?”
“No. You need to tell me. Right here. Right now. Tell me.”
I grip the doorknob, silently begging my legs to hold me up for this.
“I was going to tell you,” he begins, shifting uncomfortably. I can hear the friction of clothing on skin.
“Tell me what?”
I squeeze my eyes shut behind my glasses, and I pray.
Please, God, let it be something different. Please let me be wrong about this.
The ache behind my sternum is unbearable. It feels like something has been torn away, ripped from me, leaving raw nerves, spewing vessels and ragged tissue.
“I told you about Rachel.”
“The college girlfriend.”
“Yes, she was my girlfriend in college. We dated for three years. She got pregnant just after I graduated. She still had one year left. We were at a party one night. She was close to term and didn’t want to go, but I wanted one last night of fun before the baby came. I thought fun would be over then. I’d been drinking…quite a bit when she told me she’d had a contraction. She’d had them before, so we didn’t think much of it. By the time we realized she was in real distress, I couldn’t drive. None of us could. Rather than waiting for a cab, I called my father. We weren’t far from his brownstone. He came for us. What he failed to mention was that he’d been drinking, too.
“We were on our way to the hospital when a girl stepped out from between two parked cars. I saw her before Dad did. I reached over to jerk the wheel, but it was too late. Our reflexes just weren’t fast enough.”
In the hush of his pause, my ears throb with the thunder of my heartbeat. I barely hear his last words, but I already know what they will be. They’re branded onto my brain, seared into my heart, burned into my world with a permanence I will never be able to escape.
“We hit her.”
And yet, they stagger me, like a physical blow.
I stumble backward, reaching behind me for the nearest chair to collapse into. As he spoke the words, as he told his story, I could see where it was leading as clearly as I could see those headlights right before my life and everything in it went black. Now, I feel the impact of them as though I’m being run down all over again.
“I didn’t want to leave you, but…Rachel…she… She was bleeding so much, screaming in pain. I thought she was gonna die. She and the baby. I just…I panicked.”
“So you called 911 and you left me.” The words fall from numb lips like dead leaves, littering the chair and the floor around me. For the rest of my life, I will never be able to sit in this chair, in this spot, and not smell the stench of their decaying corpses. “It was you.”
I feel Levi squat in front of me, feel his body brush my bent knees, feel his hands hover tentatively over mine before he thinks better of touching me and moves them away.
“Evie, that’s why I’ve never been able to forgive my father. What he did was bad enough, but what he did after…”
“You mean never coming forward? You mean hitting a girl on the street and never bothering to see if she was okay? If she lived or died? If she could pay her medical bills? If her life had been destroyed?”
Levi’s body moves slightly, a flinch, like I slapped him. “Yes, that. All that. And…and what he did to Rachel.”
I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know.
But I do ask because I have to know. “What did he do?”
“The baby…she died. Our little girl. She was in distress too long. The cord got wrapped around her neck and she…she didn’t make it. It was… She…”
Levi falls quiet for a few seconds, and what little piece of my heart is still alive squeezes in grief at his obvious pain.
“The day Rachel was going to be discharged, I went home early to get a shower and change clothes and then come back for her. When I got back, she was gone. My father had been a busy man, covering up his wrongdoing. He’d made arrangements for her to disappear. And so she did. I don’t know what he said to her, what he threatened her with, but she left. Without a word. Without a note. Without a goodbye, sorry about our baby. She just…left. He wouldn’t tell me whe
re she went. Said she didn’t want to see me, and that it was for the best. He said we had to keep everything that happened that night quiet. It would end his career if it ever got out that he’d been drinking and driving and got involved in a hit-and-run.
“I didn’t see her again until I touched her cold face inside the casket she was buried in. One of my friends saw the funeral announcement in the paper, told me about it. She…she…Rachel killed herself three months after we lost the baby. After we…hit you.”
I say nothing.
Levi says nothing.
There is utter silence as I digest his words. There is utter silence as I remember that night. There is utter silence as my soul bursts into consuming, excruciating flame.
My throat is clogged. Grief, for me and for Levi, disbelief that this could be our convoluted history, betrayal at the fact that he could keep this from me, that he could do this to me—it all rises up to bottleneck in my throat, nearly choking off my words. Relentlessly, I force them out. I have to set them free. I have to know his answer.
“Were…were you ever going to tell me? Or were you just going to keep pretending?”
“I…was, yes.” His pause says otherwise. I don’t hear the truth. I hear uncertainty. Maybe he wanted to tell me, but I don’t believe that he actually intended to. If he had, he already would’ve. “I wanted to, but I was…” He stands, his heat withdrawn from me, leaving me colder than ever before. “Jesus, Evie, I was afraid you’d never be able to forgive me. Hell, I can’t forgive me. Or my father. What happened…what we did…it was unforgiveable. I was so drunk and I…I just didn’t know what to do. But that doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make it right. It was unconscionable.”
I don’t bother to argue. I don’t bother to pretend that I disagree. Because I don’t. I don’t disagree at all. What they did was unconscionable. They left me for dead.
“But even so,” he says, coming to squat in front of me again, “I hope you can forgive me. We never meant to hurt you. I swear to God, Evie, I swear to God I tried to help you. You did see me because I did try to save you. And…and you said you’d moved on from that night, that you were able to forgive the people who did this to you. Did you mean that? Were you telling the truth?”
I turn my face away, but I imagine his eyes following me. “I thought I was. I thought I did forgive them, but…”
A fresh wash of hot tears spill from my eyes and pour down my cheeks.
“I would’ve told you eventually. I promise. I was just so afraid of losing you. Please believe me. Please.”
The last is said on a whisper, a desperate plea. He sounds a little more convincing, but I’m not sure it matters. Not now. Not after this. I’m not sure anything he says will matter after this.
“But instead you let her tell me. I had to hear it from Julianne?”
Saying the words, hearing them fill the quiet is like a knife to the chest. Or a dozen knives to the chest, peppering me with pain, cutting to the bone. Shredding what was left of me before Levi came into my life.
“Evie, I,” he slowly begins, his voice a tortured blend of regret and guilt.
Before he can finish, another thought enters the despondent whirlwind of my mind, adding more agony to the already unbearable anguish.
Dumping salt into the wound.
What if all this has been some sick way of assuaging his guilt? What if it’s been a morbid way to check up on the woman left for dead on the side of the road? What if he came into my life on purpose?
“Did…did you know who I was? That night, at the showing, did you know I was the girl you hit?”
I’ve never known silence to actually hurt. But this silence does. It pricks like a thousand needles, piercing my tender skin, each one drawing blood.
I lurch to a stand, needing to be as far away from him as I can get. I stumble across the room, reaching for a wall, reaching for stability. Reaching for something to hold me up so I don’t crumble into a million tiny pieces. “Is that why you came? Did you seek me out? Did you seek me out because you feel guilty?”
I suck in a deep, corrosive breath. It burns its way through me. The simple thought that these days with Levi have been fake… The mere suggestion that those nights we shared weren’t real… It burns. Like battery acid, eating away at my insides until there’s nothing left but the hurt.
“Evie, it wasn’t like that. You have to believe me. I thought there was a chance it could be you when I read about you in the paper. When I saw that you’d been the victim of a hit-and-run during your time at Columbia, I suspected, but I didn’t know for sure until I saw you. Then I knew. I knew the moment I saw you. I’ve never been able to forget you, never been able to unsee your eyes as they looked up at me. They were my own personal hell until I met you. Then they became my salvation.”
I hear his words, but I don’t really hear them. I’m stuck in the horrific rut of pain and humiliation, finding out that he knew me. He knew me.
“So you’re trying to make it up to me, is that it? You’ve been spending time with me, taking me places, being a part of my life out of sympathy?”
Even the words feel bitter on my tongue. I’m so mortified, I just want to dig a hole, crawl into it, and never come back out.
“No, Evie, no! God no!” he exclaims, his voice drawing nearer.
I hold out my hand to stay him. I want to beg him to leave, to stay away from me, but I can’t. I have to know. I have to hear from his lips what all this really was. Whether I’ll ever be able to believe him or not, I need to hear it.
“Then what was it? Did you buy my paintings? Are you trying to pay me off? Absolve your family of any wrong doing?”
“No, I’m not. I…I wouldn’t do that. I bought one painting because I had to have it. Because it was of you. Because when I looked at it, I saw you. And somehow, you’ve become like air to me. Looking at Lady, looking at you, I can breathe again. But I swear that’s the only one.”
“You bought… You bought Lady? She was forty thousand dollars! And you’re going to stand here and tell me it had nothing to do with the fact that your father destroyed my life and then ran away without a word? Without having to pay a dime toward my hospital bills? Without giving me closure? You expect me to believe one had nothing to do with the other?”
I hear his sigh. And when he speaks, I hear the defeat in his voice. “No, I don’t expect you to believe it. You have no reason to believe a word I say. About anything. But I hope you will anyway. Because it’s the truth.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” I murmur, wrapping my arms around myself, an unfathomable cold seeping into my bones, into my heart. Into my soul.
“When I bought that painting, I had no idea you were saving the money for surgery. I only knew that I had to have it. I needed it. Like I need you. It’s as simple as that.”
“Simple? Nothing about us, about this is simple. You lied to me. You purposely deceived me. How is that simple?”
“That’s…that’s not what I meant, Evie.” His words are quiet, his tone subdued. Defeated. “I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t plan for any of this to happen. Maybe some part of me thought that, if it was you, I could help. But after I saw you, after you fell into my arms and I got to talk to you, to know you, anything I might’ve wanted flew right out the window. I think…I think I might be fallin—”
“Don’t,” I whisper, the breath stolen right from my lungs. “Please don’t. Just stop speaking.” It takes all of my strength to swallow the sob that’s lurking at the back of my throat. “You need to leave, Levi. I…I can’t do this anymore. I just…I can’t.”
“Evie—”
“No. Just go. Please.”
“Evie, I—”
“Go!” I shout, my voice quavering.
The quiet that follows my shout is like a tar pit. I feel all the good parts of my life, all the love and happiness and color of it, falling into its sticky black depths and being swallowed whole. I know the moment Levi walks out of this room, I wi
ll never feel them again. They will be gone forever.
The front door creaks open and then, seconds later, it creaks closed. I’m holding my breath, waiting for the end to come and destroy me, when I realize I’m still wearing the glasses. I tear them from my face, snap them in two, and throw them across the room. For long moments, I’m stiff and motionless but for my heaving chest. And then, as though the fight in me got swallowed up by the tar pit, too, my legs give out.
I fall apart, crumpling neatly to the floor to dissolve in a puddle of my own tears.
CHAPTER 22
EVIE
SOMEONE IS banging at the door. Reluctantly, I roll over. I smack the clock on my bedside table, and it announces in a woman’s robotic voice that it’s 9:38 PM.
Groggily, I roll back over. I don’t even care that I’ve been in bed all day. I don’t even care that the phone has chimed at least a dozen times. I don’t even care that there’s life going on outside my bedroom door. I just want to sleep.
To hide.
And to not come out until the pain is gone.
The banging persists, and I half-growl, half-whimper. “I just want to be left alone,” I tell the night. But when the knocking grows louder, I force myself from the safe haven of my covers and trudge my way through the cold, empty apartment.
“Who is it?” I bark.
“Jacob, from down the hall. Cherelyn called and asked me to check on you. She’s been calling for hours and couldn’t get you.”
“Oh.” Now I feel like a piece of shit. “I’ll call her. Sorry, Jacob.”
“Just glad you’re okay,” he says, but his voice says that he’s more than a little irritated at having to be Cherelyn’s lackey.
My limbs feel like weighted rubber as I move them around the living room and then the kitchen in search of my phone. I heard it ring, so it can’t be far.
I finally find it, lying in the chair that I sat in while Levi dropped his bombs. I curl up into it, drawing my legs up to my chest, and I tell Siri to call Cherelyn. She answers on the first ring.
“God Almighty, you scared the hell out of me,” she says by way of answer.