Echo

by E. K. Blair

  “What are you doing?” he asks, startling me, and when I turn around, he’s walking up the stairs with a mug in each hand.

  “I woke up, and . . . I was just looking for you. I wanted to freshen up, but there was nothing in the bathroom.”

  He hands me one of the mugs, and I’m instantly greeted with a fragrant floral spice from the tea he made for me.

  “Umm . . . thanks,” I mumble when he moves past me and into his bedroom.

  I don’t know whether I should follow him, so I stay put, but I don’t have to wait long for him to return with his leather toiletry bag I remember from his loft back in Chicago.

  “Here,” he says as he hands it to me. “You can use my things.”

  He then walks into my room, and this time, I follow. He takes a seat in the sitting area by the windows, and I go into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I open his bag, pull out his toothbrush, and take comfort in using it along with his deodorant. I brush my hair, careful not to rip off the bandage the doctor put over the scab on the back of my head.

  When I walk out, he’s made himself comfortable, looking pulled together in slacks and a crisp, charcoal button-up. But I can see the exhaustion in his eyes as well. I walk over and slip back into bed, covering up in the warm blankets, sitting against the upholstered headboard. I take a sip from my cup of tea and look over to Declan who’s flipping through a stack of papers.

  “Are those . . . ?”

  He raises his head and says, “I wanted to know what upset you, so I took them from your room.”

  “Did you . . . I mean, have you . . . ?” I fumble with my words as my anxiety picks up, remembering what I read.

  “I figured it would be best to talk about this and deal with it head on instead of it taking control over you.”

  Shaking my head, I tell him, “I don’t want to talk about it, Declan.”

  “Why?”

  Putting the tea aside on the nightstand, I wilt down in the bed and give him my honest thoughts. “Because it hurts too much. Because talking won’t change it. Because my life is already too screwed up for me to handle.”

  He sets the papers down on the coffee table in front of him, leans forward, and says, “Ignoring it is only going to make it hurt worse. That’s your problem, Ni—Elizabeth.” Shaking his head at his near slip, he looks back to me and continues, “You hide everything, and when you do that, you give those things power over you.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No,” I respond, and he releases annoyance in a sigh, saying, “Then explain last night to me.”

  “That wasn’t—”

  “Have you looked at yourself lately?” he chides. “A woman who’s in control wouldn’t be smashing her head into a fucking wall.”

  “You don’t understand,” I defend.

  “Then please, explain it to me. Make me understand why your body is covered in contusions.”

  His glare is sharp, pinning his frustrations to me as I sit here awkwardly. Knowing how Declan saw me last night, knowing the things I’ve revealed to him, I feel denuded of my armor I’m used to hiding behind. I’ve laid myself bare to this man, but now I want to hide again. I want to throw the façade on and lash my crude words at him. Push him out of the honesty I’ve been giving him.

  But he sees me wanting to avoid when he presses, “I want you to tell me why you’re determined to destroy yourself. Tell me why.”

  Shaking my head, I stutter, “I don’t . . . You wouldn’t understand . . . I can’t . . . ”

  “Why hide now? Why? Just talk to me. Tell me.”

  But I doubt he would even understand if I told him. I barely understand it myself. As I continue to avoid answering, he stands up and walks over to me, sitting on the bed in front of me. His closeness, especially after kissing him last night, unsettles me, and I let my fear grow.

  With a rigid tone, heavy with his brogue, he says, “Help me figure you out. Tell me why you’re hurting yourself.”

  “I’m not . . . ” I begin when I hear the tribulation in the cracks of his stern voice. I give in to his request because I know he deserves it. I owe him whatever it is that he wants. “I’m not hurting myself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It makes me feel better,” I confess. “When I’m hurting, really hurting, I hit myself and it takes the hurt away.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re just masking the pain; you’re not getting rid of it.”

  “But I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

  “You deal with it. You talk about it and face it and process it.”

  His words are reminiscent of Carnegie’s. He once told me something very similar when I spoke with him about Bennett. But the thing is, to face a pain like that takes a particular type of strength I don’t possess.

  “But what about you?” I accuse. “You hide.”

  “I do,” he admits freely. “I miss my mum, and I hide from that whole fucked up situation. But it’s not eating at me the way you allow things to eat at you. I’m not the one throwing punches at myself, you are.”

  His words are caustic. They piss me off because they’re true. He’s right, and I hate that. I hate that I’ve become transparent to him. Hate that I’ve allowed that. Gone is the camouflage. I left it behind for atonement, for repentance.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I concede.

  He gives an understanding nod. “I know. I just want you to talk, that’s all.”

  “About my mom?”

  “It’s a good place to start.”

  “What’s to say? I mean, I’m scared to know too much,” I tell him, struggling to not break down.

  “Too much? Did you not read through everything?”

  “No. I was so upset, that I . . . I just couldn’t read it. I couldn’t focus.”

  He insists that I need to know, so I sit and listen to him tell me the documented facts of how and why my mother sold me to some guy she barely knew. And the fabricated story she told my father and the police that I was kidnapped when she left me in my car seat unattended while she went inside a gas station to pay.

  He speaks in detail as I sit here like a stone, forcing my feelings away. I keep my breathing as even as I can as I concentrate on restoring my steel cage while he continues to tell me about her mental instability. She had extreme postpartum depression and was later diagnosed with manic depression and deemed insane by the courts, which is why she was sentenced to a state mental hospital instead of prison.

  “Say something.”

  I keep my eyes downcast, afraid if I look at him, I won’t be able to hold myself together as well as I’m doing right now. “Is she still there?”

  “No. She was released after serving twelve years.”

  “What?” I blurt out in disbelief, finally looking up to Declan. “But . . . I was still a kid. Why didn’t she come for me?”

  “She relinquished her parental rights.”

  My thoughts begin to collide in my head, and when I turn my face away, he catches me. “Don’t do that. Don’t avoid.”

  “Why am I so unlovable?”

  “Look at me,” he demands, and when I do, his face is blurred through my unshed tears. “Your mum was sick. She—”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I scream in disbelief. “Why are you defending her?”

  “I’m not defending, I’m being rational.”

  “You can’t rationalize what she did,” I throw at him. “She sold me! What if the police had never found me? But she didn’t care what happened to me as long as she got what she wanted.”

  “You don’t think it’s worth making sense out of? To find any semblance of understanding?”

  “Are you kidding me? No! What she did was wrong! People like her don’t deserve understanding!”

  “You mean people like you?” he throws at me.

  “What?”

  “How is what she did any different than what you did?”

&nbs
p; His assumption that I’m anything like the woman who sold me pisses me off, and I snap, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m talking about you. Why did you marry Bennett? Why did you make me fall for you? Why did you lie?”

  “It’s not the same,” I state, refusing to believe I’m of the same vile nature as my mother.

  “Because you wanted something to make you feel better. Because you were only thinking of yourself and you didn’t care what happened to the people who came in your path or that you destroyed,” he answers for me in growing rage.

  His words shut me up. I don’t want to acknowledge the parallels, but it’s there, unmistakably. He just threw it in my face.

  “She knew better,” I poorly argue.

  “So did you,” he affirms.

  “I can’t forgive her for what she did.”

  “No one is saying you have to. I just want you to face the facts and deal with it. I don’t care how you deal with it as long as you do something with the information instead of hiding from it,” he says. “And yes, what she did was awful, and it makes no sense, but neither do your actions.”

  “And neither do your actions, Declan,” I condemn, and he knows exactly what my words imply.

  “No, you’re right. I can’t make sense out of the things I’ve done to you. But I do know enough to recognize that ever since I took a man’s life, I haven’t been the same. I carry an appalling amount of animosity inside of me that I don’t know how to deal with.”

  “So we’re all just screwed up?”

  “To some degree, yes,” he responds. “I don’t want to downplay what your mother did, that’s not what I’m trying to do. I just want you to face the facts and do something with it.”

  And I see his point, because it doesn’t even take me a second thought to know I don’t want to resemble that woman in the slightest. I don’t want that hostility living and breeding inside of me anymore. I want to let go of the resentment. I want to let go of the blame. I want to let go of the constant fiending for payback. But sometimes we don’t get what we want, and even though I want to be without it, a part of me will probably always want to hang on to it.

  I AIM MY foot to land on the small patch of snow just to hear it crunch under my rain boot. The sound brings me a tiny piece of joy as I walk the grounds. The snow started to melt away yesterday when the sun finally peeked out from behind the heavy blanket of grey clouds. But today is another dank day, cold and damp.

  Declan still has me here at his house. He took me back to the Water Lily to pack some of my belongings, but I’m still paying for the room because he told me this arrangement was simply temporary until I was well-rested and feeling better.

  This is my second day here, and I’ve hardly seen Declan. He spends most of his time up on the third floor where his office is. When the sun came out yesterday, he suggested that I soak up the vitamin D, so I decided to enjoy the grotto. I spent hours inside the clinker structure. He has a small round table with two chairs set in the center under the glass ceiling. Even though the temperatures were in the thirties, the sun warmed the room where I sat and daydreamed like a little girl. As if that grotto was my palace, and I, the princess captured, waiting for my prince to save me.

  And now, as I walk the grounds, stepping from snow patch to snow patch, I feel myself imagining this fabulous property as my magical forest. Winding through the trees, up small hills, passing flower gardens bedding the blooms that will emerge in the coming months, as well as benches and manmade stone and pebble creeks. I wish for one of the creeks to be the mythical Lethe that Declan and I could drink from to vanish the past into a vapor of vacuity. To eradicate the sufferings of our souls.

  It’s as if this is the forest I spent my childhood searching for. I used to sneak out of my foster homes during the night in a fit of wanderlust, hoping to find the place my father told me about. The fairytales of kings and queens, flying steeds, and of course, Carnegie—my life-long caterpillar friend who used to fill my dreams. He hasn’t come around since that night when I turned into a caterpillar as well. He’s been replaced by the corrosive memories of my past, and when I’m lucky enough, empty nights of blank space.

  I find a spot up on a hill to perch myself. I sit and my pants dampen, seeping up the melted snow that soaks the earth beneath me, but I don’t care because I’m at peace. I fold my legs in front of me and look down on this house that for now, I imagine is my kingdom. And when I close my eyes and lie back on the sodden ground, I believe that the man hiding away in his office at the top of the castle is my prince.

  I breathe in the essence of the innocent child-like dream, and I’m five years old all over again. Dressed in my princess gown, I see my father holding the bouquet of pink daisies. His face still a crystal perfect image in my mind. Although twenty-three years have passed, I’m still a little girl, and he’s still my handsome daddy who can fix anything with his hugs and kisses.

  “You’re so beautiful,” his voice whispers through the wind, and my eyes flash open when I sit up.

  My heart flutters at the realness of his voice, and then I hear it again.

  “Where have you been, sweetheart?”

  “Daddy?” My voice rings high in optimism through the breeze blowing through the trees above.

  “It’s me.”

  Looking around, I see no sign of anyone. I know this isn’t real, but I don’t care. I let whatever chemical my brain is spilling take me away, and I give into the illusion.

  “I miss you,” I tell the wind that carries wishes coming true.

  “I miss you too. More than you’ll ever know,” he says, and I smile at the way his voice warms my chest. “What are you doing out here in the cold?”

  “Escaping.”

  “Escaping what?”

  “Everything,” I say. “Being out here and exploring transports me back to a place of happiness. Where evil doesn’t exist and innocence isn’t lost.”

  “But what about down there?” I look down to the house as he continues, “Why can’t you find that inside those walls?”

  “Because inside those walls lies the truth. And the truth is . . . evil does exist, and innocence is just a fable.”

  “Life is whatever you want it to be, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I tell him. “I don’t believe we are stronger than the forces of this world.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d like to think of my little girl as someone who would fight for her fairytale.”

  “I’ve fought my whole life, Daddy. I’m ready to throw in the towel and give up.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Turning my head, I see Declan standing off in the distance.

  “I’m not crazy,” I instantly defend.

  He begins walking towards me. “I didn’t say you were.”

  But if I did what my soul is screaming for me to do, he would. Because right now, the emptiness that refills what my father just warmed makes me want to cry out at the top of my lungs for him to come back. It roils inside of me, panging on the strings of my heart, but I mask it for fear of completely breaking down.

  Declan sits next to me, and I deflect, teasing, “You just might destroy those slacks, sitting in the slushy dirt with me.”

  He looks at me, and his expression is hard to read, but it’s almost despondent.

  When he doesn’t speak, I ask, “Why have you been hiding in your office?”

  “Why have you been hiding out here?” he counters.

  “I asked first.”

  Taking a deep breath, he admits, “Honestly . . . It makes me nervous to be around you.”

  “Why?”

  He pulls his knees up and rests his arms over them as he explains, “Because I don’t know you. I feel like I know the character you played—I know Nina. She made me comfortable. But you . . . I don’t know you, and that makes me nervous.”

  But before I can speak, he says, “Now it’s your turn to answer. Who were you talking to?�
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  Casting my eyes away from him, I reveal, “My dad,” and wait for his response, but what he says next surprises me.

  “What did he have to say?”

  Shifting my attention back to Declan, he looks sincere in wanting to know, so I give it to him. “He told me I need to be stronger.”

  “Will you tell me about him?” he asks, and then smirks, adding, “The truth this time.”

  “What I used to tell you about him, the way he comforted me, the way you two resemble each other, it was all true, Declan. The lie was the Kansas story. Truth is, we lived in Northbrook. He was a great dad. I never had to question his love for me because he gave it endlessly.” Thoughts from the past pile up, and I smile when I tell him, “The reason my favorite flower is the pink daisy, is because that’s what he would always buy me.”

  My chest tugs when the memories fall from my eyes and roll down my cheeks.

  “We used to have these tea parties. I’d dress up and he’d join me, pretending to eat the little plastic pastries.” I wipe my tears, saying, “I never asked about my mom. I never really thought about her because my dad was more than enough. I never felt like I was missing anything.”

  “You mentioned he went to prison,” he says, and I nod.

  “Yeah,” I respond and sniff before explaining, “He was caught for gun trafficking. I was five when the cops arrested him in front of me. The vision of my dad on his knees, being handcuffed, and promising me that everything would be okay is still so vivid in my mind.”

  “So what happened?”

  Shrugging my shoulders, I resign, “That was it. I never saw him again. I went into foster care and had the shittiest of caseworkers out there. He went to Menard Prison, and I wound up in Posen, which was five hours away.”

  “Nobody ever took you to go see him?”

  “No. My caseworker barely made time to come see me, let alone drive me across the state. But she did make the time to come tell me when my dad had been killed in a knife fight.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  He reaches out and takes my hand, turning my palm up. His voice is gentle when he says, “You didn’t answer me when I asked you this before, but I need to know.” He then drags his thumb over the faint white scars on my wrist. “Tell me how you got these.”