The Redemption

by Lauren Rowe

  And when he tells me about his teacher Miss Westbrook, how she kindly and brilliantly lured him out of his painful silence, how she made him feel loved during the loneliest point in his young life, how she nurtured this poor, aching boy when he was so obviously grasping for a drop of kindness, how she so lovingly showed him the purest kind of love through naming her child after him, I thought my heart would physically burst and splatter the poor man with even more blood than he’s already withstood. It seems I’m not the only woman to have fallen deeply in love with Jonas’ innate sweetness—his mother, Mariela, and Miss Westbrook did, too.

  “Oh, Jonas. You poor, sweet baby,” I say, moving to hug him.

  He holds up his hand. “No. I haven’t told you what I need to tell you yet.” His face is etched with pure anxiety. “Everything I just told you is mere background—stuff you need to know to understand the context of what I’m about to tell you.”

  I sit back and shut my mouth. What could he possibly need to tell me that would make him look this anxious?

  He takes a deep breath and looks at me with those mournful eyes of his. “At first, when I wouldn’t talk, my dad sent me away. To a hospital. You know, a mental hospital. A ‘children’s treatment center,’ they called it.”

  At seven? Right after the poor little guy lost his mother and his beloved nanny? That seems like a pretty heartless thing to do to a kid.

  “But I wouldn’t talk. I wouldn’t do anything the doctors wanted me to do. I didn’t want to get better. I just wanted to die so I could be with my mom. When they finally let me out despite me not talking, I figured my dad must have missed me too much to make me stay there. I found out later my dad finally broke down and brought me home because Josh had begged and pleaded and cried so much.” He smiles ruefully.

  I keep forgetting about poor Josh in all this. Good Lord. He didn’t have it easy, either.

  “And then, after that, through the years, I just always knew there was this threat that at any moment, my father might send me back to the treatment center again. If I didn’t talk like I was supposed to. Or if I cried, God forbid. Or if I just wasn’t ‘man enough,’ whatever that meant. It was always hanging over me—say or do the wrong thing, be the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, and he’d say it was because I was ‘crazy’ and needed the ‘fucking doctors to get my head straightened out again.’

  “But sometimes I couldn’t help it—I just couldn’t follow his rules. Maybe I was just too sad to get out of bed for a week. Or maybe I couldn’t make myself care about his opinion of me on a particular day. Sometimes, I’d lose my temper and start screaming at him—which became a pretty big problem for him the bigger I got.

  “So, anyway, I was in and out of that fucking place for years—in and out, over and over. For long stretches, I’d get to go to school, even make a friend or two. Start to feel like maybe I was normal, after all—and then, boom, I’d have to go back for whatever reason. As I got older, I started to feel angrier and angrier about the whole thing and think I’d rather die than go back there. And then in my early teens, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘I’d rather kill him than go back there.’” He swallows hard.

  My heart skips a beat.

  “He hated me.” He runs his hand through his hair. “He just plain despised me.” His eyes turn moist. “All those years, it was just my father, Josh and me living in that huge house—just the three of us—and two out of the three of us hated my guts.”

  Tears flood my eyes. Where did Jonas eek out any kind of love in his young life? With Josh, surely—but where else? How the heck did Jonas retain all the goodness and kindness I see in him?

  “And all the while, I swear to God, it was my father who was the crazy one, not me. He was the one getting shit-faced drunk all the time, not me. He was the one fucking prostitutes and bringing them to our house and buying Bentleys and Bugattis and Porsches and helicopters and jewelry for his ‘girlfriends’ and spending money like it was water.” He shakes his head. “He was the one who screamed all the time, not me.” His eyes suddenly flash like a light bulb just went off in his head. “I’m sorry I screamed at you after we left The Club, Sarah.” He wipes his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was just so freaked out at the idea of losing you that I took it out on you.” He shakes his head again. “Which makes absolutely no sense.” He rubs his face. “Maybe I am fucking crazy, I don’t know.”

  I crawl across the bed to him and hug him. “It’s okay. I knew where it was coming from.”

  He nuzzles into my neck. “There’s no excuse to scream at you, ever—you’re the gentlest, kindest person I’ve ever met. You don’t deserve that, especially with the asshole-father you had. Please, please forgive me.”

  “I do. Of course, I do.”

  “Please don’t think I’m like your father.”

  I scoff at the thought. Jonas is a raw beast in so many ways—physically imposing, daunting, tortured, tempestuous, primal, sexual beyond anyone I’ve ever encountered—but I’ve never for a nanosecond thought he’d harm a hair on my head.

  “I understand,” I say. I kiss his lips and my entire body explodes with outrageous yearning. Oh good Lord, I want to make love to him. I kiss every inch of his face and he melts under me. An outrageous throbbing slams into me, right between my legs. In a flash, I’ve got a maddening itch and Jonas is the only one who can scratch it. I press my body into his, hungry for him.

  He groans, clearly itching the way I am. He runs his hands down my back and pulls on my tank top—but then he jerks away from me, pulling on his hair.

  “I haven’t told you everything yet,” he says, his voice strained. “Sarah, listen. If I don’t tell you everything right now, I never will.” He clenches his jaw. “I have to tell you.” His eyes are pure pain.

  I want to kiss his agony away. I want to feel him inside me and make him feel good and make his hurt disappear and make myself feel damned good in the process. But instead I nod and take a deep breath. “You can tell me anything.” I crawl back to my assigned corner of the bed and stare at him, waiting.

  There it is again, right there on his face: Fear. Really? Does this boy really think there’s something he could say that would make me run away? Does he really think there’s anything in this world that would make me stop loving him?

  “Josh and I call it The Lunacy,” he says, exhaling like he’s just said an abominable curse word.

  I wait.

  “I was seventeen. My dad had his usual tickets to the Seahawks game, but he didn’t feel great, he said, so he gave the tickets to Josh—Josh always had a thousand friends he could invite to a game. And my dad shocked the hell out of me by asking me to stay home with him and watch the game on TV. ‘Let Josh go with his friends,’ he said. ‘You and I will stay home and make a memory.’” Jonas shakes his head and scoffs. “I was so fucking dumb, I was actually excited to stay home with him. I actually thought, ‘Wow he wants to spend time with me—just me? Not Josh, too?’ I was like, ‘Wow, Dad, that’d be great.’ I was giddy about it—like he’d just offered me some kind of fresh start.”

  I know what’s coming next. Tears pool in my eyes.

  “I was in the kitchen, making us turkey burgers before the game. God, I was such an idiot—I was garnishing the fucking plates.” He lets out a bitter laugh. “Just like I’d seen on a cooking show.”

  I bite my lip. I know I need to let him get through this, but I’m not sure I can stand to hear what’s coming next.

  “When I heard the gunshot upstairs, I knew—right then, I knew. I remember I looked down at the plates I was fixing for us, the plates I was garnishing, and I actually laughed out loud. I knew right then he’d suckered me.” He rubs his eyes. “I should have just walked out of the kitchen, straight out the front door, and never looked back. But I couldn’t stop my legs from climbing the stairs, just like he wanted me to do.”

  He glances out the window of the bedroom. We’ve been talking for so long, the sun is rising over The Strip. His
features are as beautiful as ever, but he looks tired. Exhausted, I’d even say. He licks his lips. They’re as luscious as ever. I try my damnedest to think of something to say, but I can’t. All I can think about is how beautiful he is. And how sorry I am for all he’s had to endure.

  “Can we put on some music?” he asks suddenly. “I’d really like to listen to some music for a minute, please.”

  “Sure. What would you like to hear?”

  “Anything. You pick.” But he quickly adds, “As long as you don’t try to create some poignant moment with some shit like ‘Everybody Hurts.’”

  I laugh. “Okay. No R.E.M.”

  “And for the love of God. No ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails, either.”

  “Well, duh. If I was going to be poignant, I’d play the Johnny Cash version of that song.”

  “Ah, torture. So fucking amazing.”

  “I know. Makes me cry every time.”

  “Me, too. His voice slays me.”

  “Oh, and ‘Tears in Heaven,’ too,” I say. “Talk about a crier.”

  “Gah. Please, no. Just a little background music to relax me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, got it. No worries, baby.” I get up and fiddle with my computer. “One order of ‘Love Shack’ coming right up.”

  Chapter 32

  Jonas

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “‘My Favourite Book,’” she says.

  “Who is it?”

  “Stars. They’re Canadian indie pop.”

  “Where the hell do you find this stuff?”

  She shrugs. “I dunno. Just listen.”

  I close my eyes and let the music wash over me. It’s a simple, effortless love song. Soothing. Sexy. Joyful. It’s so Sarah.

  “It’s nice,” I say. The song relaxes me. My scrambled thoughts begin to collate and organize themselves. “Thank you.”

  She blinks slowly at me, like she’s caressing my cheeks from across the bed with supernaturally long lashes. God, she’s beautiful. A jolt of anxiety flashes through my veins. What if finding out about The Lunacy changes everything for her?

  I take solace in her warm brown eyes. No one’s ever looked at me the way she does. Her eyes are coaxing me to throw caution to the wind and tell her my secrets.

  “Okay,” I say softly, girding myself for what I’m about to do. “The Lunacy.”

  She nods. She’s ready.

  Fuck it. Here goes. I exhale. “I went into his study. The room looked like he’d stuck his head into a giant blender without a lid.”

  She winces, but I feel nothing. I might as well be giving her driving directions to the post office. You turn left on Fifty-Seventh Street and make a right on Seventeenth Avenue Northwest and it’s on the right-hand side of the street.

  “He’d hung her wedding dress on a coat rack right next to his desk,” I continue. “Wedding pictures were spread out everywhere. His blood and brains were on everything.” I clear my throat. Shit. I can’t believe I’m about to tell her all this. “I found out later that day would have been their twentieth wedding anniversary.”

  She bites her lip in anticipation.

  “An envelope with my name on it sat on his desk. I knew opening it would be the end of my sanity—but I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know—even though I already knew.” I sigh. “I guess there’s only so long you can outrun your crazy, and I was just sick and tired of running.”

  She frowns sympathetically, but she doesn’t speak.

  “‘Everything you touch turns to blood.’ That’s what his note said.” I laugh bitterly. “Nothing else. Just one final, simple ‘fuck you.’ No apology. No last fatherly advice or expression of regret or pride or love.” I scoff at myself for even uttering that last word. “Not even a goodbye to poor Josh. That was probably the most unforgivable thing of all, what he did to poor Josh—sending him off to cheer at yet another Seahawks game while yet another parent stayed home and died.”

  She makes a soft moaning noise.

  I pause, trying to gather my composure before continuing—but not because this next part makes me want to cry. Quite the opposite. To this day, what happened next makes me want to laugh maniacally. “He had this incredible car collection,” I say. “A McLaren, a Lamborghini, a vintage Bugatti, a bunch of Porsches, a couple of Bentleys, even a Lotus. Man, he loved those cars.” I shake my head. “I grabbed a couple gas cans from the shed and I doused every last one of them, except for his favorite one, his most prized possession—a vintage silver Porsche 959.”

  I sneak a cautious peek at her. Her face is neutral, but her eyes are sparkling. Fuck, maybe I’m imagining it, but it almost seems like she’s suppressing a smirk.

  “I tore out of there in the Porsche—which, of course, he never allowed me to touch, so it was particularly gratifying. I had a fantastic view of the bonfire in my rearview mirror as I peeled out, too. That was special.”

  She nods. Her body language is open, relaxed, fascinated. Maybe even amused? Definitely not freaked out. So far so good. But, surely, this next part won’t be quite so easy for her to digest.

  “At first, I was laughing, but then I could barely drive through my tears. I was just a fucking wreck. Totally out of my head. I was sideswiping parked cars, running over curbs, doing one hundred on the freeway—just a bat out of hell. It’s a miracle I didn’t kill someone, a total miracle. To this day, I’m tortured by the thought of what might have happened that day if I’d wound up hurting or killing someone. What if I’d killed some kid’s mother? I would have been no better than the fucker who killed my own mother.”

  She looks at me sympathetically, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “A police car started chasing me when I got to the freeway and I was like, Oh yeah? Try to catch me now, motherfucker! I just floored it, laughing hysterically the whole time. The cops must have thought I was on LSD or something, I swear to God, I was a fucking after-school special—and then another and another cop car showed up behind me until there was a fucking armada on my ass. And I remember, I just started thinking, over and over, like on a running loop, Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me.” I rub my hand over my face. “I just wanted someone to put an end to my fucking misery once and for all.”

  She bites her lip. That shadow of a smirk I saw earlier, if indeed it was ever there, is long gone.

  “And then I thought about Josh and that made me bawl like a baby—to think I was doing this to him on the very day Dad had just blown his brains out. God, it was so heartless of me, but I didn’t care. I thought only about ending my own torture and not about the torment I’d be inflicting on Josh. I still can’t believe I was willing to fuck up Josh’s life beyond repair just to make myself feel better.” I twist my mouth, trying not to choke up. “I guess I’d convinced myself I was doing him a favor by finally setting him free.”

  “Oh, Jonas.”

  She looks so fucking sympathetic. But is that sympathy or pity? Am I transforming from the boyfriend she loves and respects into a pitiful charity case right before her eyes?

  “So what happened next?” she asks. “Since you’re sitting here right now, I’m assuming suicide-by-cop didn’t pan out?”

  “Not for lack of trying, though. You know the Montlake canal bridge?”

  “Of course. Right by campus.”

  “I was racing down Montlake toward that bridge with all those cop cars chasing me—I was fucking O.J. in the white Bronco—and I was laughing and crying and totally freaking out the whole time. A total madman. It was just so bizarre, like an out of body experience. And the bridge started opening to let some barge go through in the canal below and the cops started making a perimeter around me, drawing their weapons, and I just... I didn’t even think about it. I just gunned it.”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You drove that fancy Porsche right off the frickin’ bridge?”

  “Yep.” I make a movement with my hand, imitating the fallin
g trajectory of the car. “Plink.”

  She winces. “Oh my God, Jonas. How are you even here right now?”

  “Eh. It turns out that bridge is renowned for being the worst bridge in all of Seattle for committing suicide. Not high enough. And the car broke my fall in the water.” I pause, trying to remember my free fall, but I can’t. “By then, I wasn’t in my body anymore. I’d departed, so to speak. I guess it’s like how the drunk guy’s always the one who survives a head-on collision.”

  “Huh,” she says flatly, as if I’ve just told her some fascinating bit of trivia about the average IQ of a turtle.

  She’s not reacting the way I thought she would. I thought we’d both be crying. I imagined myself trying desperately to convince her I’m fine now, that I’m a beast, that I’m still the same Jonas she knows and loves. But she doesn’t seem to be on the verge of tears right now, not like she was earlier when I talked about Mariela and Miss Westbrook. She doesn’t seem even remotely tempted to turn her back on me. She just seems oddly fascinated, and sympathetic, of course, but not particularly emotional.

  “So, yada, yada, yada,” I continue, “I didn’t die—couldn’t even do that right. I was surprisingly uninjured, in fact. A couple of broken ribs. A concussion. And when they pulled me out of the wreckage, I was so uncooperative, so out of my mind, so violent, they threw me into a juvie-psych facility on suicide watch. I don’t know how long I was there. Could have been a week. Could have been a month. I really don’t know. I just remember being tied up like fucking King Kong and thrashing around.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  “Uncle William eventually got his lawyers on it. I got off with probation and restitution and involuntary psychiatric containment until I was eighteen. I guess my dad’s suicide that same day and my prior medical history were considered ‘extenuating circumstances.’”

  Sarah looks at me intently, studying my face. She’s totally unreadable to me right now. I pause. I keep thinking she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t.

  “So is that everything?” she finally asks, her face somber.