I stepped into the silence.
“Devon?”
“Yes, my Ashley?”
“Devon, I guess this revelation we’re coming up on was the kind of thing you can only understand from the inside, but still … whatever the hell it was, can you see that from my perspective, it doesn’t make any kind of sense that you’re standing on that ledge because of some mystical moment you experienced almost thirty years ago, while you were a child recovering from a serious head injury?”
And again, a nod. “I see your point of view with crystal clarity – and as always, you are calm and clever, and also quite right.”
“Pardon me, but I’m watching the man I love standing atop one seriously tall building, getting ready to do away with himself – so no, I’m not one bit of calm.”
But somehow, I was. I was way more calm than I had any right to be, under the circumstances.
Why?
I had the feeling that I knew, that I was being pulled toward my own revelation – and that I could see it right now, if I only looked hard enough.
Then that voice I loved and trusted, that voice that drove me crazy and pulled me in six different directions at once, broke into my thoughts.
“You are sweet and loving and frightened, my Ashley, and I apologize with all my heart for frightening you. And you are also right about my state of mind that day, but so am I. The only explanation I can offer is that nothing made sense before that one perfect moment, and afterwards, everything did.”
“And so this earth-shaking revelation arrived maybe three or four hours after you woke up, shortly before your snake of an aunt crawled through the door?”
“Just so. I’m estimating the time – I dozed off here and there, and of course I was subject to the influence of quite a few medications, so reality still wavered just a bit around the edges – but I would say four hours sounds close to the mark.”
“So what was this shattering personal revelation like? Did it, I don’t know, come with flashing neon lights and a band? Were there clowns, elephants, maybe a ringmaster with a bullhorn?”
Devon laughed, and that laugh was the best music I’d ever heard.
It sounded like hope.
“I fear no circus animals or ghoulish clowns were involved, more’s the pity. It was … it was both humbler than that, and far more grand.”
He waited, a few seconds bled away, and then he described the indescribable.
“I remember a nurse was at my bedside when it happened, an older woman with an iron rod for a spine and waves of fierce grey hair. She clucked disapproval at one of the pinging machines, tinkered with a dial and adjusted a knob, and then glanced down at me with a look that said I was somehow conspiring with the machine’s readouts to displease her.
“I looked past her at the wall and thought about Mama. I thought about that beautiful, doomed horse. I thought about the ants.
“Then a single beep echoed from another machine, she turned to stare that one down, and it happened.
He sucked in a single deep breath, held it as he closed his eyes, and then sighed it out again. His eyes opened.
“It struck me down in an instant. I was pinned beneath its weight, though it was not a thing that existed in the physical world. It set me on fire and wiped everything else from my mind. All my past and future fell on me at once, and yet I also stood alone at the center of a vast stage, it was … I was … I cannot hope to explain what I saw and became in that instant, truly.
“I was like Paul on the road to Damascus, or a Buddhist monk transmuting his soul into the stuff of nirvana … I was forever changed by the truth that had been there all along, if only I’d had eyes to see.
“You see, Ashley, I came to the end of the path in that moment. I came to the end of the path, I looked upon the truth that waited there, and I saw my own face.
“I was the reason for everything.”
His haunted eyes begged me to understand.
“I stood at the center of it all. Before, my life and the lives surrounding me were unconnected bits of flotsam riding the flood – after, all that pain and suffering and loss and madness made sense, because I was at the heart of it. I was the connection, the one common thread that linked everything.”
Those eyes bore into me. His need for me to understand was like a vast weight balancing atop a mountain, ready to come crashing down at the touch of the slightest breeze.
“A beaten, abused, unwanted boy, the son of a suicide mother and a drunken, dead father – it all seemed so much to ask of random chance, but in that moment I saw that randomness and chance and the cruel hand of chaos had nothing to do with it.
“The rage of the Killanes at having to surrender such a considerable chunk of their heritage to a pale, strange boy who’d been forced upon them made perfect sense now. That innocent horse met its grisly, undeserved death for a reason. Randomness did not determine that my mother should die, I did. My suffering, I saw in that single blinding instant, was not cruel or unfair – it was nothing but perfect justice.”
“Devon, you –”
“Perfect justice leading to a single logical end and one perfect solution – this roof.”
“Devon, you can’t punish yourself for –”
“Oh, but I can. I can, I must, and I will.”
He turned away from me. He leaned forward. My heart stuttered and my breath stopped.
“Devon, none of this, none of what happened to you or your mom or your dad or the Killanes or anybody else was your fault –”
“Nonsense, of course it was my fault. Had I never existed, had I been removed from the equation at the start, then Mama would still be alive, my father would still be drinking and partying his life away, the Killanes would be cackling with joy over their ill-gotten gains, that horse would have lived out its natural span of days, and the descendants of those ants would still be pursuing their tiny, perfect lives.
“Everything would be perfect, without me. Everyone would be happy.”
“Not me, Devon. Not me. I’d be just one more lonely fat girl sitting in a tiny apartment, playing my stupid video games and wondering when I got to have a life, to have … to have somebody who loved me.”
“I cannot believe that, Ashley. Someone would have come to you in time, surely – how could men not see your beauty and fire, your wit and your kind heart and your courage?”
“Trust me, every guy before you totally missed all that stuff. All they saw was a whale who’d be good for a little casual fucking until a real girlfriend came along – and I took them up on that because it was all I could get, okay?”
I forced the tears back, forced back the tears and the memories and the shame. He had to choose not to do this for himself, not out of pity for me.
Then I remembered something, one tiny scrap of logic that didn’t quite fit into his grand picture of destiny and justice – he’d probably shoot it down, sure, but I had to grab onto any little handhold of hope I find.
“Devon, can I just ask you one more thing?”
He eyeballed the drop, edged forward another deadly inch, and he wanted to turn to me, I felt it, but he didn’t.
He did do that crazy-making thing where he answered my question with another question, though.
“Ashley, do you think I will find Mama, once I step beyond all this?”
He might have been asking whether I thought he’d find his iPad if he went looking for it in his office.
“I think you’ll probably just find a whole lot of darkness, supplemented by nothing and nobody – but hey, your mileage may vary. Anyway, Devon, please tell me how –”
“Mmmm, you think so? What a pity. I still miss her, you know – every day, every hour. Even though I never deserved her, even though I destroyed her, I’m still so selfish as to want to see her again.”
He uncrossed his arms, dropped them to his sides, and I saw his hands clench into white-knuckled fists.
It was close now, so close.
“Devon, please, just
one more thing – how does the special project fit into your plan? Because in this Devon-takes-the-blame-for-everything universe, didn’t the Killanes deserve to keep their company? Didn’t they have every right to drink and go whoring and roll around naked in their kazillions without having Evil Devon snatch it all away from them?”
And yep, he did shoot that right down.
“Oh, that. Ashley, do you remember being a teenager?”
“I sure hope so, seeing as how it was only a few years ago, but what –”
“For me it was twenty years ago, but I still remember. Teenagers are creatures of passion and justice, my Ashley, fiercely demanding that all things be made right, no matter what obstacles stand in the way – and though my ten-year-old self sensed what must be done in the end, the teenager I became decided that justice needed a nudge along the way.
“Since I must pay for all that I had done, for all the misery that flowed outward from me to everyone I encountered, why not make the Killanes pay too, in one perfect flower of vengeance?
“And so I conceived of letting my uncles think they’d won, signing away my inheritance to them and walking off into a future that I planned in elaborate detail – a Harvard education followed by the leap into business, building one company upon another over the years, until my fortune was so vast I could easily afford to liquidate the Killanes.
“Mama would have payment for their locking her away, I would have compensation for hatred and beatings beyond measure, and then I would come to this roof to make my own final payment for everything, for every last wrong and injustice that sprang from my existence.
“Honestly, considering what a moody and hormone-raddled boy I was at the time, it’s really quite the beautiful plan.”
“Forgive me if I don’t see it that way, big guy – and as you said yourself, I don’t fit into this plan of yours, not one bit. How do you explain that?”
“I cannot. I cannot explain how or why you came to me, what part you are meant to play in the grand architecture of my life, or if you even have a role in all this – you mean so much to me that I do not think your presence here can be a matter of random chance alone, but beyond that, I simply do not know.”
He sighed, he looked up and glanced around at all the quarters of the sky, and I knew somehow it was meant to be his last look, his last lingering view of everything. Then he looked down again, down the side of the building as it vanished into the falling snow.
“I know one thing for an absolute certainty, however. I know it to be even more true than the fact of my responsibility for so much death and anguish and mute suffering, Ashley – I know that you will leave.”
Leave? What new emotional tightrope was I going to have to walk here?
“Devon, you don’t know jackshit about me if you think I’m leaving – you are nuts and adorable and you do things to me I don’t begin to understand, and I am NOT leaving, not in this or any other universe. You’ve got me to the end, you crazy bastard, like it or not.” I thought a minute, and then added, “So there.”
He drew his arms around himself again, and had I won a few more seconds?
But then he shook his head.
“Of course you’ll leave. Everyone does. Not that I can blame anyone for wanting to leap free of the train wreck that is my life, but still, there it is, the unvarnished truth – everyone with the slightest shred of sense leaves.
“My father rode laughing out of my life, Mama deserted me without a second thought, endless numbers of women took what they wanted from me and moved on, and even Uncle Sheridan was forced to leave in the end, to become one final reminder of just what happens to those who choose to stay by my side.
“I am a toxin, Ashley. My guilt poisons everyone who strays too close to me – and so everyone leaves, or I destroy them. It’s all much the same, in the end.”
Logic was useless here, I knew it, but I had to try.
“Devon, listen up. Your dad died in an accident that his own fault – he did not leave. As for your mom, she wasn’t responsible for her actions, not one bit – she’d been locked up in that hospital since forever, surrounded by patients who were mentally ill and doctors who thought she was too, and don’t take this the wrong way, but she probably wasn’t all that stable in the first place. She loved you and she did not leave you – life took her away.”
I doubted I was getting anywhere with this line of argument, but at least he was still standing there, still listening.
“I won’t even get into what was wrong with all those actresses and models and random bitches who milked you for money and magazine covers – if they couldn’t see what I see in you, if they were that blind, then good riddance to their skanky asses.
“And Uncle Sheridan, seriously? He did not leave, and unless you stood in the middle of that crosswalk and shot him right in his aneurysm with a Glock 9mm, then you so did not destroy him.”
I stopped. I watched Devon. He looked down at the snow so far below, I could almost hear him considering the logic of what I said … and then I heard or felt or sensed the iron wall of his guilt crashing down, cutting him off from me.
He shrugged away logic. “Ashley, they all left and you would leave me as well, in time. You should leave, really. I am a magnet for heartbreak and destruction, and you will be destroyed if you stay by my side – and since I love you with all that I am, I cannot bear to destroy you. Therefore, I must leave.”
Devon edged a half-step forward on the ledge. There was no more room. He swayed as the wind pushed against his towering body.
Then the man I loved glanced at me from five feet and a world away, and his voice was a faint whisper. I could barely hear him over the rising wind, and I could barely see him through the cold tears filling my eyes.
“Ashley, I think you should go inside now.”
And just like that, it was over. Time was up, and I was out of arguments.
I didn’t move.
“Ashley, there’s no need for you to see this. Please, go inside. Sit down, wait a few minutes, and then call 911. My lawyers will be in touch with the details of the funeral arrangements and your inheritance, and a temporary board will sort out the affairs of Killane Corporate Holdings. I’ve made all the arrangements.”
I still didn’t move.
“Ashley, please. It’s time.”
I thought about that face-down picture on Mom’s dresser, the picture of the father I barely remembered.
“Ashley, I must insist.”
I thought about Greg and all the other guys who’d dumped me for something thin, pretty, and shallow.
“Ashley?”
I thought about the strange, temperamental man I’d faced down in that lobby a lifetime ago. I loved that man, the man who now stood just a few feet away on the brink of nothing, and I knew that man would never leave me.
One way or the other.
I was calm, perfectly calm, and why not? I would never be alone again.
“Devon, you’re right, it’s time.”
He turned to me, one eyebrow raised.
“I made a promise too, and it’s time for me to keep it.”
I started walking.
Ashley, NO.
This was absolutely insane, and absolutely right.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Yes.
I stepped up onto the ledge alongside Devon. I took his hand in mine. I told myself not to look down.
“Devon, do you remember our last night in Montana?”
He stared at me as if he’d never seen me before, and then spoke in a hollow whisper. “I remember.”
“Me too – I remember what we did, every bit. I remember your hands and your mouth and your body. I remember your warmth and my need, I remember the promise I made, and I remember the exact words of that promise: ‘Devon, I promise I will stay by your side, no matter where you go and no matter what happens. I promise I will never leave you.’ You kept your promise to tell me when this day came, and now I’m keeping my promise to stay by
your side, no matter what.”
“Ashley, you can’t possibly –”
“Watch me.”
Then I did look down, and … and somehow, I was okay with it.
I looked 1,400 feet straight down, through the endless cascade of falling snow, and I felt nothing at all. No vertigo, no dizziness, nothing.
We might have been holding hands as we stood on a downtown street corner, waiting for the light to change.
Looks like we’re not going to make it to the other side either, Uncle Sheridan.
I tightened my fingers around Devon’s, and I kept staring. It was like being drawn into a vortex, a vast spinning swirl of air and snow and space. I didn’t move, but all that vast landscape below seemed to move beneath me, in a stately waltz of gravity and cold and depth that pinned me in place. That impossible view sucked the air from my lungs and made me feel like an ant peering down from the summit of Mt. Everest.
This made the 245-foot drop beneath the Golden Gate Bridge look like a ditch by the side of the road.
Everything was so tiny and vast at the same time – the buildings were an ocean of grey and white Lego blocks, and the sky was endless. The few cars trundling along the even fewer plowed streets were wandering ants, and the low-hanging grey clouds were like fields roamed by giants. The good citizens of Chicago walking around down there were no more than dots, tiny trudging dots I could barely see from so far above everything.
Would anyone be able to see us, after?
Would anything be left?
I leaned my head against Devon’s arm. I felt his eyes on me, felt his hand holding mine tight, guessed at the chaos of thoughts that must be howling through his head – but it was all right. We were together, and we always would be. Nothing else mattered, not even the screaming plunge into nothing waiting below.
I wondered what it would be like.
I imagined air rushing past our heads, air pulling our hair out behind us, air ripping from our lungs and freezing our skin. I pictured the ground getting closer, objects getting larger, the pavement rushing up to meet us, the sudden and absolute stop.
I wondered if it would hurt.
Probably not – we’d wink out in an instant, before the pain had time to race along our nerves and register in our brains. Gone, just like that – no pain, no fear, no regrets, no last goodbyes.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 55