by Sarah Jio
“That’s right,” Bruce says.
“That will be fine,” I say, looking at Cade for approval.
Bruce’s eyes narrow. Any trace of his smile disappears as he leans in. “I need to caution you not to try to confront this business partner,” he says. “We need the element of surprise to solve this case. No pun intended.” He winks. “Best to catch them with their pants down, if you know what I mean.”
“Well…I’ve already been in touch with him,” I say a bit remorsefully.
“Does he know you’re working with an attorney, an accountant?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Keep it that way.” He looks at Cade, then at me. “And you need to protect yourself. When this much money is at stake, people can lose their minds and do unspeakable things. Money is an ugly beast.” I feel a chill creep over me. “Just be safe,” he says. “Don’t go poking around where you shouldn’t. Let us handle that.”
Before we leave, Cade, who’s been mostly silent through the meeting, extends his hand to Bruce, who receives it with a firm shake of the wrist. “Thank you,” Cade says to him, “for helping me.” He casts an assured look at me. “I’m ready to get my life back.”
—
I drive Cade back to Harborview, and once he’s settled into his two o’clock session I stop into Dr. Branson’s office.
“Oh, Kailey,” she says, looking up from her computer. “It’s nice to see you.” Behind her are a dozen or more framed artistic renderings of the brain.
I sink into a chair beside her desk. “He’s doing so well,” I say. “Today when I was driving him back from an appointment, he recited the Robert Frost poem I used to love.”
She smiles. “Which one?”
“Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
“Ah,” she says. “One of my favorites, too. I was a literature major before I decided on premed.” She closes her eyes as if to extract the words from one of the lobes of her brain. “So dawn goes down to day.”
We recite the last line in unison. “Nothing gold can stay.”
She smiles. “Such a beautiful stanza. I’ve always felt that it’s a realistic view of life, though a tad pessimistic.”
“Why so?”
“Nothing gold can stay,” she says, releasing the words into the air again. “It’s a commentary on how good things don’t last. True, in some cases. Not all good things last, so when they’re with us, they must be savored. But I’m not sure I entirely subscribe to that thinking. Ultimately, I believe good things can, and do, last.”
“Do they?” I say skeptically. “I’m not sure. Maybe that’s the whole concept of beautiful things. We can only have them for a moment.” I think of flowers that bloom and wilt in the summer, leaves that turn brilliant shades of gold in autumn before shriveling and falling from their branches. Parents who die. Love that is lost. In the world, and my life, gold does not stay.
She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t be practicing medicine and so focused on the way the brain can heal and regenerate if I believed that. Sure, nothing lasts forever, but gold can stay for a long time. And I’m in the business of helping it do just that.”
“Well, you’ve almost made me a believer,” I say with a smile. “You’ve done amazing things for Cade.”
“It’s remarkable, really, how far he’s come in this short time,” she says. “Brain science is the last frontier of medicine. We don’t know why some patients respond to treatment as well as they do, or why others don’t. But Cade is talking; his speech is fluid. His memories are returning, and according to his imaging, his brain shows signs of repair.”
“I know,” I reply. “It’s almost like he’s himself again. Almost.”
Dr. Branson looks thoughtful. “And he may always be an ‘almost.’ ”
I nod, thinking of the Cade I used to know—the man who charmed me from the moment I laid eyes on him, made me laugh at the drop of a hat or whisked me away to Big Sur on a moment’s notice.
“I expect him to continue to improve,” she says. “We’d normally like our patients to complete the full year program, but we’re learning as we go, and Cade may do well blending back into life on his own. We probably should begin talking about his plans for finding work and housing, that sort of thing. Have you thought about what kind of job Cade might apply for?”
“Job?” I say.
“Yes, perhaps janitorial work, a restaurant position?”
It’s hard to imagine Cade washing dishes at some restaurant or vacuuming the carpet at a dentist’s office. “He used to run a multimillion-dollar company,” I say.
“Yes, I understand,” she says, unfazed. “But he may be happier doing…simpler work now.”
“Right,” I say, thinking about our meeting with the attorney earlier this morning and hoping that they’ll be able to recover at least a portion of the funds that are owed to him.
“Well,” she says, standing up. “I’m late for my afternoon session.”
I follow her out to the hallway, and she turns to me once more with a smile. “Gold can stay,” she says. “Don’t forget that.”
—
“Wow, I can’t believe he’s coming to the wedding,” Ryan says later that night at the kitchen table, eyeing his phone.
“Who?” I ask, looking up from my plate of overcooked lasagna Ryan’s mother made and left in the freezer. I neglected to preheat the oven, and the top got scorched.
“Josh Graham,” he says. “An old friend from Yale. He just emailed me.”
“You’ve never mentioned him before,” I reply, scrunching my nose.
“Josh is a fraternity friend,” he says. “He’s living in New York now with a wife and two kids. He runs a hedge fund and is doing really well for himself.”
I imagine the email from Josh Graham saying he’ll be coming with a date, and I look away indifferently.
“Is something wrong, honey?” Ryan asks.
I sigh again. “I don’t know,” I say, tugging at my sweater, which suddenly feels itchy around the neckline. “I guess I’m wondering if we should have kept the guest list to only close friends and family.”
“But when we discussed it, you didn’t bring up any apprehensions about the size of the wedding. And Josh is a close friend.”
“A close friend? I have never heard of him, and it sounds like you haven’t seen him since college.”
“Yes,” he says a little defensively, “but we email and talk on the phone now and then. Besides, he’s a great business contact.” He turns back to his laptop, looking a bit wounded.
“Business contact?” I say. The words shoot out with a little more oomph than I planned. “So our wedding has become a networking event?”
“Kailey, you’re overreacting.”
I sigh. “Didn’t you say that a bunch of your dad’s colleagues are coming, too?”
“The Hartmans, yes,” Ryan says. “But I’ve known them since I was a baby.”
“All right, fine,” I continue. “But your father said he wanted to reserve a table for his employees. Ryan, really? His employees?” I feel anxiety welling up in the pit of my stomach and rising to my chest.
He sighs. “What do you expect, Kailey? My parents are paying for the wedding.” He gets up and walks to the kitchen, opens the fridge, and grabs a beer.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
My phone rings before Ryan can venture a response, and I’m relieved to have an excuse to stop talking about the wedding. Since the engagement party, every interaction has felt strained, every conversation stressful.
I recognize the number on my phone: Harborview. Dr. Branson, perhaps? I pick up. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Cade.”
“Hi,” I say, turning to Ryan, who’s typing something on his laptop.
“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” he says.
I walk to the living room. “It’s okay. What’s going on?”
“I, I…”
“Cade, wha
t is it?”
Ryan looks up from his laptop, and his eyes meet mine for a brief second before he turns away.
“I just…miss you, I guess,” he says.
The words pierce my heart. I remember the first time he told me he missed me. A month after we started dating, he called me one evening and those three words slipped out of his mouth and slayed me, right there on my couch on a Thursday night. And there is his voice on the phone again. The world has shifted, and yet his words hit me as hard as they did so many years ago. And maybe even harder.
“Do you need me to come over?” I say, aware that Ryan is listening.
“If you can,” he says. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Of course it’s not,” I say, glancing at the clock: seven-thirty. “I can be over by eight.”
“That was Cade,” I say to Ryan. “He’s…struggling tonight. I’m going to go over and check on him.”
Ryan grunts a reply but doesn’t look up from his laptop.
“I won’t be long,” I say. “Just there and back.”
I grab my keys and purse. Ryan doesn’t say goodbye.
—
Seattle is glorious tonight. The skyline sparkles over Lake Union as I drive down I-5, and I am struck by how much I love this city, all of its angles, all of its character. I’ve been drawn to it from the moment Tracy and I rolled in with all of our earthly possessions in the back of her car. I fell for its rain-soaked streets, the briny smell of the sea, the sound of ferry horns on Elliott Bay, the music spilling out of restaurants and bars, a new talent, a new yet-to-be-discovered sound around every corner.
But so much of my love for Seattle is wrapped up in Cade. Every song. Every neighborhood. Every hole-in-the-wall café. We left our mark on the city together, and without those memories Seattle might as well be Chicago or Los Angeles or New York or any metropolis on the face of the planet. Cade is Seattle. And Seattle is Cade.
“Hi,” I say to the security guard at the reception desk at Cade’s building when I arrive. I strain to remember his name. My head is foggy tonight. Chris, I think. Yes, that’s right.
“He’ll be glad to see you,” Chris says. “He’s had a hard night.”
“What happened?”
He leans closer to me. “Someone scared the living hell out of him.”
“What do you mean, someone scared him?”
“He went out for a walk,” Chris explains, “about four o’clock, and came back an hour later really shaken up.”
“Is it okay for him to be out on his own?”
“Dr. Branson said it was okay for him to leave for walks,” he says, pointing to the clipboard sign-out sheet. “See, she signed him out right here.”
I nod. “What do you mean, he was ‘shaken up’?”
“He said someone was chasing him, that someone wanted to hurt him.”
“Do you think it was real or post-traumatic stress, as Dr. Branson described?”
Chris shrugs. “Beats me, but the guy seemed really frightened. He kept looking over his shoulders thinking someone was coming for him.”
“That’s terrible,” I say. “No wonder he didn’t want to be alone.”
“Nice of you to come,” Chris says as I head to the elevator. “Let me know if you need anything.”
The elevator deposits me on the third floor, and when I knock on Cade’s door he opens it immediately.
“Hi,” I say, giving him a hug.
“Hi,” he says, pulling me tight. I’m aware of his hands around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be,” I reply. “I’m glad you called. Now tell me what happened. Someone was chasing you?”
“How do you know?”
“Chris told me.”
He gives me a blank stare.
“The security guard.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Kailey, it’s not safe out there for me.”
“Sit down,” I say. “What do you mean?”
“Someone was following me. I started walking faster, and he started walking faster. Then I began to run, and he began to run.”
“Are you sure the person was following you?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Did you get a good look at who it was?”
“No,” he says. “It was too dark.”
“We have to protect you. Please, don’t leave the building unless you’re with someone. I don’t know what’s going on, or why these people want to hurt you, but, Cade, promise me you’ll stay here and keep yourself safe until we can get to the bottom of this.”
He nods. “I’m glad you’re here. The world feels better when you’re with me.”
Before I can respond, Cade’s phone rings. “I’ll get it,” I say.
“Hello?”
“Kailey?”
“Yes?”
“This is Chris at the front desk. There’s a man here who says he needs to see you.”
“A man? Who?”
“Says his name is Ryan.”
Why is Ryan here?
“Ok,” I say, “um, I’ll come down.”
“Actually,” Chris says, “he’s just stepped into the elevator. I tried to stop him, but he said he was your fiancé.”
“Yes,” I say. “He is. It’s fine.”
“I’ll just be a moment,” I say to Cade, heading out to the hallway. Ryan is stepping off the elevator. His face looks ashen.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Nice to see you, too,” he says.
“Ryan, what’s this about?”
He throws up his arms. “What’s this about? I think you know what this is about.”
“Shhh,” I say. “Please, he’ll hear you.”
“Kailey,” he says, “at this point, I don’t care if he hears me.”
I look down at my feet.
“I’m done,” Ryan says. “Done pretending that this little charade doesn’t bother me, because it does. You’re the woman I love, and I have had to sit back and watch you spend every spare minute, expend every ounce of your emotional energy, on this man, while all I get from you is the scraps. Kailey, I would be fine with the scraps if I knew you really loved me, if I was assured that you wanted to be with me in the way that I want to be with you.” He shakes his head. “But I’m not assured. In fact, I think that as long as Cade is in the world, I’ll never have your heart.”
My eyes widen. “Ryan, you wouldn’t.”
His eyes search mine. “Wouldn’t what?”
It has never crossed my mind, this ugly thought that hovers now, but then I’ve never seen Ryan’s eyes flash with anger in this way. I’ve never seen such a passionate response from him. That, and he came home from work late tonight. My heart begins to thump loudly in my chest. “Tell me you wouldn’t hurt Cade.”
He shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Someone was following Cade tonight. Someone wanted to hurt him.”
He shakes his head again. “I can’t believe this. Even now. Even when I’m standing here, pouring out my fears to you, all you can do is worry about him? Or worse, accuse me of trying to hurt him?”
I take a step toward him. “But I—”
“It’s okay,” he says, forcing a smile. “I know this is hard for you. And at the end of the day, I’ve only wanted to make life easier for you. I’ve only wanted you to be happy. And if you’re happy with Cade, then you should be with him.”
“Ryan, please. I—”
“Goodbye, Kailey. I love you. I always will. I’m sorry I…I’m sorry I’m not the one.” He ducks into the elevator before I can beg him not to go.
I fall to my knees and weep.
—
A few minutes pass before I pick myself up. I wipe away the tears on my cheeks before I return to Cade’s door and peer in. “Cade?” The apartment is empty.
“Cade!” I cry. I notice a note, written in his handwriting, on the coffee table. It reads:
My dearest Kailey,
/> You saved me, and the only way I can repay you is by not ruining your life. It’s time I said goodbye.
I will always love you, no matter how close or how far.
Cade
“No!” I cry. “Cade, no.”
He must have slipped out and used the stairs to leave while I was talking to Ryan. Did he hear everything? Is he upset?
I don’t wait for the elevator. Instead I bolt to the stairwell. My feet pound down the cement stairs, footsteps echoing off the walls. When I reach the first floor, I race to the reception desk. “Did Cade leave?”
Chris nods. “About five minutes ago.”
I shake my head. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“We have a sign-in, sign-out system here, but we can only advise patients. At the end of the day, they have free will.”
I nod, solemnly. “Did he say where he was going?”
“He didn’t, just left heading that way.” He points right, toward the city, and my heart sinks.
—
It’s after ten before I drive home. I looked everywhere I could possibly think of for Cade, but this time, it seems, he is gone. Ryan too. His car isn’t parked in front of the house, and when I step inside, there’s a permanence to the air of loneliness I feel, as if an era has ended, just like that, without my even knowing it or asking for it. Just gone.
I walk to the kitchen and somehow know I won’t find Ryan at the breakfast table in the morning. I can’t even remember the last omelet I made him. Sunday? The Tuesday before last? Was it spinach and leek or mushroom? I think about all of our lasts. Our last kiss. The last time he danced with me in the living room, made love to me on a Saturday morning with birds chirping out the bedroom window. The last time we held hands or laughed together. I want to memorize the details, and mourn them.
And yet I still wonder if he could have been part of the reason Cade left tonight. Did Ryan frighten him? Could he have hurt him? Impossible. Or not? The world feels cruel and sad and confusing, as if everything I love has been reduced to a small pile of sand and I must try my best to hold it in my hands, wincing at every grain that slips between my fingers.
I’m startled by the sound of a knock at the door, and even more startled when I open it to find James standing on my doorstep. It’s begun to rain, well, pour, and James’s hair is wet. His bangs are plastered to his forehead. He looks disheveled, anxious.