I tried but couldn’t recall a catalyst any more than I could solve an algebraic equation off the top of my head. Although, it soon occurred to me that perhaps my mathematical difficulties weren’t due to any injury or illness, but a lifelong aversion to putting the alphabet into number problems. Maybe not the earth-shattering revelation I’d been hoping for, but it was a step in the right direction, nonetheless.
My nose twitched again, begging me to reach up and yank the tube out.
Just one tiny pull, and the headache would be gone.
Having fallen for the exact same thing once already, I tucked my hands under my thighs and prepared to wait it out. The date was written on a marker board hanging on the wall closest to the bed. As I read it, the chirping from the machines intensified, along with the fluttering in my chest.
The severity of my condition was spelled out in large black numbers. I’d been trapped in a void of nothingness for three weeks.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days.
Billions of minutes—just gone.
Again, math hadn’t exactly been my best subject.
When I lost something, I typically found it by going back to the last place I remembered having it. As crazy as it seemed, maybe I could do the same thing with my fractured memory, retracing my steps until I pieced everything together.
While the nurse busied herself with something across the room, I closed my eyes and began sifting through the rubble. Steering clear of any detours involving lemon pies and fussy horses, I concentrated solely on what I knew to be true. If I listed enough concrete facts, the answer was bound to come to me.
My name was Ariana James. I was nineteen years old. I lived in Houston, Texas, with Tristan and my mama—no, that wasn’t right.
Mama was gone.
I ended up in the hospital because…
What I needed was right there, but it was as if the film in my head had suddenly hit a brick wall, leaving behind a fragmented mess of memories. Everything else lay just out of reach on the other side.
It only hurts if you let it…
Those seven words hadn’t failed me yet. I was just going to give my brain a little break and try again later. Indifference replaced irritation, and I reopened my eyes, pulling my hands free as footsteps approached my bed.
“Here we are,” the nurse said, attaching something to my neck. “Good as new.”
I could ask her. It was just a simple matter of writing the question out in my head and reciting each word slowly and clearly. My stomach churned in apparent disagreement, but it was better than not knowing. Taking a deep breath, I drew myself up tall and opened my mouth.
Make yourself heard.
“I got here as soon as I heard.”
I withered instantly at the sound of his voice, my rehearsed words fleeing back into the recesses of my mind. A shudder worked its way down from the base of my skull before settling in the area between my shoulder blades.
He’s going to kill me.
Mama’s warning had chosen a most inopportune time to pop in, but there was no stopping it now.
“I’m here—I’m here now.” His fingers brushed against my hair and my back involuntarily arched off the bed. Searing pain moved powered through the center of my chest, sparking and pulsing like a downed power line.
When I was a child, I’d experienced periodic episodes where I would wake, only to find myself unable to move or speak. I was forced to lie against my pillow, completely helpless, until my brain and body were no longer opposing forces.
That in and of itself wasn’t terribly frightening. It was what occurred during those moments of paralysis that left me quaking in fear. But this wasn’t a hallucination or the trick of an overactive imagination.
This monster was real.
“Did you hear that, Ariana? Your father is right here with you.” The woman’s mouth stretched into a wide grin I couldn’t quite return.
Once people realized who my father was, I became someone worth knowing. The disinterest in their eyes morphed into expressions of star-struck wonder. Despite what the world believed, growing up the daughter of a megachurch pastor hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing.
I’d known Tristan James was a household name by the time I could walk. He’d written instant bestsellers, appeared every Sunday morning on televisions across the country, and had an entourage of celebrity followers.
Tristan loved being in the spotlight, and with his gravity-defying dark hair and piercing aquamarine eyes, the media just loved him right back.
Tristan James: America’s sexiest pastor.
Seriously.
As if that was even a real thing.
When people claimed he looked much younger than forty-six, he’d attribute it to doing the Lord’s work, conveniently leaving out that his eldest daughter was twenty-four.
I pushed my trembling fingers beneath the white sheet, hoping no one had noticed. I’d been doing so well, reading my Bible and praying more… just like he wanted.
After thousands of mistakes over the years, I had it down to an almost exact science and could sense when the world was close to slipping off-axis. If I stepped in at the right moment, I could keep him happy, and the façade was preserved.
As far as anyone knew, we were one happy family.
It was only when the world slept that I found myself wanting something I couldn’t put into words—this desire to be seen as more than Tristan James’s daughter.
I wanted freedom.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that call?” He asked, his mouth tipping up in a smile that conveyed nothing.
Was he angry?
Did he know how I’d ended up here?
Tristan gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head as if he’d been granted a direct line into my thoughts. The nurse continued beaming, unaware of our silent conversation.
No to what—both? One?
Tell me! I wanted to scream.
“Melanie,” Tristan stated, turning his attention back to the nurse and signaling the end of our little discussion. “Would you mind if I prayed?”
Melanie readily agreed, jarring the side of the bed with her hip in her hurry to reach Tristan’s outstretched hand. I winced as the pain in my head expanded like an overfilled balloon, but instead of fading to black, the room seemed to grow brighter.
Or maybe it was just Tristan’s unnaturally white teeth.
“Heavenly Father—”
I added my own silent prayer. Obviously, it had been too much to ask for freedom. At this point, I was willing to settle for unconsciousness.
The rhythmic beeping from the machines made tuning out his words easier than I imagined. The nurse might have believed differently, but if he was here, then I was not safe.
And all the prayers in the world wouldn’t take away from the genuine possibility that this time, he’d gone too far.
He reached for my hand as he spoke, letting his beady eyes search my face. I’d seen this look more than once, an unspoken reminder to stick to the script. Suddenly afraid of what he might see reflected in my own eyes, I turned away from his probing gaze.
Knowing I hadn’t said a word was one thing. Convincing him of the fact was a completely different animal.
I glanced up when Tristan’s voice cracked in the middle of his impassioned monologue, surprised to find he wasn’t glaring at me in suspicion. Not even close. I watched in a sort of horrified fascination as moisture pooled in his blue eyes before spilling over onto his lashes.
Tristan James did not cry.
Ever.
On the morning Mama passed, his eyes had remained completely dry. He’d seemed almost relieved to be free of the invalid wife and her accusations.
The memories cropped up sporadically, but my thoughts were still very much jumbled together like skeins of yarn in a wicker basket. Tugging on the string of one fact didn’t lead to the next. It only seemed to further entangle the threads of the others. Mama had been gone for years,
but the memory of her death was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday.
I fought against the sudden surge of panic and looked down to where my hand rested in Tristan’s, studying every line until I became convinced that I was, in fact, still an adult. For reasons I couldn’t explain, the past had taken a firm hold over my mind, distorting reality.
“And Father, we—we just need—” Tristan tried covering his mouth, but he was too late.
What happened? I knew my lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear the sound of my voice.
“Ariana.” He squeezed my fingers with a hiccuped breath. “You were driving the convertible and lost—you lost control, sweetheart.”
It didn’t make any sense. If I went anywhere, I would have taken the Audi. I shook my head, mouthing, No, I wouldn’t have—
It only hurts if you let it…
The heat in my chest moved up to my esophagus, yet I remained silent. I freed my hand from his and rubbed frantically at the base of my throat.
Tristan’s face crumpled again, and he dropped his eyes down to the sheet. “You… you didn’t have a seatbelt on and your head—” His words trailed off in a sob of fragmented sentences before Melanie intervened.
“Ariana, you hit your head. The doctors had to remove a piece of your skull to help with the swelling. If the pressure on your brain remains low, I expect they’ll look at scheduling a surgery soon to replace it.”
Why can’t I talk? I mouthed, resorting to hand gestures when she didn’t seem to understand the question.
“Well, you were on mechanical ventilation for a little over a week before the doctors were able to perform a tracheostomy. So, right here…”
Taking my hand, she gently guided my fingers up my throat. “You’ve got a little hole. Now, with that speech valve on, you can talk. It’ll just take some getting used to.”
I touched the circular valve again, waiting for some sudden burst of clarity. She’d handed me the missing puzzle pieces, yet I couldn’t seem to make them fit together.
As the rough sounds of Tristan’s sobbing filled the room, I was forced to confront an alternative truth. Maybe the reason he wasn’t telepathically urging me to stick to a narrative was that this time, there wasn’t one.
It only hurts if you let it…
Without a doubt, I knew my name and basic information. If I focused, I could even recall the live worship night we’d hosted at the church back in May, down to what I’d been wearing.
Simple black wrap dress. No shoes.
The filing cabinet of my mind had kept a diligent record of every significant event in my life, save one. As I glanced back at Tristan, I saw the truth of Melanie’s words in his wounded expression.
He wasn’t responsible for my accident.
That meant only one thing.
I’d done it.
I’d finally done it.
I’d taken my mother’s advice and run, only to prove that Tristan had been right all along. The world was full of evil people, and, given where I was now, it was clear they’d wasted no time in bleeding the last bit of hope from my veins.
3
Ariana
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
-Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Once upon a time, I believed Tristan James had hung the moon. Although he’d been a mostly absentee parent while Mama was alive—leaving us to care for her while he jetted off to promote his latest book or fill in as a guest pastor at another church—I’d adored him.
While he was away, I would sit with my nose almost touching the television screen, mesmerized by the sound of his voice and the way he always seemed to know just what to say.
I guess I thought if I studied his mannerisms and the way he spoke, I might see something to help me defuse the bomb before it exploded. Knowing how to read his moods was a skill I became convinced would prove useful in the long run.
Disillusionment didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual shift, occurring when I realized Tristan’s views didn’t necessarily line up with my own. He preached year after year about the flawed and sinful nature of the world, and the pedestal I’d placed him on tipped forward a little more, eventually toppling completely.
I knew there was evil in the world.
I’d seen it with my own two eyes, after all.
Nothing—not even a car wreck—could take away the image of a boy being dumped off a dock like a piece of garbage. But as I confronted the details of my experience, I was forced to admit that had I not witnessed it, I likely would have missed what followed.
People had a tendency to overlook the little, everyday miracles when their lives were going well. It was only in moments of absolute darkness that they looked around long enough to appreciate the positive. Maybe it wasn’t right out in the open, but I was a firm believer in seeking out goodness wherever it happened to exist.
That was the fundamental difference between the two of us.
In Tristan’s mind, a person fell into one of two categories. You were either a sinner, or you were a saint. He couldn’t seem to separate himself from his rigid and unyielding beliefs long enough to consider that a person, or world, might be both and still worthy of saving.
He ruled over his kingdom like a dictator, where differing opinions were seen as credible threats to his ministry. The world was always watching, so there was no room for error.
To me, the pursuit of perfection was draining.
It hadn’t always been like that, though.
There was a time when each girl within the church community was allowed to spend three days in the city upon turning eighteen.
Urban Mission had been established as a safe way of giving us a snapshot of the world. My grandmother was certain once we’d seen the sinful way in which people lived, we would better appreciate what my father had built for us.
There were twelve months between us, and year after year, I watched as each of my sisters headed into the city, accompanied by one of the church elders and his wife. Each returned home looking more than a little shell-shocked, seemingly confirming my grandmother’s suspicions.
My eldest sister, Aubrey, had worked in the kitchen at the mission, serving food to a homeless population clothed in little more than rags. A few begged her for money, and one woman had gone as far as offering up her body. Before the trip, Aubrey had planned on enrolling at a nearby Protestant university for the fall semester. Instead, she’d stayed and married Brother Caleb’s son, Lucas, in a lavish October ceremony.
Anastasia was next, followed by Avery and Autumn the following years. Each one readily gave up their plans for a college education in favor of a wedding and home within the community.
I’d devoured their stories, ravenous for even the smallest crumb from their travels. Without fail, I eagerly prayed night after night that they might bring back news of the boy with blue-gray eyes.
When Ashlynn turned eighteen, everything changed. She was the sister I was closest to, and the only one to give an honest account of her experience. The night she returned, I’d waited until everyone was asleep before sneaking into her room.
My older sisters had arrived home and slowly drifted up the stairs like balloons in need of helium before collapsing onto their beds in exhaustion.
Not Ashlynn.
She’d feigned disappointment as she told our father of the trip during Sunday dinner. Still, I’d seen the excitement reflected in her eyes. Brother Jakob and his wife, Sister Hana, hadn’t been as pleased with their time in the city and had retired to their hotel room early one evening.
“I met someone, Ari,” she’d whispered as I slipped beneath her bedcovers, no longer hiding her pleased grin. “I snuck out and walked to an all-night diner. He bought me a cup of coffee before sitting down
, and we just—we just talked for hours. His name is Matt, and he just enlisted with the Army, but gave me his unit’s information so I can write him letters.”
She’d paused before admitting, “So Matt walked me back to the hotel, and then he—he kissed me. He kissed as if we were the only two people in the world. And instead of stopping it, I kissed him right back. I felt like maybe I could have kissed him forever.”
Her confession had sent an arc of unfamiliar longing coursing through my veins before it set up camp between my legs. It was similar to the sensation I got when Pepper jumped over obstacles, but I was never left with the urge to nuzzle her neck afterward.
We’d stayed up half the night as she told me of the other things she’d experienced, but her first kiss was what I remembered most. As wrong as it had been, I’d wanted to be held by a man just as she’d described it.
But not just any man.
A pleasant shiver had moved down my spine as I crept back to my own bedroom, and I made a promise to myself that when my turn came, I was going to find the blue-eyed boy and kiss him.
What I wanted hadn’t mattered in the end.
Like the old saying, ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,’ some things are just doomed to fail.
I didn’t know it at the time, but within a matter of weeks, Ashlynn would be gone forever. The church would vote to end the Urban Mission project, and my eighteenth birthday would pass just like every other day before it. I would stay within the same four walls I’d known my entire life, fantasizing about what it would be like to live somewhere else, to be free to make my own choices.
Something must have happened to turn my fantasy into reality. Some catalyst that left me with no other choice.
Why else would I have tried to escape?
I knew as well as anyone how it had ended for my sister.
* * *
I snapped out of my thoughts and frowned down at the notebook filled with scribbles. I’d written hospital five times with the year sketched out to the side in block letters. Beneath that were strange symbols and obscure words that appeared to be a newly discovered form of cursive. My brain must have decided to solve a mystery without my help because decoding the jargon proved impossible.
Through The Water: Fairest Series Book Two Page 4