Sighing, I sip at some more coffee and keep staring at the rain thundering around me. I feel like that soil. Tipped up, raked over, and now drowning beneath a torrent of feelings that aren’t equalled because she’s in Manhattan, in my apartment, and I’m here regurgitating the problem I’m struggling to accept the answer to. I thought it would be a simpler task than it appears to be, easier to manage. It isn’t, though. It’s problematic. Difficult to acknowledge as viable. Whether that’s because of the actuality of the decision or the fact that Hannah has woken a sense of complex emotional responses within me is both questionable and debatable.
“Why can’t I wake her up?” mutters from me.
“You’re not God, Gray, no matter how much you’d like to think you are sometimes.”
Another questionable quandary given these past ten years. “And yet I’ve played God with her body without contrition or apology.”
She snorts, amused by something. “Well, you always were a player. Husband or not. Considering Heather’s deceit, and your inflexible nature, I’m not surprised by your actions nor do I blame you for them, but it is time, Gray. There is life out there.”
Silence resumes for a few minutes, as I consider those words. Husband. I was a husband for approximately four months before I caused that crash. She contacted the company, found a way to get a message through to my email, and then asked to meet. I don’t know why, to this day, I never examined the legitimacy of the child’s parentage. Too trusting at the time maybe, or too analytical for the option of lies to even enter my thoughts. Maybe I just wanted to do the right thing regardless of questions, be the right thing and find a sense of happiness in the world around me that had become nothing but parties and money and pretentious functions that I cared little for. A practical low key wedding in the Bahamas later, just us, and vows exchanged, and we were two.
Nearly three.
I finish my coffee and keep listening to the rain, part of me miles away from here with Hannah listening to the dull drone of my heartbeat rather than this downpour. I can’t remember the last time Beatrice and I just sat like this, talking and being family rather than co-workers trying to solve a conundrum. I can’t even remember the last time anything was more relevant than working data and statistics before Hannah. Malachi occasionally, I suppose.
Or what Malachi provided for me.
“I bet you never told her you loved her.”
“Why would I? I never did. You know that.”
She chuckles and stands, taking my coffee cup from me after squeezing my shoulder. “No. I meant Hannah, Gray. Romance? Presuming you do love her.”
“I told her everything. She still left.”
Her surprise is clear. As is the look of pity she bestows. That, and the sound of hoof beats landing heavy somewhere close by, make me frown. I look up the paths, watching as Charlie comes slowly along the beaten down ground, both him and his horse seeming as drowned as the soil is around us. He’s another thing I need to deal with, talk to perhaps. Or maybe I don’t. Why should his opinion on my life be of consequence?
“Mom,” he says, coming to a standstill. “Sir.”
I nod and look over the frame of the horse, as he talks with Beatrice about something. Childish things presumably. Mother and son dialogue. Probably irrelevant to any reality other than the life he’s been offered because of my guilt.
Still, the disinterest makes me dismiss the thought of conversations with him and wonder if I should have told Hannah more, or gone with her. Maybe I should. Maybe that would have made her decision making about me easier. In fact, it was fucking dumb of me to offer her space now I’m processing the thought. I should have done what needs doing immediately, not caring for the guilt involved in it, and offered her everything I am.
“Sir?” I look up at him, unsure what he’s said. “Mom said you wanted to go for a ride? I can saddle up the filly and-“
“No. I have things to do.”
Moving away, I duck through the door and make my way down to the east wing. I don’t have time for children today, nor do I have the patience for dealing with feelings I doubtless should have dealt with long ago. The thought makes me stop by the orangery, eyes cast out at the loan figure of him heading back to the barns. His head hangs low, the weight of the rain on his shoulders as heavy as the torment he probably holds every day because of circumstance.
At least Beatrice has been there for him, held him through the years, taken the gift of a parentless child and offered him some protection against the actuality of his existence. I couldn’t. Didn’t want to, or was unable to tolerate the thought of another man’s child under my roof even if it was the right thing to do. It’s never been hidden from him. He knows his real mother is here, but the carcass of her unresponsive frame wasn’t much use to a child in need of a maternal instinct.
I turn and head back in the direction I was aiming for again, remembering the time I caught him in there with her on his own for the first time. Five years old and he just stood there, staring, as little emotion on his face as I’ve always had on my own. Learnt behaviour presumably given both Beatrice’s and my analytical approach. It’s still there now when he visits her, as if he feels nothing for her. I’ve never even asked him how he does feel about it all, or if he understands how easy it will be to end the turmoil we’re all under.
My cell vibrates silently, as I push on the door into the room. I pull it out of my pocket and check over the messages, part desperate for it to be the one I’m hoping for. It isn’t. It’s Malachi. The same Malachi that gave her the ability to do what she did to herself.
I grumble to myself and slide it back into my pocket, not in the slightest ready to communicate with the man who put the life of the one person I care so deeply for in harm’s way. For the moment, I’m nowhere other than concentrating on this in front of me and trying to find a defensible and justifiable reason to do what I want to do.
All this time, and all the times Beatrice has suggested it, and never once have I recognized it as rational or acceptable. My truths were more important than her death. I’ve wanted to wake her, and then shake the fucking life from her again just to put that power back in my hands rather than have her hold this wedding band around me any longer.
A son that wasn’t mine.
He was something so pure and strong when he came into the world, the wreckage of his broken mother not holding him back from his first shouts at life. I held him, loved him within a second’s worth of heartbeats, and saw my future reflected in his eyes. Everything, for a day, was clear. Every reason to be whole was there and waiting for me. Life. Love. A new purpose and determination to be everything he needed to me to be. Perfect. Indisputable.
And then that power was taken from me by way of blood tests.
Not mine.
And yet now, because of my personal feelings for another woman and a life I could have with her, all those sorrows and all that pain is being overridden. They mean nothing alongside the fear that haunts me at the thought of not having her with me. I need that. Want it. Love. Comfort. A chance at all of it again. I miss her even now, can feel her lips on mine, her skin on mine. I want my damn walks in parks, my mornings waking up together and my nights entwined in hope rather than the constancy of numbers and processed evaluation of facts.
My gaze lands on the machines littered around the space, all of them doing their constant tasks of keeping this body breathing and its organs functioning. Why shouldn’t I have that life I want? What lies here is a lie. A farce of a marriage. A child that isn’t mine. And a house that I hate because of those two falsehoods. This whole damn life I’ve been living in is an untruth.
And it’s only a few switches.
Simple.
I stare at them, glare, and then move forward. There’s nothing else to do than that. I have the paperwork in place, signatures from two state senators and the medical advisory team to make sure the deed is legal. Not that it ever wasn’t in reality. If anything should be deemed illegal,
certainly immoral, it’s been me showing reasons to keep her on the damned machines. The governing bodies liked that, though. They sanctioned Grayson Rothburg testing her, trialling the others – attempting to find cures for problematic scenarios the world has to deal with daily. Questionable potentially, but what the people don’t know doesn’t hurt them, and those same people will scream for the drugs these trials have provided one day. I’ll be a hero in the eyes of the masses. And the thought of how the drugs evolved will be dismissed as inconsequential.
Switches.
A few turns.
I’ll be a widower then. Free.
Lacking truths, but free.
“Sir?”
I blink at the sound of Charlie’s voice behind me and stop my hand moving, guilt and culpability sweeping over me like a goddamned storm. My eyes close, throat swallowing down the curses that want to rain down hell into the space around me. “Yes, Charlie?”
“Mom told me you’re sad.”
A dark and troublesome chuckle forms in my throat. Sad? I never knew sad before Hannah. I knew anger and rage and depression, but not sadness. It’s true now, though. I am sad. I am miserable and wretched with the thought of both what I have to do, and what I will not be able to do if I don’t do it.
Swallowing again at the thought, I continue looking over her perfectly still body and lodge my hands in my pockets rather than aim them at switches I was about to turn. Sadness. This is all a sadness. It is for me, and it is for Charlie behind me. We’ve been nothing but stalled in life, him and me. Waiting for me to achieve something. Both of us.
I turn my head to look at him, watching as he stares at me rather than the woman who gave him life.
“Are you sad because of the lady who was lost?” I nod, nothing else for it other than truths now. “She was pretty.” She was, is.
My lips lift slightly, imagining all those harsh lines and all those soft smiles, and then drop as the image of her in here last night takes hold. So angry. So hurt and confused. Rightfully so.
My fists tighten in my pocket, the chain gripped tightly, and my wedding band loose beneath it.
“Is she coming back?” he asks.
No. Not here.
Never will she be here again, regardless of the route forward from this point onwards.
“No, Charlie. This isn’t the place for her.”
Or me.
He stands quietly, as he mulls that information over. It’s profound in a way I couldn’t have imagined before Hannah. Silent but meaningful, regardless of his small size, as he thinks and eventually looks at his mother’s body. “You can’t make her better, can you?”
“I don’t think so.” Or I don’t care to try anymore. “How does that make you feel?”
He looks as surprised by the question as I am about asking it, but the following frown is one I know all too well. It’s the same line a Rothburg has, irrespective of his ancestry. More learnt behaviour presumably, but it also shows more of me in him than I’ve ever measured as feasible.
“A little sad, Sir.”
Sad.
I back off a few steps until I’m near the door and wave my hand at him, accepting the fact that because of his position in this room there’s nothing I can do to alleviate the problem we’re all in unless I ask him if it’s alright to do it. It’s not something I’m considering, nor will I ever put the burden of that responsibility on him. It’s mine alone. My fault. My issue. My problem. “Come on, Charlie,” I muse, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Tell me about your ride this morning.”
For now, that’s all I’ve got.
That and waiting for a phone call that might never come.
With these thoughts in mind, and the need to feel Hannah still engrained more deeply than any of this, I doubt I’m going to wait here much longer at all.
Chapter 20
Hannah
I don’t think I’ve slept, and yet the day seemed to arrive and pass by without me acknowledging its existence. Dark shades now creep and glide around the floor, as if directing me into rooms and corners I’ve never been in before. My bare feet pad the stairs upwards, his robe wrapped around me, and then I turn corners to the next level. A glass roof covers the expanse of it once I get there, pointed angles showing me stars and more black obscurity above.
Gazing into what seems to be a laboratory with glass walls only lit by the moon, I pull the robe tighter around me and take in the quiet, shadowed space, as I drink some coffee. Everything’s quiet here. Me included. It’s tranquil in some ways, giving me a chance to breathe on my own and try to figure out what’s real or not.
I’ve fingered things since I’ve been here alone, touched things, smelt things. I’ve walked into rooms, leafed through his journals, and looked over the honours and acclimations on his walls for brilliance and ingenuity. I’ve picked up his expensive pen, saw the chewed end of it, and studied it, searching for a man that chews pens. Pen chewer. Not something I imagined.
And horses – they’re everywhere if you look close enough in dark corners. Paintings of them. Modern sculptures. There’s even some books on them in his study, old pictures of a huge spread of a house and farm somewhere. His family home maybe.
I’ve lain in his bed, felt the sheets wrap around me and grip me like he does. And because of all those things, I’ve found myself at home with those new feelings and sensations. They’re all him. Maybe they’re the him that I’ve never met before, or perhaps the him that I first met and got drunk with. He laughed then. Smiled with me.
My own smile weakly emerges with the image of it, and then the visions of him come crashing in again. Hands holding me firmly as we danced, then hands handling me harshly as we fucked. And then those same hands holding me gently, his eyes directed at mine as he asked me to be there with him for that one time.
I know now. I know why he kept me away, why he tried to keep the distance between us. But now I don’t know how real anything is that I’ve felt about him, or still feel about him. All I have is my conscience and this ongoing feeling that yearns and aches. But without him here, without the words to tell the truth, I can’t find reasoning about their worth.
I took the drugs.
Swallowed the pills.
I could be as screwed up as those women are about him.
I pull the card from my pocket and swipe it through the lock to the laboratory, waiting for it to open the door for me like it did with his study. It doesn’t, and the sound of feet running through the apartment downstairs shortly afterwards makes me realise that Jackson’s been alerted to an alarm of some sort. I wait for his arrival and then stare at the door again.
“Mam?” he questions.
“Can you open the door please?”
“Mam, I can’t do that. No one but Mr Rothburg is allowed in there.”
“Why?”
He looks confused, as if he doesn’t have an answer for that. I do. It’s because this is where the sinister happens, where the files and information is stored about what he’s done. It’s a shame that doesn’t seem to make me hate him. I should. I should despise what he did to those women. I should be able to distinguish between right and wrong, but I can’t.
I know what needing answers is.
And I know what pain is.
Sighing at the conundrum I’m in, I look upwards at the stars and try to counter the rationale that tells me to ignore it all and call him, tell him I love him, too. I think I do anyway. I still feel it, deep down where truths live and life begins. But all this, and the fact that he’s married, make the confusion unbearable. Frankly, being under those pills was easier to deal with.
“Open the door for her, Jackson.”
Gray’s gravelled voice interrupts my musing, and I look over sharply to see if he’s really here or not. He is, one of his hands on the bannister as his body stalls on the last step to this floor. Everything in me that was questioning, that was trying to analyse rather than feel, falters. He looks exhausted, barely a flicker of life on his f
eatures other than irritation.
The door slides open beside me before I’ve realised Jackson’s moved.
“You said you wouldn’t come until I called,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to give you the chance not to without hearing it all.”
Jackson coughs in the background and walks between us, probably waiting for Gray to step out of his way on the stairs. He does after a few more beats of us staring at each other, and then we’re alone. Just two. Nothing in the apartment but feelings and trepidation again.
“What do you want to go in there for?”
“I don’t know. I just …” I look at the open doorway, unsure. “I wanted to see the files on the women.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know.”
“What more do you need to know?”
“I need to know if it’s real or not. These feelings. I could be like them.”
A low smile breaks out on his face. “Believe me when I tell you, you are nothing like them. Never were. This is very real.”
“But how do you know that?”
“Because you’re not still on meds. You’re clean. They’re not.”
Right.
I look at my coffee and swill the dregs of it around the cup, part desperate to go to him and follow instincts that seem so strong, and part worried that if I do, if I make that step into him again, I’ll be nothing more than another test case.
“You don’t believe me,” he murmurs.
“I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know who you are.”
“Yes you do. I’m the man that fell in love with you. The one who, regardless of trying to dismiss you, couldn’t find it in me to deny a reality I’m now fucking lost without.”
My toes curl into the carpet, shoulders scrunching in at the thought he might have said that to those other women. He steps forward, closing the distance down. “I love you, Hannah. I am less of a man without you. If you know anything, know that.”
He seems so real, as do the words and the feelings they cause in me. Rick’s gone. As has the life I had before Gray. It’s all immaterial now. I’m new. Alive. Floating on a precipice as if daring myself to jump off the cliff and fall. And these words, they make me desperate to make more of them than this space between us allows.
A Sorrow of Truths Page 14