His grip tightened on her son, holding him in place. She reached down and worked to wrench the man’s fingers from her son’s arm. She looked up, and Caleb’s face fell to a frown.
“Let go!” she hissed.
Caleb’s lips quivered, as if he was debating how to respond. The quiver expanded, filling the side of his face. As Blair pulled, his face contorted past the grimace, drooping into an unnatural and shaking relaxation. Blair shuddered, heaving on her son as Caleb’s right eye rolled back into his head.
Chapter 67
Irene
A wave of panic crossed the thick man’s face at hearing her father’s name again.
“Sheriff?” Irene croaked. She turned to find Dietrick. The sheriff and Leo were moving from the cooks back to the patrons. Irene glared back through the service bar. The man had disappeared.
She bolted through the kitchen door. Her heart threatened to beat out of her chest, fueled by adrenaline-spiked panic and hope. She caught a shadow of the man as he rounded the pantry shelving. She jogged to close the distance, her voice cracking as she cried for him to wait.
She turned past the shelf, finding his enormous silhouette in a swath of sunlight as he left the building. He was running.
She followed through the kitchen’s exit, into a dusty yard. Her legs pumped to catch up to him. He was moving fast, already across the street, making a beeline toward a trailer standing in the yard.
“Hey!” she called out, her voice working again. “Hey, do you know where Caleb Allard is?”
The man continued running ahead. Irene’s swirling hope and panic focused into a rage. It ripped out of her mouth. “Stop right there, goddammit!”
The man stumbled to a stop, his shoulders hunching at the weight of her scream. His hands shook as he raised them over his cowering head. His thick frame pivoted around, his face clenched with fear.
His meek eyes found hers, and then his face wrinkled with mild confusion as he took her in, evaluating her for the briefest moment.
“Do you know where Caleb Allard is?” Irene repeated. She sounded pleading. Desperate. The force of her scream had taken the strength from her voice.
His arms lowered. His head rose and he stretched his neck to one side. An obvious expression of disgust crossed his face as his posture relaxed and his eyes rolled. Irene recognized the look from countless interactions with her peers. Her teachers. Men everywhere. He was ashamed he had felt threatened by her. He turned back to the building, dismissing her with a swipe of his hand.
The fire under her rage flared, igniting her impatience. She pulled in another breath, ready to spew untethered hell upon this behemoth who could take her to her father.
A scream pierced the still air. Not from Irene. From the building ahead. Irene held her breath, unsure of what to do with it. The man startled again. Then he broke into a run.
Chapter 68
Caleb
“There’s been a change of plans.”
Caleb …
Caleb’s abdomen exploded with ragged, hot pressure. He opened his eyes. Blair looked at him, concerned. Her mouth moved; she shook her head. Caleb could hear only a warble of her voice over the static of his stomach pain.
Behind Blair, the walls and floor faded to the tepid beige of those fixed moments, the color of choices made or lost. The woman’s face knotted. She asked him something. She expected a response.
Her words broke through his wall of agony. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Caleb chuckled around the jagged edges of the pain, realizing what she was asking. Her face tightened, confusion turning into fear. He met her eyes and replied, “I wasn’t talking to you.”
The thrush surged in his deaf ear.
Caleb!
Ripples of color stripped from the walls and floor. Their motions kept time with his own pulse, inching across every surface. Homing on Caleb as if he were a gravity well for death.
Caleb, you need to do this!
“Is that … blood!” Blair’s voice grew loud. Her eyes wide. She pulled on her son. Caleb tightened his grip on the boy. He tightened his grip around the thing in his pocket. The metal parts cool against his fingers and palm.
Do it! Do it now! Kill that little universe-ending shit!
The colorless putty was everywhere. The last of the color surrounded only the mother and child now, as she clutched her arms around her petrified boy. She pulled on him, her strength increasing. Caleb held him fast as he lifted his hand out of his pocket.
This is it! Your choices are running out! One little beetle to crush and your life will have a purpose!
She blubbered. Yanked on the kid. Her noise. The pain. The disappearing colors. It dissolved into an incoherent rabble.
Caleb …
The boy froze. Eyes bulged. Breath heaved. Tears and snot stuck to his cheeks. Emerson. The boy’s name was Emerson.
Caleb?
Caleb raised his fisted hand up to the boy’s terrified face. The voice ebbed from his head like a wave flowing back into the sea, giving him space to act. The tide of his own blood flushed in his good ear.
How much longer would he hear it? How many heartbeats did he have left? How would he use them? The wisps of color hung in suspense, curious to know the same.
Caleb! What the hell are you waiting for!
Chapter 69
Blair
Why the hell hadn’t she waited for Jaime to get back? How did she think doing this without him here was a good idea?
She clawed at the spotted yellow skin of the man’s hand. Her fingers worked to pry his fingers off Emerson’s arm. She couldn’t move him. With all the fury she had, she hammered her fists against the brace on the man’s wrist. The skin on her knuckles split open, yet this sickly man’s grip remained locked on her son’s forearm.
She needed Jaime. Her back and legs heaved, her son failing to move. Where the fuck was Jaime?
Caleb raised his other hand. It was holding something. Blair caught the flash of metal in his hand.
Blair kicked at the desk, searching for any leverage her tiny frame could use against the man holding her son. Caleb pulled harder, and Emerson inched closer to the man as his wadded hand floated to her son’s face. Her efforts were pointless—she couldn’t release the hold of this dying man.
The thought slapped her mind: She could let go. Leave Emerson here. Run. Let this man take her boy. Save herself. But for what? What would life be without Em? Living in a fucking trailer. On someone else’s lot. With her shit job in this shit town. She would die here. Stuck. Waiting. Waiting for death to take her from her shit trailer in a shit town some shit years into her shit life.
No. She deserved better. She deserved Emerson! Resolve coiled in her. Emerson was a gift. A gift for her. For her suffering. The abuse from his father. From men. From the world.
The coil snapped. Her arms tightened. Jaw clenched. Her own scream rattled through her bones, “Jaime!”
Chapter 70
Caleb
Caleb pulled Emerson closer. The boy’s mother was fighting him, wresting the boy away. Why?
The voice slammed against the inside of his skull.
Caleb!
Breathing through the boom of the voice, Caleb opened his fist. He held his palm flat, letting it float in front of Emerson, waiting for him to unclench his eyes.
Caleb, no!
Emerson’s eyes peeled open. They jumped to Caleb’s face.
Caleb smiled, as best as he could through his discomfort. Through the scratching voice in his head. Through the throbbing fingers of color lapping around his shoes.
Emerson’s gaze fell to Caleb’s open hand. He took a long look at the toy El Camino, and the boy’s expression softened. His posture relaxed, shoulders falling as his panting slowed.
Caleb wiggled his hand a little, a suggestion for Emerson to take the car. A smile hinted on the kid’s face as he looked between Caleb and the toy. It was the only w
armth in this chilled moment. Caleb smiled at the sensation.
The mother stopped yanking on the kid. Caleb looked up at her. She stared down at the toy in his hand. Her hands fisted in the boy’s wrinkled shirt. Her face hung in wide terror, but her body stilled, creating a statue of ugly confusion.
Oh fuck! Caleb! What are you doing?
Caleb ignored the voice as best he could. Instead, he turned his focus to the growing pain inside of his belly. “I have a boy too,” he said in a whisper. His lungs rattled as he sucked in air. “He drives a car that looks … just like this one.” The sentence came out in spurts, between the throbs of agony radiating from his gut.
Emerson blinked from Caleb’s gaze down to the car. He sniffled in a heaving sigh.
A stab shot up from Caleb’s abdomen. It lifted with it a wave of nausea and fear. Caleb breathed and counted, pushing it all back down. He needed a few more moments, that’s all. He prayed he would have them. He continued, “I mean, his car is bigger of course. We wouldn’t fit in this one.”
Emerson’s smile stretched to his eyes. Caleb moved his open palm holding the toy El Camino toward the boy.
Jesus Christ …
The kid’s eyes bounced from the toy back to him. Caleb relaxed his hand from the boy’s arm as Emerson moved to wipe his nose on it. With a croak, the boy asked, “Can I … can I have it?”
Caleb, you’re ruining everything! Literally everything in the damned universe!
Caleb smiled and nodded at the toy in his palm. Emerson sucked in his lip and raised a tentative hand. His nimble fingers lifted the car off Caleb’s palm.
You can still do it, okay? You can pull out the fucking gun and kill this cataclysmic brat!
Emerson relaxed into his mother, clutching the El Camino in his tiny fist. The boy glanced up at Caleb, and the remaining knots of tension between them loosened.
You don’t understand what you’re doing!
The boy’s mother remained vigilant, her hands flattening on Emerson’s chest and pulling him away. Her voice was quiet and coarse, “Emerson, we need to leave, okay? Right now.”
Caleb? Please! Don’t do this!
The door to the office burst open. In the bright Texas afternoon sun stood the hulking frame of Jaime. His sharp eyes took in the scene, moving from Blair to Caleb to Emerson in a tense circle. He snatched up the boy, shoving Blair away. Caleb heard her head connect with the desk, hard enough to make it crack the flimsy annex wall. Jaime turned and bolted through the door, Emerson clutched to his chest.
Oh God, no!
Caleb watched the man run through the open doorway. As they bobbed across the churchyard, color dissipated from his clothing, from his skin, from the boy. He turned back to find Blair. She lay on the floor, a growing pool of blood leaking from her head. The blood dissolved from crimson to a drab beige as the color smoke reached over her prone body.
You asshole. You fucking asshole! You’ve fucked everything. Do you realize that?
“I made a choice,” Caleb replied to the voice. “Emerson will make his own choices too.”
Yeah, well, that was a real dick move, Caleb. Way to blow it. Way to ruin the entire universe!
Caleb reached again into the jacket pocket. His fingers found the revolver and eased it to his lap. It had become heavier somehow. Everything felt so big. Everything except Caleb himself.
Do you have any idea how much effort I put into you?
Tiny wisps of putty ate through his sneakers. The colors exploded away with every jolt of pain, grabbing more and more of him. His ankles. One calf. Then the other. The tendrils smoked toward his knees. His feet went cold, and then they weren’t there anymore.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
The effort to lift the gun pulled the eddies of color higher, over his thighs. The gun was so heavy. Caleb feared he would drop it. Lose this last choice. He fit the pistol under his chin using both of his shaking hands.
Chapter 71
Irene
He disappeared around the front of the building. Irene sprinted after him, her legs burning from the sudden exertion. She threw herself into the same corner, slamming against the building. She felt the heat in her blood as she took in the empty yard, the brick church beyond, the Labradoodle stooping to piss on a spot of glass.
The man must have entered the building. Before she could get her legs moving, a percussive whomp punched the wall behind her. He exploded from the door, carrying a flailing bundle of a kid in his arms.
“Stop!” she demanded.
The dog galloped, shadowing him across the yard like they were playing a game. Irene pushed herself off the building. Running a few steps on shaking legs, she screamed again, “Hey! Asshole!”
As if that was its name, the dog skidded to a stop. It turned around, beady eyes finding her through the curls on its face. It tilted its head and peaked its ears with curiosity. In one motion, the dog’s mouth opened, the tongue flopped out, and it leaped toward her in spastic strides.
Irene froze, focused on the man as he ran across the street. The dog raced past her, clipping her leg and sending Irene to the ground. When she got herself upright, the man was gone.
“No!” Irene begged. “I just want to know where my dad is!”
A ruckus turned her around. The dog stood in the building's doorway, lapping at something on the floor. Her muzzle came up dirty. Muddy. Bloody. Irene approached the steps. A woman lay on the floor of the structure, her head leaking blood. Beyond her, around the frame of the door, sat a man in a chair.
“Dad? Is that you?” Her voice was thin, its strength gone.
She moved up the steps to see all of him. She stared, willing herself to recognize the man slumped in front of her. His face sunk against his skull. Skin jaundiced and sallow. It had been two days, but Dad had aged years.
Irene had seen it before, in her mom. The disease. It was taking Dad.
His head dipped to one side as he stared down at the woman on the floor. A grimy canvas coat hung on his tender frame, open to show brown stains of dried blood across his chest and legs. Wes’s blood. On his lap, cradled between his hands, was a pistol.
Uncertainty cast shadows on her thoughts. “Dad?”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t look at her. He sucked in a phlegmy breath and raised the gun to his chin.
Chapter 72
Caleb
It consumed him now. It ran into his gut. The color leaked out of him. His body fixed into its final position as the end of his life lapped at him like a rising tide.
Now what the hell am I going to do?
Caleb ignored the voice. It came easy now. It didn’t rumble through his bones anymore.
The gun was so heavy. It shook in his hands. He had one moment left, at least one more choice to make, didn’t he? He could end this on his terms, like he’d planned. It was just days ago. Or was it longer? Weeks?
This is all shit. Just shit!
His finger found the trigger. The barrel pressed into the soft tissue under his jaw. These were his final thoughts. Wes. Irene. Ivy. The boat. The deep dark waters that terrified and delighted them as kids. They learned to love it, though. They should have spent more time there. Together.
I mean look at this mess. Just look at it!
Caleb closed his eyes as the warmth and color drained from his chest. It was coming fast.
He squeezed. Nothing. He opened his eyes.
Irene. Irene was here? The gun was in her hands now. Where were his hands? He couldn’t feel them anymore. Just the rising pressure inside of his chest, his pulse walloping through his head.
Well, hang on …
The color of her face—her lovely face—dissolved away, leaving behind the clay of the fixed moment. Irene’s kind eyes, her tears, her worried lips, solidified for eternity.
Huh.
Her mouth moved. Caleb could not hear her. He was so tired.
Thoughts jumbled. Caleb’s c
hest expanded, heaving in a breath. His last breath. How would he use it? He had to pull one thought, one thread, from the knot in his head. I’m sorry. You look so much like your mother. Don’t remember me this way. I’m proud as shit of you. Take care of your brother. Run away from your brother. Your brother is dead. I killed your brother. Whose dog is that? I wish I had done more for you. For Wes. For your mother. For us all.
Okay, how did you do that?
This was it. Caleb had to make this last choice. What could he say to his daughter? After the pain he caused her. The difficulty of growing up with Wes. Without Ivy. And yet Irene persevered. She gave so much back to them. Irene’s support. Her intelligence. Her edge. Her humor. Her kindness.
His body racked as he let go of the breath. He wasn’t able to push it out. Instead, the words leaked from his mouth like smoke, light on the currents in the air. He didn’t hear them, but they were out of him now, floating away with the last of the color he would see.
“Thank you, Starlight.”
Irene’s face was still.
The world split.
Irene’s face was still. Irene kissed his head.
The world split. Irene’s face was still. Irene cried. Irene pulled out her phone. Irene kissed his head. The dog sniffed at Caleb’s shirt.
I’ll be damned.
The world split. Irene stooped over Blair. The dog sniffed at Caleb’s shirt. Irene sat against the wall and brought her hands to her mouth. Irene’s face was still. Irene kissed his head. Irene cried. Irene pulled out her phone.
The world split. The dog licked its crotch. The dog sniffed at Caleb’s shirt. Irene’s face. So many of them. Irene?
The world split. It was too much to know. It was too bright to see. Caleb tried to close his eyes, to make it all disappear. To sleep. Where were his eyes?
The world split. Over the rabble of light, the kaleidoscope of moments, Caleb heard it. The pitch falling. Its volume fading. The voice, keeping its promise. Moving away from him. Leaving him behind.
Season of Waiting Page 30