Liberty (6 page)

Chapter Eight

L
exy pulled up in front of Golden Hill just a little after noon the next day. Instead of getting out, instead of walking inside like she was supposed to, she sat in her car and stared mindlessly at the big brick building. She couldn’t make herself move. Exhausted didn’t begin to describe how she felt. Being by Ryan’s side the past few weeks while he recovered had drained a little bit of life out of her. If he was the same man he was when he went away it would be easy to walk away. To not care. But this new Ryan made her feel things she had never felt before. She wasn’t sure how to handle him.

She thought that maybe when she got home, got the chance to sleep in her own bed, that she could get some sleep, rest her mind and reevaluate this turn in her life. But as soon as they crossed the threshold she knew there would be no regrouping.

Ryan was really back. In her home.
Her home.
The place she had made her own. The place she spent the past two years becoming who she wanted to be. But after that alarmingly steamy interlude in his bedroom she could barely think about anything else. She felt him everywhere. Not just his presence in the house but his touch on her skin. His lips on her body. She felt his heat even though it had been hours since he had touched her. And when she went to bed last night she could barely sleep because she knew he was across the hall. She knew that only a few steps separated them.

He was going to make leaving hard. Instead of physical strength he was going to use mental warfare to try to get her to stay. And that was more brutal than any slap he could deliver.

Shaking herself out of her troubling thoughts, she focused on the task ahead. There was no use stalling any longer.

Taking a deep breath, she left her car. She needed to get on with her visit. She needed to talk to the man she thought about constantly. To explain how the past few weeks had been for her. She knew he would understand. Kyle was very sweet that way.

“Hello, Mrs. Beecher,” one of the front-desk staff cheerfully greeted her as she walked in.

“Hello, Janet. How are you?”

“I’m just fine. We missed you around here.” Janet looked at her curiously as if she were waiting for an explanation of her absence.

Lexy knew the staff of this building was aware that she had a husband somewhere, but she never talked about him and she didn’t want to talk about him now. “I missed you all, too,” she replied as she made her way toward Kyle’s place.

The door was open when she got there and Kyle was sitting in his favorite spot. He always waited for her by the window. Today he wore the blue shirt she had gotten him for Christmas last year. He always wore something she bought him when he knew she was coming to visit. It made her smile each time she walked through the door. It made her feel appreciated.

“Hello, handsome.”

Kyle didn’t look up at the sound of her voice. She tried to ignore the tiny stab of pain in her chest when he didn’t respond. Part of her wondered if he might be upset with her for not being around for so long, but a bigger part of her, the rational part of her, knew that wasn’t the case.

She walked farther into the room, placing the bag with the gifts she had bought him on the table. He didn’t stir at the sound of her footsteps or give any indication that he had heard her.

“Kyle? Honey?” She touched his shoulder and he finally looked up at her. Her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw him. He was thin to the point of gauntness but his eyes lit up in recognition.

“Hi, buddy.” She greeted her younger brother with a kiss to his papery cheek. “I missed you.”

Kyle was the brother she had never known about. She had grown up thinking she just had Maybell, and then she thought she just had Ryan. But five years ago somebody contacted her from Golden Hill Extended Care facility to tell her the money from her grandmother’s trust had run out and that if she didn’t make a payment soon her brother would have to find a new place to live.

A brother. A family. The news was more than a shock to her. Maybell never talked about her parents or anything pertaining to Lexy’s past. The old woman had kept Kyle a secret from her his entire life. At first Lexy was furious with her grandmother. Kyle was her family and she wanted to know him, but when Lexy finally met her brother she understood why her grandmother kept him away from her.

Kyle was sick with some rare debilitating disease that literally caused him to melt away. His life expectancy was only thirty years. He needed round-the-clock care. He couldn’t talk or walk or stand or feed himself. He was in constant pain. She knew Maybell, and while the world thought the woman was tough, Lexy knew that there was no way her grandmother could see such suffering on a daily basis.

For Lexy, seeing her brother’s suffering was nearly impossible. But she bore it anyway because nobody should live their life alone. Everything she had done for the past few years had solely been for her brother’s sake. Kyle was the reason she had stayed with Ryan for so long. For the first two years he paid for Kyle’s care. Lexy would have if she could, but working as a librarian’s assistant she couldn’t afford to support herself much less pay her brother’s huge bill.

So she asked her husband to do it, and he never let her forget it. Especially when he was drunk.

“You better do as I say, Lexy, or your brother will be out on the street,” he slurred. “If it wasn’t for me he would be dead.”

She hated him a little more every time he held her brother’s welfare over her head. At first she thought he was bluffing, but he wasn’t. One time after she refused to have sex with him he didn’t pay the bill. It was then she knew she couldn’t allow him to have that kind of power over her.

Golden Hill was one of the best in the state and with such excellent care came a high cost. She looked into cheaper facilities that would solely be covered by his insurance. But seeing those places, seeing how miserable the patients were, made her realize that she could not leave him there.

So she got another job, picking up shifts at the Calloway—the restaurant her grandmother used to be the cook at. Ryan thought it was to help out with the household bills. They were in serious debt. He thought she didn’t know about it. She knew his paycheck went to alcohol and cars and to a woman that wasn’t her. But she didn’t care about that. She only cared about her brother.

So she did the only thing she thought she could do. She told him her brother had died. She wouldn’t allow him to play with somebody else’s life. From then on she worked double shifts in addition to her day job, stashing away every penny she could while she paid for Kyle’s care in secret. She was going to use that money to leave Ryan. But three years ago he almost knocked her into a tailspin. He had found her stash hidden in a coffee can in the back of a kitchen cabinet. She thought he was going to get angry about it, but he didn’t. It never occurred to him that she might leave him. He just looked at her, told her it was stupid to keep so much cash in the house and then went to deposit it in their bank account.

She never saw that money again.

She couldn’t protest him taking it because that would cause him to ask questions. She was so close to leaving him. It was hard to pretend the loss of three thousand dollars didn’t nearly kill her.

Looking back, it was a blessing in disguise. She had no plan then. No place to go. Nobody to lean on. Now she was smarter. She had opened up a bank account that he couldn’t access. She visited a counselor at a women’s center who helped her make a plan. All the pieces had recently just fallen into place. And then Ryan got hurt.

And she hadn’t worked for a month—at either of her jobs. Their property taxes were due and Lexy had spent a lot of money caring for Ryan while he was in the hospital. And she still had to pay Kyle’s bill. It would take her a little while to recover. But she tried not to let it get her down. Maybe by the time she was ready to leave, Ryan would be well enough to survive on his own. Then they could both move on with their lives.

“I’m sorry I was gone for so long.” She took Kyle’s hand in hers. It was softer than the last time she held it. The muscle tone noticeably different. “Ryan got hurt and I had to go take care of him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Beecher, it’s nice to see you again.” Dr. Hebert walked into Kyle’s room. “How’s your husband? I was sorry to hear that he was injured. I hope it wasn’t too gravely.”

“Ryan will make a full recovery,” she said with no doubt in her voice. There was no other option. He had to get better so that she could leave.

“That’s good. Please thank him for his service to our country.”

“I will.” She looked back to her brother. “How’s Kyle been? He doesn’t look as good as before.”

“No.” The doctor shook his head sadly. “His illness is progressing. His body is reacting the same way any patient with his type of dystrophy would react. He’s had a few small seizures this week, but as you know at this point all we can do is make him as comfortable as possible.”

She nodded. She knew Kyle would only get worse but still it was hard for her to hear it. “I stopped and got him some ice cream before I came here. Do you mind if I give him some?”

“What kind?”

“Double-fudge chocolate swirl.”

“Good choice.” He nodded. “Normally I would encourage my patients to eat fat-free, no-sugar-added frozen yogurt, but in this case I say whipped cream and hot fudge are in order.”

Lexy smiled at the doctor. “A man after my own heart. I’ve bought that, too.” She turned to pull a towel out from her brother’s nightstand and placed it over his shirt. “You want some ice cream, honey?”

His eyes lit again and she wondered what was going on in his brain. Did he understand what was happening to him or was he blissfully unaware of the course of his future?

Dr. Herbert had the bag in his hand when she turned back around. “Thank you. I feel really terrible that I wasn’t here for so long.” She pulled out a spoon and began to feed her brother. A memory of her feeding Ryan in the hospital entered her head, but she didn’t feel the same way feeding him as she did Kyle. And that bothered her more than she could express.

“Don’t feel bad. Half the people stick their family in this place and never walk through the door again. You weren’t here because you couldn’t help it. I know how far you have to travel, Lexy. There is no way you could have been in both places. And you were where you needed to be. With your husband. Everything that can be done for your brother is being done. There is no need for you to feel guilty.”

“Is there anything else I should be doing to help him?”

Dr. Herbert shook his head. “You’re a good sister. And I know paying for his care must be a financial strain.”

“I’m happy to do it,” she said quietly. It was more than a strain but it was the most important thing to her.

“Keep visiting. His time left on this planet is limited. Just be here for him.”

* * *

When Ryan woke up the next morning his wife was gone. She left him a note telling him to eat the oatmeal she left warming on the stove and that there was fresh coffee in the pot, but she gave him no clue as to where she went. He hoped she would stick around today, not because the urge to be near her was nearly overpowering but because he still had so many questions about their life together.

Nothing in their home seemed familiar or felt right, but this had to be his place, their home, because the man in the pictures with Lexy looked like him. Not exactly. The man’s eyes were different, his face a little fuller, but they were so similar in appearance they had to be the same man.

Of course they were the same man. How could they not be?

But what kind of man was he? A cheater? A drinker? He hated to hear those things about himself, but those must be the reasons she was so averse to him. And they were valid. But it seemed to go against everything he stood for. He wasn’t the type of guy who would cheat on his wife. He wasn’t a drunk. Or maybe he was. He simply couldn’t remember.

Lexy
did
remember and she thought he was her husband. And Mary thought him to be her son. And his friends... To them, he was the same man who went off to war. He needed to remember, to find out who he really was. And if he wasn’t the man he should be then he was going to have to change all of that.

This town was the place he grew up. Something had to trigger his memory. After he ate and showered he put on clothes that didn’t feel right against his skin and he stepped outside their little house to go to town. The yard, the garage, the driveway were filled with cars, all in various states of disrepair. He shook his head. It seemed like such a waste. The money that had gone into the cars could have gone to giving them a better life.

He disregarded the pickup truck, ignored the Trans Am and chose the classic black Mercedes to drive to town in. It was beautifully restored. A collector would go crazy for a car in this condition. He mentally calculated how much he could get for it if they sold it. How much they could get for the expensive tools that took up half the garage. He would have to do proper research on it later. Lexy said he loved his cars but as of right now he felt no attachment to them. He might one day soon when his memories returned.

He started the car and went into town, only knowing the way because he paid close attention when Lexy was driving him home. Even then she seemed to test him, asking him if wanted to drive. It was almost as if she thought he was faking, like he was using his memory lapse to deceive her in some way. It was clear she didn’t trust him and he wasn’t sure whether to be sympathetic or annoyed by it. There was no way he could fake it. It was the worst feeling in the world not knowing who he was. Not remembering his wife. Or what he did to cause her to want to leave him.

Nothing looked familiar as he drove down Main Street. Liberty was a cute little town, quaint with redbrick buildings lining the street. This is not what he had imagined when he pictured a small Texas town. He had been to Austin.... A memory hit him hard. He was at a concert with some friends. He vaguely remembered a singer belting out a bluesy melody. He thought harder. His head began to ache but he couldn’t remember any more than that. So he stopped trying to think and kept driving.