True Divide (29 page)

I wait to hear an apology. A proper good-bye.

Nothing.

Through the shock of it all, I hate myself for imagining I could ever have more than what I do. He says my name again, but I cut him off because he's only trying to draw this out and I want it over.

“Get out, Jake.”

He tries once more. The sound of my name, whispered and broken in his mouth, through the thick of what may be his own grief. I hate the sound more and more each time he says it, so I respond the only way I can. The words I mean, but not really. Words you say when things hurt so badly you merely want it to stop. Words that inevitably prompt a door to shut quietly, and when the room goes silent, you immediately wish you never said them.

“Go. To. Hell.”

19

M
y first official act as a business owner? Don't open for a week. Stay in my house for days and stare at the walls while my heart breaks. I'm off to a killer start as a proprietress. The Donald has nothing on me; I should get my own reality show. The contestants could perform a series of challenges geared toward proving their utter inability to cope.

I don't cry. Much. Too numb for all that. If I cry, it means I've admitted to losing everything and tears would be my body acquiescing to that loss. I'll take an absentminded sort of delusional thinking instead. I'm convinced that if I don't bawl, it means this week off is a mental reset: I'm merely regrouping after a small setback.

Television helps, endless hours of binge-watching shows I shouldn't. I only need two channels. Thank you, Lifetime and Bravo, you've been there for me with back-to-back episodes of shows that make my natural disaster of a life seem manageable. At least I haven't murdered anyone, developed one of those nasty meth habits, or suffered through the horrors of a botched rhinoplasty. All I have to survive is one teeny, tiny, oddly familiar round of heartbreak. Totally doable.

Kate calls after two days. I don't answer, let it go to voice mail instead. If I answer, either those tears will kick in or I'll end up speaking nonsensically, quoting reality-star truisms that only make sense to someone who has spent the last forty-eight hours watching television shows about people with more money than self-awareness.

“Life isn't all diamonds and rosé, but it should be.”

“What I don't want is . . . birds chirping, and butterflies, and rainbows. I don't want to live that way.”

“This is like the last time I tried to woo a saber-toothed tiger. It didn't work.”

Ain't all that the truth. But if you haven't watched two straight days of television as I have, or if you're Kate and hardly ever watch television in general, these things won't resonate quite as powerfully. I get that.

I listen to Kate's message a day after she leaves it. My chest feels slightly less as if it might collapse under my next breath, so I might stand a chance of struggling through an interaction with another human being.

“Lacey. I'm terrible at this, you know that, but I waited forty-eight hours before calling you and inserting myself into your crisis. But as my ever-perceptive husband reminded me, unlike myself, not everyone prefers to be left alone when something like this happens. Anyway, Jake stopped by the house on his way out of town, told us what was going on. Christ, I'm not sure what to say first. Congratulations? For The Beauty Barn thing, of course. The Jake thing? I'm really sorry about that. He's a mess over it all, Lace. I hope you know that. He looked . . . I don't know, lost or something. I'm here if you want to talk. If I don't at least get a smoke signal by Friday, I'm coming over to make sure you haven't choked to death on frosted animal crackers.”

Deleting the message, I respond to her with a smoke signal text.

Please send frosted animal crackers. The front door is unlocked.

An hour later, the front door creaks open and I mute the television. Kate shuffles up the stairs and peeks in my bedroom, tossing the bag of cookies toward me. It lands on the mattress with a thwack, then lies there waiting for me. That's when I start to cry. A sloppy, slobbering, unfettered round of bawling that evolves quickly into something that sounds like a bleating little fawn. Kate silently tosses her coat on the floor, kicks her shoes off, and crawls up on the bed until she is close enough to wrap her arms around my shoulders.

I fall asleep after a while and when I wake up, Kate is still in bed next to me, pointing the remote at the television and rolling her eyes. She has the sound down so low it's nearly muted.

“Daytime television is atrocious. Vile. Abhorrent. I hope you haven't been watching this crap for the last two days.”

Grumbling, I attempt to shimmy myself up into a slumped sitting position. “If you just keep watching, after enough hours, it starts to seem tolerable. Good, even.”

Kate settles on an at-home-shopping network where an overtanned middle-aged man is hawking food dehydrators. She drops the remote to the bed and reaches down to grab the bag of animal crackers, then slides them up against my side.

“You want to rip the bag open and get a few in before we talk, or are you ready now?”

The bag rips under my hands and I pointedly shove a few in my mouth and look at her. Kate nods and slouches down into the pillows a bit, waiting for me to finish chewing.

“Let's start with the obvious. What the hell happened?”

The cookies taste funny today. Instead of that candy coating making my tongue tingle delightfully under its artificial allure, it makes my mouth taste rank. I'm sure the fact I haven't brushed my teeth for days isn't helping. I try to swallow the last remnants without gagging.

“Dust storm.”

“Awesome.”

She doesn't press for more. Likely because she knows the details of whatever Dusty said don't particularly matter this time. He was simply the catalyst. But when Kate turns onto her side, settling in so she can see me, and focuses intently, I decide to tell her everything. Or at least, everything I can manage.

“When Ruth Ann left me everything, I wanted to tell him. So much. But I didn't know how. If I'd told him, he would have walked.”

“What? Why would you think that?”

“It would have been over. Because he would know I wasn't ever leaving Crowell. Not now that I have something of my own here.”

Kate sighs and stares at the television again. Finally, after a few minutes, she flops her head toward me. “You do realize I have to give you the same speech you gave me three years ago, right? Word for word, almost.”

Mimicking her move, I let my own head drop her way, raising my brows a bit. She raises her own.

“When you and I went to Idaho and I was
this close
to leaving Trevor behind, you told me your life was safe and stifling. You made me promise to think about having the same kind of life before I gave up on him entirely.”

I have to look away for a moment. The recollection of Idaho, being there with Kate when she was broken, being there with Jake when we were young and wrapped up in each other, is nearly too much. There is hope and heartache laced through both memories, so much that both moments feel too intense for now.

Kate pauses and takes a deep breath. “Whatever you do, remember this: he's a real, live, person. Flesh and blood. Crowell and The Beauty Barn are just things, places. They can't take care of you. It might seem easier to hold on to all that because they're tangible, but they can't give you what he can. They just can't.”

She leans over and rests her body against mine. “There's my attempt at a come-to-Jesus, atta-girl speech. Think about that before you decide. Do you want a bunch of inanimate things? Or do you want a life?”

I shove another handful of cookies in my mouth, pausing only to offer one headless elephant cookie to Kate. She scoffs but takes it. Sinking down a bit farther into the bed, I close my eyes and try not to cry again. Perhaps if I just stay here, in my bed, until the worst of this passes, I'll find my way.

The head nurse at Ruth Ann's care center calls a few days later. I managed to straggle my way into work today, surprised at how gloomy the store feels after being shuttered for a week. When my phone rings, I've barely gotten all the lights turned on and started surveying the fine layer of dust exposed under the glare.

She stops short of saying anything too specific, nimbly skirting around the obvious. There were enough clues in what she did say. Hospice team. Pain management. Keeping her comfortable. Thought you would want to know.

When I turn the “CLOSED” sign again and flip the lights off, I know that when I come back to this place, Ruth Ann will be gone.

Four hours later, I find a parking space at the care center and slowly turn the key in my ignition to shut off the engine. My head thumps to the steering wheel. I grip it tightly in my fingers, until my knuckles start to ache under the pressure. Nothing happens. Either I'm out of tears from losing Jake or I've compartmentalized all this crap into such airtight little boxes, my emotions can't find room to rise up. Fine. I'll take another round of numb for now.

Down the long hallway toward her suite, the head nurse catches my gaze and offers a timid smile with a half wave. If I weren't quite so dependent on remaining emotionally anaesthetized, I would wave back. Instead, all I can give is a responding smile, so feeble it probably looks as if I only experienced a facial tic.

Stopping just outside her room, I pause and close my eyes, but reach to push the door open without waiting too long. If I do, I might not be able to do this. When the door opens completely, I can't process anything but how ungodly warm her suite is. I remember this cloying awareness of smothering warmth from when my dad died. The stuffy heat of his hospital room, the way it accentuated each sensory experience. The acrid smell of infection covered by medicine and desperation. The sound of his rattling, slow breathing, the way the heated air seemed to keep it trapped there, insulated in the spare space. The way my skin felt clammy and feverish. I couldn't move the air around me enough to push it away.