Table of Contents 14 страница

I bring my hand to my face and I cover my eyes. I wait a few seconds and then I pick up my cell phone.

It’s November 9th.

Shit.

I mean, it’s no surprise I didn’t sleep for twenty-four hours straight, so I don’t know why I’m upset. Especially considering the eleven hours of sleep I did get. I’m not sure I’ve slept this much since I was a teenager. And I especially haven’t slept this much on today’s anniversary. I normally don’t sleep at all.

I stand in the middle of my bedroom and debate how to proceed with today. Behind door number one lies my bathroom, my toothbrush, and my shower.

Behind door number two lies a couch, a television, and a refrigerator.

I choose door number two.

When I open it, I suddenly wish I had chosen door number one.

My mother is sitting on my couch.

Shit. I forgot she was bringing me breakfast. Now she’ll think I do nothing but sleep every day, all day.

“Hey, ” I say to her as I walk out of my bedroom. She glances up, and I’m immediately confused by her expression.

She’s crying.

My first thought is what happened and who did it happen to? My father? My grandmother? Cousins? Aunts? Uncles? Boddle, my mom’s dog?

“What’s wrong? ” I ask her.

But then I look down at her lap and realize that everything is wrong. She’s reading the manuscript.

Ben’s manuscript.

Our story.

Since when did she start invading privacy? I point at it and shoot her an offended look. “What are you doing? ”

She picks up a discarded tissue and wipes at her eyes. “I’m sorry, ” she says, sniffling. “I saw the letter. And I would never read your personal things, but it was open this morning when I brought breakfast and I just... I’m sorry. But then”—she picks up some of the pages of the manuscript and flops them back and forth—“I read the first page and I’ve been sitting here for four hours now and haven’t been able to stop.”

She’s been reading it for four hours?

I walk over to her and grab the stack of pages from her lap. “How much did you read? ” I pick the manuscript up and walk it back to the kitchen. “And why? You have no business reading this, Mom. Jesus, I can’t believe you would do that.” I shove the lid back on the cardboard box and I walk it to the trash can. I step on the lever to open the lid, and my mother is moving faster than I’ve ever seen her move before.

“Fallon, don’t you dare throw that away! ” she says. She grabs the box from my hands and hugs it to her chest. “Why would you do that? ” She sets the box on the counter, smoothing her hand over the top of it like it’s a prized possession I almost just broke.

I’m confused why she’s reacting this way to something that should infuriate her.

She releases a quick breath and then looks me firmly in the eye. “Sweetie, ” she says. “Is any of this true? Did these things really happen? ”

I don’t even know what to tell her, because I have no idea which “things” she’s referring to. I shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.” I pass her and walk toward the couch. “But if you’re referring to Benton James Kessler and the fact that he allowed me to completely fall in love with a fictitious version of himself, then yes. That happened.” I lift one of the couch cushions in search of my remote control. “And if you’re referring to the fact that I found out he was somehow responsible for a fire that almost killed me, but failed to point out that minor detail as I was falling in love with him, then yes, that happened, too.” I find my remote.

I sit on the couch and cross my legs, preparing for a twelve-hour binge of reality TV. Now would be the perfect time for my mother to leave, but instead, she walks over to the couch and sits next to me.

“You haven’t read any of this? ” she asks, placing the box on the coffee table in front of us.

“I read the prologue last year. That was enough for me.”

I feel the warmth of her hand encase mine. I slowly turn my head to find that she’s looking at me with an endearing smile. “Sweetheart...”

My head falls against the back of the couch. “Can your advice please wait until tomorrow? ”

She sighs. “Fallon, look at me.”

I do, because she’s my mother and I love her and for some reason, even though I’m twenty-three, I still do what she says.

She lifts a hand to my face and tucks my hair behind my left ear. Her thumb brushes the scars on my cheek, and I flinch because it’s the first time she’s ever purposefully touched them. Other than Ben, I’ve never allowed anyone to touch them.

“Did you love him? ” she asks.

I don’t do anything for a few seconds. My throat feels like it’s burning, so rather than say yes, I just nod.

Her mouth twitches and she blinks fast, twice, like she’s trying not to cry. She’s still brushing her thumb across my cheek. Her eyes deviate from mine and she scrolls over the scars on my face and neck. “I’m not going to pretend that I know what you’ve gone through. But after reading those pages, I can assure you that you aren’t the only one who was scarred in that fire. Just because he chose not to show you his scars doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” She picks up the box and sets it on my lap. “Here they are. He’s put his scars on full display for you, and you need to show him the respect he showed you by not turning away from them.”

The first tear of the day escapes my eyes. I should have known I wouldn’t get away with not crying today.

She stands and gathers her things. She leaves my apartment without another word.

I open the box, because she’s my mother and I love her and for some reason, even though I’m twenty-three, I still do what she says.

I skim through the prologue I read last year. Nothing has changed. I flip to the first chapter and start from the beginning.

Ben’s novel—CHAPTER ONE

November 9th

Age 16

“Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.”

—Dylan Thomas

Most people don’t know what death sounds like.

I do.

Death sounds like the absence of footsteps down the hallway. It sounds like a morning shower not being taken. Death sounds like the lack of the voice that should be yelling my name from the kitchen, telling me to get out of bed. Death sounds like the absence of the knock on my door that usually comes moments before my alarm goes off.

Some people say they get this feeling in the pit of their stomach when they have a premonition that something bad is about to happen.

I don’t have that feeling in the pit of my stomach right now.

I have that feeling in my whole goddamn body, from the hairs on my arms, to my skin, down to my bones. And with each second that passes without a single sound coming from outside my bedroom door, that feeling grows heavier, and slowly begins to seep into my soul.

I lie in my bed for several more minutes, waiting to hear the slam of a kitchen cabinet or the music she always turns on from the television in the living room. Nothing happens, even after my alarm buzzes.

I reach over to turn it off, my fingers shaking as I try to remember how to silence the same damn alarm I’ve silenced with ease since I got it for Christmas two years earlier. When the screeching comes to a halt, I force myself to get dressed. I pick up my cell phone from the dresser, but I only have one text message from Abitha.

Cheer practice after school today. See you at 5?

I slip the phone in my pocket, but then I pull it out again and grip it in my hands. Don’t ask me how I know, but I might need it. And the time it takes to pull my phone out of my pocket may be precious time wasted.

Her room is downstairs. I go there and I stand outside the door. I listen, but all I hear is silence. As loud as silence can be heard.

I swallow the fear lodged in my throat. I tell myself I’ll laugh about this a few minutes from now. After I open her door and find that she’s already left for work. She might have gotten called in early and she just didn’t want to wake me.

Beads of sweat begin to line my forehead. I wipe them away with the sleeve of my shirt.

I lift my hand and knock on the door, but my hand is already on the doorknob before I wait for her to answer me.

But she can’t answer me. When I open the door, she isn’t here.

She’s gone.

The only thing I find is her lifeless body lying on the floor of her bedroom, blood pooled around her head.

But she isn’t here.

No. My mother is gone.

* * *

It was three hours from the moment I found her to the moment they walked out of the house with her body. There was a lot they had to do, from photographing everything in her bedroom, outside her bedroom, and in the entire house to questioning me, to looking through her belongings for evidence.

Three hours isn’t a very long time if you think about it. If they thought foul play was involved, they would have cased off the house. They would have told me I needed to find somewhere else to stay while they conducted their investigation. They would have treated this way more seriously than they did.

After all, when a woman is found dead in her bedroom floor with a gun in her hand and a suicide letter on her bed, three hours is really all it takes to determine she was at fault.

It takes Kyle three and a half hours to get here from his dorm, so he’ll be here in thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes is a long time to sit and stare at the bloodstain that remains in the carpet. If I tilt my head to the left, it looks like a hippo with its mouth wide open, about to devour prey. But if I tilt my head to the right, it looks like Gary Busey’s mug shot.

I wonder if she’d have still gone through with it if she knew her blood stain would resemble Gary Busey?

I didn’t spend much time in the room with her body. Just the time it took me to dial 911 and for the first responders to arrive, which, despite feeling like an eternity, was probably only a few minutes. But in those few minutes, I learned more about my mother than I thought would be possible in such a short span.

She had been lying on her stomach when I found her, and she was wearing a tank top that revealed the end words of a tattoo she got several months ago. I knew it was a quote about love, but that’s all I really knew. Probably Dylan Thomas, but I never even asked her.

I reached over and pulled the edge of her shirt aside so I could read the entire quote.

Though Lovers be lost, love shall not.

I stood up and walked a few steps away from her, hoping the chills would go as fast as they arrived. The quote never meant anything until now. When she first got it, I assumed it meant that just because two people stopped loving one another didn’t mean their love never existed. I couldn’t relate to it before, but now it feels like the tattoo was a premonition. Like she got it because she wanted me to see that even though she’s gone, her love isn’t.

And it pisses me off that I didn’t know how to relate to words on her body until her body was nothing more than just a body.

Then I notice the tattoo on her left wrist—the one that’s been there since before I was born. It’s the word poetic written across a music staff. I know the meaning behind this one because she explained it to me a few years ago when we were in the car together, just the two of us. We were talking about love and I had asked her how you know if you’re really in love with someone. At first, she gave the quintessential answer, “You just know.” But when she glanced over at me and saw that answer didn’t satisfy me, her expression grew serious.

“Oh, ” she said. “You’re asking for real this time? Not as a curious kid, but as someone who needs advice? Well then, let me give you the real answer.”

I could feel my face flush, because I didn’t want her to know I thought I might be in love. I was only thirteen and these feelings were new to me, but I was sure Brynn Fellows was going to be my first real girlfriend.

My mother looked back at the road and I saw a smile spread across her face. “When I say you just know, it’s because you will. You won’t question it. You don’t wonder if what you feel is actually love, because when it is, you’ll be absolutely terrified that you’re in it. And when that happens, your priorities will change. You won’t think about yourself and your own happiness. You’ll only think about that person, and how you would do anything to see them happy. Even if it meant walking away from them and sacrificing your own happiness for theirs.”

She gave me a sidelong glance. “That’s what love is, Ben. Love is sacrifice.” She tapped her finger against the tattoo on her left wrist—the tattoo that had been there since before I was born. “I got this tattoo the day I felt that kind of love for your father. And I chose it because if I had to describe love that day, I would say it felt like my two favorite things, amplified and thrown together. Like my favorite poetic line mixed into the lyrics of my favorite song.” She looked at me again, very seriously. “You’ll know, Ben. When you’re willing to give up the things that mean the most to you just to see someone else happy, that’s real love.”

I stared at her tattoo for a bit, wondering if I could ever love anyone like that. I wasn’t sure I would want to give up the things I loved the most if it meant I wouldn’t get anything out of it in return. I thought Brynn Fellows was beautiful, but I wasn’t even sure I’d give her my lunch if I were hungry enough. I certainly wouldn’t get a tattoo because of her.

“Why did you get the tattoo, though? ” I asked her. “So my father would know you loved him? ”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t get it for your father, or even because of your father. I got it mostly for myself, because I knew with one hundred percent certainty I had learned how to love selflessly. It was the first time I wanted more happiness for the person I was with than I wanted for myself. And a mixture of my two favorite things was the only way I could think to describe the way that kind of love feels. I wanted to remember it forever, in case I never felt it again.”

I didn’t get to read the suicide letter she left, but I was curious if she had changed her mind about selfless love. Or if maybe she only loved my father selflessly, but never her own children. Because suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do.

After I found her, I checked to make sure she really was gone and then I called 911. I had to stay on the phone with the operator until the police arrived, so I didn’t have a chance to case her bedroom for a suicide note. The police found it and picked it up with a pair of tweezers and put it in a Ziploc bag. Once they sealed it up as evidence, I just didn’t have the balls to ask them if I could read it.

One of my neighbors, Mr. Mitchell, was here when they left. He told the officer that he would watch over me until my brothers arrived, so I was left in his care. But as soon as they drove away, I told him I would be okay and that I needed to make some phone calls to family members. He told me he needed to run to the post office anyway and that he’d be back to check on me later today.

It was like my puppy had died and he was wanting to tell me it would be okay, that I could get a new one.

I’d get a Yorkie, because that’s exactly what the bloodstain looks like if I cover my right eye and squint.

I wonder if I’m in shock. Is that why I’m not crying?

My mother would be pissed that I’m not crying right now. I’m sure attention played at least a small role in her decision. She loved attention, and not in a bad way. It’s just a fact. And I’m not sure that I’m giving her death enough attention if I’m not even crying yet.

I think I’m mostly just confused. She seemed happy most of my life. Sure, there were days she was sad. Relationships that went south. My mother loved to love, and up until the moment she blew her face off, she was an attractive woman. Lots of men thought so.

But my mother was also smart. And even though a relationship she thought had promise ended a few days ago, she just didn’t seem like the type who would take her life to prove to a man that he should have stuck with her. And she’s never loved a man enough to feel as though she couldn’t live without him. That kind of love isn’t real, anyway. If parents have been able to survive the loss of children, then men and women can easily live with the loss of a relationship.

Fifteen minutes have passed since I began contemplating why she would do this and I’m no closer to an answer than I was before.

I decide to investigate. I feel a little guilty, because she’s my mother and she deserves her privacy. But if a person has time to write out a suicide note, surely they have time to destroy things they would never want their children to find. I spend the next half hour (why isn’t Kyle here yet?) snooping through her stuff.

I scroll through her phone and email. Several text messages and emails later, I’m convinced I know exactly why my mother killed herself.

His name is Donovan O’Neil.

Fallon

I drop the page with my father’s name on it. It flutters to the floor with some of the other pages I just read.

I push the manuscript off my lap and quickly stand up. I rush to my bedroom and opt for door number one. I take a shower, hoping to calm down enough to continue reading, but I cry the entire time. No sixteen-year-old should have to go through what Ben went through, but it still doesn’t answer all the questions I have about how this relates to me. But now that I know my father was involved with Ben’s mother at some point, I have a feeling I’m getting closer. And I’m not so sure I want to keep reading, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. Despite the fact that I feel nauseous, my hands have been trembling for fifteen minutes straight, and I’m too scared to read what my father has to do with any of this, I force myself to forge ahead.

It’s at least an hour later before I have the courage to return to the manuscript. I sit back down on the couch and pick up right where I left off.

Ben’s novel—CHAPTER TWO

Age 16

“When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”

—Dylan Thomas

Kyle finally made it to the house. So did Ian. We sit around the kitchen table and talk about anything except why our mother hated her life more than she loved us. Kyle tells me I was brave today. He treats me like I’m still twelve, even though I’ve been the man of this house since he left home six months ago.

Ian calls one of those companies that provide cleanup service after a death. One of the officers must have left their business card on the counter, knowing we would need it. I didn’t even know those existed, but Ian mentioned some movie he watched called Sunshine Cleaning a few years back about a couple of women who did it for a living.

The company sends two men. One man who doesn’t speak English and one man who doesn’t speak at all. He writes everything down on a pad that he keeps in his front pocket.

When they’re finished, they find me in the kitchen and hand me a note.

Stay out of the bedroom for at least four hours so the carpet can dry. Your total comes to $200.

I find Kyle in the living room. “It costs $200.”

We both look for Ian, but we can’t find him. His car is gone and he’s the only one with that kind of cash. I find my mother’s purse on the kitchen counter. “She has enough cash in her wallet. You think it’s okay if we use it? ”

Kyle snatches the money out of my hands and leaves the room to pay the guys.

Ian returns later that afternoon. He and Kyle argue about whether or not he informed us he was going to the police station, because Kyle doesn’t remember Ian leaving and Ian says Kyle just wasn’t paying attention.

No one asks why he went to the police station in the first place. I think maybe he wanted to see the suicide letter, but I don’t ask him about it. After reading how in love she was with this guy Donovan, the last thing I want to read is how she couldn’t live without him. It pisses me off that my mother would allow the breakup over a man to devastate her more than the thought of never seeing her sons again. It shouldn’t even be a tossup.

I can almost see how her decision played out. I imagine her sitting on her bed last night, crying over the pathetic bastard. I imagine her holding a picture of him in her right hand and a picture of me, Kyle, and Ian in the left. She looks back and forth between the pictures, focusing on Donovan. Do I just end it now so I don’t have to live without this man for one more day? And then she looks at the picture of us. Or do I stick out the heartache in order to spend the rest of my life with three men who are grateful to have me as their mother?

What I can’t imagine is what would motivate her to choose the picture in her right hand over the picture in her left.

I know that if I don’t see for myself what was so special about this man that it will eat at me. A slow, painful gnawing that will chip away at my bones until I feel as worthless as she felt when she circled her lips around the tip of that gun.

I wait a few hours until Kyle and Ian have gone to their bedrooms and then I walk into her room. I search through all the things I read earlier, the love notes, the arguments, the proof that their relationship was as tumultuous as a hurricane. When I finally locate something with enough information about him on it to Google his address, I leave the house.

I feel odd taking her car. I just turned sixteen four months ago. She was saving up to help me buy my first car, but we hadn’t gotten there yet, so I just used hers when it was available.

It’s a nice car. A Cadillac. I sometimes wondered why she didn’t just sell it so she could afford two cheaper cars, but I felt guilty thinking that. I was a sixteen-year-old kid and she was a single mom who worked hard to get where she was in her career. It wasn’t fair of me to think we even remotely deserved equal things.

It’s after ten p.m. when I pull into Donovan’s neighborhood. It’s a much nicer neighborhood than the one we live in. Not that our neighborhood isn’t nice, but this one has a privacy gate. It’s not that private though, because the gate is stuck in the open position. I debate whether or not to turn around, but then I remember what I’m here to do, which is nothing illegal. All I’m doing is scoping out the house of the man responsible for my mother’s suicide.

At first, it’s hard to see the houses. They’re all really long driveways with lots of space between lots. But the further down I drive, the more sparse the trees become. When I close in on the address, my pulse begins to thump in my ears. I feel pathetic that I’m nervous to see a house, but my hand slips on the steering wheel from the sweat on my palm.

When I finally reach the house, I’m instantly unimpressed. It’s just like all the others. Pitched, pointy roofs. Two car garages. Manicured lawns and mailboxes encased in stone that match the houses.

I expected more from Donovan.

I’m impressed with my own bravery when I drive past the house, turn around, and then pull the car over a few houses down so that I can stare at it. I kill the engine and then manually switch off the headlights.

I wonder if he knows?

I’m not sure how he would, unless they have mutual friends.

He probably knows. I’m sure my mother had a multitude of friends and coworkers and a side to her personality I never saw.

I wonder if he cried when he found out. I wonder if he had any regrets. I wonder if he had the choice to go back and unbreak her heart, would he do it?

And now I’m humming Toni Braxton. Fuck you, Donovan O’Neil.

My cell phone vibrates on the seat. It’s a text message from Kyle.

Kyle: Where are you?

Me: I had to run to the store.

Kyle: It’s late. Get back ASAP. We have to be at the funeral home by nine tomorrow morning.

Me: What are you, my mother?

I wait for him to respond with something like too soon, man. But he doesn’t. I stare at the phone a little longer, wishing he would respond. I don’t know why I sent that text. I feel bad now. There should be an unsend button.

Great. Now I’m singing the words unsend my text to the tune of unbreak my heart.

Fuck you, Toni Braxton.

I sink down into my seat when I notice headlights coming toward me. I sink even further when I see them pull into Donovan’s house.

I stop singing and I bite the inside of my cheek as I wait for him to get out of the car. I hate that it’s so dark. I want to see if he’s good-looking, at least. Not that his level of attractiveness should have played any part in my mother’s decision to depart this world.

One of his garage doors opens. As he pulls in, the other garage door also begins to open. Fluorescent lights are beaming down on both vehicles in the garage. He kills the engine to the Audi he’s driving and then steps out of the car.

He’s tall.

That’s it. That’s the only thing I gather from this far away. He might have dark brown hair, but I’m not even sure about that.

He pulls the other car out of the driveway. Some kind of classic car, but I know nothing about cars. It’s red and sleek and when he gets out of it, he pops the hood.

I observe him as he toys under the hood for the next several minutes. I make all kinds of observations about him. I know that I don’t like him, that’s a given. I also know that he probably isn’t married. Both cars seem to be cars a man would own and there isn’t room for another car in the garage, so he probably lives alone.

He’s more than likely divorced. My mother probably liked the appeal of his neighborhood and the prospect of moving us in with him so that I could have a father figure in my life. She probably had their lives mapped out and was waiting for him to propose, when instead, he broke her heart.

He spends the next several minutes washing and waxing his car, which I find odd since it’s so late at night. Maybe he’s always gone during the day. That has to be irritating for the neighbors, although the neighboring homes are far enough apart that no one even has to notice what goes on next door if they don’t want to.

He retrieves a gas can from the garage and fills the car with gas. I wonder if it takes a special kind of gas, since he’s not filling it at a fuel station.

He sets the gas can down next to the car in a hurry, and then fishes out his cell phone. He looks at the screen and then brings his phone to his ear.

I wonder who he’s talking to. I wonder if it’s another woman—if that’s why he left my mother.

But then I see it—in the way his hand grips the back of his neck. The way his shoulders droop and the way his head shakes back and forth. He begins pacing, worried, upset.

Whoever is on the other end of that line just told him my mother was dead.

I grip my steering wheel and lean forward, soaking in his every movement. Will he cry? Was she worth dropping to his knees over? Will I be able to hear him scream in agony from here?

He leans against his precious car and ends the call. He stares at the phone for seventeen seconds. Yes, I counted.

He slides the phone back into his pocket and then, in a glorious display of grief, he punches the air.

Don’t punch the air, Donovan. Punch your car, it’ll feel much better.

He grabs the rag he used to dry off his car and he tosses it at the ground.

No, Donovan. Not the rag. Punch your car. Show me you loved her more than you love your car and then maybe I won’t have to hate you as much.

He pulls his foot back and kicks at the gas can, sending it several feet across the grass.

Punch your fucking car, Donovan. She might be watching you right now. Show her that your heart is so broken, you don’t even care about your own life anymore.

Donovan lets us both down when he storms inside his house, never once laying a finger on his car. I feel bad for my mother that he didn’t throw more of a fit. I’m not even sure if he cried, I was too far away to see.

The fluorescent lights go out in the garage.

The garage doors begin to lower.

At least he’s too upset to pull the car inside.

I watch the house for a few more minutes, wondering if he’ll ever come back outside. When he doesn’t, I begin to grow restless. A huge part of me wants to drive away and never think about this man again, but there’s a small part of me that’s growing more and more curious with every second I sit here.

What is so fucking special about that damn car?

Anyone who just received news as devastating as he did would want to lash out at the thing closest to them. Any normal man in love would have bashed their fist onto the hood of the car. Or, depending on how much you loved the woman, maybe even bashed their fist through a windshield. But this asshole grabs a rag to throw on the ground. He chose to get his aggression out on an old, weightless rag.

He should be embarrassed.