Brother's Keeper (25 page)

She collapses to my chest, and I stay within her body, not wanting to lose the feel of her warmth. Her tears continue to slowly run to my chest. I keep her fast to my body for many minutes before kissing her warm mouth as I pull my length from her tight sheath. I continue to kiss her warm mouth as I shift her to the bed, enfolding her in my arms. And there we stay, waiting and dreading the morning. My sleep is tortured and agonizing, but the morning does come eventually. And as I wake, I find a note in her stead. She’s slipped out once again. She knows how much I hate that. For the last time, she defies me, and it is bittersweet and so very Rowan. I open the note from her.

Logan,

I’m sorry I left early. I hope you won’t be upset with me. I just couldn’t stay. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I know you’ve questioned yourself every step of the way, but I never have. Be happy and well and forget me fast.

-Rowan

Numbness slowly takes over my heart as I read the last words she’ll give me. My new life is standing in front of me. Finally, after so many months of dreading it, it is here, and she is gone. The emptiness is nauseating, the numbness is paralyzing. I have no idea how to continue being a person. My life, so meticulously planned out by me, is suddenly my worst enemy, and I hate myself and pity myself all in the same breath.

I stand in the shower letting the overly hot water scour my skin painfully. Her scent is washing away from me, and as it does, her every last detail flashes across my mind, and every part of my being resists and fully denies she is gone.

Chapter 23

When I return to my apartment, I manage to make it upstairs and get coffee started before collapsing on my bed in misery. I don’t want to think, I don’t want to feel, and I sure as hell don’t want to remember. I try to close out the world by closing my eyes, but all I see is her face. Opening my eyes is no better. I’m surrounded by our space—the bed we’ve spent so much time in, the window seat where she first touched me. The entire apartment has her invisible stamp on it. What was once mine has been so thoroughly taken over by her, and now she is gone. It’s tormenting, and I want to escape. But escape is no better. For every mile I put between us will just break my heart further.

When my family arrives, I mindlessly set about lifting, carrying, un-assembling, and re-assembling, until there is nothing left to do except leave. But leaving is hard. Leaving is always hard. It’s not as if I thought I’d have no feeling about moving halfway across the country, but when this decision was made I hadn’t fallen madly in love with a woman entirely too young for me whose life is moving in the complete opposite direction as mine. So what I already knew would be hard became damn near impossible. But it is time—unavoidably. My mother sobs, Sara is ready for me to leave so she can take over my apartment, and I stand by numbly—unable to cry, unable to do much of anything at all. Once my father and I are on our way, I turn my brain to autopilot and stare mindlessly out the window at nothing at all.

The miles fall away slowly as I continue to stare, brain dead, out the window. When we finally stop for the day somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, my father turns to me and says, “So, are you going to tell me what’s got you so bent out of shape? Not like you to be so out of sorts, but you haven’t said so much as two words to me since we left Grand Rapids.”

I owe him an explanation, but my mind is so defeated that coming up with any appropriate excuse is impossible. I just don’t have it in me to invent excuses. I end up shrugging. “I’m fine.”

He knows better but leaves me in peace. Once checked into our hotel, my father is hungry for dinner, and we end up eating boring food in the hotel restaurant. I try to make small talk, but it is hard to even get words to come out of my mouth. It’s painful trying to pretend to be normal. I eventually give up and sulk like a child. I do my best to numb my brain with wine, but even slightly tipsy I’m miserable. Being slightly inebriated, though, makes calling Rowan seem like a fine idea all of a sudden. But being still slightly sober also gives me enough common sense to know that would just be cruel to both of us—much like developing a relationship that would be doomed to failure. When we return to the room, I collapse on the bed craving the peace of sleep. And before long, I’ve found it.

We are back on the road early the next morning, and by mid afternoon we’re pulling into my new driveway of my new house in my new town to start my new life. I liked my old life. At least I did once Rowan entered it. Life with her is truly all I really want anymore. As we unload and unpack I let my mind drift to her. I imagine she is here with me, smiling at me in that most amazing and radiant way. Her eyes alight with joy at a shared life together. We’re unpacking, but it is
our
new town to start
our
new life … together. It’s the most pleasure I’ve felt since making love to her in the early morning hours of the day before. It feels like so long ago, yet she’s only been away from me for a short while.

We work late into the evening, taking time only to order pizza and scarf it down. We have all the furniture unloaded, in place, and re-assembled by the time we finally call it quits at midnight. The next day starts early, and we finish unloading all the boxes before lunch. By late afternoon, I’m dropping my father at the airport to catch his flight back to Grand Rapids, and I’m finally alone in this place. And I don’t want to be here.

My job will start on Monday, leaving me the entire day tomorrow to wallow in my self-pity. And that is exactly what I do, rising occasionally from the couch to put something away. I wander to the nearby liquor store and buy a bottle of wine. Again I spend the evening drowning my sorrows in a bottle, only to find that I have to fight my restraint to pick up the phone and call her. But I manage to keep from dialing each time I’m overcome with my need to hear her voice. And by the next morning I’m arriving at Brighton and Brinks to a very warm reception from my new firm.

My office is amazing with incredible views of downtown Denver and the mountains beyond. It is everything I’d ever dreamed of, and I curse myself for thinking this was what I wanted. Fortunately, I’m brought on a jury selection team almost immediately and put to work; I don’t think I could stomach my life right now were it not for work. And as I delve into my case and research, I find my first measure of peace since leaving Grand Rapids. It hardly keeps Rowan out of my mind, but it makes being away from her more tolerable in some small way.

* * * *

Days start ticking off the calendar, and I stay as busy as possible, putting in ridiculous hours at work to avoid being alone with my thoughts more than I have to. But every night I end up fighting my despair the second I lay my head on my pillow. It is then I miss her the most—when my brain stops moving for the day and the memories of her are allowed to flood my mind, causing agonizing grief. It has been nearly three weeks now since I last saw Rowan, and I’m desperate for the torture to end. It must at some point, but it hasn’t faded an ounce, and I can’t help but wonder if it ever will. I can’t imagine her sharing this pain, and I wonder if it is as awful for her as it is for me. The idea of her suffering this, too, only makes my own anguish all the more palpable. I pray she’s doing better than I am.

Chapter 24

I hate my life. The six weeks since Logan left have been the hardest I've experienced, overshadowed only by the memories of my mother’s death. Ronnie and Sara seem intent on dragging me everywhere and anywhere, trying to perk me up, but I’m hopeless. I want them to believe I’m fine so they’ll just leave me in peace, but I can’t pretend I’m not in hell. Smiling makes my mouth hurt; laughing is impossible.

So when Ronnie suggests a shopping day in Grand Haven, I inwardly groan but outwardly try to be a good sport. The trip there fills me with anxiety. I dread the images that will plague me from my last time there. I want to see nothing of that time as it will be more excruciating than I can stand. But the images and the memories are everywhere. We eat lunch in the harbor on the very same street Logan and I enjoyed the farmers’ market only a few months ago. It is warm and sunny, but my heart is cold and dark. The lighthouse is visible a few miles down the coast, and I swear if Ronnie suggests a drive out there, I will scream. All I want is to be at home in bed, sleeping. It is my only safe haven—though even my sleep is often interrupted with memories of Logan.

He is doing well, so Ronnie says over lunch when Sara asks. Involved in a big case and staying very busy. Her eyes are on my face as I refuse to look up from the spot I’m studying on the table. I don’t want Ronnie to see the pain in my eyes, and I know she is searching for it. I’m glad he is okay, but I want to hear nothing more about it. The reminders hurt, and in some ridiculous way I resent him for being okay. I’m not okay. Why the hell should he be? It isn’t fair, and I resort to throwing a temper tantrum inside my head while I focus on the worn and scratched surface of the table in front of me.

When Ronnie drops Sara and I off later that afternoon, I have a letter waiting for me from the admissions department at the University of Michigan. They need a copy of my social security card for their records, and my guts clench at the realization this will mean a trip back to home sweet trailer park. If Logan were here, he’d kill me for even considering it… But he’s not here, and I have little choice but to go. It is mid afternoon on a Tuesday, so my father should still be at work. There’s no time like the present, and I tell Sara where I’m off to before running out the door.

Chapter 25

When I arrive and enter the trailer, I’m taken aback by the state of the place. Not that our trailer was ever anything to write
Better Homes and Gardens
about, but I have never seen it in this state. There is garbage strewn about from room to room. The stench is overwhelming; many months’ worth of Styrofoam take out containers, fast food bags, and old pizza boxes litter every piece of furniture and every square inch of floor space. Well, if I didn’t want to stay any longer than necessary, the smell of this place was all the motivation to work quickly I would need.

I proceed first to my father’s bedroom closet. And while I find a collection of gratuitous porn magazines that are more terrifying than they are sexy, a hand gun—again frightening given who it belongs to—and a strange collection of old rusty nails, what I don’t find is my social security card.

As I wander back out to the living room, my eyes land on the side table that sits next to my father’s old smelly recliner. It has two drawers, and I’ve seen my father stash many an odd piece of paper in there. It’s as good as any place to look. The trailer is small, and while cluttered all to hell, there simply aren’t that many places that my social security card could be hiding. I approach the side table, and doing my best to touch only what I absolutely must, I start rifling through the contents of the drawer. I find more overdue bills than any grown adult ought to have, numerous scraps of paper with bizarre notes and messages written on them, and a rather large amount of receipts from the nearest liquor store. Again I strike out finding my social security card, and as I slam the drawers shut I unleash a slew of expletives at the poor old side table.

Giving up is sounding like a better idea by the minute. There may not be very many logical places to keep the card, but unfortunately, there are a good deal of obscure and unfathomable places it could be hiding. Being here is unsafe, and I can just imagine Logan laying into me, but the idea of Logan yelling at me for risking my safety just brings on the all too familiar stab of pain … and a bit of resentment. What can I say; anger has become a very effective means of coping with my loss of him. I often find my daydreams of him becoming charged with fury at him, fury at myself, and fury at life in general for pulling us apart from one another. And my fury now compels me onward. Onward, in this case, means the file cabinet in the kitchen that the microwave sits on.

As I enter the kitchen, I find that it is in an even worst state than the remainder of the house. What looks like a city dump in the living room is a full-on explosion of garbage in the kitchen. Every inch of the counter is consumed by dirty dishes and rotting food. The stench is a solid mass that hits like a blanket smothering your face as you plummet into the stench. There are mice feces all over the counters, and I’m suddenly very attuned to the scurrying sounds that surround me. I approach the file cabinet ready to hold my breath and dive into one more disgusting filth pit, but as I tug on the dusty old handle it doesn’t budge. Awesome. Locked. Of course it’s locked. I let go of another inanimate object tirade before completely throwing in the towel, and as I storm back into the living room still cursing, I walk right into the meanest man in the world. He looks more demon than man at the moment, and given the virtually empty whiskey bottle in his hand, I’m guessing he’s beyond the point of any sense and reason.

As I stumble backward into the kitchen, he grabs me with one hand around my throat and virtually throws me back into the living room. I hit the side of the recliner and fall over it to the ground. I’m on the opposite side of the chair from him, but trapped in the living room with no way to skirt around him quick enough to get out the front door. As I pull myself up from the floor, he moves around the recliner and grabs me by the throat once again. He squeezes tight, and I’m suddenly overcome by images of myself being choked to death. The sting of the constricted air passage sets my brain to panic mode, and just when the pulsing vibrations of hypoxia start to take over my brain, he punches me hard on the temple. The very best thing I can say about being punched is that it forces me out of his suffocating death grip.

I fall back, hitting my head hard on a wall shelf behind me, but not hard enough to knock me out completely. I’m almost upset I’m not unconscious at this point. I thought people weren’t supposed to feel pain when their bodies were in fight or flight mode. Instead, I can feel every last ache and throb. My eye feels like it’s outside of my socket, the back of my head feels like it’s going to explode, and my throat is still burning with fire. As I fall to the floor on my knees, grasping the back of my head, his foot makes first contact with my gut, and what little breath I’d regained from being nearly choked to unconsciousness is forced back out of my lungs, leaving me gasping loudly and desperately for air. And before I can regain any use of my lungs, the next kick lands in nearly the same place.