Faith (Rescue Me, A Contemporary Romance) (21 page)

That’s when she heard the crash from Liam’s room upstairs.

She took off at a run for Liam’s room, taking the stairs two at a time. Behind her she could hear Myra shouting in the confusion, asking what was happening. Her voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very long cave to Faith’s ears.

Liam’s door was locked.

“Open this door Liam!” Faith shouted, pounding on the door in frustration.

There was no answer from inside his room.

“Damn it Liam, open the door!”

Faith started throwing her small frame against the door, trying to force it open.

“Mom!” She shouted for Myra, “Where are the keys to Liam’s room? Bring the keys! Hurry!”

From downstairs she could hear Myra pulling things out of drawers looking for the keys. Neither of them had ever needed to use any of the interior door keys since they’d bought the house. She wasn’t even positive where the keys were kept. She hoped Myra knew where things were, even if she didn’t.

“Liam?”

Faith pressed her ear up against the door, straining to hear him behind the door.

“What was that noise honey? It makes me panic when you don’t answer me Liam.”

Still, nothing moved or answered her panicked questioning.

“Mom, the keys!” Faith screamed, terrified to the bottom of her soul that something was really wrong in Liam’s room.

Myra came huffing up the stairs holding at least a dozen keys in her outstretched hand.

“I don’t know which one it is!” She yelled, her eyes wide with fear and confusion.

“What’s happening now?”

Faith didn’t answer her, just swept the keys out of her hand onto the floor so she could start trying them one by one.

Myra stood over her, wringing her apron in her hands and watched her helplessly.

“What is it?” she kept asking over and over, “is it Liam? Oh my god, has something happened to Liam?”

Faith didn’t answer her. Just put one key after another into the lock and attempted to turn the handle. One key down, then two, then six, when finally the seventh key she tried clicked the lock open and the door swung soundlessly open on well-oiled hinges.

Myra screamed.

Liam hung motionless from the chandelier. A thick brown leather belt was tied around his neck and the chair he’d used to hang himself was lying on the floor underneath his gently swaying feet.

Faith remembered buying that belt for him.

The memory of that shopping trip was all she could think of. She and Liam had gone to Anchorage for the weekend when Mac was out on a month long fishing expedition. It had been last July and the weather was bright and sunny and almost warm by Alaskan standards. The two of them had had the best weekend together. They ate ice cream for every meal, laughed at everything, and went shopping to buy Liam a belt for the new school year. He wanted a sophisticated, grown-up looking belt so they’d picked out the brown leather design together. It was going to be his first year in the high school, and he didn’t want to look like a kid anymore.

Five months later the accident happened and Mac was killed and their lives were forever changed. Faith was glad she didn’t know then that would be the last shopping trip she and Liam would ever have.

“Get him down!” Myra screamed, rushing to Liam. “Oh my god, no! Why would he do this?

Faith knew there was no point. She stood numbly and watched Myra rush around tugging at Liam’s legs. But, she knew he was gone. Knew it as soon as she’d heard the crash from downstairs. She may have known he had slipped too far out of her reach when she’d watched him fly into a rage at Josh. It was almost like he didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to feel that way, but the fear and guilt he’d been living with for months had broken him.

Rory had stepped into a crack that was already starting to grow in her son’s mind and that crazy, obsessive man had made it wider and deeper so it was the size of the Grand Canyon.

“Help me god damn it!” Myra screamed at Faith and slapped her once hard across the face.

It did the trick. The sting of her slap was enough to shake Faith into action.

Yes, Liam was gone but it was a grisly sight to see him sway from the chandelier. She had to help her mother get her baby down. At least his suffering was over.

“Why?” Myra kept weeping into her hands, “Why would he do this Faith? Why? He was getting better!”

But Faith knew he hadn’t been. Not really. His longest conversations were with a girl he didn’t really know. He hadn’t eaten a meal with them in a month. He had slipped into a dark place, or rather he had had one foot there and Rory had pushed him the rest of the way there and he’d never had the strength to come back.

“Call the police, mom,” Faith told her. “We can’t get him down by ourselves.”

Myra left to call 911, but Faith didn’t follow her out. She felt she had to stay with Liam. Even though his spirit had left his body, she thought maybe he was still there with her in his room. She could feel his presence with her, and she knew it wasn’t coming from the limp, lifeless body.

“Liam?” She said out loud, feeling a little silly.

“I feel you here in this room with me honey. I’m so sorry that you felt like this was your only option. I’
m so sorry for anything I did to bring you to this point. I love you Liam. You will always be loved.”

She sat on his bed and picked up his favorite hoodie and crushed it to her f
ace so she could smell the good, boy smell of him…her son.

“I know you’re with your dad now Liam. You tell him how much I love and miss him too, okay honey.”

Salty tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. She just let them come, let her heart cry with the loss of her only child.

“You’ll be so missed Liam,” she continued, sensing that her son was somewhere in a place she couldn’t reach him, but that he was listening and smiling back at her.

She could never explain it to anyone but she could honestly feel him with her, she knew he was there and that he didn’t want to leave her alone.

In the distance she could hear the sounds of the approaching sirens screaming their way up the street.

“I’m going to open the gate for them!” Myra shouted downstairs.

“You have to go now baby,” Faith said, choking on the words.

She didn’t want his gentle spirit to watch as the medics worked on his body and his grandmother screamed and cried. She knew he needed to move on to a better world than this one, and her grief and his fear were holding him with her. It was the hardest thing to ask of a mother, but she knew she had to let her child go on this journey without her.

“Mac are you there?” Faith asked, instinctually searching for the comforting, familiar feel of him in the room.

She felt a faint sense of comfort. It could be him.

“Go be with your dad now Liam, honey. Don’t worry about your grandma and me. We’re not mad at you. Goodbye my baby boy. I love you.”

And then he was gone.

She didn’t know how she knew that Liam had crossed over into a place where she couldn’t sense him anymore, but she knew that he had, and for the first time since Mac’s death she felt truly alone.

Nothing upset Josh more than watching a young person waste their life and Liam Byrne’s suicide was the perfect example of a needless, pointless tragedy. The fact that he might have somehow contributed to it was waking him up in a cold sweat every night.

“It’s not that I feel responsible
, necessarily,” he tried to explain to his daughter Emily, “but the very fact that our visit to that house might have somehow pushed him over the edge isn’t something I can just accept either.”

If anything, Emily felt even more responsible than he did.

“Stop it!” He ordered her sternly, “that kind of pointless guilt is what starts a decline into suicidal thinking in the first place. You know that’s where Liam’s self-torture started and it festered in him until he literally couldn’t live with it anymore. I don’t want you thinking that way.”

She nodded glumly.

“Are we going to the Memorial today?” She asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Faith called the school to let me know what happened and we’re going to respect Liam’s memory and our place in this tragedy and we’re going to go.”

“But,” he continued, “this doesn’t mean that we’re going to give in to guilt or anger. We didn’t cause this and we couldn’t have changed it. This was Liam’s choice. He chose to end his struggle rather than fight for his mental health. You did what you could. You acted like a friend to that boy, and I’m proud of you Emily.”

He hugged his daughter tight.

“You’ve never reminded me more of your mother.”

As he kissed the top of her head, his thoughts went to Faith. When she’d called to tell him about Liam’s death, she sounded so calm and quiet on the phone that he could only guess at the turmoil she must be experiencing.

He didn’t know her that well—didn’t know her at all, he had to keep reminding himself—but he knew instinctively that her telephone mannerisms were not at all like her. She was too polite, too matter-of-fact almost. It was clear to him that she was trying to keep from exploding with grief.

“I’m so sorry Faith,” he’d said to her. “Emily and I would like to attend Liam’s memorial, if that’s okay?”

She’d hesitated before agreeing. He remembered that pause and thought about what it meant for perhaps the hundredth time since he’d hung up the phone with her. She had paused. Did that mean she didn’t want to see him there? Did she blame him and his daughter for Liam’s suicide?

He wasn’t sure what to think, but she had ultimately agreed that they should be there and
they were planning to go.

There was no one that he would admit this to, but he was excited to see her again.

He knew it was sick to be looking forward to a funeral, but he honestly could not wait to see Faith’s beautiful face again.

There was something about that woman that had captured his heart the moment she’d opened the door to welcome them to her home.

It wasn’t just the way she looked—although the memory of her thick brown hair and beautifully shaped eyes and lips threatened to stop his heart if he dwelled on them too long—but she had a fierce electricity about her. Something virtually crackled from her when he looked at her and he couldn’t put his finger on what it exactly it was that he was feeling coming off her.

Bravery. Certainly, she was brave. All he had to do was consider the tragedy that she had experienced and the way she had pulled out of it, fighting for her son and her family, and never giving in to the violence that had swirled around her more times than anyone person should ever have to live through.

But, it was more than her fighter spirit. Was it joy? Was that the word he was thinking of? Yes, it’s possible that joy was the element he couldn’t quite understand. It was as if all the tragedy in the world could come raining down on Faith’s shoulders, but she wouldn’t let it bury her. She would keep smiling, even as the world heaped sorrow on her shoulders.

If this was a medieval story, he mused—he was a fan of Camelot and books about knights and ladies faire—she would be both the damsel in distress and the dragon, he thought. Would that make him the knight, he wondered?

Even at the thought of saving Faith he blushed, although he was alone since Emily was still getting ready to go, he still blushed and felt his heart start to race.

He would happily play the knight, the
mighty steed, and the fairy godmother to Faith’s damsel in distress. He wanted to be anything she needed.

But would she let him?

There were so many people here, Faith thought as she looked around the chapel.

Myra had insisted on holding Liam’s memorial service at her beloved church, and Faith had agreed without comment. Truthfully, she thought it was a wonderful idea.

Liam had attended the church with Myra quite a few times before he’d slipped into the darkness, so he would have known or at least recognized most of the people here.

Faith thought it was a wonderful show of support and affection for her mother to see so many faces willing to be with them as they said goodbye to her son.

“Where are Josh and Emily?” She asked Myra. “Have you seen them yet?”

Myra looked at her daughter with a savvy expression. As much as Faith denied her attraction to the sweet school administrator, she could see that they were very much attracted to each other.

For heaven’s sakes, even poor broken Liam had seen it during Sunday supper on that awful, awful day. Of course, it had made him furious to watch his mom gazing at another man with that telltale look in her eye, but Myra didn’t mind. She wanted to see Faith happy and settled.

“Maybe they can’t get through security at the door,” Myra said with an indignant sniff to show her disapproval.

Faith looked back at the double doors to the church and saw the uniformed policemen there checking names off against a pre-printed, pre-approved guest list.