Finding Cait (17 page)

Chapter 45

Matt

    
Moving on with my life is going to be impossible.  I am in unfamiliar
territory with Cait and I don’t know what to do any more.  Cait is all
over the place and I can’t seem to keep up.  I love her madly and the
weight of the gravity that is pulling me down from the high of our night
together is crushing me.  I won’t allow myself to think that the night we
slept together was a mistake; it was the best night of my life.  How she
can just put that behind her and not give us a try I will never understand. 

    
Perhaps this is fate again, showing me what I need and then taking it from
me.  Watching her in the bar and knowing that she is trying to have no
attachment to me is devastating.  The indifference is driving me
mad.  My limit has been reached and I can’t take it anymore.  My
training has taught me to always have a way out so I need to plan for tomorrow
so that Court’s death won’t cloud my escape from this town, which is painted
with her memories. 

    
Running away is my plan; I am leaving as soon as we carry out Court’s last
wishes and flying back to meet up with my unit again.  I am going to bury
my sorrows in the desert and engulf myself in a world where she never
existed.  My only chance of being happy is to stay here and make a life
with Cait and I can see in her face that she can’t find a place in her heart to
love me.  I want to drop to my knees and beg her to love me but I worry
she will just stare down at me with that sadness in her eyes and tell me
no. 

    
Loving her against my will, I am a prisoner to her.  I watch her when she
is not looking and I long for her when she is not close.  My happiness
depends on her smile.  My ability to breathe rises and falls with the
distance she puts between us.  Right now that distance is great and my
heart aches in my chest and my throat is closed off by the words I can’t
say.  I need her and she just can’t see it.

    
This loss is too much for me to
bare
.  Court’s
death has taken from me my will to live and now Cait’s indifference is
finishing me off.  It may not kill me but I am sure I will spend the rest
of my life without both of them, wanting to die.  The depression is all
too consuming and I am trapped in this place of limbo.  I am pleading
every way I know how for her to just love me.  I long for her to tell me
to stay, my ability to keep living depending on it.

Chapter 46

Cait

    
“Tell me not leave Cait,” he whispers.  “Please tell me not to leave.”

    
“I can’t.” The tears start falling down my face as I realize that I cannot ask
him to stay.  He needs to go and be with his unit, far away from any place
that would remind him of her.  If he stays here for me I will just be
buying us time but in the end we will both be miserable when it’s over. 
He may lose another love again in the future and find himself without the
reassurance and support of his sister, but I cannot be that loss.  Right
now leaving will be hard but eventually he will get past it and will see it for
what it is, a connection to his sister he is struggling to sever.

    
He stands up and puts his fists on his hips and stares into the sky.  “I
don’t understand Cait.  Please don’t do this.  What are you afraid
of?” Now he is staring at me demanding an answer.

    
“I am afraid that I will hurt you and she won’t be there to help you get back
up.”

    
“What do you think you are doing right now?” he yells pinning me again and I
look down because I can’t
bare
to look him in the eyes
afraid that he will see right through me. “You’re fucking killing me!”

    
“I’m sorry.”  I whisper. 

    
He nods and then pushes himself off of the truck and opens my door.  I get
into the seat and watch him as he closes my door and takes a minute to compose
himself before walking around to his side.  He jumps in and starts the
truck but does not put it in drive.

    
“I know you have it in your head that I am not thinking straight, that losing
my sister is somehow clouding my ability to identify what I am feeling but it’s
not.  I will prove it to you if you would only let me.”

    
“Don’t,” I say as I look out the window.  Hearing him is breaking my heart
and worry that any resolve I have left will break away if he continues.

    
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you how I feel or don’t show you?  Damn it Cait, I
am dying here!  I should have told you a long time ago so that you would
believe me now but I didn’t.  She begged me to let you know. She told me
that if I didn’t tell you I would be miserable forever.  I should have
listened to her but I thought you were happy.  Now I am going to live with
that choice for the rest of my life.  I won’t have Court and I won’t have
you either.”

    
“I’m sorry,” I say not looking at him.  The truck is beginning to fog up
now and he reaches up with his sleeve to wipe away the moisture from the
window.  He puts the truck in drive and we pull out of the lot and sit in
silence for the rest of the ride back.  When we get to Court’s he opens
the door for me but then goes to his own room and closes the door.  I make
my way into Court’s room and sit on the edge of her bed, wishing she were there
to talk to.

    
In the silence I can hear his voice.  It is muffled but I can make out a
few words.  He discusses dates that he can leave and where he will be
going and I curl up on her bed and wrap myself in her covers.  The room
still smells like her and I run my hand along the bed until I find her
scarf.  I pull it under my face and breathe her in, praying for God to
take me now too. 

     It is morning
when I wake and find myself back in my bed.  I must have fallen asleep in
Court’s room and Matt must have carried me in here.  I can’t remember the
last time I have felt so tired.  I try to open my eyes again and reach out
in the bed to see if he is with me.  When there is no one there I curl up
again, hugging myself for comfort.  I fall back asleep knowing he has let
me go at my horrible request and I cry myself to sleep again.  

Chapter 47

Matt

    
Something has to give.  I sit for hours in the silence on the couch unable
to eat, unable to get up.  We are getting lost in this house of death and
pain and I can’t get up enough strength to save myself let alone the strength I
need to help Cait.  She hasn’t left that room in two days and yet I don’t
know what to do about it.  I just sit on this couch helplessly staring
down the hall waiting
fo
the
answer to just appear.

Cait is going to
die if she doesn’t snap out of it.  I feel like my presence would only
make her pain worse so I have kept my distance from her giving her space. 
I hold my breath each time I hear her move waiting for her to come back out
here to me but she never does.  Her body will start shutting down soon and
I am beginning to believe that I am going to watch her die of a broken
heart.  I would not believe that it could be possible if I wasn’t on my
heartbreak deathbed also.

         
Misery doesn’t even begin to describe the state of our life at this
point.  Utter dismay, complete agony and imminent death are a closer
description but they still imply some sort of measurable quantity and I am sure
our pain is far from measurable.  We want to die and our bodies are making
it possible, blocking out our ability to eat, slowing down our drive to go on
and separating us from each other so that neither can help the other.

    
We have to get through this for Court.  I need to be okay with not having
Cait. I need to focus on getting her out of here before our grief and this
house consume us.  Walking to her bedroom, I tell myself that I won’t take
no for an answer.  Choosing to leave her room without her will be choosing
to let her die.  Cait’s death is not an option.  Court needed her to
move on and I need to know she is going to be all right also.  As I reach
her door I inhale deeply, pushing aside my own doubts on a mission to resurrect
the almost dead.

Chapter 48

Cait

    
I hear a faint knock at my door and I try to orient myself to answer. “Come
in.”

    
“Cait, you have to eat, it’s been two days.”  Matt looks worried and leans
down over me on my bed and pleads with me to get up, “Please Baby, come eat.”

    
Eating does not sound possible.  Even if I didn’t vomit when I saw the
food, the muscles in my throat and stomach would not allow it to get very
far.  There is a gaping wound in my chest where my heart should be and an
ache that is relentless.  The worry in his eyes and the desperate way he
begs me to eat pulls me out of my thoughts and I know that I need to go with
him.

    
“Okay, let me clean up and I will go with you.”  There is relief in his
face but not much and he walks into the bathroom and starts my shower.  I
try to get out of bed but I am weak.  When I sit up I get dizzy and feel
like I am going to be sick.

    
Matt walks over to me with such sadness in his expression.  He kisses the
top of my head and then lifts my chin with his hand, forcing me to look him in
the eye.  If it wasn’t for her ashes I would beg him to just let me
die. 

    
“Let me help you,” he says tenderly, and knowing I can’t do it alone in this
state I nod my head to accept his help.  He stands up and removes my shirt
and bra and then helps me up to my feet.  I undo my pants and he holds
onto me as I struggle to free my legs.  I wait until we are in the bathroom
to take off my panties and he steadies me as I step into the shower. 

    
I know Matt is sitting outside the shower as I let the hot water run over my
head and down my face again, just like I always do, never learning that it
can’t fix what is broken.  It does wake me up a little and I soap up my
body and wash my hair.  He is waiting with a towel when I’m ready and
dries my face and then wraps it around me and helps me to the bed. 

    
“Can you get me my clothes out of my bag, I don’t care what it is.”

    
Matt digs through my bag and comes up with a pair of yoga pants and a soft
t-shirt and I nod to approve his choice. 
It doesn’t
matter
,
nothing matters
.  He dresses me
and we make our way out the door.  The ride to the small café is quiet and
we both spend it looking out our windows.  The pain I feel now is worse
than I ever could have imagined and I place my hand on my chest to hold onto
the small cross that hangs there.

    
I feel nauseous but know he is right, I have to eat so that I can fulfill my
promise to Court and release her ashes at her happy place.  We order our
breakfast, toast and Coke again and say nothing as I swallow it for the sole
purpose of surviving another day.  When I have finished my food Matt leans
across the table and whispers, “Thank you.”  I nod my head knowing it must
have been a hard two days for him as well, worrying that I was never getting
back out of that bed. 

    
“Where were you?” I ask him, allowing the self inflicted hurt to rise in my
throat, burning and constricting my breath.

    
“What do you mean?” he asks in return looking pained.  After a brief
moment I can see in his eyes he understands that I am asking him why he wasn’t
in bed with me when I woke up. “Cait, I can’t keep doing this.  I love you. 
You deny loving me back, what am I supposed to do?”  He had been looking
me in the eye but now he turns his head sharply, obviously angry by my
indifference.

    
“I don’t know anymore,” and as I say it out loud I know it is my heart
speaking.  I didn’t know anymore.  When I first came to say goodbye
to Court I was determined, knowing my life would be empty and death would be
the only escape.  Matt had been a distraction for a while, but now there
is no denying to myself that I love him and the determination to leave is
weakened and the bleakness I feel about a life without Court is changing.
 

    
I imagine what it would feel like to come home to Matt.  I would have
never believed that I could have let go of Elliot, but I did without looking
back.  I have not thought about him in days.  My talk with Candy
helped me to see that my loss was shared, that you can keep moving forward when
something that precious has been taken.  Reaching up to my chest, I
touched my cross again to remember how the pain had lessened just slightly as I
shared Emma’s story with Matt, an opportunity that Elliot had never given me.

    
My future had held no promise of better days, no light at the end of the
tunnel.  Now sitting here across from the man I loved I can see that
light.  The problem now is that the light is small and not blinding, held
back by the great unknowns, the what-ifs,
the
what-
nexts
.  I am scared for both of us without her, the
woman who had kept us anchored and dried our tears.  I am scared that we
can’t do this without her.

    
“I’m scared.”  With my voice he turned his gaze
back to
me and the relief showed on his face
.  He reached out with his hand
and touched mine. 

    
“Me too.  The way I see it Cait is that it is going to hurt no matter when
it happens.  If I leave here without you it will hurt forever I am
sure.  Our only hope for living without this pain is trying, in the end we
may get hurt but at least we won’t go through our lives wondering if it could
have worked. We won’t go through this time alone.”

    
He was right and I knew it.  What he didn’t know was that I had not
planned on returning to my life without her.  I think of returning to my
house now, seeing the divorce through and what it might be like to call my
clients after I had already said goodbye.  He would get to just go one
with the plans he already had in place, putting his stuff in a bag and running
off to wherever in the world got him far enough away from Court.  My far
away was an hour by car and I know that was not enough distance to put between
her memories and me.  Choosing him would be choosing to live, a choice I
had been so sure I couldn’t make.

    
“Let’s go home,” he says squeezing my hand and then he gets up from the table
and puts his hand out in an offer to hold mine and I accept.  We get into
his truck and ride back to the house.  The pain was still there but it
isn’t suffocating.  As we pull into the drive I am relieved to be back,
feeling like I am home again.  We spend most of the day back on the couch
watching TV, nothing in particular, just something to pass the time while we
wait.  I push all decisions out of my head and just enjoyed my time with
Matt, not sure if it is the start of something or the end.