Sloth (Sinful Secrets #1) (49 page)

Someone brought me dry pants and these weird shoes, and I cried some more, and talked to a cop who was nice and handed me a towel from his trunk.

Someone from the hospital—some sort of advocate woman—popped up and took her own notes as I answered questions for the accident report. And then the advocate told me she’d find out about Kellan, and she led me to a plastic chair.

That was coming up on three hours ago now. Physically, I might be the healthiest person in this room, but I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m being psychologically tortured.

Just when I think I’m going to end up wringing smiley-face receptionist’s neck, a short-haired brunette in a white coat comes through the double doors. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “Cleo Whatley?”

I rise and she blinks at me. She seems distracted, almost skittish. She tries to smile, stops half-way, and pushes a strand of short gray hair out of her green eyes.

“Cleo.” She waves me to her. “Has anybody spoken with you yet?”

I shake my head. She ushers me down a short, white hall, into a small, white room with a brown table and three chairs. She sits on the side with only one chair and nods at the two in front of her, which makes me cry because if Kellan was with me there would be two of us for two chairs, but that makes no sense...

The doctor plunks a tablet on the table and glances down into her lap, then up into my face.

“Hi there.” Her face is stuck somewhere between kind-and-understanding and gravely serious. Which makes my stomach do a flip.

“Can you tell me how my boyfriend is?” I manage hoarsely.

My voice breaks on the word “boyfriend,” as I remember that he’s not. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. How fucked up is it that I still want him?

A box of Kleenex slides across the table toward me and I realize I’m crying again. I take two tissues and dab my cheeks.

“Is he okay?”

Her mouth flattens. Her face looks like
no
. “What do you know about Kellan’s health, Cleo?”

I look worriedly into her wide brown eyes. To see where she is leading me, so I can shelter myself. But I can’t tell. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I... think he has a drug problem. Maybe?”

She blinks, completely poker-faced. I watch her chest rise on an inhalation. “What makes you think that?”

My throat tightens—and I can tell I’m right in my guess. He
does
have a drug problem. Shit.

“Like I said, I found a bunch of pills at his house... recently.” I rub my finger over a ragged cuticle. “Also, the ambulance. They said... I saw pain patches. On his back.” My stomach twists so hard I have to swallow to be sure I don’t throw up on the table. I look at her. She says nothing. “Is he okay? You’re scaring me.”

“Cleo...” The doctor leans toward me. Her eyes widen. “What do you know about Kellan’s mental health?”

My throat tightens as if she’s slung a noose around it. “Nothing.” I bring a hand up to my chest. “Is there something I should know?” My voice wavers.

The short-haired doctor sits back in her chair. She looks almost relieved. “In June, he was admitted for an overdose attempt,” she says, stroking her hair out of her eyes.

I gape. “He
was
?”

She nods. “He spent two nights in the psychiatric unit here, but he was discharged. I’m going to tell you about that,” she says slowly, “but first you need to know he’s being transferred to another hospital.”

“He
is
?
Why
?” My heart pounds as my head throbs.

“We’re moving him to New York. It will be a plane transfer, and it will happen soon. There is an option for you to go along, if you want that.”

I swallow. I blink, and tears fall down my cheeks again. “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he stay here?”

She leans toward me, reaching across the table. Time slows as I watch her red lips move.

“Cleo—I’m sorry to have to share this news with you, but... Kellan is in the most advanced stage of leukemia.”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR
whole life rearranged by something someone told you? It feels like surgery in a second. Like someone reaching in and moving things around so fast you’re different before you even realize what they’ve done. Maybe they’ve removed a part, or maybe something’s added. Maybe everything’s the same, but shifted slightly leftward.

Surgery on the heart changes the way the blood is pumped to every other part.

It makes sense. I can’t deny that much. It makes so much sense now that I know the truth.

When he disappeared from the deck off the windowed room that afternoon—after the grow house? We’d been playing rough, and he had asked me for a safe word. I said “sloth.”

The next day, he took me out for chicken pizza. Then the roasting of pecans. So many questions from him. Then Snow Queen, The Unicorns, Olive’s grave. What could make more sense than this?

They say God has a sense of humor. But it isn’t funny, is it?

I remember when we fell asleep on the couch and Kellan had that nightmare. How I draped my arm around his shoulders. All those other times, when he was always reaching for my hand. Between the dirty talk and his pretty, perfect cock, he was always reaching for me. Trying to fill every second with sex, at least when I first met him. Trying to interest me in taking over his business, because he was “leaving.”

How many sick people are getting marijuana at no cost because a bunch of college students pay for it?

Robin Hood.

I’m not even surprised he set up something like that.

And yet, I’m so surprised. I don’t believe it—any of it. I can’t fly to New York with him. When the doctor tells me what she tells me, I take a taxi back to Chattahoochee, to my car. I see the swamp, the puncture in the rail, the road muddied from where they hauled his car out, and it’s meaningless to me. Like a scene from a film I watched while half asleep.

I drive straight to Kellan’s house and find it unlocked. I go to the windowed room and go to sleep, and wake up in a ray of thick gold sunlight. Afternoon, it seems.

I reach the river as the sun sets, pinkening the sky over the pine trees. The black cat joins me. When I start to feel ill and I know I need to move, she follows me back to my car and twines her sleek body around my legs.

“And if we catch her and we have to put her down instead?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“It makes you sad to think about putting down a feral cat you’ve never even met?”

“I think pain should be reserved for something painful…”

I scoop Helen up and take her with me. I don’t know where I’m going until I realize I’m in Lora’s parking lot.

‘I’m here. Coming up
,’ I text her as I look up at the third story.

I carry Helen up the stairs and knock and ring the bell. Lora’s not home, but there’s a spare key underneath the frog statue sitting by her mat. I take Helen straight to the kitchen, where I serve her water and a bowl of ham.

Then I pull a wicker chair out from the breakfast table and sit down.

Tired. I feel—

Don’t.

I pull my phone out of the pocket of the jeans I got from the overnight bag in my car, and turn the screen face down so I can’t see the texts or missed calls.

Denial burns inside me, prickly, unsettling. I stand up and start to organize the counter.
Toothpicks, Lora? Three boxes of toothpicks?
I move two dirty plates, a vase of crumpled roses, and a sheer pink blouse, then spray the grimy counter down with a bleach-based cleaner.

The air in Lora’s house is cinnamon-vanilla. It feels heavy, like the pressure of the water on a scuba dive, which I did once and hated.

I’m wiping the counter slowly, letting the bleach fill up my head, when my hand bumps into a stack of mail partially obscured by the toaster oven. The thing on top is from the power company. It’s marked urgent.

“Lora, Lora…” I tear the bill open and mount it on the refrigerator with a magnet. I wipe the counter two more times and then thumb through the rest of Lora’s mail. This girl makes me look organized. Probably because she has so much money. What’s a late fee? I thumb through her other bills but don’t see any that look urgent enough to justify my opening them. I’m setting the envelopes in a seashell-shaped pewter bowl beside her paper towel holder when a small, white square slips from the bottom of the stack. It flutters to my feet. I bend to scoop it up and...it’s addressed to me?

I blink down at my dorm room address, and something starts to buzz inside my head.

I set the post card down. The post card with the campus scene. I turn around to face the throughway between living room and kitchen, leaning my back against the countertop. I touch my throat, which stings, as if I swallowed a sharp chicken bone.

I turn back around, compelled, and as my hands grab for the post card—

Thwack!

I whirl toward the breakfast table. My phone has fallen to the floor. Vibrating. I step over to it. Face-down, so I can’t see who’s calling…

Dr. Marlowe’s voice echoes.
“A relapse after three years… hasn’t sought treatment… team waiting for him in New York…”

I scoop the phone up, see the number, answer. “It’s Cleo.”

Desperate. Desperate. Desperately, I clutch the phone. I sink into a wicker chair. My mind cranks like an airplane: spinning slowly, faster faster…

Cindy. Be The Match.

My fingers tremble on my iPhone as she lets me know my blood arrived. I am a match. She starts to tell me things I know from last time. I stand up. Circle the kitchen. I step over to the counter, frame the post card with my fingers.

I blink and stroke the glossy cover of my post card as she talks.

My brain…I must be tired. I feel wound up. Like things are connected when they aren’t connected. Like I’m about to cry, or barf. I look over my shoulder. Where is Lora? Is it chapter night? What day is it?

I’m going to pass out.

Just turn the fucking post card over.

I feel strong resistance to the idea. Cindy’s voice is driving me insane. She prattles on. My heart swells like a balloon behind my ribs. It takes up all the space. With a flick of my wrist, I turn the post card over. Read the time stamp: September 19, 2014. So…today.

I blink several times, and scan the text. It blurs as pressure builds behind my eyes.

“Cindy?”

She takes my interruption as a sign that she should wind things down. “So to proceed, we’ll need a commitment. Verbal and—”

“Cindy?” A tear falls onto the card.

“Miss Whatley? Are you okay?”

I swallow, but my voice is still a rasp. “I have a question.”

“Sure,” she says indulgently.

My heart hammers. I swallow, but it doesn’t help me breathe. Again, the chicken bone. “Can you tell me…when did R. die? What day?”

My chest is on fire. My head on fire. I lean against the table as my hand mangles the card.

“If you really want to know, I guess it couldn’t hurt. Just one moment, Autumn, okay?” I can hear her fingers clicking on a keyboard.

“Cleo.”

“Cleo? Okay, Cleo. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

My chest rises… My head spins.

“Sloth,” he says. “Is that a nickname?”

“Chicken pizza? Are you kidding me?”

“What can I say?” He smiles. “Chicken? Pizza? It works. You agree?”