The End of the World (33 page)

And that day—more than memories of Pete or peanut butter sandwiches or the fact that my little boy won’t stop asking for them for reasons I can’t comprehend, not to mention the timing of these requests is just awful—is what has me forcing back tears yet again. I wipe my eyes, determined to get my stupid emotions under control, and pick up my child. He’s not even four; it isn’t his job to worry about me.

“I’ll make you twelve peanut butter sandwiches if that’s what you want, buddy.”

That earns a loud giggle from him, and I kiss him on the nose. This baby has been happy from the moment he was born, as though God knew I needed a sweet kid—one that rarely cried and often smiled and regularly brought my spirits up with a quick grin or loud belly laugh.

“But I’m only three!” As always, he holds up three chubby fingers in front of my eyes to make sure I get a really good look. “I can’t have twelve or my tummy would get too big.”

“Okay, fine.” I give his belly a quick tickle and set him down with a pat on the bottom. “I’ll make you one, and then it’s time for bed. Deal?”

He spins in place—arms out, pretending to fly. It takes less than nothing to make this child happy. “Deal, Momma! But first I wanna—”

His mouth falls open when the doorbell rings. Zachary loves the sound; he has no idea how the smallest things like unexpected noises—especially ones that come late at night—still send shivers of fear down my spine.

“Can I get it? Can I get it?” He’s running to the door, dirty feet slapping against the linoleum like wet rags smacking against a bare thigh. I have to practically take a giant leap through the air to prevent him from opening it. One kid to my name and I’m exhausted; I have no idea how people manage life with three or four.

“I’ve got it, dude.” I push Zachary behind me, heart pounding an irregular rhythm in my chest, and look through the keyhole to see the identity of the person on the other side.

I wish I hadn’t.

I really wish I hadn’t.

Because now it isn’t just my heart slamming around inside me.

It’s my head.

And my blood.

And my pulse.

And my thoughts.

Which really aren’t thoughts as much as a series of
oh no oh no’s.

And everything combined has me wishing for the privacy of an empty bathtub and my thumb.

Slowly, I open the door to face Cameron standing on the other side. His eyes dart to my face. Behind my shoulder. To my leg. To the right of my leg…the leg Zachary is currently clinging to. And back to my face. I don’t know what I expect him to say, but the words that come out of his mouth aren’t it.

“I thought you…I had no idea you…” He looks at me, really looks at me. “Why, Shaye? Why didn’t you let me help you?”

Shaye

F
rom his spot
at the kitchen table, Cameron hasn’t moved. For three solid minutes, he hasn’t said anything. Not
why didn’t you tell me
or
how do you live with yourself
or
everything is your fault
or any of the other accusations he could toss my way that I wouldn’t be able to answer or defend. Not that I would try. For years, in the private spaces in the recesses of my brain, all of this has been my fault. The assaults and the pregnancies and the babies that were—in what felt like the blink of an eye—no more. As the years have passed, those thoughts have moved forward, grown bigger, yelled louder, cut deeper. Every single action, it seems, meant to make me feel worse.

It wasn’t until Zachary was born that things began to get better.

Now, I barely remember that victimized girl who spent her nights in an angry man’s bed and slept until sunrise in the hard confines of a dirty bathtub. In fact, until earlier tonight, the thought of climbing inside one hadn’t crossed my mind in forever, because that girl was replaced a long time ago by one more sure of her purpose in life.

Cameron, however, is just now getting the chance to finally know that girl. But getting to know the new version of me requires letting go of the old one. A harsh process, since the only way to make that happen is to talk.

And now he knows about Mike.

He knows why I left.

I’ve been talking for what feels like hours.

He’s been silent for what seems like longer.

I hate talking. I hate silence more.

“Three. You’re telling me you’ve had three.” Finally, he says something. I knew this was the point he would focus on, though I hoped to be wrong. But then after everything I just laid out in front of him, I guess I’m not surprised. Secrets have a way of verifying suspicions once they’re tossed out into the open, and this is no different. Cameron is surprised, but in another way—a more sad and profound way—I can tell he isn’t.

“Yes,” I say. Zachary was put to bed a while ago, thank God. I couldn’t have this conversation with him in the room. “I had three.”

“But the detective said—”

“So they did tell you?” I saw his name on the form, but still I had hoped. My emotions ride a strange wave of up and down, back and forth, in and out, and all of it leaves me dizzy. I’m not certain if I would have told Cameron eventually or not, but the knowledge that he found out from a stranger reading a police report inside the confines of a sterile room slays me. I am broken and exposed. But I want Cameron to know me. Really, finally know me. And the only way to abandon the old me and start over with the new one is to open the old wounds, dress them all over again, and let them heal once and for all. Cameron deserves someone whole; no matter if he sticks around after this conversation or walks away forever.

Either way, he’s going to remember me like this. No longer a victim. No longer in a bathtub. No longer crying alone at the edge of a lake. No longer hopeless.

“They told me you had two,” he says. “I didn’t know about the third.”

I shrug. “That’s because I lost that one on my own. I wasn’t forced into anything, so there’s no medical record.”

He shifts positions on the sofa and plants an elbow on the armrest, chin propped on his hand. He rubs the back of his neck, thinking. He’s thinking hard. It won’t take long before he realizes—

“Was I there for all of them?”

I stare at my hands. Opening up sucks. Letting someone see all the ugly parts of your past sucks more. Especially when it means they’ll find out some painful truths. About themselves. About you…

“You were there for two.”

He studies me. Clears his throat. “When?”

I take a deep breath. “The night Carl shoved your face in the sink? He took me to the doctor earlier that morning.”

“But how did you—”

Stand up? Walk around? Act normal?

I can see those questions rolling around his brain, searching to find a way out of his mouth. The answer is simple: I had no other choice.

Cameron never asks. Just sniffs. Runs a thumb under one eye. Even from here, I can see the red rim developing at the corners.

“And the other?”

My voice is monotone simply because none of this is new to me. I’ve lived with the reality for what feels like a lifetime.

“The first time you found me crying at the lake. I’d lost one earlier that morning.”

And right in front of me, Cameron cracks. Not in the normal way you might expect a twenty-four-year-old man to crack. There are no screams. No thrown fists. No curse words or knocked over furniture. None of that happens. It’s simpler than that. Raw in a way that hurts deep and aches everywhere. Because in the way only Cameron can, even after all this time, he just looks at me. Looks at me. I watch as his eyes slowly fill with water.

And I track his movements as he stands and walks out the door.

It might make me nervous—scared even—if I thought he was gone forever. But he isn’t gone. In the deepest part of me where intuition takes up residence, I know that Cameron isn’t going anywhere.

So I do the only thing I know to do. I lay my head on the sofa and let the tears fall.

And fall.

And I listen through the cracked front door as Cameron cries his own solitary tears in the hallway.

Shaye

S
omeone is shaking
me. Someone is yelling in my ear. Someone is about to get punched in the nose, because someone won’t shut up. And right after I punch them I’m going to—

I blink my eyes open. Cameron is leaning over me.

Not shaking me.

Not yelling at me.

He’s whispering my name.

“Shaye, wake up.” He sighs, pokes me on the cheek, then pokes me again. “I forgot how cute you are when you sleep. Wake up!”

I sit up, blink again, wonder why two sets of eyeballs are staring at me—one pair bigger than the other, both round, both wide, and both very, very blue.

Cameron.

Zachary.

Both of them in the same room without me to monitor the situation. My heart plays vertical Ping-Pong inside my chest, then drops to my feet. Game over. I lose.

“How did you get inside the apartment?” Alarm—no, accusation—lines the outer edges of my voice, but it can’t be helped. I’m a good mother. I
know
I’m a good mother. But apparently Zachary let a strange man walk around inside my house for God only knows how long, and it doesn’t matter that he isn’t strange to me. Zachary has never met him.

“Um, you fell asleep with the door propped open,” he says. “So I came back inside, found you here, and made myself a bed over there.”

I follow the direction of his finger. There’s a blanket on the recliner topped with a balled up sofa pillow. My eyes narrow. That red pillow is now so mangled and twisted that it might never straighten out again. Cameron never did respect my things. I rub my eyes and blink up at him.

“How long have I been asleep?” I look over Zachary with his blue shirt and black jeans and jelly stains around his mouth, then at Cameron with the amused expression tilting the corners of his mouth; both seem fine, both seem happy. Pretty sure I’m the only one freaking out here.

“All night and part of the morning.” In a move that completely baffles me, Cameron grins, tweaks my nose, and stands up. As though we haven’t gone years without seeing each other. As though we didn’t have an awful conversation only a few hours before that sent him out into the hallway for what felt like years while I lay on the sofa in a fetal position, sobbing myself to sleep. “Now get up. We have things to do. Zac, grab your shoes. I’ll help you tie them while your mom gets dressed.”

“Okay, I will,” Zachary says, his eyes lighting up. “Momma, he gave me toast!”

But all I can think is…
Zac?

Grab your shoes?

Finally, my voice manages to work. “He…” My voice cracks. “He did?”

“Yep, and it was the best toast ever!”

I watch in confusion while Zachary—not Zac, I’ve never called him Zac a day in his life—spins in place and runs off to the other room in search of what I can only assume are shoes.

And then it makes sense. All of it.

I’ve been transported to another universe. I’ve been shuttled through space in a time machine. There
is
life on other planets—one where memory is nonexistent and history doesn’t repeat itself and years are like seconds and the clock spins like a top on a freshly waxed floor—and I’ve been dropped here with no way out. It’s the only explanation I can think of for Cameron’s odd behavior.

And Zachary…he’s playing along happily like having a strange man in our apartment is a normal everyday occurrence.

It isn’t. None of this is normal.

Least of all me. I’m the one in charge here, so why is Cameron acting like he already moved in and took over the role of caretaker?

“Why does Zachary need shoes? And why did you feed him?” My voice sounds rough, hoarse. Like I’ve walked through a desert with no water all night long and I’m desperate for a drink. And right now, one thing’s for certain.

I could definitely use a drink.

He frowns at me. “Because we’re leaving, and he was hungry. He says he’s supposed to be at school, so you and I are going to drop him off. And then I have someplace I want to take you.”

Whiskey. A Bloody Mary. A freaking wine cooler topped with a pink paper umbrella. I’ll take anything. Anything at all.

“I made coffee,” Cameron continues. “Want some?”

I sigh, rub my eyes. Coffee works too. Anything to help me wake up from this dream.

“Sure.” My legs find the floor and I stand, feeling myself wobble slightly to the left before catching myself against the arm of the sofa. “Where are we going?”

Cameron smiles over at me.

“Don’t worry about that. Just get dressed. You’ve got ten minutes. Let’s go.”

Let’s go?

One thing’s for certain, the years of absence haven’t done a thing to erase Cameron’s bossiness. I shuffle toward the bedroom, knowing there isn’t a single chance that I’ll be ready in ten minutes or even twenty, for that matter. My head feels fuzzy and my feet have grown numb and both combined aren’t helping to make moving any easier. Just before I reach the doorway, the sound of Zachary’s baby steps cause me to turn around.

And that’s when I see him climb into Cameron’s lap.

And that’s when I see Cameron tousle his hair.

And that’s when I see both of them laugh as though they’ve known each other forever.

And that’s when my confusion from earlier melts away into something that feels a lot like an old, familiar fear.

Because Cameron might possess the same level of bossiness as always, but his appeal has grown ten times in size.

I know it. I see it. I feel it in every pore of my body. But that isn’t what has me afraid. Because it isn’t just me…

My son sees it too.

*