by Brown, Tara
“No.”
Pressing his lips together, he hesitated before saying, “It’s interesting. These people are much better than we are. They’re alive and free and messy.”
“Is there a spa?” I asked with a grin, taking us back to small talk.
“Oh yes.” He laughed.
We ate and chatted and pretended the dramatic events in our lives hadn’t happened.
Maybe we were saving them for therapy with strangers.
I had no idea how that could possibly be healing.
Chapter 7
Tuesday, July 16
“I read once that animals in captivity will stare longingly at the paintings and murals surrounding them, enduring the constant haunting reminder of the life they used to lead. It’s a particular kind of hell. They’re trapped within a cage and surrounded by the place where their heart used to be full.” A man named Jack, who had said he lost his wife to cancer, paused. He took a deep inhale, it was shaky. “I know that feeling. My murals are pictures and portraits, and things she decorated our house with. Items she made. Like the mittens I have on today.” He lifted his hands in the air, showing the soft blue mitts. “She made from her favorite sweater when she knew it was over. Mittens so she would always be holding my hand.” A single tear slipped down Jack’s cheek, but he didn’t stop speaking no matter how badly I assumed he wanted to.
His words brought tears to my eyes, something I should have fought, but I couldn’t. Though I’d never met the man in front of me before, his anguish was devastating.
He cleared his throat to cover the agony trying to seep from him and continued, “I stand there at the entrance of the rooms in our house sometimes, just staring at everything we used to have, and I feel like that. Like I’m trapped in a cage, and I can’t stop seeing her and the old me and the old life. And I don’t know how to find that again, that happiness. I don’t know if I want to. How do you trust love after it’s broken every promise it ever whispered to you?” His voice was thickened with the tears he wasn’t crying, except the single escapee. I was helplessly crying them for him.
My gaze was stuck on the mittens.
I’d never seen someone love their wife as much as he did. My parents didn’t even like each other. It was always more of a partnership.
His eyes met mine. He tried to smile, but it came across as more of a cringe. I offered him something similar back as he squeezed tightly as if his wife’s hand really was there, an angel in a ratty sweater.
The eyes of the people around us lowered with his. All of us stared at the mittens. I suspected every one of us was revisiting our individual losses—murals—montages—whatever you wanted to call them. The people in this room knew suffering, every flavor of it. Every emotion that came from it. Some had a whole life of it. I had one week. Nothing compared to them.
I blinked away my tears as the lady with no nametag next to Jack spoke softly in a voice so hollow it echoed. It was her turn. “My brother has been gone two years this Christmas. His children are coming for the entire winter holiday.” Her voice changed a little, tightened perhaps. “His widow is going to Mexico again. I don’t want to judge her, everyone deals with grief differently, but I don’t understand—” Suddenly it was there, the anger and rage. Her perfectly manicured hands clenched into balls of hate as her words spit from her soft lips, “I do not understand how she can leave those precious children at Christmas, not just because it’s the anniversary of his death but because it’s fucking Christmas!”
We nodded more outwardly for her. We judged her sister-in-law for how she grieved. It was a cardinal sin amongst these people, but we all did it.
The ironic part was that I knew, deep down, if any of the dead were able to talk, they’d tell us to find love again. Find happiness again. Live life. Jack’s wife would want him to go to Mexico. She would want him to celebrate her life and be happy and fall in love again. He was young.
I envied them all for their pain. It seemed cut and dry, not laden with guilt like mine.
“Sometimes I forget he’s gone,” a man with a nametag that said “Ray” muttered, which I assumed meant it was his turn. “I lift my phone and send a text, and as it’s delivering, I remember. But it’s almost like I’m enduring his death all over again. My heart stops, my breath gets stuck, the lights of the ambulance flash on the walls around me. One minute I’m texting in the loo, and the very next I’m in the ambulance, holding his hand, feeling his skin go cold in the places I’m not touching. They’re pounding on his chest and I keep moving my fingers, hoping to circulate the blood. Even if it’s just in his hand. And I can’t let go.” Tears streamed his dark cheeks, matching mine and a few others. He lowered his head, covering his eyes.
“Thanks, Ray.” Dr. Zamora, the therapist who ran this session, nodded as he smiled, clasping his hands and looking around the bunch of us before focusing on me. “Ophelia?”
“Oh, uhhhhh. No, thanks,” I passed.
“You sure?” he asked. “You can talk about anything. It doesn’t have to be grief.”
“Uhm. Okay.” I got lost in my own thoughts for a moment and decided to try, in case Dr. Graves was somehow watching this. “I guess—I feel her—Paige. My best friend. I can smell her on the wind—I keep my window open for her.” My voice cracked, and an authentic piece of my heartbreak and myself slipped out. “She wore this weird perfume that was like lilacs or something, and she smelled—smells like them. It’s the end of September, and there are no lilacs, but I can—I can still smell them. When I need to.” I stopped, and that was it. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Thanks for sharing. It gets easier, I promise.” Dr. Zamora didn’t push any further. “Good session, everyone.” He stood. “See you in two days.”
Still drying my eyes, I got up and walked away from the group as most of them hugged Jack. I desperately didn’t want to talk about my loss, so I hurried back to my room, excited when I saw the door in the hallway.
When I was in my room, I closed the door and pressed my back against it, inhaling a few times before the faint scent of lilacs wafted in on the breeze. Listening to other people’s grief made me realize how raw mine was. I’d been doing what my family always did, ignoring my feelings. But being in group therapy was force-feeding me my sorrow. And there was too much for me to understand.
I took a step toward the bed but a knock at the door made me pause. Believing it was Dr. Graves, I sighed and opened it. Stepping back when I saw the dark stare of Lucas peering down on me in the small gap.
“Hi,” he said softly. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” I stepped back farther and let the door fall open more. He walked in and closed it, a conflicted look in his eyes. “What’s up?” I asked.
He parted his lips like he might say something, but he didn’t. He froze for a second and then muttered, “Nothing.”
“You look upset.”
“I just did that group thing.” He stared past me—through me.
“Yeah, me too. It’s weird how people sit and talk about how sad they are and share the worsts stories I’ve ever heard. I don’t see how having my heart broken every second morning at ten thirty is going to be helpful.” I was nattering, filling the void.
He didn’t speak or respond.
“I think the worst one in our group so far is Jack. He’s like thirty-five, maybe. He lost his wife to cancer. It took her years to die.” My voice cracked. “He has mittens she had made from her favorite sweater, and he wears them all the time. Like he’s constantly holding her hand.”
“Jesus.” He balked at that.
“I know. And Jack loved her so much. They met when they were teenagers. He came into the restaurant where she worked every single day. He was mowing lawns to pay for all the meals out so his parents wouldn’t know he was spending so much money to see a girl. I think he will love her until the day he dies.” A rogue tear escaped my eye and trickled down my cheek.
Lucas brought his gaze back to mine as he lifted
his hand and brushed the tear away but kept his hand there, touching my cheek.
Nervously, I parted my lips to say something more, to divert us from the weirdly tense cloud hovering over the room, but he rushed me.
The sudden movement was startling, I backed up until I hit the wall as he cupped my face. He didn’t kiss, he stared, his eyes telling me a story as he hovered over me.
The trembling fingers and wild eyes were harrowing, and yet I found myself tilting my face, meeting his desperation with my own.
He ran a thumb over my lower lip, pressing in as if he was smearing my lipstick, but it was a stain, it didn’t budge. He smiled, and for a second, I was confident we would kiss. I prayed we would. But he released me, stepping back and shaking his head like he was having a conversation with a ghost. He turned and left the room, closing the door hard enough that I jumped from the noise.
My legs buckled and I slid down the wall, sitting on the hardwood next to the window. The smell of lilacs crept down the sheer, billowing curtains, tiptoeing to me.
“He’s so crazy,” I whispered to Paige.
Why hadn’t he kissed me? Or rather, why had he come at all?
It took several minutes before I crawled to the bed to lie down, closing my eyes.
I had no idea what just happened.
But I was mentally and emotionally exhausted; I couldn’t bother with it right now. I needed rest before tackling the many layers of my grief and Lucas’ insanity.
A warmth settled over me. I assumed it was Paige. She was on the bed holding me. It reminded me of a bath. The kind you fill too full and lie back in, so deep that just your mouth is above the waterline and for two seconds, you contemplate sinking below. You wonder how long it would take for the panic to set in. Would I let myself back up, or would I close my eyes and forget how it felt to breathe air?
Would she be waiting for me on the other side? I could picture it. I’d cross over into someplace I liked, I felt comfortable in. And she’d be there in her cute Gucci sandals I had bought for her and the Dolce and Gabbana sundress she stole from me. She would be leaning, smoking and smirking.
God, I missed her almost enough to test the theory.
And those were the thoughts I clung to. The ones that helped me sleep.
Chapter 8
Sunday, July 21
Sundays were a free day. A day of self-reflection. It was sunny, so I decided to take a solo trip through the gardens and carry on to the woods, contemplating the weird exchange I’d had with Lucas. The kiss that wasn’t a kiss and the insanity of his actions plagued me. Not because he came to my room and rushed me that way, but because nothing else had happened. For five days, we had eaten meals together, gone to our separate therapy groups, and maintained proper decorum at all times. We were running out of small talk subjects and old stories.
There hadn’t been another inkling of passion or inappropriateness from either of us.
And I didn’t know how to take it, but I hoped a walk might make me feel less trapped and smothered by the overwhelmingness of everything.
The property the retreat was on, I discovered, wasn’t quite the compound I’d feared when I arrived. The ancient fence line at the back, along the hillside, had old holes in it and a stream to cross, but it wasn’t impenetrable at all. In fact, it ended up reminding me of being a little girl on our estate. I’d spent my childhood running after Lucas, Laertes, and Horatio in the woods behind our house. Though rarely was I allowed to join them as they were off to have adventures, and I was too small to keep up.
Then later, I used the forest off the side of the estate to sneak out. In my head I could hear the footsteps of my partner in crime meeting me in the woods. Paige’s soft giggle as we tiptoed drunk and reckless to the road where a car would be waiting.
I squeezed my hands and wished I had been clever enough to make mittens. The scent of lilacs caught me on the trail just as I was arriving near the main road. Knowing there was this little bit of freedom, made being here easier.
I sat on a large rock with a flat plateau and stared out at the fields. My coping mechanisms were trapped somewhere inside me. The ability to reach them and feel something hadn’t been taught to me. But the loneliness of the quiet field chipped away at the icy layer that had built up around my jaded heart. A single tear slipped down my cheek as the words my mother spoke rang in my head again, as they had for days.
There was never any doubt how evil she was, but this was something else. Psychotic. I needed to tell my brother and father and hoped they believed me.
With a heavy heart, I stood and sighed, staring out at the open world, missing the one piece stolen. Not just from me but from Paige’s family and Horatio.
“I miss you,” I whispered before turning around to walk back. A noise caught my attention, a car driving erratically. The lilac scent on the wind became a cloud, choking me. I gagged from the smell but knew she was warning me.
Quickly, I stepped behind the tree I was next to, struggling to get my breath as I listened while a dark SUV, one that reminded me of my father’s, drove by.
The place I stood was entirely hidden. The lilacs dulled but stayed with me. It was akin to standing behind Paige when she spritzed her perfume on. I could taste it in the air.
“Were you warning me because that’s my family?” My skin shivered at the idea of it. Was she so close to my world, she could do something that tangible—relay an actual message? Hope and fears flooded me at the same time. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered to her as I turned back and started running for the center, worried those vehicles weren’t just for me.
I sprinted as fast as I could, through the forest, across the stream, and back inside the fence. The fields were much simpler to run along than the woods had been, but by the time I reached them, I was out of breath. I hadn’t worked out in ages, and I was wearing flip-flops.
My stomach tightened at the idea of my family being there. Unless it wasn’t my family at all. That made me move faster again.
I needed to get to Lucas and warn him, just in case.
Fortunately, getting through the main doors into the center was a whole thing. When I reached the side of the parking lot again, cutting through to the gardens, the SUV was parked.
Sweating and feeling faint, I hurried for the doors, dreading the long walk to Lucas’ room. I missed my cell phone at that moment.
“Out for a jog, good for you,” Ray offered as he passed me in the hall. I nodded, not sure my outfit of flip-flops and shorts spoke to my level of exercise enthusiasm.
My throat felt dry, and my skin hot and sweaty by the time I made it to his room. I knocked, leaning on the wall and gasping for air. The lilac was there.
Lucas answered, offering a confused grin. “Why are you sweating? Did you exercise? I didn’t know you did that. I always thought you were one of those skinny fat people Laertes mocks.”
“I am. And that’s rude but it doesn’t matter—I need to tell you something. Right away! But we have to leave—if the black SUV out front is here for you—I think you should hear me out before you agree to see anyone.” I was wheezing speaking.
“What?” He closed his eyes and tried to piece together what I meant. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on!” I grabbed his hand and hurried back the way I came. We raced down the halls to the door at the back which led to the gardens as I dragged him out to the fields and sat, collapsing in the grass from exhaustion.
“Is this a joke? I’m confused.” He watched me.
“I need you to listen to me. You’re in danger!” I gasped. “The day before they made me come here, I heard my dad get a call. It was from a Dr. Dupree, I don’t know him. He told my dad he was right—that the king—your dad had been poisoned.”
“What?” It was Lucas’ turn to gasp.
“Yeah. The doctor ran tests, and it was something called methyl something. It sounded like your dad inhaled it and died, and it was made to look like a stroke. That’s got to be
why the dog died too.”
“Jesus, O. Are you joking me right now!” He paled, pausing and processing before he began pacing. “How could your dad know that?”
“I don’t know. Dad said he suspected it, suspected the murder. And the doctor called to confirm it. Your father was murdered, Lucas! And the doctor and dad didn’t sound like they knew who did it.”
“This is insane,” he muttered, still pacing.
“That’s not all. Some black SUV just pulled up at the retreat. I’m assuming they’re here for either you or me. But if someone murdered your dad—”
“I could be next,” he finished my sentence, his eyes wide. “That’s why! That’s what he’s trying to tell me. I’m in danger.” He didn’t make sense.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, finally catching my breath.
“O, make no mistake, this comes as a surprise.” He kept pacing, his eyes darting to the center. “But I’ve had a couple of weeks’ warning, I suppose, though I don’t think I believed it until this moment.”
Realization hit me hard. The ghosts.
“Did your dad tell you?” I asked, remembering everyone was saying Lucas saw ghosts.
“Did you see him too?” he asked, sounding emotional for the first time since we started talking.
“No, but I heard you saw ghosts. How else could you know this?”
“I’m not crazy, I swear. I mean I am, but not that kind. Just tell me you believe in ghosts, O,” he asked gently. “And that you don’t think I’m insane.”
“I don’t think you’re insane because I’m pretty sure Paige is haunting me. I can smell her perfume constantly and feel the wind when I’m in a closed-up room. And today, she warned me about the SUV.” The admission was a relief, but not nearly as intense as the next one, which accidentally fell out, “I think m-my mother murdered her,” I said, and the impact cracked me. A dam broke, and my entire heart poured out in tears and sobs. It was real. It was real because I said it out loud, admitting it aloud.
