by Lily White
As I stared at the flickering lights, and listened to the muted shouts between the police investigating the scene, I thought back to the events of our lives over the past few weeks.
Dr. Silva has reluctantly released Holden from the hospital. He’d begged Holden to agree to tests, had offered to pay for each and every one, knowing Holden couldn’t afford the costs. Yet, Holden had refused, his confusion burrowing deeper as his brain and heart attempted in vain to accept the reality that his sister had died years ago. After Holden had agreed, reluctantly, to consider Dr. Silva’s request, Angela had driven us home. We’d stepped out of the car to walk inside, but Angela called out for me wanting a minute to speak alone.
She’d explained she called Penny, my family’s cook, and that Penny had agreed to contact friends in order to convince some of the victims of the parties to come forward.
It was a secret us wealthy kids had kept to ourselves: We felt more comfortable speaking to the staff than our own families. We’d developed friendships with those considered beneath us because they alone would listen and encourage us to do what was right. Penny must have done a decent job convincing the girls, at least three had come forward with their stories despite their families demands they remain silent.
How fucked up was it that our parents preferred we endure abuse in order to continue the business ties that existed between the wealthy families? The realization sickened me, physically and emotionally.
As for me, my parents hadn’t attempted to reach out to me since I spoke with my mother at the police station. And if I were to be honest, their silence was more of a relief than anything else.
Was I saddened by my family’s apparent dismissal? Of course. But perhaps they were never really family to me despite the shared genetics.
Holden was my family now. Angela and Dr. Silva. They were the warriors marching in to correct the injustices of this town.
Once the girls stepped forward and admitted to Dr. Silva what they knew, we’d gone as a group to the State Police to file our complaints against not only the boys who had drugged and used them, but also the local police force that had known all along while turning a blind eye.
I’d lodged my own complaint about what happened the night Jack disappeared, and because a sexual crime was involved, the State Police had been granted jurisdiction to get involved. I was surprised it took them this long to find Jack’s body, but with all the bureaucratic holdups, the local police had been barred from moving forward without the involvement of the agency investigating them.
At least, that’s what Dr. Silva has explained to me. He and Mr. Grinshaw were much more educated on the matter, and I trusted them to watch over the situation and keep me informed.
With them manning the helm of the ongoing criminal investigations, I’d been left to handle a man who was spinning out of control.
Several times, I’d found Holden sitting in Delilah’s room, his back against the wall, his fisted hands in his lap, his eyes closed as he struggled against the denial in his mind that she wasn’t really there. I’d found him crying. I’d found him raging and destroying what was left of her room. I’d found him cleaning up the mess with the misguided belief she would return if he could put the room back together.
Most frightening, I’d found him blank. His eyes were open. His heart was beating and his lungs were breathing. But his mind had escaped, leaving him present while not actually there.
I’d cried every time I found him fighting against the truth that Delilah would never come home, but to protect him from the pain I was taking on for him, I’d hidden my tears from view, only to appear strong for him when I was falling apart right beside him.
You don’t know pain until it’s written plainly across a loved one’s expression. You don’t know loss until you have no choice but to stare it in the eyes and watch helplessly while it destroys a beautiful person. You don’t know hatred until you understand that, by your silence, your weakness, and your refusal to see the truth, you had a part in the circumstances that ripped the sanity from the mind of a tortured soul.
Vacillating between blaming myself and scrambling to repair the damage, I felt helpless and bitter, while demanding I stand strong against the force of Holden’s utter and complete devastation.
I had done that to him.
I could have stopped Jack before he had the opportunity to tear Holden’s world apart.
A simple confession to authorities beyond the town’s reach might have been enough to stop the parties, clear the drug houses and protect Holden from a fate that did nothing but force him to his knees.
Yet, I’d remained silent for far too long.
And suffering Holden’s pain as if it were my own would be only a small part of my final redemption.
Not only would I suffer beside him, I would breach the shadows that kept him from moving forward, regardless if I was swallowed by their murky depths in my efforts to piece him back together.
A sigh escaped my lips, hot breath against the chill night air, and after swallowing down what was left of my tea now freezing, I stood from my seat to walk inside and prevent Holden from coming outside and seeing the lights in the distance.
Dry warmth enveloped me as I stepped inside, the low hum of the central heat a white noise that lulled my mind into a calm serenity. After setting my teacup in the sink, I meandered down the hall, listening to the faint music coming from Holden’s studio. His art was the only thing that calmed his tortured thoughts, our lovemaking the only thing that bled him of his eternal pain enough that he could find a few hours of sleep.
He was always awake by the time I opened my sleep dazed eyes in the morning, and I always knew where I could find him.
Letting myself into his studio, I crept quietly to lean against the back wall, watching with both sorrow and pride as he brought another image of Delilah to life, this painting revealing her laughing at something somebody said. He’d captured every minuscule detail in his memory, and stamped that precise image onto canvas with a talent that would go to waste in a town that did nothing but hurt him.
The music in the room picked up its tempo, the change in pace flicking some switch in his brain that tugged him from the tranquility of the memory into the desolation of reality.
His paintbrush fell to the floor, a scream of rage tore from his lips, and before I could stop him, Holden ripped the canvas from its easel and shattered the edge of one side over his knee. A knife driven through my heart would have hurt less than seeing him tear the painting apart, the wet paint coating his skin as pure agony tore out from his lips.
“Holden!”
Lunging forward, I gripped his arms with my hands, my strength nothing compared to the violent movements of his body. Forced back, my head hit the wall with a harsh thud, my knees giving out on me as I slid to the floor with pulsing pain spreading over my skull.
“Michaela?” He spun after realizing what he’d done, his own body dropping to his knees before me. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered through heart-wrenching sobs, his forehead coming down to rest against my own, his tears dripping like a leaky faucet to wet my pants. “I’m sorry.”
How many times could a heart shatter before it stopped beating? By my count, his had crumbled to dust a hundred times over.
Not caring about the paint smeared over my clothes and skin, I gripped his shoulders and tugged him toward me, my eyes meeting his as I spoke softly to soothe the chaos shredding him from the inside out.
“Shhhhh, it’s okay. I’m not hurt. I promise. I just want to know you’re okay.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m -“
“Shhhhh,” I whispered, my hand running down his hair, my tears spilling to mingle with his own. My heart shattering in time with his, the pieces tinkling against the ground in harmony with his full bodied sobs.
I didn’t know if he was apologizing to me or to Delilah, to himself or to the all the people he wanted to protect but couldn’t. Scouring my mind to find the answers was usele
ss, so I simply sat there and held him, my eyes swollen by ceaseless tears, my body losing strength as I fought to hold him together.
What could I do to make him go through the testing? How could I explain that he was mentally ill? What would I do if he never got past the injuries that froze him in time on a cold winter night when the girl he’d always clung to for love and support had been lost?
There were very few options in my reach, so I fell back on the only one I knew would pull him from the clutches of emotional destruction and into a moment where action spoke louder than words.
Cupping my hands over his tear soaked cheeks, I lifted his head to my own. Our eyes met, both rimmed red with heartache and sorrow as I crushed my lips to his and swallowed his sobs.
His body jolted with the force of our kiss, his mind lost to the need to escape, if only for a few hours. And as his fingers swept up my thighs to pull the yoga pants from my hips, I moaned into his mouth, willing to surrender myself entirely to anything he needed.
Love isn’t just telling a person they mean everything to you, it’s the ability to let go and become what they need in the moments they don’t know how to can repair the damage inside them.
As heartache stepped aside to make room for lust and passion, we both continued to cry while ripping at each other’s clothes. Naked, we slid to lie on the floor, wet paint coloring our bodies, as tears swept in to dilute it.
Entering me with one desperate thrust, Holden let go of the agony that had trapped him, and became lost to the rhythm of our shared desire, our minds calmed for a moment of the reality that awaited us once we woke again the next morning to find that the world had kept spinning while we’d been lost to our love.
It wasn’t a solution to the problems that plagued us, but a bandage that would hold him together until I could find a way to help him accept the losses he’d suffered and teach him how to let go and live on.
I could only hope that by the time Holden was strong enough to move forward, I wasn’t so broken by his pain that I’d be powerless to follow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Holden
I’d been dead for weeks, it seemed.
Strangled to a point of labored breathing, crushed beneath the weight of a delusional life, buried beneath heaping mounds of regret that continued piling on with each new day that passed without the understanding that I was as lost as any person can become when faced with unshakeable tragedy.
Embarrassed by the idea that I’d imagined a girl who no longer spoke to me, I’d spent hours sitting in her room, staring at her on her bed, wondering how she could look back at me and smile, how she could argue that she never died, how she could reach across the room to hold my hand, and cry when I wouldn’t reach back to pretend for another hour that she hadn’t lost her life.
I knew the truth and yet I still saw her, my mind fighting to decide what was real and what I plainly saw. I knew Michaela cried when she thought I couldn’t hear her. I knew she whispered on the phone to Angela or Dr. Silva when she worried I would never regain my healthy mind. Who knows what they said to calm her? All I knew was that I felt like a failure for not being the man she needed when my shadows attacked her, as well, and dragged her down. I should have been shaking my head of the insanity, at least enough to stand in defense of a girl who was drowning beneath the surface while trying to hold me aloft.
My only sanctuary against this living nightmare was the one place where I could take what I saw in my mind and apply it to canvas. Every brushstroke, every image, every painting I brought to life wasn’t a memory of what had been, but an illustration of what I was still seeing. They angered me while soothing me. They were proof of visions that others swore could never be real. They were the snapshots that clearly detailed a man’s inability to make sense of his fragile mind.
Yes, I knew what I was staring at wasn’t real. I believed Dr. Silva, Angela and Michaela. But despite that belief, Deli still stared back at me, her long hair trailing down her back, her smile just as innocent as it had always been, the pain of losing our parents still fresh behind her eyes.
“You’re not here. Do you know that?”
Her brows tugged together, her hands wringing in her lap. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I’m here. How could I talk to you if I wasn’t?”
Stretching my legs out on the floor, I leaned heavily against the wall at my back. “I have to let you go, Del. I’m going to agree to treatment.”
Fear flashed in her expression, panic causing her hands to move faster, her fingers to flex harder until the skin was white from the blood squeezed down. “I’ll be alone?”
Shaking my head, I ignored the tears welling in my eyes, the way my heart beat in an imperfect rhythm beneath my ribs. “You won’t be alone,” I managed to croak in response. “Mom and dad are waiting for you. They’ve been waiting this entire time. You were right, Del. You will see them again. Just not because they are coming home. It’s up to you to find them.”
My words were logical, my conclusions sane, but still I felt a cold, cruel hand tearing my heart from my chest, felt my soul bleed from my body now that it was shredded by the claws of a reality that didn’t give a damn what was fair, or deserved, or selfish about our lives.
There are different levels of missing someone, death being the most desolate and disturbing of them all. Losing a person you love is to lose a part of yourself, knowing full well you’ll never manage to regain it. There would always be a hole that couldn’t be filled. There would always be pain and remorse. There would always be the ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ that could never be explored because time is a bastard that will never stand still. Emptiness replaces happiness. Anxiety replaces comfort. Anger comes sweeping in like a turbulent storm, wrecking every fragile wall you manage to build to block out the heartache that loss had caused.
I was enduring the storm, and I was fracturing beneath it, barely grasping on to a reality where another girl fought for me while needing someone strong to stand at her side. I didn’t want to fail Michaela any longer, and in order to take her hand, I had to let Delilah’s go.
My lips were quivering when I confessed, “I have to say goodbye, Del. I’ve fallen in love, and Michaela needs me. We’re going through so much. I can’t stay frozen in one moment and let her fight on her own. Please tell me you understand. Please tell me you want me to move on.”
Each word ripped a piece of my soul away from me, but I knew what I was doing was right. How could I have asked Michaela to learn to be strong, only to turn around and collapse beneath my own refusal and weakness?
Whispering now because anything louder would shatter me to shards, I begged, “Please understand how sorry I am. That I couldn’t protect you. That I couldn’t save you when it mattered the most.”
Deli climbed off the bed, her steps slow as she approached to drop to her knees in front of me. She reached to cup my face, my head hitting the wall when I flinched back. If she touched me I’d lose sight of the truth. I’d lose touch with my life with Michaela.
“She’s small, you know? You told me that. Why leave me to stay with her?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Michaela isn’t small. I was wrong, Del. She’s large. Like you. Like Angela and everybody who’s fought against everything that has gone wrong in their lives. Don’t you see that?”
“Holden?”
Another voice dragged my eyes toward the door, another island of safety within the crashing waves of an ocean brought to life by my storm.
“Are you okay?”
Rolling the back of my head over the wall, I shuddered to see Delilah once again on her bed, a memory and nothing more. It made sense to me in that moment, the clues exposed that I should have questioned all along.
“She never changes,” I whispered. “Not her hair. Not the shadowed bruises beneath her eyes. Not her clothes. Deli looks exactly the same from the moment I last saw her sitting beside my bed in the hospital.”
Without speaking, Michaela moved to sit besi
de me, resting her back against the wall and stretching her legs out along the floor. Her hand moved to curl her pinky with mine in silent understanding that I was coming to terms with my loss.
Soft laughter fell over her lips, not at me, but as a bit of levity to counter the weight of my pain. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but is she still calling me small?”
Nudging me with her elbow, she drew my eyes away from Del to look at her. A soft smile graced her lips. “You still haven’t told me what that means.”
Despite my tears, my lips curled in response to the teasing quality of her voice. Memories flashed through my head. The day I’d explained to Deli what the word meant to me. And the day I’d first brought Michaela to my house and reminded her that she could never be large.
I was wrong. So tragically wrong that I had to swallow the crow her actions had forced down my throat. “It means that there’s nothing inside you worth notice. That to pretend to be something better than everybody else, you have to drag the good people down to your level instead of rising up to meet the bar they set.”
Nodding, she glanced at the bed. I knew she didn’t see the small girl sitting there frozen in time, a memory that never grew beyond the day I last saw her.
“So,” Michaela said softly, “I assume to be large is to be the person setting the bar? The one who through natural talent or fierce perseverance becomes worthy of admiration and respect?”
My throat was clogged, so I simply nodded in response.
Her eyes locked with mine. “Delilah was large. You know that right? She had more talent on the dance floor than the entire team put together. More talent than me, even though my mother had ensured I was trained in every type of dance out there. I’d been practicing since I was a little girl, and Delilah could still dance circles around me.”
