When I Find You

by R. A. Casey

  I am torn.

  I don’t want to let him down. I don’t want to disappoint him.

  But at the same time…

  I don’t want to enter this doctor’s surgery.

  I don’t want to be reminded of the past.

  “No,” I say. “I’m… I was just waiting for someone. After you.”

  This man looks at me, clearly a little bemused. Nods. “If you say so. Have a good day, miss.”

  I smile at his blatant politeness. “Thank you. Same to you.”

  I watch him walk past me. Watch him enter the doctor’s surgery.

  And as I stand there, head spinning, I know where I need to go.

  It’s sudden. Very sudden.

  And I’m not even sure how practical it is. I’m not even sure of the logistics of what I’m facing.

  But I know what has been happening to me lately.

  And those events are real.

  Calvin delivering the note and the parcel.

  I KNOW EVERYTHING.

  Losing it in my kitchen.

  Finding it in the woods, right by the school field.

  Finding it, taking it home and it going missing again.

  I know I haven’t imagined these things.

  I know these things are real.

  But Freddie doesn’t believe me. Sweet as he is, he doesn’t believe me.

  So I need to investigate myself.

  And that does not start with facing my past here at the doctor’s surgery.

  I take a few deep breaths. My heart thumping like mad.

  Sweat trickling down my face.

  I know where I need to go.

  I swallow a lump in my throat.

  And as wrong as it is, as wrong as I know it is, I walk away from the doctor’s surgery.

  I get the sense that I am being watched.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I am back at home, and I know Freddie knows something.

  I’ve tried not to draw too much attention to myself. I mean, in Freddie’s mind, I’ve been to the doctor’s, after all. It stands to reason that we’ve been discussing some pretty personal things. Things he should not be expected to probe me over for a little while.

  All in your own time, love. I can almost hear him saying the words to me right now. Talk to me when you’re ready to talk to me.

  But there’s none of that.

  There’s a silence.

  There’s a coldness.

  And I know he knows something.

  We’re sitting on the sofa. Usually, if I’m feeling rough, or if he’s feeling rough, we’ll have an arm around each other. He’ll be stroking my back with those big fingers, so gentle, so caring. He has a way of putting me into a weird trance like that. Making me feel so calm. So relaxed. So comforted. So at ease.

  But this afternoon, there is none of that.

  He’s sitting beside me, hands glued to his knees. He’s staring at the television. A Place in the Sun is on. One of those shows we usually have on in the background. Commenting on the idiots wanting everything from their house but on a ridiculously low budget. Sea view. Pool. Buzzing location. All for fifty thousand pounds, please.

  Really? Get a grip.

  But we’re never usually watching it intensely in any way. We’re usually chatting. Doing other things while watching it.

  But right now, he’s not saying a thing. He looks focused on it. I can see his jaw twitching. Hear his teeth tapping against one another like he’s grinding them together. I can see how closely he’s watching it. And it concerns me. It bothers me.

  Especially because I didn’t go to the doctor’s today as I’d promised.

  Especially because I…

  I swallow a lump in my throat.

  I’d told Freddie I was going to go for a bit of a walk after my appointment. That I was going to just take the morning for myself. And that wasn’t a lie. It was true.

  I just wasn’t being completely honest about what I was actually doing.

  I wonder if he knows. But how can he know? It’s not like he’s stalking me or anything.

  Or is it?

  I don’t know what to say. I just know that he’s quite clearly not in a good mood. Not in a talking mood.

  And I don’t know how that makes me feel.

  Especially when he’s usually so caring if I’m not feeling myself.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  He looks around at me. And for a moment, I see that look in his eyes that I dread. A twitch to his eyelids. Disdain. Pure disdain.

  He knows.

  He knows and he hates me and…

  And then he breaks into a warm smile. “Course. Sorry. Just feeling a little tired. Work’s getting to me lately.”

  He puts an arm around my shoulder. Strokes my back, but a little less lovingly than usual.

  But he seems okay, though he does look a bit tired. I can believe the work thing.

  But still. As much as I’m happy he hasn’t quizzed me about my trip to the doctor’s… the sheer lack of questions about it has me worried, not gonna lie.

  “Aren’t you…”

  “What?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I just… I don’t know. You haven’t asked me how today went at all. I guess I’m just checking you’re alright.”

  He looks at me again. Stares deeply into my eyes.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I just figured it wasn’t something you’d want to talk about much. Figured you’d come to me in your own time. This stuff is personal. Right?”

  I search his face for a sign that he’s mad. He’s saying all the right things, but I’m not feeling them at all.

  But I smile back at him. What else can I do? Make a meal about a doctor’s appointment that didn’t actually happen?

  “How was it, anyway?”

  I feel relieved he has finally asked me. It gives me an opportunity to lie. As guilty as I feel… if he finds out the truth, I don’t know how I will explain it to him.

  There are so many things I don’t know how I’m going to explain to him.

  So I have to keep weaving the lie as elaborately as I can and just hope he doesn’t see through it.

  And of course, I’m only doing it because it’s the right thing to do.

  To protect him.

  That might be hard to get your head around. Just how deep this lie goes. But how rooted in protecting him, it actually is.

  In protecting myself, too.

  “It was… difficult,” I say.

  Freddie’s eyes widen. “Difficult? How so?”

  I look away. Swallow a big lump in my throat. I’m starting to feel upset. Mostly through guilt. “I just… Well, it wasn’t easy. Accepting… accepting what I went about.”

  “The papers?”

  I nod. Feel a sickly twinge in my stomach. “The papers.”

  Freddie stares at me a little longer than I’m comfortable with. “And what did the doctor have to say?”

  “She… she referred me to speak with someone. Told me it’s likely I’m just experiencing some trauma because of it being summer and all that comes with summer. After Charlie, you know. And the move. Struggling to sleep. All these things. But she… she said she was going to up my anxiety meds, too. That they might help.”

  Freddie looks at me. Right in the eyes. His smile is gone, and I know something is wrong.

  “Freddie?”

  He looks away. Looks at A Place in the Sun. At this idiot couple wanting far more than their money can afford.

  And he sighs.

  “That would be a very believable story, Sarah. If it wasn’t a complete and utter fucking lie.”

  My stomach sinks.

  He knows.

  I don’t know how he knows, but he knows.

  “What—”

  “Don’t sit there and play dumb. Don’t sit there and lie to me. I watched you. I watched you stand by the entrance to the doctors. I watched you stand there for an uncomfortably
long time. And then I watched you walk away to God knows where.”

  I can’t even think up an excuse anymore. “I … You watched me?”

  “Don’t flip this onto me,” Freddie barks. He stands from the sofa now. “Don’t you dare suggest for one minute I’m in the wrong in any way here.”

  “I—I—”

  “You didn’t go, did you?”

  “Freddie.”

  “Did you?”

  “No,” I say.

  It’s almost a relief to admit it. Almost a relief to get it off my chest.

  But only for a moment. Because when I look up at Freddie, when I see the look on his face, I know how upset he is.

  “You promised,” he says. “This was supposed to be the beginning. This was supposed to be the start. Of you getting better. You promised, Sarah. So why didn’t you go?”

  I move my mouth, but no words come out.

  “Why didn’t you go, Sarah?”

  “Because—because I don’t know what to believe,” I say.

  Freddie narrows his eyes. “You don’t know what to believe? Then where did you go?”

  I look up at him. Heart racing. And as much as I know it’ll infuriate him, I know there’s only one thing I can do right now.

  Tell the truth.

  “I… I don’t think I’m mad. I don’t think I’m insane. I don’t think this is all in my head. I think… I think someone is following me, Freddie. Someone is taunting me. About—about the past. About Charlie. And I’m not sure how it all links together. I don’t even… I don’t even know what it means. But I need to solve this.”

  He stands there. Stares right at me. Silent.

  And for a moment, I wonder if he’s about to come around. If he’s about to see things from my perspective.

  “Where did you go, Sarah?”

  I open my mouth. For a moment, I consider telling the truth.

  “I went… I met Cindy.”

  But it’s obviously a lie. Obvious to anyone.

  He stands there a few seconds. He looks like he’s about to say something. Like he’s really considering it.

  But then he storms off out of the lounge.

  “It’s not in your head, hmm?”

  “Freddie?”

  He races upstairs.

  “Not in your head,” he mutters. “We’ll see about that. We’ll remind you again, should we?”

  I hear him going upstairs, and I hear him rustling around the bedroom, and I want to run away.

  I want to escape.

  But I know I’m going to face the truth.

  I know I’m going to face it all over again.

  I hear him stomping down the stairs and scratch my arm and feel hands wrapped around my wrists and hear screaming and I’m standing in the maize fields again and—

  Water.

  Water on my hands.

  The sound of crying.

  Of something cracking.

  And then blood and—

  And then Freddie is back opposite me, and I’m back in the room.

  He stands opposite me.

  That little blue box in hand.

  The box he showed me the contents of last night.

  The box that prompted my trip to the doctor.

  He pours out all the contents onto the floor.

  Throws the blue box against the wall.

  “Look at that,” he says. “Look at that and tell me you’re not making this up. Look at that and tell me it’s not all in your fucking head.”

  I don’t want to look.

  I don’t want to see.

  “Look!”

  I look down at the floor.

  Look at the cream carpet.

  And I see them, just like I saw them last night.

  The pieces of newspaper I tore up two weeks ago.

  The ones with Charlie’s face on.

  The ones with the story about Charlie going missing.

  The ones he was so apologetic about.

  “Don’t you see?” he shouts. “Don’t you fucking see?”

  Staring up at me, from these torn newspaper pieces, there is nothing about Charlie.

  No headline.

  No pictures.

  There is absolutely nothing Charlie related on these pieces of old newspaper I tore to pieces—at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I think about my life in two very distinct segments.

  The days before Charlie went missing, and the…

  Okay. You get the idea now. My life went tits up when Charlie went missing.

  But if you thought it was all rosy and dandy before he went missing, you haven’t been paying attention.

  I lie in bed again. I’m feeling more at home in bed lately. I ran upstairs after Freddie threw the newspaper cuttings down on the floor. I didn’t want to face the truth. Didn’t want to accept the reality before me.

  So I ran away. Slammed the bedroom door shut. Squeezed my eyes together and tried not to think of the pain in my arm, of the thoughts of that blistering hot day on the school field.

  Of Charlie letting go.

  Disappearing.

  Calvin beside me.

  “Lovely day for it, in’t it?”

  Of…

  Do I see something else now?

  Something I’ve never seen before?

  Over by the stage. Right in the corner of my eyes, I think I see something.

  Movement.

  Movement in the maize fields.

  Maize fields.

  I think of childhood. I think of how happy I felt on those sunny days. The days in the tall grass. The days with all the other children, like me. How happy we were. How perfect everything seemed. How sunny my memories were.

  I think of those times, and I feel a warmth inside. Not like the sickly warmth of the day Charlie went missing. Not like the incessant heat of this summer. Of mornings waking up, the bedroom boiling, the windows closed.

  I think of a different kind of warmth.

  A warmth within.

  I am laughing.

  I am smiling.

  And she is standing opposite me.

  She is standing opposite me and—

  The pain around my wrists.

  The screaming.

  “Everything will be okay, my angel. Everything will be okay…”

  And then Charlie is missing and—

  I KNOW EVERYTHING

  And the other thing in the parcel.

  I open my eyes.

  Freddie is by my side. He’s got his arms around me. He apologised for flipping at me earlier. Told me it’s only because he cares. Only because he loves me. That he wants me to get better.

  I want to tell him the truth.

  The truth that I won’t get better.

  I won’t ever get better.

  Because you can’t fix this.

  I feel his arms around me. I hear him saying things to me occasionally. I hear his words of comfort. His words of reassurance. I hear them all, but I know the truth.

  There is no emotion to them anymore.

  There is no deep sincerity to them anymore.

  I am not the woman he thought he moved in with.

  He always knew I was damaged. Always knew I was broken by what happened to Charlie. He always knew I was different.

  But he had no idea about the depths of just how damaged I am.

  And he’s starting to tire of me.

  I lie there with my eyes open, burning. It’s late now. I want to get up and move around. But I know getting up will only provoke questions. I know I’ll have to go to the doctor and promise it for real this time. I know I’ll have to address my mental problems. I know I’ll have to play along.

  But while I cannot argue against the newspaper cuttings and the evidence I saw right before my eyes… I am adamant about one thing.

  I am not going insane.

  I am not losing my mind.

  Someone is following me.

  Someone is doing all this to me.

  I see the s
treetlight right outside our bedroom flicker and watch it descend to darkness.

  I shiver. I don’t like the darkness. It reminds me of the darkness that crept into those sunny days when I was a child.

  That sense that there was something beneath the surface.

  Something I didn’t want to look in the eye.

  But something I couldn’t hide from.

  I climb out of bed. Freddie is snoring now, so I’m not so worried. I walk across the bedroom floor, the carpet cool against my bare toes. I walk up to the window. Pull it aside.

  The streetlamp has gone out. The street is dark. I can see the lights from televisions in the houses. I can hear laughter somewhere in the distance. I can—

  A car door slams shut. I jump. Look down.

  It’s someone at Moira’s. Her nephew, Kent, probably. I can smell cigarette smoke in the air. She’s always smoking. One of these days, she’s going to burn the pair of bloody houses down.

  She speaks to the man in hushed tones, then turns around and looks right at me. I swear we make eye contact. Then she turns away and walks back to her home.

  I go to close the curtain when I notice something that makes my stomach turn.

  First, I see him standing there.

  A silhouette of a man.

  Doused in black.

  I can’t make him out properly, but he’s looking up at the house.

  Right up into the bedroom window.

  I want to shout for Freddie. Want to tell him to come over here. But I can’t say a thing. No sounds escape my lips.

  I stare at that silhouette standing there. Still staring up at me. Dread filling me, threatening to burst to the surface.

  And then the streetlight flickers back to life.

  The light blinds me.

  I step back, let go of the curtain.

  It’s then that I swear I hear movement.

  Footsteps.

  It’s then that my stomach hits the floor.

  Because someone is in the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I hear the footsteps downstairs, and I know I am not alone.

  I can’t move. I’m standing at the window, right at the foot of the bed. The room is light again, the streetlamp outside flickering back to life, filling the room with this nice soft glow that’s usually so comforting, usually so reassuring.

  But I’m not reassured right now.