by Claire Adams
Copyright © 2016 Claire Adams
Prologue
Ollie
I had told her not to, but she went ahead and did it anyway.
“Of course I’m gonna make a cake for my baby on his eighteenth birthday!” my mother said when I protested. She was having trouble sticking the candles into the cake; the latest round of chemo had left her weaker than I’d ever seen, her bones brittle, her skin papery and translucent.
“Ma,” I said. “Two candles is fine. Really.”
She had that look on her face, though, and I knew she’d press on until all eighteen candles were in place.
“Now, Ollie,” she said. “I don’t want you to be too disappointed this year. It’s been hard for me to get around, you know that, so getting you a birthday present was a bit of a challenge.”
“You don’t need to get me anything.”
My mother coughed, a painful, wet hacking sound. I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t cringe. Her last round of chemo had been exactly that—her last. At her appointment last week, Dr. Gordon had given her a hug, the look on his face clearly saying he knew this was probably the last time he’d see her. There was no reason to continue the chemo, he’d told us. The cancer, which had started in her lungs, was everywhere. Now it was just a matter of making her as comfortable as we could until she finally decided to let go.
Somehow, though, while I’d been at work over at Garrett Wilson’s ranch, she’d summoned enough energy to bake a cake. From a box, but still. She still had to pour, stir, measure a few ingredients. Cooking and baking had always been her thing, though, and I knew she still felt that anything from a box was subpar.
“It looks great, Ma,” I said. She sang happy birthday to me, pausing every couple of seconds to cough. I blew out the candles, knowing the wish I wanted to make wasn’t going to come true.
I didn’t feel like eating cake right then, but I started picking the candles out and putting them on a folded up paper napkin.
“So, you’ve had a good birthday?” my mother asked, watching me as I pulled the candles out.
“Yeah, Ma. It’s been good.”
“You worked on your birthday! I would’ve thought you’d at least have taken the day off.”
“Garrett would’ve given it to me if I asked, but I wanted to work.” It occurred to me after I said it that maybe she’d been hoping I would take the day off; this would be my last birthday she’d be around for. “I’ve got most of tomorrow off, though,” I said. “Just have to go over there in the morning. Early, though, and it shouldn’t take too long.”
“What about Carolyn? Are you planning to see her tonight?”
“Not tonight.” I decided to leave it at that, not wanting to elaborate that the next time I saw Carolyn would be to break up with her. We’d been high school sweethearts, and I thought at one point, I probably really did love her, but the feelings had just faded. It’d be better to break it off with her than to keep stringing her along. She didn’t deserve that.
Problem was, my mother’s feelings for her hadn’t faded, and if anything, had grown stronger over the months because she liked to imagine the grandchildren she thought we might give her one day.
“And I know Darren should be calling any second to wish you happy birthday!” my mother said brightly. “I can’t wait to talk to him and hear all about the big city.”
I looked at the stove clock, the glowing green numbers. My mother would be asleep soon. He wouldn’t call, I knew that, but I forced a smile.
“He’s just so busy,” she said.
My older brother had fled Colorado the second he turned eighteen, landing in San Francisco, where he promptly came out of the closet and declared himself gay.
I cut two slices of cake. She picked at hers, and I ate mine in four big bites, the sugar hurting my teeth, landing in my stomach like a big lump.
“This is for you,” my mother said, pushing a rectangular wrapped box toward me.
“Oh, Ma, you didn’t need to go out to the store and get me anything.”
“It was no trouble at all. Marie and I went together and made a day of it. It was the nicest outing I’ve had in a while. I hope you like it,” she said.
I began unwrapping the box. I didn’t even want to think about how long it must have taken her to wrap the thing in the first place. What a pointless waste, wrapping presents. Just to tear the paper off in about two seconds flat. So, I went slowly, sliding my thumb underneath the first seam, popping the tape off. I set the paper aside and sat there with the box on my lap for a few seconds, before lifting the lid. There was tissue paper to be moved aside, which revealed a bright pink Scully shirt, embroidered across the torso with a floral design. It was about the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
“Wow,” I said, pulling it out of the box. “Would you look at that.”
My mother beamed. “I wasn’t sure about it, but I called Darren and he said that you’d love it. He’s got such good fashion sense.”
“He sure does.”
I stood up and slid the pink shirt over the black t-shirt I was wearing. The thing fit all right, and my mother smiled in approval.
“That looks wonderful!” she said. “Let me take a picture and we can send it to your brother. I bet he’s going to call any second now.”
“No, Ma, you don’t have to take a picture,” I said. “Darren doesn’t need a picture of me in a pink shirt. I’m sure there’s plenty of guys wearing pink shirts out there, anyway.”
“You’ll have to make sure you bring it when you go out and visit him,” she said. A sad look crossed her face. “It’s kind of like I’ll be out there too, since I bought you the shirt . . . I really wish I had enough time so we could all go out there together . . . .”
“Ma . . . .” We hadn’t had the talk yet. Neither of us had admitted to the other that we knew she was going to die soon, that there likely wouldn’t be another Christmas, certainly not another summer, no more of the Fourth of July celebrations that she loved so much. Every time I’d sensed she was going to bring it up, I veered us away from that. Life was not fair, I knew that, but the whole situation with my mother was so far beyond fair I couldn’t really even think about it without becoming enraged. The doctors didn’t confirm it, but I knew her lung cancer was from breathing in all that secondhand smoke from my father, who had died just a few years earlier in a car accident. He was controlling and abusive, and even a blind person could see the immense weight that lifted from my mother’s shoulders once she was free from ever having to deal with him again. She was able to smile and mean it. She didn’t have to account for her whereabouts every second of every day. She was actually enjoying life. And then she got the news she had cancer, it was incurable, and she was going to die. Nothing anyone could do about it. I didn’t want to have that conversation just yet. There was still time. It was running out, yes, but there was still time.
She smiled. “I know,” she said. “We can talk about it another time. No need to be a Debbie Downer on your birthday! I better get to bed; I’m exhausted.” She looked at me once more, evaluating the shirt. “But that shirt sure does look nice on you.”
“Thanks, Ma. I love it. I’ll wear it out tonight and show all the guys.” All the guys would give me a gigantic heap of shit for wearing such a thing, but I didn’t care. They’d have a laugh about it, and my mom would go to sleep knowing that I’d gone out in the gift she’d given me.
The Watering Hole was the hangout for all the locals, and because I’d grown up around here and had been working for Garrett Wilson since I was eleven, I was allowed into the bar even though I wasn’t twenty-one yet. And, as expected, there was a whole lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ from the guys when I walked in, wearing that pink shirt.
I went over to the bar and the bartender, Lauren, slid me a bottle of beer. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” she said with a grin. “Almost legal.”
“Where the fuck did that shirt come from?” Alan, one of the guys I worked with on the ranch, ask
ed as he came over and slung an arm around me.
“Gift from my mother,” I said. “Told her I’d wear it out tonight and impress you all.”
Alan grinned. “Figured something like that would be from your brother. But I guess it takes a real man to be able to wear pink like that out in public.”
“How is your mom?” Lauren asked.
“Hangin’ in there,” I said.
“Tell her we’re thinking of her.”
“I will.” I took a sip of the beer, cold and bitter as it went down my throat.
Aside from it being my birthday, though, there wasn’t much different about tonight. It was Friday night, so the place was pretty busy, but I recognized almost all the faces—all except for a girl sitting at a table with a couple guys I went to high school with. Her back was to me, but when she turned, I saw her profile and she wasn’t anyone I recognized.
I sat at the bar and listened to Alan tell me about chasing down a few escaped heifers that almost made it into town. My phone was in the front pocket of my jeans, and I felt it vibrate against my leg. I pulled it out and flipped it open to see who was calling. Carolyn. She’d want to know where I was, and if I told her I was here at the Watering Hole, she’d first give me shit for being at a bar when I wasn’t twenty-one, then she’d come down there and hang out. Carolyn was always after me to do the right thing. She’d want to leave the bar and go drive somewhere, somewhere that it could be just the two of us, and we could talk and she’d slide closer and closer to me and then we’d be kissing, and we’d probably have sex again. It had only happened once so far, just last week, actually, because Carolyn had wanted to wait. Only after did she tell me that she’d decided to do it this time because she knew that we’d eventually get married. Since then, there’d been several more opportunities to do the deed, and she certainly wanted to, but I couldn’t. Not knowing that what I really needed to do was break up with her.
I closed the phone and slipped it back in my pocket. “Carolyn,” I said.
Alan smirked. “You hit that shit yet?”
“Shut up,” I said.
“’Cause if she was my girl . . . .”
“Really, Alan, shut up. You couldn’t fuck your way out of a wet paper bag.”
“You gonna meet up with her tonight? She takes one look at that shirt and she’ll be on her back pronto. A shirt like that . . . that’s what they called a ‘lady killer.’”
“Then I better take it off right now and give it to you, since we all know you need all the help you can get in that department.”
“Someone buy this man another beer!” Alan shouted.
I drank the second beer, ignored another call from Carolyn, endured more good-natured shit about my pink shirt. It was nice that everyone wanted to celebrate, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I hung out for a while, but then decided to call it a night. That way I could get up nice and early and get over to the ranch and help Garrett repair the fencing and then get back home to spend some time with my mother. Maybe I’d even take her over to the ranch to see the horses; being around them always seemed to lift her spirits.
I heard something as I walked to my truck, though, a scuffling and then a girl’s voice saying, “No, stop it.” She wasn’t shouting or anything, and I almost kept walking, but then she said it again, a little more forcefully, but I also heard a note of fear.
I turned to my right and saw that it was Isaac Wentworth, one of the guys I’d gone to high school with. He had graduated a few years before me, and we’d actually been in shop class together, but we were never what you’d call friends. He had a twin brother, Evan, and they had their little group of friends that always stuck together. You got the feeling that they were always planning something, scheming, devising some sort of plan to try to take over the world. Now, though, he had that girl pinned up against the truck. There was just enough moonlight for me to see that he’d pulled her shirt up, exposing her stomach and the top of her jeans. Her hands were pushing his away.
“Hey,” I said.
He ignored me.
“Hey,” I said again, louder.
Isaac turned his head, the bulk of him blocking the girl from my view. “What?” he said roughly.
“What are you doing?”
“Something that doesn’t require an audience. We’re fine, Ollie; we don’t need a chaperone.”
“I just want to go home,” the girl said.
Isaac laughed. “The hell you do,” he said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart; you’ll get to go home, just not quite yet.”
“Leave her alone,” I said.
Isaac sneered. “Or what?”
“Or nothing. Just get off of her.”
He rolled his eyes like he couldn’t believe that I would actually be saying that to him and yanked the girl’s shirt up even higher. She shrieked.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, yanking him back.
“Fuck off,” he said. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.” He started to turn back but let his gaze linger on me first. “Nice shirt, pussy.” He reached for the girl again, who was cowering against the truck, her face shrouded in the darkness.
“I don’t fucking think so, asshole,” I said, and I grabbed him and threw him back. He stumbled a few steps but didn’t fall; when he regained his balance he ran at me swinging, one fist connecting with my side but I barely even felt it. My own fists were clenched and every time I swung, I felt my knuckles make contact with his soft flesh. Even where I hit bone, it felt soft, and it seemed it took only seconds for us to go from standing to him flat on his back, me above him, pummeling his face. At first, he tried to get his arms up, to hit me, then to just block me but I couldn’t stop. Who the fuck did he think he was, trying to ruin some girl’s night by doing something she didn’t want him to do? But it wasn’t just for that reason I kept hitting him; all the stress and guilt and anxiety I’d been feeling ever since my mother told me she had cancer, the unfairness of it, that just when she’d finally been freed from my father and was starting to actually enjoy life that she’d find out she was dying . . . It wasn’t fair. I kept hitting him because of all of that, and because it also felt good to have a release for the stress, for the anger, for all of that, and by the time I stopped, my arms ached, the girl was gone, and I was alone in the parking lot. I didn’t have to look at Isaac’s bloodied, pulpy face to know that he was dead—that my own two fists had just beaten the very life out of him.
Part 1
Seven Years later
1.
Wren
It was just like out of a movie.
The couch, me reclining on it, facing away from Dr. Michael Carter, who sat in a brown leather wingback chair, one leg crossed over the other, yellow legal pad in his lap, pen scribbling away. Mike, he’d told me to call him during our first visit. If that made me feel more comfortable.
Nothing was making me feel comfortable lately, which was why I was here in the first place. I’d been dealing with it pretty well, or so I’d thought, but that had now changed. I’d made the first appointment with Dr. Mike—almost a year ago now—under the guise of wanting to get a control of my “serial dating.” I’d gotten into the bad habit of sleeping with guys and never returning their calls, even the ones that I actually did find myself liking. I’d become a “real bitch” as one of the guys had so kindly phrased it after we’d slept together and I then refused to see him again. Worse, I was starting to get a reputation around town, which, as a small business owner, I did not want. But I didn’t seem to know how to stop it.
Talking with Dr. Mike was helpful, sort of. I didn’t feel as though I was any closer to actually untangling the knot that was my problems, but just speaking out loud about them really did seem to help.
“So, these dreams,” Dr. Mike was saying. “You’ve been having recurring nightmares.”
I stared at a speck on the ceiling. “Yes. But that’s not that strange; I’ve been having those dreams for the past seven years now. I’m used to th
em.”
“What’s changed, then?”
The speck moved; it was actually a fly. “Because I found out that person is getting released from prison.”
“And how did you find this out?”
I hesitated. There was always this awkward moment when I had to admit what I’d been doing all these years. “I called the prison he’s at. I’ve been . . . I looked him up online. He had a MySpace profile that I found, and he’d started a Facebook one, but then . . . but then the incident happened and . . . .” I let my voice trail off. I was stalking him online, although it’s difficult to stalk someone in this way when they’re in prison and can’t actually access the internet. I’d learned his name from the newspaper article, which I could recite verbatim:
Carmel resident, Isaac Wentworth, 20, was killed last night in
an altercation in the parking lot of the Watering Hole. Oliver
“Ollie” Boardman, 18, also a resident of Carmel, has been detained,
charges pending. An unidentified female was also at the scene,
but she left before police arrived. Authorities would like to speak
with her, so anyone with information regarding her whereabouts
or who she is, is asked to come forward.
No one knew me, was the thing. I had seen the article, so yes, I could’ve come forward, I could have driven myself down to the Carmel police station and answered whatever questions they had. But I didn’t. Instead, I stared at that article, reread it so many times that I eventually had it memorized. I didn’t come forward when Oliver plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and, because they’d avoided a trial, the district attorney offered him ten to twelve years. And now he was getting out after seven. I told myself that my coming forward wouldn’t have changed anything. It would not give Isaac his life back, it would not make Oliver’s statement any more or less true.
