I shook my head, wishing I could just spit everything out, but coherent thoughts were alluding me in that moment. “No, Caleb and I are good. He actually called to warn me. Josh, she’s in love with you, and she’s pissed that we’re together.”
“Shit,” he hissed. “Not that again.”
“What do you mean ‘not that again’? Has she talked to you about me before? She doesn’t even know me.”
He shook his head. “No, I never told her about you. When I was going up there, she was dealing with so much and rubbing my new, amazing relationship in her face didn’t seem like the best idea. It’s the whole thinking she’s in love with me that I have a problem with. It’s not the first time.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“After Jeremy died and Savannah was born, I was around a lot. And one night, Carlie sort of came on to me and told me she loved me. I pushed her away, but then she went crazy and was throwing things and crying hysterically, and I had to detain her or else she would have come after me. She calmed down after that, and she started talking about Jeremy and how mad she was that he’d left her alone. She said he wasn’t responsible, and that’s why he’d gotten himself killed, but I was responsible, and she wished she’d met me first.”
I sucked in a breath. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I didn’t have the same feelings for her. I loved her, but she was like family to me.”
“Did she tell you that you were Savannah’s father?”
He gave me a funny look. “Why would she say that? That’s not even possible.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “It’s what she thinks now. She even told Van that.”
“What?!” Josh roared, anger bubbling up out of him. “What the hell is she thinking telling a little girl that her father isn’t her father? That’s bullshit. Tay, it’s not true. Jer was her father.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Josh, I don’t believe her. I know you and Carlie never slept together.” But the look on his face told me I was wrong. “What?! You slept with her?”
He hung his head. “It was a complete moment of weakness, and it was right before I moved back here. I never slept with her while she was with Jer. We’d had a few drinks, and one thing led to another, and yeah, it happened. And then a few days later she told me she loved me, and I knew what we’d done was a huge mistake.”
“Dammit, Josh.”
“I’m sorry,” he insisted. “I fucked up, but it was a long time ago.”
“Then why does she think you’re Savannah’s father? That’s crazy.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “Because she’s obviously not well. She needs to go back into treatment. I’m calling her doctor.”
Before I could stop him, he was on the phone and arguing with the doctor from the rehab facility. He kept insisting that Carlie needed his help, but I guess the guy wouldn’t listen to him. Finally Josh hung up the phone in a huff.
“They’ll only help her if she goes back voluntarily or if she proves to be danger to herself or others,” he explained. “He said since she’s an adult, and she was in the program voluntarily, she had every right to leave. We can Baker Act her if we want, but that’s it.”
I sucked in a breath, already hating where this night was going. “Do you want to call the police? Carlie and the kids will be here in forty-five minutes.”
Josh shook his head. “No, let me see if I can talk to her.”
As much as I didn’t like it, I backed off. Carlie was his friend. He’d known her for over a decade. I had no authority there.
* * *
When the doorbell rang almost an hour later, I was on pins and needles, and my stomach was churning. Josh jumped off the couch to get the door, and I stayed put. I hadn’t left as Caleb had suggested. I wasn’t afraid of Carlie.
As soon the door opened, a tiny body flew inside and ran to me.
“Taylor!” Savannah cried, as she scrambled into my lap and threw her arms around me. She smelled like suntan lotion.
“Hi sweetie,” I said, hugging her tiny body to me and kissing her forehead. I’d missed holding her, and it had only been a few days. She was such a good cuddler.
I looked up toward the front hall to see Carlie hugging Josh tightly. It was the first time I’d seen her outside of pictures, and from what I could tell, she didn’t look insane. Maybe Caleb had been unnecessarily worried.
Her long dark hair flowed down her back in glossy locks, and her dark eyes sparkled along with the smile on her face. She wore a white sundress and flat sandals and looked like she’d just spent a week in the sun.
Savannah cuddled on my lap with her head resting on my chest, as Carlie finally released Josh and looked up at me. “So, you’re the bitch,” she said, very uncharacteristic to the casual way she was dressed, and my hand instantly went to Savannah’s uncovered ear.
“Carlie,” Josh said, clearly appalled by her words. “Please don’t say things like that. That’s Taylor, my girlfriend.”
“I know who she is, Josh,” Carlie spat. “And thanks for telling me some stranger would be taking care of my kids for a month. I appreciate that.”
“Carlie, I didn’t know at the time. Everything happened really fast, but the kids love her, and she loves them.”
He looked at me with warm, loving eyes as Savannah clung to me.
“Oh, I know how the kids feel,” she said, laughing in a maniacal, non-humorous way that sent chills down my spine. “They’ve done nothing but talk about your little whore of a girlfriend for days. It was Taylor this and Taylor that and Taylor likes to play video games with us, and Taylor’s brother is so cool, and Taylor is so pretty. I’m sick of hearing about Taylor.”
“She is not a whore,” Josh said tightly, his whole body tensed with anger, and I wished he wouldn’t react so much. Sure, I appreciated him defending me, but at the same time, Carlie was apparently nutso, so it was probably best not to rile her up even more. “She’s my girlfriend, and I love her.”
“And apparently so do my kids. Go on, Caleb,” she said, pushing Caleb, who had been standing quietly in the front hall all this time, so hard he winced. “Go sit with your new mommy. You obviously like her better.”
“I’m fine here with you,” Caleb said firmly, and I could tell he was doing his best to be brave although he was terrified of her in that moment. He looked like he was about to cry and was fighting so hard to hold it in.
Carlie laughed that insane laugh again. “Obviously you’re not. Go sit with your sister and Taylor. Now!”
Caleb reeled in fright at the way she’d screamed at him before he walked as determinedly as he could across the room to where we were sitting. As soon as he sat down, I took his hand in mine, and he didn’t push it away.
“Now,” Carlie said, turning to Josh. “Let’s talk about you, shall we?”
“What about me, Carlie?”
“I don’t know,” she said in that crazy tone she’d adopted, as she started pacing the small space in the front hall. “Let’s talk about your obligations to your family, shall we?”
Josh crossed his arms over his chest. “What family?” he asked firmly, knowing exactly where she was headed.
“Us,” she said, as if Josh was an idiot, gesturing to herself and the kids. “Me. Your kids.”
Oh, great. Now she had moved on to thinking Caleb was Josh’s son too. This was bad. Next to me Caleb squeezed my hand. Then he leaned over and whispered to me. “My mom has a gun.”
I froze, and I was sure my face drained of all color. What the hell was he talking about? She had a gun?!
“Carlie,” Josh said carefully, “I love Caleb and Savannah, but you know Jeremy was their father, not me.”
Carlie let out a laugh/huff that said she didn’t believe him. I hated that the kids were witnessing her in this state. I wanted to take them upstairs, but I was too afraid to move.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Josh,” she spat. “And the fact that you took advantage of me to get
me pregnant was really appalling, but then I fell in love with you, and I just wanted us to be together.”
Huh? Had she been reading some crazy-ass story and had attributed it to her own life? What the hell was she talking about?
Josh looked back at me, the concern and worry burning in his blue eyes. “Taylor, Allison called for you a while ago. Why don’t you go upstairs and call her back?”
What? What the hell was he talking about?
Then he raised his eyebrows and looked at me pointedly, as if to give me a silent message, and I finally understood. He wanted me to get out of the living room and take the kids with me. A part of me didn’t want to leave him, especially if Carlie was armed, but I also didn’t want the kids around her if she started wielding a gun. I was fairly sure that Josh could get her calmed down, so hopefully she wouldn’t have a need to reach into her purse, but I couldn’t be sure. I needed to find a way to tell him about the gun.
“Come on, kids. Why don’t we go play video games in your room?” I suggested.
Josh and I had relocated the Playstation back there, so I figured we could go upstairs, turn up the volume, and they wouldn’t have to hear Josh and Carlie arguing.
“Don’t forget to call Allison,” Josh urged, nodding his head, and I looked at him in confusion. Allison could wait. “She said it was an emergency.”
Oh, shit.
I finally got it. He wanted me to call the police.
I ushered Caleb and Savannah into their old room and set them up playing the zombie game they loved while I went into our bedroom to call the police. I could still hear the faint sounds of Carlie and Josh’s conversation downstairs, but mostly it was her raised voice every few minutes.
I fired off a text to Josh and hoped he would check his phone.
His response came after a few seconds. Call the police. Now!
With shaking fingers I dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
I took a deep breath. “Hi, we have a situation where a family friend is at our house, and she suffers from mental illness. She’s going a little crazy, but she won’t go back to the rehab facility she was just in voluntarily, so I think we need to Baker Act her. And her kids are here, and she’s arguing with my boyfriend, and I think she has a gun.”
I sounded like a babbling idiot. What the hell was I supposed to say?
“Ma’am, please stay calm. I need you to answer a few questions for me.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself.
From downstairs I heard Josh yell, “Carlie, what the hell?”
All I wanted to do was run to him. Had she pulled the gun on him? Were they still just talking? I had to stay on the phone. I had to get the police to our house.
The 911 operator proceeded to ask me a series of questions about Carlie and her mental state. She then let me know that the police were in route to our house. I took a deep breath, as I got up off the bed to go check on the kids.
Caleb was shooting the heads off of zombies, and Savannah was laughing at him as he ran a commentary about how he was taking them out one by one, and he was the master zombie killer. I sat down next to him, and he gave me a look that told me he was only playing the game and making jokes for his sister’s benefit. I knew he was as terrified on the inside as I was.
I couldn’t hear anything from downstairs, and Josh’s window faced the side of the house, so I couldn’t even look out to see if the police were arriving. The minutes ticked by in slow motion. I decided to leave the room and sit at the top of the stairs where I could hear Josh and Carlie, and at least know what was going on, but I could still keep an eye on the kids.
Then a loud popping sound came from what sounded like downstairs, and I froze. Next me, Caleb froze too, and the controller dropped from his hands onto the padded carpet.
“Caleb, they’re getting you,” Savannah cried out, as the zombies descended on Caleb’s character.
“Tell me that was the sound of you killing zombies,” I said quietly, and he shook his head. “Stay here.”
I was out of the room before I could even think it was a rational idea. My mind was only focused on one thing, and that was Josh. Had Carlie shot him? I prayed that she’d just fired a warning shot. She’d better not have hurt him.
Another shot rang out, and the panic almost overtook me.
As I tore down the stairs, my heart was racing out of my chest. Not Josh. She couldn’t hurt Josh.
I rounded the bottom of the stairs into the living room and came face-to-face with what looked like a murder scene in the front hall. Blood and chunks of something else were splattered all over the walls and the front door. My hand instantly covered my mouth, and I couldn’t help crying out.
Josh was on the floor, his chest slumped forward, his head resting on his knees. Beyond him was Carlie, her body splayed out against the wall by the front door, the gun lying by her open hand on the tile floor.
Josh looked up at the sound of my voice, his eyes red-rimmed, and my heart started beating again. He had blood on his face and chest, but he was alive.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, as I rushed to his side, the smell of blood nearly overwhelming me.
I’d heard two shots, and from the blood seeping out of the side of Carlie’s head and the direction of the splatter, it seemed one shot had been aimed at her. And it appeared self-inflicted, but where had the other one landed? In Josh?
I almost couldn’t breathe.
Josh shook his head. “I tried to stop her,” he croaked, as the tears streamed down his face. “She wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t get her to listen.”
“Are you hurt? Did she hurt you?”
“No,” he croaked out, and I let out a huge sigh.
“It’s okay, Josh,” I said, taking him in my arms and holding his head against my chest. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay, but what else was I supposed to tell him in that moment, as one of his oldest friends lay dead a few feet away, having committed suicide in front of him. There weren’t words for something like that, especially because I knew Josh blamed himself. I could just tell.
“Taylor?” Caleb called from the top of the stairs. “Is everything okay?”
I froze. I could not let him or his sister see the carnage downstairs. “Everything is fine, Caleb, but I need you to stay with your sister right now, okay. Stay in the room. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be up in a minute,” I assured him.
“You’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Is Josh okay?”
“I’m fine, Cale,” Josh called out weakly.
“Josh is fine, buddy,” I told him.
“Okay.”
I realized then that he hadn’t asked about his mother, and some part of him must have known she’d taken her own life. It broke my heart to finally understand the burden Caleb had been carrying around for years, knowing his mother was sick, trying to diffuse her irrational behavior, and doing what he could to be strong for her and his sister. I doubted Savannah would ever truly understand how her mother could have done what she did, because she was always shielded from Carlie’s true nature. Caleb had made sure of that.
A pounding on the door pulled both my and Josh’s attention toward it.
“That’s the police,” I confirmed, and he nodded.
“I’ll let them in. Go upstairs with the kids,” he commanded, taking charge.
I nodded, releasing my arms from around him. He slowly pushed himself to his feet, and I took stock in him, making sure he didn’t have any injuries. It appeared like the blood on him was all Carlie’s.
The police pounded on the door one more time. “Police. Open the door.”
I left the room just as Josh was opening the door to them with his hands in the air in a non-threatening way.
“Keep your hands up, son,” the officer said as he and his partner moved into the house. “Oh shit.”
I
knew then he’d seen Carlie’s body. It was quite an image – one I knew I’d never get out of my head. I must have been in shock at that point, though, because all I could think about was getting to the kids. The fact that blood and skin and brains were splattered all over our house didn’t register. The fact that someone had committed suicide didn’t seem real, and my own feelings toward the situation didn’t matter. It was Caleb and Savannah who I was worried about.
Caleb met me outside of his and Savannah’s room.
“Van’s asleep,” he said, as soon as he saw me
Then he burst into tears, so I ushered him into my and Josh’s room and wrapped my arms around him as soon as the door was closed. He fell against me, sobbing and gasping, as he let out everything he hadn’t let himself feel for so long. My eyes filled with tears for the little boy who’d probably done everything he could in a vain attempt to help his mother overcome something that was bigger than he could have ever imagined.
“She killed herself, didn’t she,” he said after a few minutes.
“Yes,” I told him quietly, knowing it would do no good to sugarcoat anything.
“I always wondered when it would happen.”
I pulled back and looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?”
Caleb wiped his eyes and went to sit on the edge of our bed. “She always said she was going to kill herself,” he said, shaking his head. “She’d say things like ‘If anything ever happens to you or Savannah, I’ll kill myself’ or ‘If you ever leave me, Caleb, I’ll kill myself, I swear it’. She said it all the time, and I just knew it was going to happen one day.”
I sat down next to him. “Cale, you know when people say that they’re just exaggerating. Your mom loved you and Savannah so much, and she didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
He shook his head. “No, it was more than that. Whenever she said it, she had this look in her eyes, and I just knew she was serious.”
I put my arm around him and pulled him close. “She was sick, Caleb,” I said, knowing it didn’t help things any.
He nodded against my chest. “I know. I wish I could have helped her. Maybe I didn’t love her enough.”
Oh, I equally loved and hated how his ten year-old mind worked. He was such a sweet kid, and it completely broke my heart.
Searching for Neverland Page 30
