“That’s part of the problem the doctors were running into with you being removed from your parents’ wills,” continues the sheriff. “They can’t do anything but stabilize her without your input, but you weren’t allowed to give any.”
I bite my lip and force myself to stay silent as anger bubbles up inside me. I have to remember that she isn’t my family and it isn’t my place to say anything. Owen is like family to me but I’ve never even met his mother. I’m exactly not nominating her for any awards based on what I know about her, either.
They lapse into silence in the front seat, and I zone out and sleepily watch cars zip past out the window until Bill’s voice drags me back to reality.
“I’m sorry that it’s had to work out like this,” he tells Owen, and I’m suddenly furious at him again.
“But not sorry enough to make this easy on him and do it yourself, huh?” I hiss. “You just have to make him be the one to pull the plug, don’t you?”
The words are out of my mouth before I even realize they’re coming, but I know that I meant them. I’m furious at him for putting Owen in this position.
Owen looks back at me over his shoulder, but before he can speak, Bill calls back to me.
“Maria... you’re not from New York, are you?”
“New Jersey,” I spit back at him. “Why?”
“Because the law here ain’t like it is in your state,” he tells me, keeping his voice calm and level in spite of the hatred I’m flinging at him. “Not even the doctors get to decide that. The law says that only Sharon or her authorized agent can make that decision, and since she can’t do it, that leaves only Owen. Either Owen makes the call—and today, at that, since the DA’s challenging his reinstatement—or they keep her on life support until she dies.”
“Who the hell wrote that? What a stupid law!” I respond in exasperation.
“It’s been on the books since 1988, so damned if I know,” says Bill. “It ain’t like I disagree with you, either. I just don’t have any say in it.”
He turns right into the hospital parking lot before continuing.
“And besides,” he says, “it’s not like I’m just now surprising him with it or anything. I mailed him the paperwork two weeks ago so he could start thinking about it. He can choose to keep her on support if he wants, too. He just has to make the decision today before the DA challenges his reinstatement. Once it’s challenged, he’s back where he started and ain’t even allowed to see her.”
I shoot Owen an angry glare from the back seat. He didn’t mention any of that to me when he called me the phone yesterday. All he did was beg me to come down with him for support, and now I’ve made a fool of myself and attacked the sheriff for something he didn’t even do.
“Owen, were you ever planning on telling me that part?” I call up to him.
“Sorry,” he mumbles awkwardly. “I... well...”
“What, you didn’t think I needed to know?” I interrupt. “Didn’t think it concerned me?”
His face turns red and he looks away silently.
“Stop it,” I tell myself. “You’re not helping anything.”
I bite my tongue to stop myself from saying anything harsher, take a deep breath, and ask my last question as nicely as possible.
“So, is there anything else you want to tell me that I ought to know about? Last call for surprises.”
“Nothing else major,” he answers quietly. “We’re going out to my house after visiting my mother. I need to see it one last time and I want to show you it.”
Bill looks at him in surprise as he pulls into a parking spot.
“Given I’m your chauffeur today, when were you planning on telling me about that?”
Owen’s face flushes even brighter and he gets out of the car without another word.
––––––––
By the time we make it through the sliding doors and into the hospital lobby, I’ve completely forgiven Owen and find myself holding his hand again. It amazes me that I can go from being so frustrated at him to feeling so bad for him in such a short time, but as the doctor greets us, he looks so nervous and scared that it almost breaks my heart. Is he excited to see his mother? Dreading it? I can’t imagine what’s going on inside his head right now.
I lace my fingers through his and squeeze his hand gently as the doctor guides us down the long, gleaming white hallway toward his mother’s room. God, that smell... I hate it and I always have. Every hospital has the same, sickly-clean odor, as if bleach was poured onto everything in a desperate, futile attempt to wipe away all traces of humanity. It never works—all it does is make hospitals smell like death instead.
“She’s in here,” says the doctor, opening a door on the right for us, and I follow Owen in to meet his mother.
Somehow, Owen’s mother looks both everything and nothing like I expected her to. In television hospital dramas, they always portray the patient—no matter what happened to her—as a pristine, perfect woman lying unconscious in bed. I’ve seen pictures of Owen’s mother before. She was a slender, beautiful blond-haired woman and shared so many features with her son. I remember noticing how they had identical noses in all the pictures.
I put my arm around Owen’s waist to steady him as we stare down at a woman who looks nothing like either of our memories.
His mother is pale and sickly now, her thinning hair streaked with gray, and she has so many tubes and electrodes running to her that she looks as much machine as she does human. There are still traces of her beauty beneath swelling and the splotchy, black and yellow bruises marring her face, but only barely.
I don’t care if Owen’s father is already dead. I hope he dies again anyway for what he did to her.
“What happened to her?” whispers Owen, and Bill sighs and shakes his head.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do,” says Owen firmly, turning away from his mother and staring down the sheriff. “Tell me.”
“She and your father had a fight over something. That’s all we know since he’s dead now,” explains Bill. “He beat your mother up, slammed her head into the dryer repeatedly, and...”
Bill trails off and shakes his head sadly.
“Keep going,” demands Owen, and he turns and looks down at his mother again. “Finish the story.”
“...and then when he realized what he’d done, he called me up and told me to send an ambulance and a body bag.”
“A body bag?” I whisper, still holding Owen close at my side. He’s almost as pale as his mother now.
“That was my response when he said it, too,” says Bill. “Then he put the gun in his mouth. We found what was left of him up in the bedroom.”
Owen starts to tremble and I turn him away from his mother and hug him tightly.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I whisper to him, rocking him back and forth as he presses his face to my shoulder. I feel horrible for him, but all I can do is stand here and be strong for him. That’s what he needs, isn’t it? It’s why he asked me to come down—to be strong for him where he knew he couldn’t.
He clings to me as silent tears roll down his face and soak into my shirt. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling right now. He knew this was coming. He knew he was going to be faced with this decision, but he didn’t know just how hard it was going to be.
“Bill,” I ask gently, “can you please ask the doctor to come back in?”
As he hurries out into the hall, I run my fingers gently through Owen’s hair and kiss him on the cheek.
“Honey, the doctor is going to need to talk to you,” I whisper to him. “I’m so sorry about your mother, and I just want you to know that no matter what you decide to do, I love you to death.”
His eyes are swollen and red when he looks up at me, and it hurts me to see him so miserable. How many times, since I first met him, have I wished I could make his pain go away? If I could take part of it for myself, I would do it in a heartbeat.
“I love you
so much,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I brought you down here. You didn’t need to see all this. I shouldn’t have made you...”
“You didn’t make me do anything,” I interrupt, softly caressing his cheek. “I wanted to come and I’m glad I did.”
Bill returns with the doctor and I hug Owen one last time before heading for the door. It’s time for me to be quiet and let him do whatever he needs to do. I need to give him some space now.
I close the door behind me and watch from the hallway window.
The doctor pulls him over to his mother’s side and talks with him in a low, hushed tone. I can only make out bits and pieces of the conversation from out here, but my breath catches in my throat as I hear one little phrase.
“...no brain activity...”
It somehow didn’t count when Bill said it in the car, but now that the doctor’s uttered those three horrible words, it’s over. Owen’s mother is dead. No matter how many machines keep her heart beating, the part that made her his mother is dead and gone.
The door creaks open as Bill slips out of the room and joins me at the window in silence. Owen leans down and kisses his mother on the cheek, and I turn away as a painful lump forms in my throat and tears cloud my vision. If this is how much it’s hurting me, I don’t ever want to be in his place. It must be killing him.
When I finally get myself under control and turn back to the window, Owen and the doctor are signing paperwork at the table in the corner. Signature after signature, page after page, and then it’s finally done. Owen sits in a chair at his mother’s side, delicately holding her hand as the doctor draws the curtain across our window.
In my mind, I can still see it all happening—the doctor turning off the respirator, Owen sitting beside the bed. Tears stream down his face as he sits quietly with his mother, holding her hand until it finally goes cold.
––––––––
The sheriff wasn’t kidding—the indentation in the top of the dryer is exactly the size of a face. All the color drains from Owen’s face as he stares at it and I grab him by the arm in case he passes out.
“All the time,” he whispers. “This happened all the time when I was younger. Dad just didn’t go far enough to get caught. He was only caught twice...”
The first time was Samantha and the second was his mother. If there’s a Hell, I hope his father’s in line for the next trip down.
I grab him by the hand, pull him away from the dryer and lead him into the next room. I don’t want him to have to see it—to have to think about it—and we don’t have very much time. Bill is only giving us fifteen minutes here, but he volunteered to drive us all the way back to Ithaca so that we can make it home in time for classes tomorrow.
Strange, almost incomprehensible feelings turn over and over in my mind as I follow Owen from room to room. It feels almost surreal being here. Sometimes I swear I can feel Owen’s emotions as he wanders through his old home. No... that’s not the right word at all. He was never safe—never loved—when he lived here. That’s not a home, just a house.
Some rooms feel alive and cheerful, almost as if people still live in them, while others feel as if they’ve been sitting vacant for years. The kitchen is still bright and sunny and blossoming flowers grow in long planters on the windowsill, while the furniture in the living room is covered in dust and looks as if it hasn’t been used in ages. Before Micah went to college, my family had a tradition of Saturday movie nights, but as hard as I try, I can’t imagine Owen’s family ever sitting together like mine did. In my mind, everyone is apart and hiding in their rooms, separated from each other by their fear of his father.
Owen leads me upstairs but stops at the top and goes no further.
“I... I don’t want to see any of this,” he says. “You can go if you want, but I want to stay here.”
“This is your house and these are your memories. I’m not going anywhere you don’t want me to go,” I tell him, and then in a whisper, I add, “I’m never going anywhere you can’t follow.”
“I can do just one room,” he says, smiling weakly and taking my hand in his, and he leads me to the first door on the left.
Even though I’ve never seen his bedroom before, I instantly recognize it. The wooden desk in the corner, the framed photographs all over the walls... does Owen realize what he’s done? Does he know that he’s recreated his childhood bedroom in his apartment? I decide not to ask. If he doesn’t know, all the realization can do is hurt him.
As he sits on the edge of the bed and stares vacantly around the room, it feels as if he’s suddenly hundreds of miles away from me. He’s not seeing me anymore; he’s seeing his old house, his old life before everything crumbled and fell apart.
“Do you have any good memories of your father?” I quietly ask. He’s silent for such a long time that I almost think he didn’t hear me, but then he finally answers.
“One,” he whispers. “I remember being very little, and we were playing together in the back yard. He crouched down with a football and waddled away as I tried to tackle him. I was laughing and laughing as I chased him...”
He shakes his head sadly, gets up from the bed and heads past me out the door.
“The worst part is that I don’t even know if the memory is real,” he tells me, choking on the words. “I think I made it up so that I could pretend that I had a good father once upon a time. It has to be a lie, because I can’t believe he ever did anything like that with me.”
I grab him at the top of the stairs and draw him into a tight hug. I can feel his pulse racing and his quick, short breaths as he lays his head on my shoulder. He’s reliving everything right now, isn’t he? We shouldn’t have come here. I should never have let him come back and see this horrible place. I should have known that walking through this house would bring all his nightmares to life again. Some girlfriend I am, letting him protect me when I’m weak but not even thinking about how badly he’s being hurt.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Let’s go. Bill’s waiting in the car for us.”
“No... not yet. One more room,” he says. His eyes are red and puffy, and if he starts crying, I’m going to start too.
He takes my hand and shakily leads me down the hall past his parents’ room, past the bathroom, to a door at the far end. His hand hovers at the doorknob for a long time before he finally takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.
A tall loft bed, pastel pink walls, and piles of stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes... Samantha’s room is unchanged after seven years. A thick layer of dust coats everything, but in my mind’s eye, I can still see the little girl lying on the floor in a yellow square of sunshine, playing with her stuffed pig. The sunlight fades in the window and Samantha disappears. She’s never coming back. She’s gone.
“Let’s go,” he finally says, and he turns away and leaves her room behind. I close the door quietly behind me and follow him down the hallway. Halfway down the stairs, he stops and sits on the landing.
“I’m sorry, Samantha,” he whispers. “I know I promised, and I’m so sorry I failed you.”
His voice drops to a nearly inaudible whisper, and I keep my distance and give him his moment. In my mind, Samantha is sitting next to him, putting her tiny arms around him and hugging him. She forgives him—I know she does. Someday, I hope he knows it too.
God, it’s breaking my heart to see him like this. I want so badly to cry and let out all the pain I’m feeling at seeing him hurt like this, but I can’t. I can’t be the one to break down. I can’t let myself fall apart while Owen needs me.
When his silent conversation with Samantha is finished, he stands up and continues down the stairs.
“Thanks for coming with me,” he tells me, his voice a little stronger now. Maybe talking to Samantha helped him more than I thought it did.
“It’s okay,” I answer. “Is there anything else you want to see before we go?”
“No... let’s go. There’s nothing left for me here.”
&
nbsp; ––––––––
“Alright... last stop. Everyone out,” jokes Bill as he pulls into the parking lot of our apartment complex. He gets out of the car and opens the door for me, and I groggily climb out of the back seat. It’s almost midnight and I’m completely exhausted. I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep for the last two hours.
“Thanks for the ride,” says Owen as he climbs out of the front passenger seat.
“No problem. Really,” answers Bill. “I still owe you a ton for how badly I screwed up.”
“You’ve done so much for me, Bill. Stop that.”
“I’ll stop when I stop feeling guilty,” the sheriff tells him with a shrug.
Owen stares silently at him for a long time before speaking again and I resist the urge to yawn. I’m absolutely exhausted.
“So what happens now?” he finally asks.
“Well, if the DA has any say in things, I’ll be fired the second I walk in the door tomorrow,” answers Bill with a thin-lipped smile. “I don’t think he’s got quite the clout he thinks he does, though, so the next thing up is getting your family’s will settled. I know a pretty good guy and I’ll get him in touch with you as soon as I can.”
“Seriously? You’d do that for me?” asks Owen, almost in awe. “I... thank you. I don’t even know where to start on any of this.”
Bill nods and shoots him a smile.
“That’s what the estate lawyer’s for. He knows this shit—took care of my mother’s stuff after she died, so I know he’ll be good to you.”
Owen grabs his bag, walks around the front of the car and then hugs Bill.
“Thank you so much,” he says. “You didn’t have to do any of this.”
He smiles at Owen one last time, and then he waves goodbye to me and gets back in his car.
Owen and I stand together, clinging tightly to each other’s hands, until the sheriff’s car disappears into the night.
Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) Page 14
