She couldn’t figure out how she could ever stand to be near them when just seeing Jett in their features was like waking up in the hospital all over again, realizing he was gone. Her daughter was gone. How was that pain ever supposed to lessen with time if the wound was made fresh every day?
“I can’t. I can’t be here.” She gasped the words, clawing at West’s shirt, begging for help. She wanted to run, but the weight was too much. Too much grief and anger and fear and guilt. She felt them each like boulders being hurled on top of her, each of them knocking the breath from her body before they settled on her chest.
“Shh, it’s okay. I have you.” West’s arms tightened around her, and Ani wanted to scream.
She wanted her husband to hold her like this, and he never could again.
He never could again.
That was the thought that broke her.
Since Jett and Mara died, she’d been running, one step ahead of the tsunami-force wave that was right on her heels. If she stopped, she would have to realize she was not passing time until her husband and baby were home again. They never would be.
Ani scrambled for something, anything to distract her, but there was nothing. The world had collapsed to that moment. The inescapable truth had her bound tight, her eyes forced open, her head held in place so she couldn’t look away.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard West’s urgent voice. He was talking but not to her. Then his voice was soft, the sound coaxing though she couldn’t process the words. He was taking her somewhere, half dragging her. There was a quiet snick of a door closing, and then his voice in her ear. “Let it go, Ani. It’s okay. Just let it go.”
Turning her head so her face was buried against his shirt she screamed. Even muffled, it was a terrible sound filled with an agony she didn’t comprehend despite being the one living it. There was no reason in that sound. It was animalistic and deranged, lacking any semblance of humanity. And she felt that—less than human. She was incapable of rationality.
All this time, she’d been trying to keep moving until she could live with this pain, but it was impossible. She couldn’t survive losing the person who’d known her most, loved her best. How could she contemplate days and months and years and decades without his smile, his humor, his arms around her? He was brilliant and fascinating and he loved her. They were partners. They had planned a whole life together, and now it was just shambles. Wreckage.
That alone should have killed her, but then she’d lost her baby. Her daughter. The precious child they’d loved and cherished even before she was conceived. She was part of their plan, part of their life together. The perfect representation of the beautiful love they shared. Mara’s giggle could make the worst day better. Her tiniest achievement outshone anything Ani had ever managed to accomplish in all her life.
Ani couldn’t be expected to wrap her head around the idea that she wouldn’t get to see Mara grow from a baby to a little girl to a teenager. There was no coping with the fact that her daughter’s life had been robbed, and there was no magic reset button. Game over, little girl. Game over when all Mara had ever experienced was the joy of cookies and the magic of Sesame Street. That was all. That was where her world ended.
Everything was destroyed. Her family was lost to her. Ian hated her. She’d hurt her mother-in-law, hurt Indy. Her blood sister hated her.
What did she have? What on earth kept her breathing?
Minutes or days might have passed before she was conscious enough to wish she’d died with her husband and baby. People died of broken hearts. She’d heard it before. Surely there had to be an end to this.
Let me die. They were the only words she knew at first.
Gradually, though, she became aware of others. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” someone was saying over and over again.
He was rocking her. West was rocking her. They were on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but the cold linoleum floor was nothing compared to the anguish that radiated from the marrow of her bones. He was wrapped around her, his legs bordering hers like parenthesis, his arms around her waist, her head tucked under his chin.
At some point her wild screams became a quiet keening, hardly louder than a whimper. She was limp against him as she cried, exhausted and boneless. Her brain seemed to be pulsating against her skull, and it was difficult to keep her eyes open because even the soft light hurt.
They were in an empty hospital room, she realized. He must have dragged her in here when he saw she was about to lose it. If she had any energy at all, she might have felt embarrassed. She felt, perhaps mercifully, empty.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered after an age. Her voice was nothing but a rasp.
“Don’t be.” He pressed a lingering kiss to the side of her head. It wasn’t a romantic gesture. It was just the mark of a man who cared for the mess of a woman in his arms.
Closing her eyes, Ani rested against him and breathed.
“How are you?” he asked after she’d quieted.
“I don’t know.” She coughed and winced at the way her body ached. Her heart hurt as though it had been physically mangled—ripped from her body, torn to bloody shreds, and pounded into the dirt.
On the other hand, the weight on her shoulders had lessened. She couldn’t quite process any of it, but there was some tiny sense of relief.
Before she could think further than that, there was a knock. Without waiting, the door opened revealing a frantic-looking Raphe.
“Tori’s disappeared.”
Chapter 20: Distance
Tori spent a sleepless night in a hotel room alone.
In the morning, she called Shane. He came without question.
“Ready?” he asked after she’d buckled her seatbelt.
She nodded and waited for the lecture.
And waited.
And waited.
“I could have been kidnapped and sold as a sex slave,” she said, unable to take the silence anymore.
“Yeah, you could have. You scared us.”
“Why? I’m not your responsibility anymore. I disappear of the face of the planet, you can’t get in trouble at work.”
“And yet here I am again. You’re right. I’m not your social worker anymore. There’s nothing in it for me on a professional front. So maybe you should ask yourself if maybe I do it because I care about you.”
Tori crossed her arms. “Look, I know I’m more dependent than I should be. I only have enough money for maybe four nights in a hotel, and that’s if I don’t feed this stupid thing.”
“Or yourself, seeing how you and the stupid thing are connected.” Shane blew out a breath. “It’s not such a bad thing to not be alone. People care about you whether you want to believe it or not.”
“Whatever. Ani is just guilty.” She tightened her arms around herself. “I was going to leave. I could have hitched a ride.”
“To where?”
“Who cares? Somewhere that isn’t here. But I can’t do that because of this thing. I promised I’d keep her fed and safe. Fifteen more weeks with me. I can do that much.”
Shane was quiet for a minute before he spoke again. “And then what?”
Tori didn’t answer.
“Wake up. Ani?”
Ani was disoriented. Her neck was sore. Something was off. “Oh.” She sat up as she remembered what was going on. Tori had been missing all night. West hadn’t left. That was why he was in her living room. Raphe was still there, too.
“Shane will be here in a few minutes,” West said.
“Shane?” She wasn’t quite awake yet.
West sat beside her on the couch. “Tori called him. She’s fine, and he’s picking her up right now.”
Relief bowed Ani’s shoulders, and for the first time in—she checked her watch—fourteen hours, she felt like she could take a deep breath.
Apparently on the same page, Raphe huffed and sat in the arm chair as if his legs had given out. He ru
bbed his eyes with one hand. The tension he’d radiated since he burst into the hospital room the night before eased.
Not for the first time, it occurred to Ani that the boy was in love with her sister. Honest, true love, not the expression of a young man who only had bedroom eyes. There was something to be said about the kind of man who would stick by a girl like Tori. Not that her sister didn’t deserve someone to love her unconditionally, but she didn’t make it easy.
Again, Ani wondered about the baby’s father. She’d had her suspicions about Raphe. Since Tori insisted that the baby’s conception was the result of a consensual act, and he was the only one from her past she kept in contact with, Brooklyn aside, he seemed like the obvious choice.
Ani excused herself to take a quick shower. She didn’t even soap up, just spent five minutes letting the hot water soothe her sore muscles, washing away the vestiges of her anxiety.
West had been amazing the night before. Ani’s breakdown had left her incapable of rational thought, and she’d started to imagine Tori ending up like Jett and Mara—her body lying still in an ever widening pool of blood.
“I can’t lose her now. I can’t lose her,” she’d said to him over and over.
He’d been calm, repeating the things she needed to hear. “She has money, Ani,” he’d said. “She probably just got a room. She needed some space, that’s all.”
Ani leaned her head against the cool tile. She took a deep breath, and then she regrouped.
An hour later, Tori came in the door with Shane. She had exactly two words for everyone—fuck off—before she disappeared upstairs, slamming the door to her room behind her.
The rest of them looked around in awkward silence until Raphe turned on Shane. “Of everyone, why did she call you?”
“Don’t take it personally. It’s what she’s used to,” Shane said. “It’s my job. Any of my kids get in trouble, run off like that, it’s me who gets them back where they’re supposed to be. She knows that.”
“But she’s not your responsibility anymore.”
“I’m neutral to her. It doesn’t mean anything except she needed a bridge back.”
Raphe huffed. Shane patted him on the back and stood. “I’m going to take off.”
“Yeah,” Raphe said, also standing. “I have work in about an hour. I should go home and shower.”
As everyone moved toward the door, West stepped closer to Ani so he could speak into her ear. “I can stay, if you want.”
She managed a smile, feeling a rush of genuine warmth at how sweet he’d been about everything. “I’m fine. Tori’s okay, and that’s what’s important.”
West hesitated a moment before he reached out and took her hand. He tilted his head, catching her gaze and holding it. “You and your sister have a lot in common, you know.”
“How’s that?” she asked, startled by his nearness.
“You think you have to deal with everything on your own. You don’t.” He squeezed her fingers. “If you need to talk, if you need to vent, I’m here, okay?”
Ani found she could only nod, a small jerk of her head.
When the three men were gone the house was too quiet. But if there could be something good about Tori’s consistent drama, at least it gave Ani something to do. She was good at making lists and checking things off them.
Ani made a comfort-food lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for both of them. She carried a tray upstairs, setting it down in front of Tori’s door so she could knock.
“Go away.”
Ani hadn’t deluded herself into thinking this would be easy. “You need to eat something.”
To her surprise, she heard the creak of the floorboards, and then the door flew open. Tori glared, and when she spoke, her tone was dripping with sarcasm. “Well, it’s your house. Your rules.”
She stooped to pick up the tray, but Ani got there first. “I have it.”
Throwing her hands up, Tori retreated to her bed.
Ani scrambled, trying to figure out this newest twist in the game her sister was playing. She carried the tray in and set it on the desk. When Tori didn’t move, Ani brought her plate and bowl over to the nightstand.
Tori said nothing. She continued to stare down at her comforger.
Sitting in the desk chair, Ani cleared her throat. “Okay.” Where to start. “I’m sorry I jumped on you yesterday. Running into Jett’s family was the last thing I expected.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“So, do you still think I’m lying to you about something?”
“What aren’t you lying about?”
“I can’t think of anything I lied to you about. If Indigo . . . Emily told you—”
“She didn’t tell me anything about you. I figured that part all out myself.”
“What is it you think I lied about?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Tori finally looked up. “You said his family wouldn’t let you see them. That’s bullshit, isn’t it?”
Ani furrowed her brow. Of everything her sister could have brought up, no part of her was expecting that. “I . . . what?”
“You said you can’t see them, but that’s not true. It makes sense now. Emily was always asking about you and if you talked about your other family at all. It’s not true they wouldn’t let you see them.”
“I said I couldn’t see them.” The memory of their unexpected meeting sent her head spinning. She rubbed her eyes. “As in I couldn’t deal with it, not that they didn’t let me.”
The reality was the opposite. As of the last time she’d checked, Ian still e-mailed every few weeks. She couldn’t bring herself to look at those messages, but she knew they were there.
“You think it’s supposed to make me feel better you couldn’t handle seeing them?” Tori’s voice rose as she continued. “You know what? You’re beyond fucked-up. You ditched me? Fine. Okay. You were nineteen. Maybe I can understand that. But then you go and do it again? What’s your fucking excuse, huh? Didn’t you learn anything the first time around? You want to sit here and tell me you’re helping me because that’s what family does. Was Emily, Indigo, whatever, not your family? She said that in group. She said she wished she had a big sister. She said her family had lost a lot and maybe she thought having a baby would make them happy again.”
She stood, moving to the corner of the room as if she couldn’t stand to be near Ani. “You ditched me. You ditched them. You think you’re not going to ditch her—” she pressed her hand to her bump “—the next time life gets shitty? Well that’s fucking great. I feel so much better.”
Ani blinked, unable to see past the tears in her eyes. “Tori . . .” she tried, but she didn’t know what to say.
“Just save it. I don’t believe you.” Her shoulders hunched, and she slumped against the wall. “Can you go away? Please? I really have nothing to say to you right now.”
Chapter 21: Heaven
The day she came home after spending a night by herself, she’d sent Emily a text.
Are you okay?
She received back a picture—a tired, flushed-looking Emily with a tiny baby in a green knit cap in her arms.
We’re fine.
And a few seconds later.
I’m sorry.
Tori didn’t respond. She considered deleting the picture.
She hardly left her room for a week.
Every evening when she came home from work, Ani knocked on her door. She left dinner in the hallway. “I’m here when you’re ready to talk.”
Tori would be ready when it hailed in hell. In the hierarchy of people she was pissed at, Ani reigned supreme.
After a week of ignoring everyone except Brook, Tori decided she wasn’t angry at Raphe. He hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened in the hospital. Sure, it was his fault so much of her life was run by the parasite, but he didn’t know that. He’d been nice to her.
He was always nice to her.
Besides, he was also useful. He was a supervisor. Maybe he could help her find a job. Then by the time the baby was born, she might at least have a plan.
She dropped by Raphe’s house on a night when she knew his mother was out. He needled her only a little for her silence, then informed her the next time she threw a world-class hissy fit and didn’t tell anyone she was safe, they were going to have words.
“I’m being reasonable here. I’m not saying you can’t have hissy fits. I’m just saying give me a call, a text. Let me know you’re in one piece and not being eaten by rabid dogs.”
“Or else what?”
He tilted his head so his face was only a few inches from hers. When had he gotten so close? “Or else someone’s getting a spanking,” he said.
It was his straight expression that killed her. She tried not to laugh and failed. “You can’t hit a pregnant woman.”
“Don’t exaggerate.” He pulled her into a hug. “You did scare me.”
She rested her head on his chest. “I didn’t know you’d be so worried.”
He pulled back, catching her face between his hands. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
His face was close again, and she wanted to kiss him. It was impossible not to want to kiss him when his lips looked so soft and his eyes sparked with something that sent a shiver down her spine. He was a good kisser. At least, that’s what Tori thought it meant when the press of his lips to hers made her dizzy and the way he urged her mouth open, teasing her with his tongue, made her knees weak.
Tori shook her head, pushing away the visceral memory. She stumbled back a step and tried to remember what the heck she was about to say.
They ended up in his room, Tori lying on her side at the bottom of the bed, Raphe with his back against the wall on the other end. She babbled about possible jobs, hinting she would even take a job from him if he could swing it. She assured him she was joking. Mostly.
“Tor, are you out of your mind?”
“What do you mean? You think it’s crazy for me to work?”
“Is that really all you want for yourself?”
Finding Purgatory Page 17
