by TJ Klune
But he wasn’t stepping back. He wasn’t trying to get away from David. He reached up and pulled a chain out from under the sweatshirt, the metal thin and silver.
At the end of it was the matching gold ring.
Olive juice too was engraved on the inside.
She’d been so tickled at the sight of them when she’d seen the rings for the first time. She had laughed, head rocking back, clapping her hands in front of her. “And it’s secret!” she’d squealed. “It’s on the inside and it’s secret!” And then they’d asked if her she would be doing the honor of being the most important part of the wedding by wearing the prettiest dress ever made for a little girl and tossing flower petals for them. And the look on her face when they asked her, the look of joy had been a moment so heartbreakingly sweet that when she’d burst into happy tears a moment later, they were shocked into inaction, just sitting there, watching their daughter sob about how she couldn’t wait to be a flower girl, that she was so excited.
And when they’d been standing in front of their friends in the backyard, she’d been a little shy, standing on top of their feet, pulling on her daddy’s pant leg while he was reciting his vows, asking him if they were almost done because she was hungry, standing on her papa’s shoes, asking him why he was crying, was he all right? And when they’d brought out those rings, she’d shrieked in delight, screaming at everyone that there was a secret on the rings that no one but them would ever know about.
Then they’d kissed.
She’d demanded kisses too.
They gave her all the kisses, of course.
How could they not?
She’d grinned at them on the Metro when they were making it “like, for real, for real,” tossing flowers onto the train, some people grinning at her, some people glaring, but her not giving two shits. She was hollering that her dads were gettin’ hitched, they were tying the knot, and they’d kept the same rings, of course, because olive juice and olive juice too. Their secret code that no one else knew.
She’d said it, sometimes.
On the phone.
When she left the house.
In a text.
Not always. Most of the time it was I love you, Daddy, or love you, Papa, but every now and then, she would just look at them, like she couldn’t believe they were hers, and she’d lean over, a funny little smile on her face, the one that reminded David achingly of Phillip, and she’d whisper, “Olive juice,” and they’d whisper back, “Olive juice too.”
It was on the ring in Phillip’s hand.
It was on the ring on a chain around his neck.
“You left,” Phillip said. “You left me.”
“You told me to,” David said hoarsely. “You told me I had to go.”
“I was angry.”
“I know.”
“You said horrible things, David. You said terrible things to me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, can I have it back? Please don’t take it from me. Please, Phillip. Please, can I have it back? Oh, please, oh, please.”
Phillip looked away, making a wounded noise deep in his throat, like he was trying to swallow down a sob. He shook his head, but he didn’t move away, and so David tried not to take that too badly. His eyes kept going to the ring on the chain and he wanted to touch it, to make sure it was real and that he wasn’t dreaming. Because he didn’t think he could stand it if he was here this moment, and the next he’d open his eyes in the shitty apartment on the fucking futon that hurt his back, the walls bare, the hall closet filled with gifts he bought for his daughter who had been taken against her will by someone almost six years before.
And then Phillip’s hand was in his and the ring was too, and David sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear his mind, trying to hold on desperately to the last little pieces of himself. He clutched the ring, and they stood together, chests bumping, cheeks scraping.
But then David took a step back. Phillip didn’t stop him, only watched him as he slid the ring back right where it’d belonged, right where it’d been since the day they’d been married the first time. He felt slightly better, a little more himself, more than he had since he’d taken it off outside the hotel. He wiped his face, tears still on his cheeks, and he didn’t trust himself to speak, knowing his voice would crack more than it already had.
“Why,” Phillip asked him. “Why, David?”
He shook his head, not yet composed.
“Please?” Phillip asked, and goddamn him.
“Why what?”
“Why do you still have that?”
And Phillip had called him a stupid man. “I told you. It’s the only thing I have left of both of you. You can’t take that away from me. I won’t let you.”
Phillip watched him for a moment. Then, “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you, buddy.”
“Okay.”
“David?”
He was exhausted. “Yeah.”
“Can you stay with me? Here?”
David didn’t dare ask if he meant now or forever, already nodding even before Phillip finished his question. “Yes. Anything. Yes.”
His face was sore, his eyes felt like they had sand in them. And he was rooted where he stood as Phillip moved toward the bed, stepping around him. He pulled back the comforter, bumping into David, who took a step back.
Phillip climbed into the bed on the right side, and David knew what his next step was, knew what was to be expected of him, but he couldn’t make himself move. He couldn’t find the strength to take those last little steps.
He watched as Phillip sniffled, pulling the comforter up to his chest, leaning back against the pillow, ring resting on his chest. A long few seconds ticked by before Phillip looked up at him and asked, “Are you coming to bed?”
Please don’t let this be a dream, he thought.
He walked around the bed to his side.
He pulled back the comforter.
He got in.
He breathed.
He lived.
He ached.
He died a little death as he sank into the mattress, because it was so good, it felt so good and he never wanted to move again. He hoped Phillip wouldn’t make him. Granted, nothing had been resolved and everything was still up in the air, but he hoped Phillip would just let him stay here, in their bed, so he could sleep and pretend, at least for a little while, that everything was okay.
He turned on his side facing Phillip.
Phillip did the same.
They were twentysomethings again, in their shirts and underwear, asking about aliens and colors and Snap! with waffles.
They were thirtysomething again, in sleep pants and tank tops, and she was there too, and she was reading them a story out of one of her books, about a happy bunny named Mr. Fluff.
They were fortysomething again, in shorts and shirts, and she was between them, wiping her eyes, telling them she didn’t know why she was so upset about what that stupid girl had said about her, they weren’t even friends.
They were older men now, David reaching out and holding Phillip’s secret ring so that it scraped against David’s own. They didn’t speak for the longest time, and David thought maybe it was his turn to talk first. That he should be the one to say what needed to be said. He was scared. He thought maybe it was the scariest thing he’d ever done. But Phillip had still worn his ring, so David thought he could be brave too.
He said, “I feel guilty. Every time I smile. Not that I do it that much anymore. But I do. Feel guilty.”
Phillip narrowed his eyes a little. “Why?”
“Because,” David said, voice breaking. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Because, I think… it’s… A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail. It was from—you know what? I don’t even remember who it was from. It—that doesn’t matter. I was reading it, and there was something stupid in it, and I laughed. I laughed, and after, I thought it might have been the worst thing I’d ever done. That I was just spitting on her and her mem
ory. Because I was laughing.” He took a deep breath and let it out slow. Phillip’s hand covered his that held the rings, holding it tightly. “She was gone, and here I was, sitting in front of a computer, laughing at an e-mail I’d gotten. Like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.”
“That’s not—”
“Just—let me. Let me finish, okay?”
Phillip nodded, blinking rapidly. He sniffled again.
“Every time I smile, every time I laugh, I think I’m doing something wrong. Because I didn’t—I have a daughter. I have a daughter and I lost her and I don’t know where she went. I don’t know what happened to her. I am a parent, and I lost my child, and who am I to smile? Who am I to laugh? I failed her, Phillip. I failed her, and I sometimes, I can’t even breathe at the thought of it.”
“You didn’t,” Phillip said roughly, voice thick with tears. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t—”
“She’s gone,” he croaked out. “Phillip, our baby girl is gone. I can’t—I’m not—where did she go? Why did she leave? Why did she have to—” He was gasping now, losing the thread he was desperately trying to follow, and Phillip was squeezing his hand tightly, so much so that he thought his fingers might break. But Phillip’s ring was digging into his palm, and it hurt, but it was a good hurt, and he was here. He was really, really here. Like, for real, for real, and she was laughing in his head, she was laughing, because this is for real, for real, silly Daddy. Silly Papa. This is for real, for real.
He cried then.
He was a sap.
This much was known.
But since March 22, 2012, the day Alice Marie Greengrass vanished, her father, David Greengrass, had cried exactly twice.
The first time he’d cried had been two weeks after she’d disappeared, the days before a storm of police, frantic searches, interviews, and sleepless nights. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he found himself in the laundry room, thinking that he might as well get something done before the sun came up and he could head out again. Phillip was sleeping upstairs, having taken an Ambien.
He was standing in front of the washer and dryer, sorting the pile of clothes in front of him. His hands were shaking. He was exhausted, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, and he just couldn’t. He knew Phillip was worried about him, knew that it wouldn’t be long before he intervened, but for now, he was drugged and asleep in their bed, and David was downstairs, unaware of what was about to hit.
He lifted a pair of jeans up from the pile of clothes and just… stopped.
Because they weren’t his jeans, no. They weren’t Phillip’s.
For one, they were too small.
Too skinny.
Too feminine.
He tried to breathe.
He found that he couldn’t.
He tried to set them down.
To turn around and leave.
To forget that he’d ever seen them.
But he couldn’t move.
And it was so stupid, that it would come to this. That he’d been so stoic to the police and to the news media, Phillip tucked at his side, crying into his shoulder. Yeah, there’d been that clip that had been played over and over online where his voice broke when he’d said, “If you have her, please. Please. I beg of you. Please let her come home. Please let our d-d-daughter come home.” He’d almost made it through, but then he’d gotten stuck on that word—daughter—and it was shown again and again and again. How sad, everyone said. That’s just so sad. At least it didn’t happen to me.
Phillip had cried. Phillip had cried almost every day.
David had not.
Until these jeans. These stupid jeans that he always gave Alice shit for, because he’d been there when she’d gotten them. He’d bought them for her, and she’d said, “Daddy, how do these look?” when she’d come out of the dressing room. And he had frowned and said, “Those don’t leave much to the imagination, do they?” She had glared at him and said that she wasn’t going to wear no goddamn mom jeans, no sir, and that she liked the way she felt when she wore them.
“Sure, sweetheart,” he’d said. “And I bet all the punk-ass boys like the way they feel when you wear them too.”
She’d grinned at him, so much like Phillip that David would have argued to anyone that she was theirs, theirs, theirs.
They’d been expensive. He’d almost choked when the girl behind the counter had read the total, and Alice had turned her big eyes toward her father, and she’d said, “Daddy. Listen. I’m about to graduate high school. I’m going to college. I’ve never gotten high. I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve earned this.”
“Yes,” he’d said dryly. “Because going to college and not doing drugs or murdering someone justifies two-hundred-dollar jeans.”
“Glad we agree. Daddy, she needs your credit card. Don’t be rude.”
So of course he did.
It was for Alice, after all.
Eleven months later she was gone.
And two weeks after that, he was holding the damn jeans in the middle of the laundry room in the middle of the night, and right before the dam burst, right before he struggled to breathe as he made the most broken of noises, he had the time to think, oh sweetheart, where are you?
And then he split right down the middle.
Phillip found him the next morning, sleeping fitfully, face still wet, lying on the laundry room floor, clutching a pair of jeans in his hands.
The second time had been the day he’d said those terrible things to Phillip, shredding what they had left into the tiniest of pieces. He didn’t like to think about that day.
And here, now, he cried. For the third time since he’d received a phone call from a kid named Digger at 3:37 on a spring afternoon in March of 2012, David cried.
But this was different than it’d been before.
He’d been alone then.
Now?
Now he broke in the arms of his husband who he hadn’t seen in almost eight months before this late night. His husband, who David had been convinced would have him served with divorce paperwork any day now. His husband, who David had missed almost as much as he’d missed their daughter. There had been nights when, instead of thinking, What is Alice doing right now? he’d thought instead, What is Phillip doing right now? He’d imagined him sitting in front of the TV, legs tucked under him like he did when he wasn’t planning on moving for a while. Or he imagined him in the bookstore, smiling at his customers, glancing every now and then at the poster in the front window that asked HAVE YOU SEEN HER? with a photo of a beautiful smiling young woman underneath.
This was different.
This was different because his face was pressed against a familiar chest, and he was breaking apart, shattering like the thinnest glass, but there were arms wrapped tightly around him, and there was a voice in his ear, and for the longest time, he couldn’t make out what it was saying over the sounds of his sobs, but eventually he heard. Eventually, he heard his husband.
Phillip said, “Oh, honey. Oh, baby. Oh, David. David. David. Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay. Shh shh shh. Honey, I need you to listen to me. Baby, can you do that? David. Shh. Listen to me. She loves you. Wherever she is, she loves you. And I promise you, we won’t stop until we find—until we find something. Maybe it’ll be good. Maybe it won’t. But you have to know she loves you. She doesn’t blame you. You did not fail her. I didn’t fail her. We made mistakes, my love. We made mistakes because we’re human, but Alice… oh, David. Alice was the best thing we’ve ever done, and if the time we had is all we’ll get, if those nineteen years were it, then we made them the best years we could. We loved her. With everything we had. We still do. We always will. And she knew that then. And she knows it now. Just like she knew that all she had to do was turn those eyes on us and she’d get whatever she wanted. She was ours, David. She is ours. I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I’m sorry for saying she was gone. I—I want to believe. I want to believe that one day, she’ll walk in that door and
say she was sorry. She was sorry, but that she’d just gotten a little lost, but now she was home, now she was home and she w-wasn’t g-g-going to l-l-leave us again—”
David kissed Phillip, again and again, both of them choking on their tears.
They breathed.
They ached.
They lived.
And there were these little deaths, okay? These little deaths that ripped through them, tearing open festering and rotten wounds, exposing them open to the air around them. They bled as they held on to each other, bled profusely, waiting for the storm to pass.
It took its time.
But eventually, like all things, it did.
The kisses were softer, less frantic.
The tears lessened.
They hurt, a raw, sensitive electric shock that felt like exposed nerves.
And maybe it would never go away. Maybe there would always be this hole inside of them. The not knowing. The mystery. The secret.
But.
They lay side by side, hands clasped between the two of them, neither wanting to let the other go.
Phillip said, “Do you know why? Why I wanted to see you?”
David thought he did. But he asked, “Why?”
Phillip kissed the back of David’s hand. “Because I love you. Because I miss you. Because I lost her, and I don’t want to lose you too.”
David swallowed thickly, the words stuck in his throat again. This time, though, he forced them out. “Everything I said. Everything I did. That day. When I left. I—”
“It’s okay. David, it’s—”
He shook his head furiously. “No. It’s not. It was never okay. No one deserves to hear something like that. Especially you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I never meant it. I never meant any of it.”
Phillip smiled that funny little smile, though it was brittle. “I know.”
And David believed him. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Um. I love you too. So.”
“You better.”
Their eyes were starting to droop.
