When I'm Gone_A heart-wrenching romance story that will make you believe in true love

by Jaxson Kidman

  I reached up and touched his face. “I wouldn’t be here without you. Please know that, Kace. You make me…”

  “Darlin’, I’m going to ask you again. What do you want to do right now?”

  “I want to go,” I whispered. “I want to see her. I want to hear what she has to say. I want to know what she has for me.”

  “Good. Then go. Don’t fear anything. This is your life right now. You control it. Nobody else does.”

  “Kace, I want you there with me,” I said. “I was there when your demons came back to haunt you. I watched the way your father was. It broke my heart for you. Not him. So I want you to see this. To be there for it.”

  Without hesitation, Kace nodded. “Of course, darlin’. I will be there for anything you need. Ever.”

  He inched back to walk away, but I moved toward him.

  We could leave in a little while.

  First, I just wanted him to hold me.

  I never really understood how it all happened after the accident. I was at the hospital for one night to get checked out and then I was sent home with my grandmother. She had to take on the task of planning the funeral for my mother, which I knew wasn’t easy for her. Even if their relationship was strained, my mother was still her daughter.

  The first week or two I spent all my time in my bedroom, trying to figure it out. Trying to understand what had happened. Sometimes at night I used to dream about the accident. It was usually one of two dreams. The first being a dream where I’d stopped the car from crashing. Sure, my mother would have yelled at me and slapped me, but she’d be alive. The second dream was of the accident itself. Living through it again and again. Sometimes it was just the silence of being upside down. Sometimes it was my mother talking to me, even though she was dead.

  Night after night I would wake up, sweating and crying, scared, but never bothered my grandmother because she was either sleeping or on the phone with someone, crying over the death of her daughter. The tears always seemed to suddenly stop when the phone call ended, but I never had the nerve to ask her if she was faking it. There was a side and wrath to her that not many people knew about. The most ironic - or sad - part of the situation was that the only person that I could possible relate to then was my mother. But she was gone, remember? Long gone. Everything she did for me had been wrong, right up until she crashed the car. I heard my grandmother talking one time saying that the way the car crashed, my mother had taken the brunt of the force. That it was a miracle the way the car had ended up so I was able to walk away.

  “Right there,” I said to Kace, pointing, as I broke up the million memories that were trying to let themselves free.

  The house was just as I remembered. Nothing ever changed. A two story powder blue house with two sets of large windows on the first floor and single set of windows on the second. The yard was kept clean, the bushes trimmed, red and purple flowers bloomed from two hanging baskets on the porch.

  It looked like a nice and quiet place to live, the complete opposite of the house where Kace grew up. But that was the thing. The exterior meant nothing. The exterior was just the basis of outside judgment. A sense of hell was inside the house, just like the sense of hell that existed inside Kace’s childhood home.

  He reached for my hand and squeezed it after parking the truck. “We don’t have to be here, darlin’. You say the word to me and we drive away.”

  “No. We have to be here. Come with me.”

  “All the way to the door and inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Kace said. “But before that, I need you to know something. I love you for who you are right now. Nothing in the past matters, or ever will. You’ve done something to me, Sienna. You’ve made me want to look at the future. And when I look in that direction, all I see is you.”

  I smiled.

  I needed the smile.

  We exited the truck and Kace stood by my side, holding my hand, walking right up to the house.

  I rang the doorbell to the place that was once home for me.

  I stood on the concrete porch and looked around, the memories prickling the back of my neck like a cold breeze.

  The door slowly opened and there she was.

  Standing a few inches shorter than I remembered. Heavier too. Her hair mostly white and messy. A thin, clear tube hooked around her ears and rounding under her nose.

  Oxygen.

  Her eyes were dark and mean looking. She was the not a kind, sweet hearted old woman. Never had been and never would be. Her face was aged and sunken, and she stood there, mouth open, taking deep breaths that sounded very labored.

  She pushed at the screen door and exhaled in a rough voice. “Sienna. I didn’t know you were bringing company.”

  “This is Kace,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend,” she said and looked at him. “You have a job?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You have a car?”

  “A truck.”

  “You have a prison record?”

  “I’ve always been faster than the cops.”

  My grandmother’s eyes went wide. “God help you both then.”

  “You called me,” I said. “After all these years…”

  “Do you want to come in for a minute?”

  Kace put a hand to my lower back. He was my support.

  I stepped forward and into the house.

  It had the same smell to it. A hint of dust mixed with the smell of last night’s dinner. The same dining room table was to my right, which then gave way to the kitchen. I wondered how many times people had actually sat at that table in the last decade.

  My heart twisted a little. I started to feel bad for her. Being alone.

  “Brought you here for something,” she said as she hobbled with an oxygen tank wheeling behind her. “Should’ve done this a long time ago.”

  She pointed to a small box on the dining room table.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You look at it when you leave here.”

  I moved forward, away from Kace.

  Beyond the entrance and to the left was the living room. Everything was completely the same. The table, the couch, the chair, the TV, the clock on wall, the random water stains on the ceiling in the corner from when the tub leaked one time.

  It was like stepping into a time warp for me.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to us,” I blurted out, figuring that this was probably my last chance to say it.

  My grandmother stopped and turned, reaching for a chair for balance. She took a couple of labored breaths.

  “Right. You’re sorry. Because I called and because I’m dying.”

  “When you say dying…”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, Sienna,” she snapped at me. “Dying is dying. I don’t have much time. This oxygen isn’t worth a damn. My body is shutting down. I’ll be gone before you know it.”

  “I don’t…”

  “What do you want?” she asked. “You want the full diagnosis? You want the outlook? You want to know what’s happening? Why? It doesn’t matter to you. This situation never worked out.”

  “Situation?” I asked. “You were supposed to raise me.”

  “And I did. You had a roof. You had food.”

  “I didn’t have love,” I said. “I didn’t know how to be around you. I didn’t know who you were.”

  “I protected you, Sienna,” she growled. “So you didn’t turn out like your mother. Remember that.”

  “Like my mother,” I said. “She was afraid of you.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? You drove her away. You drove me away. You put her in a place where…”

  My grandmother lifted her hand and shook her finger. “Don’t you blame me for what your mother decided to do. Did you come here for that? Is that what you’ve wanted to say to me all these years?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Because you never talked about it. You never talked about anything unless it involved you. I
f we were in front of other people, it was okay to miss your daughter. But here, it was forgotten. I was forgotten.”

  “You survived just fine,” she said. “And when you got old enough, it was time to leave. And you left. Look at you. You’re doing fine.”

  “Fine?” I asked. I felt the old anger start to creep up. “You don’t know anything about me. Or how I grew up with her. The way I took care of my mother. I did the job you gave up on.”

  “Then maybe you should have been driving the car that night.”

  That was cold. And it stung my heart hard.

  My grandmother turned her head away.

  I collected myself, barely, and walked to the table.

  “You wanted me to have this?” I asked. “A box. That’s what my life has been reduced to.”

  “That’s the truth,” my grandmother said. “Maybe then you’ll understand everything.” She looked at me. “I was beyond the parenting years to have a child, Sienna. Your grandfather was the one who took the burden from me for years. When he passed, I felt alone and lost. Your mother turned into this rebellious… thing… I didn’t know what she was or what to do. And then she took off. Came back with you. I thought she could fix herself, but she never did.”

  “You terrified her,” I said. “You left her broken and scared. Just like me.”

  “Don’t project that on me,” she said. She coughed and touched her chest. “It’s your damn life, not mine.”

  “You used me,” I said. “My mother’s death and all the decisions leading up to it were things for you to talk about. I was the pity project for you. And when I got old enough to ask questions, you got angry and kicked me out.”

  “You left,” she said.

  “You told me to leave.”

  “So that’s the moment you decided to finally listen to me? You sound like your mother now.” Her eyes went to Kace. “And maybe your taste in men is the same. Can’t wait to see how messed up he makes things for you.”

  I gasped.

  “You know nothing about him,” I said. “And if you did, you’d know how much he cares about me. And takes care of me. And is there for me.”

  “It’s okay,” Kace said.

  “See? He says it’s okay. That means he knows the truth. Take your box and leave, Sienna. Let me die in peace.”

  “Die in peace?” I asked. “That’s what you want? To die bitter and alone? With all these made up stories in your head about life?”

  My grandmother hobbled back and leaned toward the table. She punched at the black box.

  “Just take it and leave.”

  “Thank you for taking care of me,” I said. “You took me in. You didn’t expect it. Who would? I tried my best to stay out of your way and your path of destruction. Sometimes I wish my mother had told me about it. Maybe I could have helped her. Maybe I could have helped you. But I was a kid. And anyone who doesn’t remember that is a bad person. I was just a kid. A kid with her mother… drunk. In a car. Speeding around a turn. I wanted to reach for her and tell her to slow, but I licked my lips and remembered that the last time I did that, she smacked me.”

  “Stop this,” my grandmother said. “Stop right now.”

  “So I didn’t do anything,” I said. “And I knew in my heart that the car was going to crash. It was going to crash. My young mind didn’t understand the full impact of what I was thinking. Do you realize that I hoped for the crash… and that it would be a wake-up call. I should have been playing with dolls. Or toys. Or something that a normal kid plays with…”

  My voice cracked a little.

  I cleared my throat.

  Kace moved toward me and slipped his hand into mine.

  “I’m okay,” I said without looking at him. I felt taller, stronger and ready for whatever was going to happen. “The car crashed and I was upside down. She was in the car with me. Drunk. Dead. Gone.”

  “Shut up, Sienna,” my grandmother said. “Just shut up. She chose that life from such a young age. I had to learn to be a widow and a single mother. And she did nothing to help me with that.”

  “Was it because you flaunted your husband’s death for attention?”

  My grandmother looked at me and I saw tears in her eyes. They looked like real tears. For once.

  “What does it matter now?” she asked in a low voice. “Everyone is gone. And so what if I chased you away? You became something of yourself. I was told two months ago by doctors that I only had a short time left. I can’t call up my daughter and talk to her. I can’t call up my husband and talk to him. But I can call you and I did.”

  “And that’s it?” I asked. “That’s how you want to die?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Take that box and leave. Take the memories. Take the thoughts. Take whatever you want from this house and go. Because it’ll all be gone for good soon.”

  I felt tears build in my eyes.

  I did not expect some happy ending moment here. All my grandmother was doing was showing the true side that I had lived with for years.

  My hand moved over the box and lifted it. “Well, thank you for this then.”

  “No,” Kace said. “Not yet.”

  “Excuse me?” my grandmother said. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “The notebook,” Kace said. “Her notebook. With the drawings and poems and stuff. Where is it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kace, don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “If you really want to keep this up, that’s fine,” he said to my grandmother. “This wall. This guard. But I don’t believe it. You have everything. All the memories. All the pictures. Everything.”

  “Get the hell out of my house,” my grandmother said. “I’ll call the police.”

  “Come on, Kace,” I said. “Stop…”

  “I’m not moving,” he said. “You know where that notebook is. I bet you’ve read it a hundred times. You know how beautiful Sienna is. How important her heart is. Get that notebook for her and we’ll leave.”

  “Kace…” I growled at him.

  My grandmother reached for the oxygen tube and ripped it off her face. She started to walk, very labored, out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  I looked up at Kace. His face was serious. Really serious.

  I fell in love with him even more.

  “You deserve this,” he whispered to me. “Whatever happens here, you deserve this.”

  My grandmother returned a minute later with the notebook.

  I put a hand over my mouth. It was a dumb notebook with so much dumb stuff in it. But it mattered to me. It was something that comforted me through the worst times of my life. Through the loneliest times. The confusing times.

  “Here,” she said. “Take it.”

  “Thank you for keeping this,” I said, my voice breaking up again.

  “You got what you wanted, Sienna. Now you can leave.”

  I looked at her. The old, broken woman. The dying woman. I watched her wrestle to put her oxygen back on again. I watched her stand there, holding the back of a dining room table chair with both hands, catching her breath.

  “I’m not going to just leave and let this go,” I said. “I’m going to call you. I’m going to check on you. Whether you like it or not.”

  “There’s nothing here for you,” she said. “I’m not worth a dime. The house isn’t worth a damn.”

  “It’s not about money,” I said. “Maybe you’ll never understand that.”

  “Just leave,” she said.

  She turned and walked toward the den room. It had six windows across the back wall and overlooked the backyard and out to the mountain. It was my favorite room in the house. But I didn’t follow her.

  I’d said what I said to her. I showed my respect by showing up when she asked me.

  “Ready?” Kace asked.

  “I’m more than ready,” I said.

  We walked to his truck and he opened the door for me. I held myself together.

  Pro
ud. Strong.

  I stared forward with the black box and the notebook on my lap. The only two pieces of my childhood left. The rest was gone. Just like that house had burned down into ashes and hurt Kace, I felt the same had happened to me.

  I stayed proud and strong too.

  All the way back to Kace’s apartment.

  There was comfort there. Really intense comfort.

  He shut the door behind us and locked it.

  I turned and dropped everything out of my hands.

  “Darlin’,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I fell forward, into his strong arms, and let myself go.

  My body ached with anger and grief. I felt like someone was squeezing my heart and twisting, wanting to rip it out.

  But I had Kace.

  The man who’d saved me and loved me.

  “I’m right here, Sienna,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  That was a relief to hear.

  Even though it was going to be me who was going somewhere…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Letters From a Broken Man

  Kace

  The box was full of letters from her father to her mother. Handwritten, scribbled letters from him during several stints in rehab. The letters of a man destroyed by life and addiction. I sat on the couch next to Sienna as she read the letters, passing them to me when she was done. It meant a lot that she trusted me to read such private items of her life.

  “I never knew this,” she whispered. “I mean, I knew he was gone and all that. That when my mother got pregnant he said he didn’t want to be a father. So it wasn’t like he was there or anything, you know?”

  I nodded. I appreciated my own silence in everything, letting Sienna work through everything that had happened. And everything that would happen.

  She opened the next letter and started to scan the page.

  Then she read some of the letter.

  “… I haven’t touched anything in weeks. But I can’t come home to you yet. I have it figured out in my head and I know she must have been born by now. I write she because I had this dream of a little girl. A girl that kind of looks like me. Big eyes. Right? My bug eyes. Remember you used to tease me about that? Everyone always did. But I had this dream about a daughter. And I was holding her in my arms. You were sleeping after a rough night. You were beautiful, Marcy. So beautiful. I mean, you still are. You always will be. I can’t stop obsessing over the calendar. They tell me it’s not healthy, but I tell them why. I know she’s been born. I know she’s here in this world. I feel… I feel good. I feel like a father…”