Not having her around to share in her happiness was painful.
Eventually, her mind settled on Dylan’s face and her heart ached painfully in her chest. How she wished he could have been present at the birth of their son. His love would have added another layer of bliss to the great measure she already felt.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Though it saddened Elizabeth that Dylan didn’t love her, she didn’t resent him. She understood his demons despite her own happy childhood.
The nurse returned with Riley Junior – who would become RJ in less than twenty-four hours – and she embraced the warmth and smell of the tiny boy as she wrapped him in her arms.
“You are loved. You are appreciated. You are welcomed into my world. I’m so glad you’re here, darling. We’re going to have fun together. I can’t wait to show you everything.”
* * *
Once they were home, Elizabeth spent her days bonding with her child. Maternity leave took care of the remainder of the school year and then summer started.
RJ was an amazing baby. He rarely cried and slept peacefully for several hours at a time. Breastfeeding initially made her nervous since she didn’t have much going on there to speak of but he didn’t seem to notice.
She planned to wean him when she went back to work but in the meantime, it added depth to their mother/son relationship that she hadn’t expected.
She showered her son with love and attention, reading to him, holding long conversations as if he understood every word, and showing him photos of Nana.
Though she didn’t know many popular song lyrics, she sang him some of the hymns she’d learned at various churches when she was little, rhymes she used in her classroom, and show tunes she and Nana used to sing while they made quilts.
When he was tucked into his crib at night, Elizabeth and either or both of her friends would sing You’ve Got a Friend In Me. Their voices were awful but she thought the sentiment was perfect.
In the back of her mind, always, was the hardship and pain that his father and older brother had experienced.
RJ received all the love she had for him as well as the love she hadn’t been able to give Dylan and Davis.
Perhaps one day, he would be healed enough to meet their little boy. Until then, she focused all her energy on making sure RJ’s life was filled with light and love.
For the first time, Elizabeth found that she was truly happy and it was spectacular.
Chapter Thirteen
Four years later…
Elizabeth loved her son, loved her friends, and loved her job. Every year, she grew into the woman she was meant to be and the pain of her losses faded gradually.
Just as Nana had done with her, she took RJ with her when she visited homebound friends, volunteered at the soup kitchen, and introduced him to most of the churches and charities in their little part of the world.
Riley and Donovan doted on their godson and usually talked Elizabeth into monthly trips to the city to tour museums, walk children’s fairs, or take in a G-rated Broadway musical.
More often than she would admit to anyone, she wondered about Dylan.
When he entered her thoughts repeatedly for weeks, she’d send Hollow an email and he would assure her that all was well.
Shortly after they left New York, Davis’s last name was legally changed to Lang and the courts severed all parental rights of his biological mother.
Donna was sentenced to ten years in prison for the crimes she’d committed against her child.
Ten years was nothing for what she’d done.
As she closed up her classroom for another summer break, Elizabeth’s favorite couple in the world poked their head around the door.
Riley wiggled his eyebrows. “Are you ready for a weekend of fun and fabulous?”
“Terrified,” she shot back with a wink.
“We’re having RJ measured for a tailored suit.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Whatever for? You just bought him one last month!”
“For our wedding.”
Her eyes went wide and she rushed across the room to hug them tightly. “Congratulations! I wondered when you’d get around to this…it’s been almost a decade. I’m so happy!”
Donovan tweaked her chin. “We’re getting married on our tenth anniversary, darling. With so many marriages failing – and with far more stress and pressure as a gay couple – we agreed that if we made it through ten years, we’d make it through anything.”
“Excellent plan and I love it.” She went back and forth, hugging one, then the other for a long time. They wiped her tears and kissed her entire face. “Ugh! I’m such a sap! Let’s go pick RJ up from the park. Dani and Olive were able to take him today since we finally had a break in the rain.”
Shrugging off the light sweater she wore inside the school, she dropped it in her bag and straightened her green dress shirt. She stepped out of her low heels and changed into her running shoes. The form-fitting slacks immediately looked casual.
Miss T, BiBi, and her two best friends had helped her define a fitted but casual look that worked with her busy lifestyle. She might never be a glamour kitten but she always looked well put together.
The three of them headed toward the same park where she’d first discovered an unconscious Dylan and where he’d given Elizabeth her first kiss.
She still ran through it several times a week.
They talked about the upcoming wedding and she asked a hundred questions. Riley informed her that all of them would take their honeymoon trip together in October.
Elizabeth laughed until she realized he was serious.
“You’re kidding? No, we’re not going on your honeymoon. As if you need a spinster and her son tagging along while you celebrate your recent nuptials. I think not. We’ll take a trip together during the summer. You will take a million photos and bring us back tacky souvenirs. ”
Donovan bumped her with his hip. “You’re going. You can pick out your own tacky souvenirs.”
She started to respond when a small pickup truck shot past them. The young driver was texting and going far too fast on the narrow street within a couple of blocks of the park where so many of the local children played.
Shaking her head, she hissed, “Where are the police? This time of day, I see teenagers on their phones constantly. They aren’t even looking at the…”
There was a horrible crash then an awful grinding sound.
“Oh my god, I hope he didn’t hurt anyone.” Elizabeth took off running in the direction the truck had gone. She was far faster than her friends were.
Forty feet ahead, she saw the truck that passed them up on the curb, one of the front tires was still spinning. The grinding sound was a piece of the undercarriage scraping against a busted parking meter. The driver was holding his head and moaning.
She started in his direction when she saw a wheelchair in the middle of the street. Her heart felt as though it stopped in her chest. She put on a burst of speed and detoured off the sidewalk.
The sight in front of her wasn’t registering.
Nothing made sense to the rational section of her mind.
Just beyond the overturned chair, Olive’s granddaughter Dani lay crumpled and still. Looking around wildly, she spotted Olive in a strange position up against a parked car.
“No. No, no, no…RJ? Riley baby…” Increasingly desperate, Elizabeth moved back and forth from the sidewalk to the street, searching for her small son.
Then she found him.
He’d been thrown much further than either of the women. His lighter body rested in a small patch of grass, up against a tree, in front of a narrow brownstone.
More than thirty feet from where he’d been hit.
Fumbling for her phone even as she reached him, she dialed 911 and hit her knees. She told the operator the corner and hung up. She would not remember placing the call.
That she noticed the grass was damp would occur to her later. Without moving her son, she
lightly cupped the side of his face that pointed upward.
“Riley? Can you hear Mommy?”
She felt for his pulse. It was faint but present. Carefully, she brushed her fingers over his head and felt how wet his hair was in the back.
Blinking back tears, trying so hard to stay calm, she glanced up at the tree that rose above them and saw where he’d struck it almost ten feet in the air.
“Please…” she whispered. “Please wake up, baby. Wake up for me, Riley.” The tears started to fall and she violently crushed down the hysteria that tried to bubble up inside her.
Her friends appeared at her sides but she didn’t see them, didn’t hear their sobs or their prayers, and was unable to respond to the sound of their voices.
All that existed was the limp body of her little boy, lying far too still in the grass.
Paramedics arrived and she moved out of their way, certain they would be able to help her baby.
She knelt at RJ’s head and whispered to him, told him she loved him, begged him to wake up.
She didn’t remember getting into the ambulance beside her son but knew she held his hand. There were no sounds other than the light pulse she felt in his small wrist.
That small thump-thump was as loud as thunder in her mind and she clung to it, focused on it.
Time flashed forward and she was at the hospital, shoving her wallet at the nurse as she followed the gurney that carried her reason for waking up in the morning.
Waiting just outside the room so she wasn’t in the way of the half dozen medical people gathered around her baby.
She watched them closely, saw when one of the doctors looked at the other and shook his head. He walked around the end of the bed where RJ lay and came toward her.
“Miss Clayton…Elizabeth…I’m sorry.”
Later, she would realize she’d known the doctor all her life but in that moment, she didn’t even understand the words he said to her.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry. The damage…” He broke off, tears streamed down his cheeks. “The damage to his brain and spine was too severe. He was hurt too badly.”
“What are you saying? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“We couldn’t save him, I’m so sorry. He died, Elizabeth.”
“No, that can’t happen. Check again.”
“Elizabeth, he’s gone. I’m sorry. He’s gone.”
The other people in the room would later tell Riley and Donovan that Elizabeth shoved the doctor away from her before she burst into tears and walked around him to her child’s side.
She wouldn’t remember that either.
RJ looked even smaller in the glaring lights. The sheet beneath his head was soaked with blood. His blood…her son’s blood.
Elizabeth bent and lifted him in her arms, collapsing in a chair in the corner with his body cradled close to her chest.
“Please, Riley. I can’t lose you. I can’t.”
Elizabeth kissed his head, rubbed her cheek against the softest hair that existed, and sang his favorite song. The one they sang every night while he got ready for bed.
Sometimes, it was just the two of them, sometimes, Riley and Donovan sang with them. They liked to send him to bed laughing…the way Nana had always preferred.
She couldn’t finish, stumbling to a stop halfway through as she sobbed brokenly against his narrow body.
Her friends appeared on their knees in front of her and she kept shaking her head.
“I need him. I can’t lose my baby. Help me, please help me.”
Neither man was able to speak but they held her tight, all of them shaking violently.
Eventually, everything inside Elizabeth stilled. It didn’t feel as though her heart was beating and she wondered that it could without a reason.
Lifting her face, she stared down at her son. He had her dark hair but his eyes…those he’d gotten from his father. She traced her fingers over his winged brows, along his silken cheek, to the tip of his little nose that she’d kissed every day of his life.
“You were the very best of me, my darling boy. The consolidation of all the good things in my life. I love you so much and I’m sorry, baby. I hope you didn’t hurt. I hope you weren’t afraid.”
Leaning down, she nuzzled the hair beside his ear.
“I don’t know what happens next, Riley. If this is all we have, I want you to know you changed my life and filled it with more joy and laughter than I thought was possible. If there is something after, say hello to Nana for me. She’s going to adore you. I love you. I love you. I love you with all of me.”
Her friends took turns kissing his face murmuring words over his small body.
Then the rest of the world rushed back.
Riley and Donovan were broken men, barely hanging on. She stared between them and said softly, “One more goodbye. One more goodbye for our little man and then we have to stand up.”
The men gathered her in a tight hug with RJ in their midst and she was strong. They helped her stand. A nurse had removed the blood-soaked sheet and replaced it with a clean one.
Placing him on the mattress gently, she arranged him as if he was sleeping and tucked the sheet up to his shoulders. She smoothed his shaggy hair and kissed him one last time.
On autopilot, she filled out piles of paperwork. She was ashamed that she hadn’t asked about Olive and Dani.
The officer who came to take her statement told her that Olive was killed instantly and Dani died in the ambulance.
The young man who hit them walked away with nothing more than a concussion.
Forms, insurance, instructions about her son’s remains, and then there were no more questions. Nothing left to be said.
Walking from the hospital, Elizabeth realized she was leaving her baby inside. That was when Elizabeth understood that Riley Donovan Clayton wasn’t coming home.
Not today. Not ever.
* * *
Over the next two days, she made arrangements and pretended to function. Her robotic speech and movements worried everyone around her.
The service was short but the pews of the little church were full. Elizabeth was unable to speak but her friends did.
Riley spoke of the warmth of RJ’s personality, of the way he could light up an entire room with his laughter, and how smart he was.
He broke down halfway through his prepared eulogy and Donovan took his place after hugging him tightly.
“From the moment of RJ’s birth, he was a pivotal part of the lives of those who loved him. If you knew him for even a few minutes, he considered you the best of friends. When he told you he loved you, he meant it with every part of himself. That little boy made you a better person just by sharing his light – a stunning light he inherited from Elizabeth and Jewel Clayton. He meant so much to me, to Riley, and especially to his mother. He will be missed every day for the rest of my life.”
He stepped down and held Elizabeth as she sobbed against his jacket.
Her son was laid to rest beside Nana and the mourners drifted away. She stood staring at her grandmother’s headstone for a long time when she asked her friends to give her a moment.
“Nana, I’m so tired.” She blotted her face with tissue and couldn’t believe she had tears left to shed.
“I miss you. Experiencing this, I’m awed at how strong you had to be when you lost your husband and children. I’m weak, Nana. I’m sorry that I’m weak. I know you’d be disappointed. I love you. If there is a heaven and you see my darling boy, take good care of him for me.”
* * *
Samuel and Pam Heller held the reception at their home but Elizabeth went where she was guided and sat where there was a chair.
She attempted to thank people for coming but it was horrifying to pretend she wasn’t screaming on the inside and she finally went quiet.
It was the longest day in all her life.
She managed to thank the Hellers for their help and they urged her
to call for any reason. Elizabeth knew she wouldn’t call them. Riley and Donovan took her home.
* * *
Inside the back door, she stared at RJ’s jacket on a hook. On the refrigerator were his drawings, photos of him, and the results of him practicing writing his name.
“I need to shower and change clothes. I love you both. Thank you for every moment.”
Her words were flat; there was no life inside her to give them.
Elizabeth went upstairs and into Nana’s bedroom, directly to the master bath.
Closing the door, she opened the medicine cabinet, removed an old-fashioned tin box, climbed into the bathtub, took out a fresh blade, and slit her wrists.
Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth’s mind drifted as her blood drained from her body. Part of her recognized sounds but the only faces she could see were those of a man and two boys with copper penny eyes.
She was tired. Her loneliness and pain went to the bone and there was nothing that would ever make it better now. Losing her baby, her darling RJ, had taken the last of her strength.
She was done being strong, done fighting for happiness, finished pretending she was happy when her reasons had all faded to nothing. There was no one for her to love, to take the love she wanted to give so badly.
Her friends would heal in time. They had each other and they were stronger together. She wasn’t going to let them rescue her anymore. Lift her up. Carry her weight.
They deserved better.
As if she’d wished him into existence, Riley’s face appeared above her. He was screaming and tears poured down his face.
Elizabeth wanted to tell him it didn’t hurt, that it would be okay, that she loved him. She couldn’t speak and couldn’t hear him.
Donovan was there, too. They were holding her arms but she had no feeling in them, had no idea what they were doing. Then the bigger man shoved Riley out of the way and lifted her from the tub.
She passed out and drifted back to consciousness in the Cadillac before passing out again.
Faded in to bright white, men and women above her, still unable to hear, unable to speak, wishing they would let her go peacefully.
Completely Wrecked: A Dramatic Romance Page 12
