The Weight of Madness

by Randileigh Kennedy

  “I heard him talking in his room several times in the middle of the night,” Logan explained. “I would go in there and he would be in this haze. One night he was holding his phone, so I asked what he was doing. He told me he was just calling Emily to apologize for everything that had happened. He seemed really out of it though, it was strange. I couldn’t tell if he was dreaming, like sleepwalking, talking to the wall, or if he’d actually called someone. He just set the phone down, still with no emotion on his face, and he curled up on the floor. The next morning, I asked some round about questions to see if he had any recollection about the night before. He didn’t. He wasn’t aware we’d even had a conversation in the middle of the night, so I was pretty certain he had no memory of any phone call.”

  “But I was with him when the same number called my phone twice the next day. First in the afternoon, then again in the middle of the night,” I reiterated, bringing that point up again from the night before. “It couldn’t have been him. He was with me.”

  “Those two calls were me, calling from his phone,” he said reluctantly. “He’d left his phone at home that day, so I went through it when I got home from work. I wanted to see if he’d really been calling her like he said that night. Honestly I wasn’t sure he even really dialed a number – he could’ve been talking to a blank screen, or even the ceiling for all I knew. But sure enough, I saw the late night call in his directory, and the time count said the conversation was over a minute so I figured he’d actually spoken to someone. That caught me off guard, because I knew it was no longer a working number for Emily, so I wondered who he’d connected with. I had to dial the number to see for myself. When I called the number that afternoon, I got a generic computerized voicemail repeating the number. I almost left a message, curious if someone had actually spoken to Lance, but I couldn’t leave that kind of message on a stranger’s voicemail. It would’ve sounded crazy. Later that night, I called again around the same time as his first call to see if I could connect with anyone then. I hoped someone would answer so I could ask them about it, but it was the same generic voicemail recording again.”

  “It’s a new number, so I haven’t even set up my voicemail yet,” I commented, mulling over his words. “Wait, the area code… she had a local number? She’s from here?”

  “No, her parents live an hour or so away, but it’s the same area code. The phone was probably through their plan, so it was a Michigan number. That first call, in the middle of the night – do you remember what he said to you?”

  “He was rambling,” I explained, recalling that first conversation. “He didn’t believe I wasn’t Emily. He sounded very strange, like maybe he was dreaming or something. But he said a lot in that short conversation. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  “That’s the scary part about it. He genuinely has no recollection of that phone call, so I can’t even imagine what all he said,” Logan stated with a sigh. “It’s not just these random conversations. I’ve even caught him sleepwalking out of the apartment in the middle of the night. Once I found him walking toward the highway, as if he was headed back to Carlstown. The next morning he had no memory of the entire thing. Another time he was outside at three a.m. just sitting in the middle of the road. I grabbed his arm to move him and he just stared back at me for a minute, then asked me why he was outside. I can’t explain it.”

  “Has he seen a doctor?”

  “Yeah, but that’s a slow process,” he replied, shaking his head. “They want to put him on all these medications, but after what he went through with Emily - her addiction with all the pills and how they slowly destroyed her - he wants nothing to do with them. He won’t take them. And the sleeping pills, well, they seem to do more harm than good. So we’re just trying to figure it all out. The diagnoses on his medical records list PTSD and an ‘acute mental disorder’ which is so broad, they have no clue how to fix him. He won’t see a therapist, because he doesn’t believe he’s as messed up as they say. He doesn’t have any recollection of these things he’s doing, so he doesn’t realize how badly he needs help.”

  “When we met, everything seemed…natural. He was so normal and sincere, and fun…”

  “That’s my brother, most of the time,” Logan agreed. “After he met you, that spark was all over his face. The night after you were here, and he walked you home, he came back with the biggest, stupidest grin on his face. He was on cloud nine. I knew he was smitten, and I hadn’t connected the dots yet with the phone call and who you were. He pulled out your business card to put your number in his phone, but the number was already in it – as Emily. He was confused at first, obviously, as was I for a minute. I looked at your card and recognized the number immediately, and that’s when I put it all together.”

  “Did he realize it too, or did you tell him?”

  “I treaded lightly at first. I asked him how he met you, and he told me someone must’ve referred him into your shop because of the paper he found with your business name and street. I pointed out the note was his own handwriting, so he obviously jotted down the information on his own. He still wasn’t making the connection, so I had to tell him. I could see the confusion mounting in his eyes. He had to know. I told him about his phone calls in the middle of the night. I told him he called you during one of his disillusioned episodes, thinking the number was still Emily. He didn’t believe me, of course. I had to show him his call log to prove it. Once he saw with his own eyes that he’d dialed your number the night before he even met you, things started making a little more sense to him.”

  “Was he able to recall our conversation after you pointed it all out to him? Or does he truly not remember anything he does when he’s in that haze?”

  “He had no memory of any of it, but the proof was on the phone, so he knew it had to be true. He was mortified. He’d had no recollection that he’d ever dialed the number since he’d left Carlstown. He obviously couldn’t deny the call log, though. There it was, showing he’d connected with that number the night before he even met you in person. He freaked out. He realized then that that call was what brought him into your shop in the first place, and maybe you knew more about him than you wanted to.”

  “I do recall telling him where I worked,” I repeated, replaying that first conversation back in my head.

  “In his haze, he apparently wrote it down on a piece of paper,” he explained. “The next morning after I heard him call Emily, all of a sudden he had the note in his hand with the words Sparks and Sixth Street on it. I didn’t think anything of it that morning. He mumbled something about how a co-worker must’ve recommended it to him so he wanted to go by and take a look because he’d driven by the shop before and the name struck him. It was pure, honest confusion that actually led him there. After this all came out though, he completely fell apart once he figured out how the puzzle pieces all fit. He was trying so hard to put his past behind him, just to realize he’d only found you because of it. He panicked. He felt like it was impossible to keep you and his past separate. So he thought it would be better to just end it before it all came out. He doesn’t want you to know about his issues, obviously. They’re so much deeper than what I’ve even told you now. He just wanted to disappear from all of it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he give me a chance to decide for myself?”

  “Because all of that is just the beginning,” Logan said apprehensively. “The rest of it isn’t my story to tell. He’ll have to do that himself once he’s ready. I’m sure that’s all part of his healing process. But honestly, he has a long way to go. All I can say is he has good reason for wanting to keep his past in the past. He’s trying to move on from it, not be reminded of it everywhere he goes. That’s why he didn’t call, Soph. He wanted to so bad, but he couldn’t.”

  “But wait,” I paused, making sure I had my timeline correct, “that night he was supposed to call – clearly after he’d figured out the connection, his number called me again in the middle of the night, but I only heard breathing. If he kn
ew by then that was in fact my number, why did he call without saying anything?”

  “I think a small part of him was somehow still in denial about the whole thing and he just needed one more piece of concrete proof to let go. He wanted to dial the number to hear for himself, as if there was even the smallest chance I was misleading him in some way, I don’t know. He heard you answer and you brought up the prior phone call that confirmed it was all true. You said you wanted nothing to do with him. He was too stunned to say anything back. He hung up and completely lost it. He thought all his feelings for you happened completely organically, as if it was some sign from the universe that he could move beyond his past and start over. He thought your chance meeting was his opportunity to be ‘normal’ again, just to realize there was nothing normal about how he came to find you that day.”

  “What happened with the chair?” I pointed back into the living room.

  “After figuring the whole thing out, and hearing your voice on the phone when he couldn’t speak back…” Logan hesitated. “It just set him off. He was pissed off about the whole thing. He had this longing to fix everything with you and explain it all to you, yet he knew he was too far past it to make any of this go away. Obviously you would have more questions about his past, and he didn’t want to answer them. When he moved here to start over, he told me he would never say her name again, and yet here he was, realizing he thought you were her before you’d even met. The whole thing unraveled him. He keeps breaking things.” He motioned to the glass all over the floor.

  I couldn’t imagine Lance angry. He had such a gentle personality. I couldn’t imagine an ounce of rage in his entire body. That just further proved to me how little I knew about him.

  “There’s one question that’s been eating at me since last night,” I said skeptically, unsure I could get it out. “When Lance called me in the middle of the night, before I knew who he was, he said something that stuck with me.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “Something about Emily?”

  “No,” I replied hesitantly. I so badly wanted an answer, but I was too scared to ask. “It was…worse.”

  Logan stared back at me with intense eyes, waiting for me to unload my thoughts.

  “His words were something along the lines of I…I killed him,” I stammered. “Was he dreaming when he said it? Was he just making it up because he didn’t truly know what he was saying?” There had to be some kind of further explanation. Throwing a chair and breaking things out of anger was one thing, but essentially murder? Those were nowhere near the same thing. I begged for some type of confirmation that I’d heard that part of the conversation wrong.

  “Charlie,” Logan replied quietly. “He blames himself for killing Charlie.”

  “Because it’s true,” Lance’s voice said from the patio door. He’d obviously heard that part of our conversation. “I blame myself for it because I did. I’m the one who killed him.”

  Chapter 11

  “It was an accident,” Logan said firmly, standing up from his chair.

  “An accident that I single handedly could’ve avoided,” Lance shot back. “It was completely my doing. I take full responsibility for that. I didn’t at the time because I so badly wanted to blame her, but it was my doing.”

  “We’ve been through this so many times,” Logan said with heavy emotion in his voice. “I’m trying to help you, Lance, but I don’t know how anymore. I told her a few things. She deserves to know. She’s already caught up in this.”

  “I got your note,” I said awkwardly, also standing up from the patio chair to face Lance.

  “It wasn’t an invitation to come here.” He sounded frustrated. “I just felt bad for the way we left things. For not calling. For not at least explaining to you that we shouldn’t see each other anymore. I don’t know what Logan told you, Soph, but we didn’t meet by coincidence. In one of my psychotic episodes, my ‘acute change in mental status’ as the doctor calls it, I thought you were someone else. I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have said. I know I can’t take back what you know, or what you think you know, but I don’t know how to move forward, Sophia. This all went wrong, and I can’t fix it and pretend like I’m the guy you met who didn’t have all of this hanging over him.” The look in his eyes softened as his gaze locked on mine, and I felt sorrow for him in that moment. He looked tired, like he had been carrying such heavy secrets that he could no longer stand their weight.

  “Why did you leave the note?”

  “Like I said, to apologize,” he said softly as Logan quietly left the two of us alone. “I could tell you were hurt, and I hated that. I wanted to at least repair the sadness and disappointment I saw in your eyes last night. But I meant what I said before walking away from you, Sophia. This madness…I’m not bringing you into it. I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m already in it, Lance,” I said sternly. “It seems a little late now to just shut me out, don’t you think? Why can’t you just talk to me about it?”

  “It’s not your burden, Soph. I’m not a mess just waiting to be cleaned up. Everyone thinks they can fix me. The doctor thinks pills will cure me, when instead they make it worse and I don’t even recognize what I’m doing. My brother thinks he can heal me by protecting me from myself somehow. But nothing fixes me. So the least I can do is not let this ruin you too.”

  “I wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing you, Lance,” I stated quietly. “But I’m here. I’m listening. I’m not judging you for anything that you’ve done. If you want to tell me all of it, that’s fine, and if you aren’t ready, that’s fine too. But you don’t have to shut me out. I know this, us, it seemed serious relatively quickly, but it doesn’t have to be. We can be friends who just hang out without the rest of it. We can move slow.”

  “You are not a girl to be friends with, Soph.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I can’t be around you without this insane longing to hold you,” he replied with a frustrated tone, looking so vulnerable as he said it. “I want to confide in you, and touch your hair, and watch you sleep even though it creeps you out, but I like to do it anyway because it makes me feel protective and strong and full of purpose even though I have no business being that person for you. When I see you, I so badly want you to be mine, but without having to answer questions I have no proud answers to.”

  “So I won’t ask questions,” I said softly as he stepped towards me, reaching out to touch my hand. “I don’t have to know everything, Lance. Whatever happened before me, it’s not my business. That’s not who you are to me.”

  “You really think it’s possible to care about me without knowing about my past?”

  “I’ve had my own share of dark days, Lance. We’re all imperfect. I get that we live in a world where we’re supposed to pretend like everything’s always perfect, but I’m not haunted by the fact that it’s not. That doesn’t scare me. Whatever you’ve been through – maybe I’ll see it differently. We all have different fears.”

  He wrapped his strong arms around me, pulling me in to his tight embrace. “I can’t be around you without wanting to be completely wrapped up in you,” he said softly into my ear as his hand brushed back my hair. “That’s what I fear, Soph. You’re like my penance for everything I’ve done wrong. Talking to you for hours under the stars, lying with you on the patio all night, listening to the waves, believing there’s some connection between us… In those moments, it was like you were restoring me in some way, making me forget about who I am and what I’ve done. Yet knowing that I am still those things, completely unworthy of you, it’s breaking me all at once. You told me personal, meaningful things about you, like the way you lost your mom, and that really affected me. You deserve someone who can fight your battles for you, Soph. But here I am, unable to fight my own.”

  “Maybe it’s because you’re fighting all by yourself,” I whispered softly. “I’m not sure many battles have ever won that way, Lance. But I’m here.
Maybe that isn’t enough for you. I don’t know what you’ve been through. I know nothing about your diagnosis. All I know is that I don’t want to give this up. I’m here. Let that matter.”

  He leaned in, pressing his lips against mine, and they were warm and familiar. The ebb and flow of us was too quick and sporadic to make any sense – certainly not the way any normal love story begins, though I was questioning what I believed to be normal. That was quite a subjective word. With his arms around me, it felt right despite everything that had gone so wrong. There was this pull I felt toward him, and no amount of reasonable thought was enough to lure me away from wanting him.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin in telling you everything that’s wrong with me, Sophia.”

  “You don’t have to. Let me care about you as I see you, Lance, not as the person you think you are. I’m not here because I have certain expectations of you. I don’t know what you’ve experienced, or how it’s changed you. You are a blank slate to me – a story still waiting to be written. I don’t see anything else when I look at you. There’s no logic or reason in caring about someone, Lance. It doesn’t have to make sense. Whatever you did or didn’t do, maybe I’ll never know. That’s okay too. All I know is that I’m not scared to fall for you anyway.”

  He led me over to the chaise we laid on just days before, pulling me down next to him. He kissed me again and the weight of my emotions lifted. All of the anger and frustration and disappointment I’d felt earlier – it was gone now.

  “Just don’t shut me out,” I whispered softly against his cheek. “That is the single only thing I’m asking of you.”

  “I’m not perfect.” He pulled his face back from mine to look into my eyes. “I am flawed in so many ways.”

  “We all are, Lance. That’s not what I’m scared of.”