Although Donna took a few minutes longer than she should have to join me, I said nothing. I was in no mood for conflict, and something told me that this site visit was going to be bad enough already.
Chapter Sixteen
Donna
I tried to make conversation as we drove, but Carter wasn’t having it. He seemed tense, distracted.
Finally, I asked him, “Which site are we headed to?”
His response came back as immediately, as if I’d pressed a button: “The McCarter site.”
When I asked which one that was, staring out the window at some abandoned houses we were passing, Carter shrugged.
“Not sure, actually. It’s good land, a perfect path for the pipeline—if it weren’t for the protestors, of course.”
I glared at him. He had seemed to say it expressly to bother me, and yet, he wasn’t looking at me at all. Instead, still gazing out the window, now at a small stream, he continued.
“There have been so many protests at our pipeline sites, I’ve lost track.”
I countered, “Doesn’t that make you think? That there might be something wrong with where your company wants to build these pipelines?”
A furrow appeared in Carter’s brow.
“This was my father’s plan, his master project. On his deathbed, I promised him I’d do it.”
That admission shut me right up. How was I supposed to argue with that? The following silence, however, after a whole two days of breathless fun, was nearly unbearable.
Finally, before I could think better of it, I said, “You’ve never mentioned your father before.”
As he stared out at the edge of the now forest-covered land, I scrutinized his dead gaze.
“Yes. He died last year. He was a good man, a hard worker.”
Another pause. Then I said, “And when your mom…”
“They didn’t get along,” he said brusquely. “Only ten minutes until we’re there.”
Carter was right, but that didn’t make the quiet, tense wait feel any closer to ten minutes. By the time his car finally, thankfully, pulled up onto the side of the road, it felt more like several hours had passed rather than mere minutes.
In gloomy silence, we got out of the car and walked over to the site with its already visible mob.
Seeing them, Carter gave a sardonic smile.
“Should’ve figured there’d be protestors at this one, too. It’s not like these people have any real causes to support or anything actually productive to do.”
I stopped walking.
“What did you say?”
Carter turned to me with that same ugly sneer.
“You heard me. If these people had decent jobs, do you really think they’d be here, wasting their time with what’s inevitable?”
His face was all narrowed, sharp planes, almost unrecognizable. I didn’t care. I was so mad that I could barely speak.
Advancing toward him, shaking my head, I said, “You’re wrong.” It was all I could manage. His sneer deepened.
“And how would you know?”
I stepped forward so our chests were touching, so I could glare right into his narrowed, hateful eyes.
“Because, babe, I’ve protested at several of your pipeline sites. That’s right; I’ve protested your unethical, nature-destroying atrocities.”
To this, Carter said nothing, and I continued. “And what you said about it being inevitable—I thought you agreed to reroute some of them. You called one of your guys right in front of me.”
Carter’s face was still that unrecognizable, remote mask, like he was a robot or a frozen corpse.
“It was always going to be a slow process,” the man I couldn’t even recognize said.
His words were a blow to my gut. I stepped back, tripped on nothing, and fell to the ground.
Splayed there, the realization sputtered out of my lips: “You were never serious, were you? You were just using me for sex. You never cared.”
Looking down on me with a stranger’s narrowed eyes, Carter only said, “Be careful what you assume.”
At his words, anger flared through me, springing me to my feet.
“Well, you want to know something? Congratulations; you did it. You succeeded. I was the idiot who fell for the sociopathic billionaire, the fool who thought she saw something different in him, something good. So, congratulations, Carter Ray, you tricked me. You win.”
As I stormed off, my pride in tatters at his feet, the worst part was what I wanted. As I walked away from the only man I had ever loved, the heartless man who had hurt me even more than my worst fears, the only thing I wanted him to do was stop me, run after me.
Yes, all I wanted from this unfeeling monster of a man was to feel his arms around me once again.
Chapter Seventeen
Carter
The alarm went off at 6:55 a.m., as it always did. I got out of my bed, put on my robe, and went downstairs.
Breakfast was on the table, one bowl of shredded wheat. I had fifteen minutes to eat, but I did it in five. There was no time to waste, after all. Wasted time was wasted money.
I picked up my phone. It was a blinking swamp of messages: Selma was wondering if we were still on for later. Jane was screaming about my three-in-a-row missed calls, saying that I was as much of a prick as she’d always thought. Tammie was calling me a cheating bastard, telling me to go fuck myself. Paul was whining about something I’d look at later.
Nothing from Donna.
I put down my phone. No matter. It was better this way—disappointing her sooner rather than later.
It all ended up the same way, the same furious faces, hollering for something I couldn’t give them.
“Today’s the day, you know.”
I didn’t turn to look at the owner of the sniveling little voice behind me. This was probably the earliest Paul had gotten up in years. Nothing like the possibility of harassing his brother to spur him into action.
“Sadly, I’m all booked,” I said before starting to shovel food down my throat as fast as it’d go.
Slumping in the leather seat across from me, his hands full of what looked to be photos, Paul shook his head.
“Not today you’re not. The anniversary only happens once. I’m not going without you.”
After a particularly ambitious gulp of shredded wheat, I repeated in the same sure voice, “I’m not going.”
But Paul hardly heard me. He now had all his attention focused on the rectangles that were actually blown-up photos.
“Got some good shots of the protestors a few weeks ago, before I came here. They just got developed now,” he said as his hands spread them on the table and his eyes scanned them.
“Can’t you look at them in your room?” I said.
I shot him a glare to find myself face to face with Donna. Or, rather, a photo of Donna.
Those big baby blue eyes, that freckled nose, everything passionate and defiant—there was no mistaking her. It was a fantastic shot, with one of her hands raised in a fist with the sun right behind her, its rays spilling across her face in an incredible chiaroscuro effect.
“That’s a goodie, eh? Pretty girl too,” Paul said before thoughtlessly pushing it under another. “Probably gonna go again in the next week or so. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
My breakfast now shoveled down my throat, I rose from my seat and marched off—fast, though not fast enough to avoid hearing Paul’s, “Though don’t think this means that I’m letting you off the hook for the grave visit.”
The drive to work was uneventful, work itself equally so—more deals and meetings and people I swayed to my point of view. Cynthia kept popping in, leaning over in that low-cut, fuchsia blouse with her brown doe eyes, indicating that her boyfriend hadn’t fucked her in weeks.
All I could think about, however, was the last girl I had fucked in my office, the one with the eager blue eyes that had seemed to really see me somehow.
So, by the time Cynthia knocked on my door a
nd announced a visitor, I sprang up and said, “Let her in!” As soon as the door swung open, however, I realized my mistake.
It was Paul. Self-righteous and embarrassing in his hideous green and orange suit, regarding me like a bull about to charge.
“It’s time,” he said.
I glanced at the grandfather clock. Three p.m. My coworkers would still be around, would still see if Paul decided to make a scene.
I glared at him and rose.
Clearly, there would be no avoiding this. Besides, it wasn’t like I had been getting all that much work done with a certain someone on my mind.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go. We can even go your way.”
By the time we got to the lobby, my very noticeable, very out-of-place companion and I had established that we would not be getting there “his way.”
Amazingly, he had rattled off the directions as if they were actually feasible. “You just take the 75 express, get off at Hurdman, switch to the 67, go two stops to the Go-Train, take five stops to Empire, then get off and walk five minutes—I’m not sure where—and you’re there.”
To that, I delivered a raised brow, silently thanked God I had never had to undergo the perils of public transportation, and concluded that we would take my car. Paul gave me a suspicious glare.
“How do I know that you’ll keep your word—that you’ll actually drive us there?”
I glared back at Paul for immediately seeing through my plan. With a sigh, I handed him my house key.
“Here. You can have this until we’ve gone and visited Mommy dearest.”
Paul gave a satisfied shrug while still glaring, and then we were off.
As I pulled onto the freeway that would get us there in ten minutes, tops, I cast a glance at Paul. Really, he was lucky; I could have just dumped him at some fast food joint right now if I’d really wanted to.
By the time we got to Riverside Cemetery, before we’d even gotten to her tombstone, the sniveling had begun. When we reached the flat gray stone, the sniveling swelled into full-blown sobs.
I took in the tombstone dully. It was the same as I remembered it: the rock as smooth as ever, the ‘RIP’ clearly engraved with our parents’ names beneath it. Mom hadn’t wanted to be buried, but Father had reasoned that if she’d wanted to have a say, maybe she shouldn’t have killed herself. There were weeds all around the stone and a crumpled pile that was probably the flowers Paul had deposited there a few months ago. No matter. Today he was armed with a new bouquet of flourishing roses.
Paul’s whine came as an unwelcome break from my thoughts. “Aren’t you even sad?”
“Do you really want to know?” I shot back.
Anger flashed in his weak, light brown eyes—the same color hers had been. Scrutinizing me with his teary eyes, he shook his head.
“I just…I can’t believe it, Carter. She was our mother.”
I looked away. “She left us.”
Paul grabbed my arm. “She was sick. She loved us.”
I ripped my arm away. “She left us. She left me to find her—like that.”
Paul said nothing, his hand still clenched midair, hovering, the tears the only movement on his face.
It was fine that he didn’t have words. I had enough for both of us. The bottled-up, unsaid words surged forth now.
“Love? Give me a break, Paul. Abandoning your kids, that’s not love. She loved herself more than she loved us. If she’d loved us, she would’ve stayed. She would’ve kept trying.”
Paul was shaking his head hard, as if he could shake my words away.
“No, you’re wrong. She tried. She tried, but he was never around, could never hear what she was trying to tell him. He wouldn’t even get her help.”
“He was doing the best he could. He was working to support his family.”
“He was a workaholic who used work to avoid the issues in his own home.”
Now it was my turn to shoot him a sardonic glare.
“Ironic, isn’t it, Paul? That you’re mad at me for hating one of our parents, whose grave we’re literally standing on, while you do the exact same thing.”
Paul’s whole body was trembling, now. With his eyes overflowing with tears, it was a miracle he could see enough to know where to direct his glare.
“You’re just like him. I should’ve figured that you wouldn’t understand.”
I smiled at him. “That’s the first reasonable thing you’ve said all day, brother.”
“You don’t even…” he grumbled, casting his gaze back on the stone.
“I don’t even what?” I asked, but he only shook his head.
After a minute, he said, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. He regretted it at the end, you know. Dad. He regretted working so much, building his ‘empire’ at the expense of everything—his morals, his friends, us.”
I started walking away.
“Save it, Paul. Save your lies for someone who’ll listen.”
But Paul was right behind me.
“I’m not lying. When you went out to the bathroom, when he was in the hospital, he told me. He told me how he’d made a mistake. He shoved a letter at me that he’d written that day. He begged me not to tell you—your work ethic was the one thing he was proud of. His dying wish was that I not tell you the truth.”
I stopped and spoke to a hole in the dirt.
“His dying wish was for me to finish the pipeline project.”
Paul walked in front of me and shoved a folded-up, yellowed piece of paper at my face.
Slowly, I unfolded it. I had to read it several times; the words just wouldn’t seem to stick, to register. The handwriting was shaky, but unmistakable.
I was wrong, Father had written. Life is not success, getting more; doing more is not happiness. Working instead of living is not worth it. Life is a meaningful experience. Spending time with loved ones, enjoying what you have, appreciating it all—that is happiness. I never did that. It is too late now and it was too late then, when I lost her. I couldn’t admit it—couldn’t bear to. I killed my wife, and I am so, so sorry. If I could do it all over, I would.
The last words haunted me. They repeated in my mind, over and over again: If I could do it all over, I would—If I could do it all over, I would—If I could do it all over, I would, would, would.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said softly, his tear-stained hand clasping mine.
I shoved the letter into his chest, pushing him—my stupid, teary brother with his stupid, contagious weakness—to the ground, raising my fist but not lowering it, yelling into his still-blubbering face, “Fuck you.”
I left. I drove away from my brother and his truth that couldn’t be, from my past, with its long, grasping fingers, trying to get its claws into my present, trying to ruin everything.
And as I hurtled down the highway, toward I didn’t know where, away from there, all I knew was that I couldn’t let it.
I ended up at home. The words chased me up the stairs. If I could do it all over, I would—If I could do it all over, I would. An unending refrain. It continued even as I popped the two antidepressant pills I hadn’t touched in weeks, not since a certain girl had come into the picture. It was fitting that she was here in my head now too, yelling out the refrain herself, triumphant in her self-righteousness. The charcoal and the canvas were in the study where I’d left them.
The words were only growing louder now, a chant that couldn’t be escaped.
This mantra was lifting my hands, grabbing charcoal and a piece of paper, having me scrawl out lines, shading, shapes, trees, flames, people with tears but no faces, and, amid it all—amid this swirling, burning chaos—her.
She was sitting atop the trees, looking at me with eager eyes, and yet she was crying. The funny part wasn’t that her tears spilled down, doused the flames, and joined with the river from the faceless ones. It was that those tears, that sad look in those beautiful eyes, was for me.
Chapter Eighteen
Donna
“We’ve bought it, honey. It’s done.” Those were my dad’s first words to me when I got home from the site visit with Carter.
I stared blankly into their beaming faces.
My mom nodded and continued. “The papers are signed. We move in in a week!” She grasped my hands. “Donna, we’ll be out of this hellhole in a week!”
I nodded dully, cast a look around at the food-flecked walls and the body of dust in the corner. Then, finally, I looked at my dad’s newly shaven face, the long slump of a beard now definitively chopped.
I couldn’t tell them the truth about the money. Nor could I give it back, no matter how disgusted I was with its owner. The letdown would kill them.
The next few days passed as one day. One sad, listless shuffling from work to home and back to work again. One sad, pathetic checking of my phone every five minutes.
Nothing. Carter was done with me. Good. I hated him.
Even Helen noticed the change as, after one of my shifts, I picked at my blueberry muffin. I hadn’t given her explicit details of my encounter with Carter, but she still knew enough.
“Tut, tut,” she said.
She patted me with one hand and brushed some of her mousy brown hair out of her face with the other.
“I did tell you, Donna, didn’t I? I warned you about that sociopathic billionaire.”
I nodded dejectedly. Pretty much the last thing I needed right now was a reminder of how badly I’d messed up.
Leaning in, her green eyes sympathetic, Helen said, “Word on the street is that he’s been out every night at his old haunts—doing the usual.”
Feeling like throwing up, I staggered to the bathroom to find it barred by none other than Kyle.
With an obnoxious smile, he wagged the keys in front of me.
“You always forget, Donna.”
Snatching them, I plunged into the small room and locked it behind me. Glaring at my crying reflection in the mirror, I splashed water on my face until the tears stopped. Once I returned to our table, Helen had her little owl eyes on Kyle.
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