Hell Without You

by Ranae Rose

  She didn’t want to hear that everything would be all right, because she knew it wouldn’t. And she definitely didn’t want to hear that it was a lost cause, that she should turn away and forget about Donovan. Because she couldn’t. She was stuck in limbo, lost half in the past and half in the present with no light at the end of the tunnel. And it was comforting, in a way. At least she was lost with Donovan, instead of without him.

  “Do you have anyone else you can stay with?” Jackie asked eventually.

  “No. My mom and step-father live in town, but I’m avoiding them like the plague, same as always.”

  Jackie nodded. She and Clementine had been friends for years; Clementine hadn’t told her everything, but Jackie knew Clementine wasn’t on good terms with her mother and step-father.

  “Done.” Clementine folded the last receiving blanket. “Now sit back and relax – if you’re taking me out for drinks, the least I can do is play nanny for a while.” She lifted Isabel, cradling her against her chest as she stood.

  Jackie beamed, leaning back against the nearby sofa. “I’m going to have to invite you over more often.”

  She looked so happy that Clementine’s resolve not to talk about her issues with Donovan doubled. There was no reason to bring anyone else down; she’d keep her secrets to herself, just like she had her grief during her college years, when she and Jackie had first become friends. Some things weren’t meant to be shared, were too twisted to ask a friend to help you sort through.

  * * * * *

  The city faded quickly, mirage-like in the rearview mirror as Clementine drove for Pennsylvania. Three days in DC had been energizing and exhausting at the same time. She’d enjoyed her time with Jackie, but all the while, worry over Donovan had filled the darker spaces of her mind and heart. Why did it feel like she’d left a ticking time bomb behind in her grandmother’s old house?

  Desperate for reassurance that he was all right but not wanting to be obvious or insulting, she’d called his garage the day before, pretending to have forgotten how often it was that she was supposed to have her car’s oil changed.

  “Changed it for you when I put those tires on,” Donovan had said. “You’re good to go for another three thousand miles. Wrote it on the sticker.”

  Feigning relief, she hadn’t prolonged the conversation. After ending the call she’d looked up at the sticker in the upper left hand corner of her windshield, where Donovan’s bold print did indeed reflect the update. As mundane as the information was, she’d stared for a full minute, visually tracing the hard strokes and angles of his handwriting.

  Familiar. Precious.

  A knot had formed in her throat as she’d recalled emptying her shoebox of hand-written notes on her narrow dorm bed during freshman year – reading through them one by one, wishing she was destined again for an evening at the quarry instead of a night of studying and nine AM Principals of Economics.

  So now she knew – she didn’t have to be in Willow Heights to feel the vise-grip of the past locked around her heart, to miss him so badly it hurt. The reawakened longing had followed her to the capital, had fermented in the dark corners of her consciousness while the city lights had shone on her face and illuminated everything around her. So much for distance cooling the irrational impulses Donovan constantly tempted her to act on.

  On the other hand, he’d seemed fine when she’d spoken to him on the phone. He’d been at work, not in the hospital or lying in a ditch somewhere – maybe her fears had been exaggerated. Maybe her time away had cleared his head if not hers.

  The thought was bittersweet, though it should’ve been a relief. Her mind kept whirling with things he’d said – about wanting her, about letting her doctor his foot just to feel her touch. Had it all been a reaction to the shock of their unexpected reunion? Had a couple days away from her cleared the frenzy of emotion from his mind, and if it had, would her wayward emotions eventually settle too?

  She was still wondering when she pulled into the driveway.

  Donovan’s truck wasn’t there. No surprise, considering that it was one-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. Knowing his obsessive personality, he probably worked at least six days a week.

  She didn’t have a key of her own, but remembering what he’d said, she knelt beside the door, reaching for the brick that stuck out just a little further than the others.

  It came loose with a familiar scrape, revealing a gap.

  The key was right where Donovan had said it would be. So was something else.

  The rough-soft brush of paper rasped against her fingertips and sent an arrow of urgency straight through the center of her chest. Hand tingling, she dropped the key and groped for a hold on the paper.

  She didn’t question the strangeness of the thrill that went through her or the fact that she was just as eager to devour the note’s contents as she had been when she’d retrieved missives from behind the brick at fifteen. She simply opened it, fingers slipping against creases – old creases.

  How long had the note been waiting behind the brick? Obviously longer than a day, or two or three. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that the paper had been folded for a long time, flattened to almost nothing and badly dog-eared. There were even fine specks of brick dust that had been pressed into the paper, crimson flecks permanently smattered among blue lines.

  C, the note began, as they always had, Tonight’s my last night in Willow Heights. I’ll arrive at Parris Island tomorrow, and be there for a while. Don’t know how to write you – no one will give me an address. Don’t know if you want me to write, but if you give enough of a damn to read this, then at least send me an envelope with a return address so I can mail you another one.

  My mom should have my address by the time you read this and will give it to you if you ask. I told her I’d send money if she did, so her word should mean something, for once.

  D

  No date was needed – the note said it all, and the paper had grown inflexible enough to verify the fact that seven years had passed between the time Donovan had planted it behind the brick and now. Refolding the paper and closing her fist around it, she rose with the key in hand, fingers cold against the metal.

  Inside the kitchen, she tried not to think of Donovan in uniform, tried not to wonder whether he’d waited for his name to be read during mail call, whether he’d waited – hoped – for an empty envelope with her college address on it.

  He hadn’t even expected her to write. He’d wanted to write to her, to send letters from Parris Island to Columbia University, where she’d been secretly crying her eyes out between classes while he’d crawled through mud and thrown grenades and whatever else they did in Marine Corps boot camp. And she knew no one else had written to him, knew no one else had read his letters, if he’d even sent any out.

  It was the little things that hurt the most – like paper cuts. Thinking of him letterless on Parris Island was more agonizing than imagining him in Afghanistan, for some reason. Maybe because she knew a little of what it was like to be alone in a strange place without anyone to call a friend yet, all the while yearning for someone who was somewhere else.

  Hating herself for being like everyone else, for letting him down, she shoved the note into her purse and pulled out her phone.

  “Hello, Ms. Haviland? It’s Clementine Lettvin again. Amanda’s cousin?”

  The woman seemed to recall her, but didn’t sound happy to be hearing from her for the second day in a row.

  “I was hoping you could give me an update on the townhouse’s repair status.”

  “Okay,” she said a moment later, her heart sinking whenever the landlord evaded her attempts to nail down an estimated completion date. “Thank you.”

  So much for that plan. Pulling her suitcase by the retractable handle, she headed for the stairs. Tonight would be another night spent in her old bedroom – the one she’d shared with Donovan not once but twice.

  He’d changed it in her absence – moved back in, it looked like. His g
reen pack was back in one corner and a box of the same color rested in the center of the bed. Letters, stenciled in yellow, stood out bold and square on its side. 200 Cartridges, the first line read, and the second was meaningless to her – military abbreviations.

  Ammunition. 200 rounds. Her heart sped as she remembered Donovan wielding a knife in his sleep. Did he own a gun? It would only take one bullet to have devastating consequences. And she’d thought she’d made the house a little safer by hiding his knife…

  She sank onto the bed, prying back the ammo box’s snaps.

  The contents weren’t what she’d expected. The container was only half full, and there was no metal – only paper.

  Breathing a sigh, she slipped a hand inside, pushing it through layers of paper until her fingertips scraped the bottom. Convinced that there was no secret store of ammunition or even a weapon, she leaned back.

  In the absence of fear, curiosity made her spine prickle. An envelope protruded from the assortment of administrative-looking paperwork, and though the cursive script visible on one corner was nothing like Donovan’s handwriting, it was familiar.

  Pulling the envelope from the box, she scanned the return address, her heartbeat spiking.

  Viola Melvin

  110 Meadowlark Lane

  Willow Heights, PA

  It was her grandmother’s address – the address of the house she currently sat in, snooping through Donovan’s things.

  All scruples now firmly by the wayside, she slid a finger under the envelope’s flap, freeing the sheet of paper within.

  Donovan,

  I hope this letter finds you well – or as well as one can be, at war.

  I’ve heard little more from Clementine than you have since she left for college three years ago. I do have her address though, and have enclosed it. I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t like to hear from you.

  Wishing you a safe return from Afghanistan,

  Viola

  The sound of a slamming door jarred Clementine from her stupor, causing her to jerk. The letter slipped through her fingers, fluttering to the bedspread.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Clementine?” Donovan’s voice radiated throughout the large, mostly-empty house.

  She didn’t put away the letter, didn’t hide what she’d been doing.

  “You’re back.” He appeared in the doorway, clad in jeans and a jacket over a thermal tee. After days away, his appearance was impressed upon her all over again – the sheer size and shape of him, the dark sheen of his hair and the way even his utilitarian work jacket couldn’t hide his muscles. Most of all, she noticed his eyes – they cut right through her, leaving her feeling as transparent as glass.

  “I told you I would be.”

  “I didn’t believe you.” He entered the room, still looking at her instead of the box open in front of her or the letter she’d picked up again.

  “Is that why you moved back into this room?”

  “I moved back in two days before you left for DC.” His voice was somehow both softer and rougher as he reminded her.

  “Right.” Her own voice came out weak as she raised the sheet of paper she held. “You wrote to my grandmother – you had my address?”

  She had no right to hurt because he’d never written her, but she did anyway.

  “I wrote her. I never had your address.”

  “But she wrote that she’d enclosed it.”

  “She wrote that letter a couple weeks before she died. I guess her mind – her memory – wasn’t what it had been. She enclosed something, but it wasn’t an address.” He reached into the box, sifting through paper before he pulled out a photo. “This.”

  Clementine blinked. “My third grade school photo?”

  “The guys laughed when they saw it. You know, they were all getting these sexy photos of their girlfriends, wives or whatever, and the only picture anyone ever sent me was this. Had to tell them you were my kid sister. There was a recipe cut off the back of a turkey stuffing box and a grocery list with the photo, too – I think your grandmother raided the junk drawer.”

  He stared at the photo for a few seconds before carefully replacing it in the box. “I wrote her back, but there was no reply. She’d already—” He looked away, a crease forming between his eyes. “I found out later she’d died. I never knew she was sick.”

  Clementine’s heart clenched as she pictured him waiting – again – for a letter. For her grandmother to write back with the address he’d been anticipating instead of a stuffing box recipe and an ancient photo. “Her illness came on quick. I didn’t know either, at first. Of course, that was my fault – I didn’t stay in touch with her like I should have. I regret it now and Donovan… I’m sorry I didn’t write.”

  “To your grandmother or to me?”

  “To you. Both really, but I’m talking about you.”

  His gaze was locked with hers, his mouth a full, unreadable line. “This the first time you’ve come back to Willow Heights?”

  “I came one other time before – just for a couple hours – for my grandmother’s funeral.”

  “Then I guess you didn’t know where to write to, did you?”

  “No, but you tried to figure out where to write me. I could’ve done the same.” No one would ever have known. She could’ve written – in secret, safely. And he’d been in Afghanistan … what could her step-father have done to him there? Her heart buried in regret, she tucked her grandmother’s letter to Donovan back into its envelope and dropped it into the ammo box.

  “I never heard anything from you, Clementine. After you left for college, I mean. Not a phone call. Not a letter. And you never showed up, never came home. I left a few months after you did. Got tired of waiting. Tired of living in fucking Shady Side. Guess I didn’t mind it so much when I had you – never spent much time at home then. But after you were gone it was all rust and smoke and watching my mom shoot up and rot in front of the soaps on the local channels because that was all there was to watch – the cable kept getting shut off.

  “I’d be lying if I said I never thought of jumping into the quarry, but who’d want to die a nobody from Shady Side? Figured there was no reason I couldn’t go away and make something of myself too. The Ivy League wasn’t an option, but there are choices, even for people like me. I knew if I survived my enlistment period, I’d be somebody different – not that piece of trash from Shady Side anymore.”

  “You’re not trash!” Her pulse spiked as anger heated her from the inside out. “Nobody can help what they’re born into, Donovan. You were never like the rest of your family and you know it.”

  “You’re the only one who’s ever thought that. Used to think that meant something, but then you ran away and left me in the dust just like your family wanted. Not even a letter.” He frowned.

  “I didn’t want to.” Her heart plummeted to her toes, and she could practically feel it cracking, just like the jam jar Donovan had knocked off the counter the first night she’d seen him sleepwalk. “I hate my family. I hate that I did what they wanted.”

  “You stuck with their plan for seven years – made it all the way to the finish line. Doesn’t seem like you hated it that much.”

  “I had to. Do you know what it’s like to have to do something? To hate it and not have a choice because there’s just no other option?”

  He raised a dark brow. “You’re asking me that when you know I’ve been to Afghanistan? Jesus, you think I liked being over there? I read your grandmother’s turkey stuffing recipe a dozen times over because fuck, it was better than thinking about where I was. What I’d done that day. What I’d do the next. You think you know about obligation? I guarantee you wouldn’t have been shot or jailed if you’d tried to walk away from Columbia.”

  “No, but you would have if I had, and that would’ve been worse!” She jumped up from the bed, stood and looked up, past his rigid jaw and into his eyes. “Maybe you’d still be in jail, or prison – or wherever they would’ve sent you – if I
hadn’t gone!”

  Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to his hands. Now, instead of imagining stripes of grease against his knuckles, she saw red. Blood. The mental image made her stomach draw up tight as her heart raced. “I’m sorry I didn’t write, but I’m not sorry I left – I can’t be. It was better than the alternative. Better than letting you be—”

  “I’m not sorry for what I did, either.” His voice hardened. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’d do it all over again.”

  “I’m not saying you were wrong. I’m saying the second you touched Trevor, we were both fucked. That was it, Donovan – it! There was no way we could’ve both stayed after that. Either I had to leave for college, or you had to leave in handcuffs. What could I have done differently?”

  She’d asked herself that same question thousands of times and had never been able to come up with an answer.

  “My step-father would’ve had Trevor press charges in a heartbeat. The only way they’d let it go was if I agreed to leave immediately for college and stay there. No visits home. No contact with you. They got what they’d always wanted, and I – I had to give it to them.”

  “You were the one who was hurt!” Donovan’s mouth twisted in an expression of pain and rage that shook her to her core. “You were the one who should’ve been pressing charges! Fuck your step-dad! There’s a special circle in hell for people like him, and if I thought I could get away with it, I’d send him there right away.”

  “Life isn’t fair.” She held his hard gaze. “I couldn’t prove what Trevor did – he even deleted the photos. And nobody gives a shit what an eighteen year old girl has to say when her step-father is the chair of the County Commissioners’ Board, especially in a town as small as Willow Heights. And then there’s his money – the truth is irrelevant when you have the means to buy lies.”