CHAPTER 27
ABI
Black Widow
It’s been two days since Sam found the letter. I haven’t heard a word from him. Not that I should expect to, but some part of me thought—and still hopes—that he was just mad and upset, and that he’ll get over it and reach out to me. I don’t want things to end the way we left them. I don’t want to leave this earth that way.
But what if he doesn’t get over it?
The thought causes a strange hollowness to open up in my chest. Like a black hole in space, it seems to have a vacuum effect on everything else around it, sucking in all other thought and purpose and whatever marginal bit of happiness I’ve been able to achieve. Everything else has disappeared. Everything except the nothingness the hollow left behind.
I force my mind into another direction, onto another question. The other side of the coin.
What if Sam does reach out to me again? Is that any better? It will feel better for a moment, yes, but then I’ll have the same problems to deal with that I did before he found out—the worry of how to extricate myself from the lives of him and his daughter without causing more pain. That’s the million-dollar question. How would I do that?
I don’t see a way.
My very presence in their lives was bound to be disruptive and painful. I knew it from day one.
But Sam didn’t.
I don’t know if I was being selfless in agreeing to Sara’s request, or if I was merely too weak to resist the opportunity to have Sam back in my life, if only for a little while.
Something tells me it was the latter. Something tells me it was selfishness. Deluded selfishness.
So now what? What would a strong, selfless person do in this situation? Let sleeping dogs lie? Let Sam and Noelle go, let them grieve Sara and find a healthy, happy way forward with their lives?
Yes. That’s precisely what a strong and selfless person would do. And I desperately want to be that strong and selfless person. Not for me, but for Sam and Noelle. They deserve better than my weakness.
My spine stiffens as determination hardens within me. I feel like I’ve made wrong choice after wrong choice after wrong choice throughout my life. Maybe now, maybe finally, after all this time, I can make the right one. One right choice in a lifetime of mistakes. But maybe that’s where true healing begins.
I pick up my cell phone and dial Anna Sturgill’s number. If I’m to stay strong, I need to get my mind off Sam and Noelle. I need to get back to thinking of others first, and Anna seems to know a lot about what goes on in town. She might know of some needs I could fill while I wait. I have some time left before my big day arrives. I’ll fill every available minute with others so that I will be less tempted to think of Sam. Less tempted to yield to the desire to talk to him, see him, spend my last days on this earth with him.
Yes, that was my plan when I got here, and that will be my plan once again.
As I listen to the ring on the other end of the line, I force my lips up into a smile. The problem is, I don’t feel that joy anywhere except in the muscles of my face.
********
Movie night in the park is much busier than I expected. The town park is adjacent to the biggest bank in Molly’s Knob, and that bank just happens to have one side of uninterrupted brick, and that side just happens to face the park making it the ideal screen to project a movie onto.
Small carts and narrow stands offering food and drink are set up around the perimeter. There are a few games for the kids and even a Port-O-John or two. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s obvious by the turnout that the townsfolk love it.
I’ve already seen half a dozen people I knew in high school, and the popularity of the popcorn stand where Anna Sturgill volunteered me to work has kept my mind off anything personal for the last two hours. Right up until Gladys Tremaine, the lady from the Community Café, sidles up to get a bag of popcorn.
“Fancy seeing you here, Joy.” She winks, and I wonder if she’s teasing or if she just doesn’t remember what my name actually is.
“Hi, Miss Gladys. How are you?”
“Better than I deserve, sweetie. Better than I deserve.” She smiles as she pulls a ten dollar bill off a roll of cash in her hand and then sticks the remaining wad into her bra. “Ain’t nobody gonna rob an old lady if she keeps her money in here, is there?” She pats the area above her breast and laughs a hoarse laugh.
“No, I don’t suppose they will.” I don’t mention that the last time someone was robbed in the safe and sleepy town of Molly’s Knob was probably when I last lived here nearly twenty years ago. Even then, the only newsworthy crime was when a middle school boy was dared by his friends to steal a straw dispenser from the local diner. Hardly a violent crime. “What can I get for you?”
“How about a large popcorn with extra butter and a large Diet Coke?”
“You got it.” I take her proffered money, which is warm and limp, and I smother a smile over her order. Adding a diet drink to a large buttered popcorn is like throwing a breath mint into the mouth of a whale, but maybe there really is something to the “every little bit helps” mindset. Who knows?
As I go about getting her popcorn ready, Gladys talks to me through the window. “A little birdy told me you reunited with an old flame.”
I pause, scoop in one hand, half full bag of popcorn in the other. The black hole I’ve been doing my best to ignore opens up like a gaping mouth beneath my feet, threatening to swallow that last bit of me into its empty oblivion. “Is that right?”
“Isn’t that right?”
I finish filling her bag and then turn to the butter spout, drenching the fluffy kernels in liquid gold. “If you’re talking about Sam, then yes, I’ve seen him several times since I got back. He’s a great man. Got a great family, too.”
I plaster on a casual smile before I pivot back toward Gladys, who is watching me with her narrowed, perceptive eyes. “That’s not quite what I was gettin’ at, but you know that, don’t you, Joy?”
I gulp down the ball that’s lodged at the base of my throat. “Speaking of Sam, how’s Sara doing? I haven’t heard an update.”
The feisty woman tosses a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth and chews, lips smacking noisily, before she replies. There is sadness in her expression as well as her voice. “She passed just this afternoon, bless her. But she’s in a better place now.”
Every one of my muscles, from hip to clavicle, bunches into a tight knot. The burst of grief and anxiety makes my breath short and my head light. “Oh sweet Lord.”
A steady burn starts behind my eyes when I think of how I wasn’t there and why I shouldn’t have been there. It only increases when I think of how devastated Sam and Noelle must be and how I won’t be around to help if they need it.
And I feel sure they will need help.
They’ll need help and comfort, like everyone does when they’re grieving, but they won’t get it from me. My help and comfort comes at a price that neither of them should have to pay.
I begin to rationalize, anything to keep this frantic feeling from overtaking me. Sara’s parents are there. And Sam’s, who Sara once told me moved to a retirement village in Florida, will likely come up when they get the news. They may already be there, too. Sam may have called them when Sara had her stroke. I can’t be sure because I wasn’t around beyond that first morning. Regardless, they are hardly all alone in this. They have family and they have this very supportive community. They won’t lack help.
Those thoughts should bring me peace, but they don’t. They only serve to illuminate all the ways I’m failing Sam and Noelle, and even Sara, whom I let trust that I would be around to pick up the pieces her death would leave behind.
I came to Molly’s Knob to live out my last days in such a way that I could help others, yet it seems I’ve done more harm than good. Lies and false promises, hurting those I care about—that’s all I’ve accomplished. Like everything else in my life, it seems this trip just went awry. Terribly, terribly awry.
“You all right, honey?”
I know I must be pale as a ghost. I feel pale as a ghost. Or maybe just ghostly, like a thin, fading wisp of the person I used to be. The person I wanted to be. Now I’m little more than the fragile seeds of a dying dandelion, one stiff breeze away from disappearing altogether.
“I…I’m fine. I just…I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. For everyone who knew her. And for Sam. And for Noelle.” To my humiliation, my words wobble and a flow of tears I have no hope of stopping begins. I can’t control the river that pours down my face any more than I can control the way my chin trembles and my heart aches. “Will you excuse me please?”
I spin away from Mrs. Tremaine and tell Bobby, the guy in charge of the stand, that I need a minute. He asks if I’m okay, but I just keep walking until I’m out the back door of the little stand and lunging into the night. I drag in lungful after lungful of crisp air, desperate for calm, but it doesn’t help me. It doesn’t even help me to breathe better. It’s as though my ribs are closing in, crushing everything within my chest cavity.
As much as I try to fend it off, panic rises. And the need to flee grows.
Anxiously, I glance around. My eyes fall on the ocean of trees that stretches out beside me. Right now, the woods are a sea of tranquility, beckoning. Summoning. Promising. So I do the only thing I can do. I do what I was taught to do. I do what I do best.
I run.
I run and I run and I run.
I run until my toes are burning so badly I can hardly remember my own name, much less Sam’s. I run until the pain steals thoughts of Sara and Noelle from my mind. And when the flames spread up my leg, I keep running. I run until my thigh starts to tingle and my stomach swims with nausea. Only then do I stop, to vomit on the side of the road.
When I look up, I see I’ve found my way home, back to where nothing can hurt me. Back to the lake that promises an escape from it all.
The last thing I remember is dragging my useless right leg behind me as I cross the living room floor to collapse on the bed where the ever-present black hole of hollowness sucks me in with open, welcoming arms.
********
I wake to both tingling and numbness, if that’s even a thing. I can’t feel temperature or air on my foot. It’s like it’s not even there, although I know that it is. I certainly didn’t drop it or cut it off on my trip home last night. At least not that I know of. But beneath that numbness is a bone-deep prickling sensation that I realize is, clinically, the protest of my insufficiently oxygenated tissues.
I know before I even look down that I’ve pushed my ailing leg too far, and while I’m not necessarily surprised by what I see, I’m far from pleased.
My leg is propped on a pillow, but even with the elevation, it still looks angry. Or maybe not even angry. It looks like it’s trapped between fury and futility. It’s as though it’s fiercely fighting a losing battle, which, in the most basic of terms, it actually is.
My foot is swollen so badly the skin is tight and shiny, and the whole thing a sick dusky bluish purple in color. My toes protrude from the top like five fat sausages. I try to wiggle them, but they struggle to obey my commands. I know I need to massage my leg, I know that I need to encourage blood flow as much as I can, but I also know, before I even touch my leg, that the process will be excruciating.
I sit up and bend over my bent knee. I take a deep breath, hold it, and dig into my calf. Ruthlessly, I work my fingers into the muscles, massaging as relentlessly as I might if I couldn’t feel the pain of it.
But I do feel the pain of it.
I feel it. I welcome it. I even revel in it a bit. Because, as always, it’s nothing more than what I deserve.
Now more than ever, it’s what I deserve.
My condition doesn’t just remind me of what I did to my child now. It reminds me of the pain I brought into the lives of others. Innocent others. A good man who didn’t need my kind of trouble, and a little girl who just wanted a friend.
I’m like a black widow of the heart. My kiss is deadly. My love is life threatening.
I work my fingers into my flesh, sweat peppering my forehead and dotting my upper lip. I work it until I feel sick with the pain of it. I work it until tears are rolling down my face and I taste blood from the imprint of teeth on my bottom lip. I work it until my hands cramp and my nail beds throb.
But still, nothing hurts worse than the pain in my soul.