Chapter 4: Gray

The day after the wedding was supposed to take place, I started my search. It wasn’t that I was going to demand her to marry me, to carry her away against her will. If she was adamant about my letting her go, I’d leave and never come back. But I knew in my heart that I had to try. I’d felt empty standing at the altar, knowing she’d never come. I felt empty just thinking about never seeing her again. I was good at finding people—hunting down targets was part of my job, but I knew that once Kat had put her mind to something she would be thorough about her plan. It wouldn’t be an easy task to find her, but I would do everything in my power to do so.

I didn’t find her car when I combed through the parking lot of the airport. It was possible she’d hopped on a flight but I doubted it—the Kat I remembered was terrified of heights and flying. Everywhere we’d gone when we were younger, we drove. We’d always taken long road trips, stopping occasionally at motels along the way when we felt it’d been too long since we’d touched each other in the way we wanted. Those were the best days of my life and I felt I needed them back. There was no salvation for me without Kat, no joy in my life without her sweet smile. During my search, my heart was perpetually sunk low into my stomach with the fear that I would never see her again. In the years that we’d been apart, I’d managed to put a sloppy bandage over the gaping wound that had split open when I’d left her. I had still thought about her every day, wondered what she was up to, even when I was with other women.

I remembered one particular day when we were on a long stretch of empty interstate without a car to be seen for miles. There was no motel, either, and so when the urge got too hot we pulled over and made love in the backseat of my car, the windows steaming with our breath. After, she laid on top of me, catching her breath while I stroked her hair. It wasn’t the first time I had told her that I loved her, but it was the moment that I realized that my heart would be hers forever.

I thought about that day, about all of our days together, and the idea of being able to repeat them drove me to search for her even harder. I went to the bus stop next and my heart leapt when I saw her car parked outside. I peered inside of it and saw that she had left nothing behind; it was empty and bare, devoid of any sign that Kat had ever been there. I went inside and showed her picture to the employees, asking each one of them if they had seen a girl there yesterday. None of them would tell me. They told me it was against company privacy. Even when I pushed them, they didn’t budge. Normally, people were intimidated by me even when I wasn’t trying. I think this time they saw the look in my eyes and felt more pity than fear, which wasn’t a great motivator in trying to get them to answer my questions.

I didn’t give up. I watched the bus schedule for the next few weeks, trying to detect a pattern in the routes. I followed each one I found and came up empty-handed, until I noticed that one particular bus left for a small town once every other week. I was growing increasingly desperate and I decided to try it, even if it meant having to stay for a week or two to wait for the bus to return to that particular town. I had long given up answering my father’s phone calls and had avoided visits from Kat’s father as well. I wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell me, what he wanted me for, but I didn’t have time to find out. The longer it took me to search, the further away she could be getting. I didn’t even know if she was in the state anymore. So I kept up my search.

I took the bus the next Monday, my fingers tapping anxiously on my legs as I waited for it to arrive at its small-town destination. I prayed that this was it, that I’d find her there. I prayed too that she would give me a chance to make it up to her, to prove how much I loved her. It had now been a month since she’d been gone and my hopes were almost dying.

When we arrived at the town a few hours later, I stepped off the bus and began to walk to stretch my legs. There wasn’t much to the place—ten or so residential streets and one long drag of businesses in buildings that looked like they hadn’t been updated since they’d been built years ago.

It was pure luck that made me stumble upon her. She was walking along the street, tying an apron around her waist. The pale pink dress she was wearing contrasted perfectly with her skin tone. I watched her from affair as she entered a diner at the corner of the block and decided that she must work there. I watched the place for close to an hour before deciding to make my move. I thought it was best to show myself to her in public so that she wouldn’t be afraid that I would hurt her. The thought of her fear made me cringe inwardly. I would rather die than hurt her and I would kill to keep her safe.

I watched through the window for a moment as she moved and smiled at her customers, looking carefree but somehow strained at the same time. I would go in and talk to her, and hope that she’d give me a chance.