CHAPTER SEVEN
Caitlin
I hug Sherry and the kids and tell them I’ll be back soon and jump in the family van, rolling down the windows to let the hot summer air rush through as I head out into the country.
The sun is shining bright and the fields alongside of the road are green and ridiculously lush. Upcountry South Carolina looks like the best, prettiest, postcard version of itself, and I can’t help but feel lifted up by the sight of it, by the smells of summer weeds and flowers floating in on the breeze, by the sounds of insects cricking and birds singing and all the trappings of summer that insist the world is alive. It is wild and alive and death won’t dare lay a finger on anything right now, not while summer is here, wrapping the world in heat and abundance.
I hold on to my hope that there’s been some simple glitch—Gabe’s phone died, or his car broke down, or his parents put up more of a fight over the move than we anticipated—until I reach Darby Hill and see Gabe’s parking spot in front of the azalea bushes empty.
I slam out of the van, heart beating in my throat as I start toward the front steps of the house, but before I can reach the veranda, Deborah opens the door. Her cheeks are red and blotchy and wet, but she isn’t crying, and she doesn’t say a word when I step onto the porch and ask her if she’s okay.
She simply stares at me with this strange empty, lost expression for a long, long minute, a tense, strained, terrible minute that makes me feel like I’m going to lose my coffee and toast right there on her elegant doormat.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, when the silence gets to be too much. “Has Gabe been here? He said he was coming to talk to you and Mr. Alexander.”
“He was here,” she says in a flat tone. “Here and gone.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Where did he go?”
“Aaron came home for lunch and found Gabe passed out behind the wheel at the end of the drive,” she says calmly. “It looks like he lost consciousness right after he made the turn.”
My hand flies to cover my mouth, and my stomach cramps tighter, forming a sick knot at the center of me. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have taken no for an answer. I should have made him let me drive him.
“Is he okay?” I finally ask. “Can I see him?”
Deborah licks her lips, and swipes an invisible hair behind her ear, taking what feels like an eternity before she answers. “Aaron took Gabe to the hospital, while I called our friend Mary, who works in emergency. She had everything ready for them when they arrived. She promised me it would be fine.”
I nod, fighting to swallow past the lump in my throat. “So is he okay? Have you heard from the hospital? Can we go see him?”
She lifts her right hand, revealing a black cordless phone I hadn’t realized she was holding. “Aaron called ten minutes ago. I thought he was going to tell me they were coming home.”
I shake my head, feeling the truth bearing down on me like a runaway train, but I don’t want to believe it. Gabe was fine just a few hours ago; he was better. He said he felt great. I don’t want to accept what I know is coming, don’t want to hear Deborah say another word. But I can’t stop her. I can’t stop her any more than I can stop autumn from coming, or death from putting his fingers wherever he likes, whenever he likes, even all over this perfect summer day.
“He’s dead,” Deborah says, brow wrinkling delicately as fresh tears fill her eyes. “My boy is dead. It’s too late.”
Her words hit me in my core, in my gut and my heart and every part of me that has lived harder since Gabe came into my life. They hit and a second later my knees hit the hard wooden boards beneath me, but I don’t feel that pain. That pain is too small to register now that my entire world has become pain. There is nothing left to breathe but pain, not a shred of hope or light anywhere to be found.
I rock back and forth on my knees, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders, fighting for breath, too fucked up even to cry. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. My cry is wordless, soundless, a miserable silent wail that only the banshees can hear.
My grandma used to tell me stories about banshees before she died. She was first generation Irish, and still had so many beautiful, dark, mysterious stories to tell. She was the first magical person I ever met in my life. Gabe was the second.
And now they’re both gone. Forever.
Forever. He promised to love me forever. Somewhere out there, wherever he is, he is still loving me, I know it. It isn’t enough to banish the pain—not even close—but it helps me pull in a breath, and then another, and finally the tears break through and begin to fall.
I cry and cry. I have no idea how long, but gradually I become aware of the fact that Deborah is still standing in front of me. I look up, to find her staring down at me with an expression of such contempt that it makes me flinch.
“It’s your fault,” she says. “You were supposed to make him want to fight, want to live. You were supposed to convince him to have the surgery.”
“I…I didn’t even k-know,” I stutter. “Not until y-yesterday.”
“How could you not know?” she asks, eyes flying wide. “It was there, every day, every word he spoke, every time he did something the old Gabe would never have done. He wasn’t the same. That thing in his head changed him, made him ruthless and cold and…” She shakes her head and her lip curls. “But you wouldn’t know. You didn’t know who he really was.”
I stumble to my feet, so shocked it feels like the ground is tilting beneath me. “You’re wrong. I knew him, and I loved him. I would have tried to—”
“You didn’t know him, you knew the disease,” she says, cutting me off. “And I should have known better than to think a girl in love with the heartless person Gabe had become could ever help me get my son back. I should have kicked you back to the hole you live in the second you darkened my door.”
My jaw clenches, and anger boils inside me, but not for myself. “Gabe was anything but cold or heartless. He loved me, and he loved my brothers and Emmie, and he was a good, good man. He would have given his life for me, or any one of the kids.” Tears fill my eyes, but I refuse to cry in front of this woman again. “If he was cold to you, maybe that’s because you’re cold, and he was tired of wasting his time on someone too stupid to see what a wonderful person he was.”
“Get out,” Deborah says, tears flowing down her cheeks.
“He told me how alone he was growing up,” I say, unable to stop defending Gabe now that I’ve started. “How you couldn’t even be bothered to tuck him into bed, and instead had the woman you hired to raise your son do it. How you made him feel like he was something to manage, not a person who deserved to be loved.”
“Get out!” Deborah shouts, the words ending in a sob. “Or I’m calling the police.”
“Fine,” I shout back. “There’s nothing here worth staying for anymore anyway.”
I turn and charge back down the stairs and across the driveway. I slam into the van, and I drive back toward town. I force myself to go the speed limit. I force myself to pull over and check directions to the tattoo parlor on the edge of town on my phone instead of tapping letters into the search engine while I’m driving.
I keep my tears at bay for the next hour and a half as I find the tattoo parlor, give the artist the picture of the windblown dandelion that I picked out online this morning, and sit down in his chair to have the tattoo inked into my shoulder.
The pain of the needle dragging across my skin helps me stay present. I focus only on the moment, and how good it feels to be going through with this, to have the tattoo Gabe and I talked about on me. Forever. A permanent reminder of our love, and the summer that taught me to never take any beautiful thing for granted.
I force myself to hold it together until I’ve paid the artist, driven home, and have the van parked in the driveway. Only then do I turn off the ignition, drop my head to the wheel, and cry like the world is ending. Because it is. Part of it. A beautiful part I’m going to miss so much it feels like something vital has been removed from my body, leaving a toxic, hollow place behind.
I cry and cry, until my face is covered in tears that drip down onto the bare skin below my shorts, taking the time to grieve Gabe alone before I go inside and tell the kids that someone they loved is gone.