Ben
I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing, and it takes me a minute to register where I am—on Dad’s couch, the remote on my stomach. The trip out and back to North Carolina was a slog, even though I’d made some good purchases of building materials—high quality, high resale value, and good for this time of year. But I’d spent extra time sorting transit for it all, and everything had been made worse by the flat tire I got out on one of the backroads I’d used to get to the highway more quickly. I’d finally come in around nine, Dad watching a ballgame on TV, and muttered about needing a few minutes to sit down, but I guess that had turned into a full night of sleep. I jerk to a sitting position and look around, panicked. Did Dad get ready for bed on his own? Did I miss Kit’s call?
“Kit?” I say as I pick up, standing to check Dad’s room.
“It’s Jasper.” I cross the living room again, peek into the kitchen. Dad’s there, at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of coffee, which he tips to me in greeting, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. He must’ve got himself ready for bed, got up on his own, made his own coffee—it’s huge progress, and I should feel happy, but something in me, again, feels a bit bereft. “You there?”
“Yeah,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Sorry. I overslept.”
“You know anything about what’s holding up Averin’s decision?”
“What?” I say, confused. My brain still feels sludgy, sleep-deprived, unprepared for Jasper’s work-ready attitude. “What decision?”
“Singh called me this morning to tell me he’ll need a couple weeks before he can give me an answer.”
Something goes cold inside me. But it’s been a rough couple of days. I must be missing something. “Singh?” I repeat. “Jasper. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jesus, I thought you were involved with this woman. She hasn’t told you?” It’s that cold feeling again—I say nothing, waiting for him to go on. “I went to Singh, Averin’s boss. We offered project funding for three years, some equipment too.”
I have to lean against the doorjamb to keep my legs holding me up.
“Told him we wanted her to come work for us, that she could stay involved in the research he’d do for Beaumont, regular travel back, all that. This guy, he needs the money. He’s running last in his department for external grants. It’s a good offer.”
“Jasper,” I say slowly, my brain trying to catch up. “You tried to get Singh to trade Kit?”
“Yeah.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kit told me herself—she’d do anything for Dr. Singh. If she feels responsible for him missing out on that kind of funding—it’d be terrible for her. I owe him everything, she’d told me. “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe you—”
“This guy, he’s clueless. Kept asking about what we’d be able to do for her, salary-wise, like he’s real worried about her? He didn’t even know she’d won the lottery.”
“What?” I shout this through the phone. “How the fuck do you know about that?” My heart is pounding. This conversation with Singh—if he’s gone to Kit with this, she must be devastated.
She must be done with me.
“It’s public record, bud. State law where you are, she had to disclose her identity to claim. There wasn’t much news about it, because the jackpot wasn’t all that big, but I found it.”
“Jasper, what the fuck. How could you do that?”
“Do what? I don’t know if he’ll take it, but he at least listened—I thought I might have him. But then he called me late yesterday and told me something had happened, that Kit would need some more time. He ought to take it—he’s not going to get the kind of funding we’re offering anywhere else, but he seems reluctant to lose her, so I guess you two have that in common, though—”
I cut him off before he can go anywhere else with that sentence. “I need to go.”
“Wait—”
“No.” I’m already in my bedroom, grabbing clothes out of a drawer. “You have no idea the shit you’ve buried me in, Jasper.”
“Tucker, come on. This was your idea.”
“This was my idea over a fucking month ago. I told you I was involved with her. I told you I wasn’t recruiting her anymore.”
“Well, I told you. You’re not the only one who can recruit.”
“You had me on the phone for two hours yesterday. You didn’t say a goddamn word. Tell me that’s not fucking shady, man. Tell me.” I shout this, slamming my fist against my dresser.
His pause is too long, and right now, I don’t give a shit what he has to say anyway so I hang up, immediately call Kit’s cell—voicemail. It’s the same at her office, and when I call the front office, the secretary tells me Kit’s not in. I quickly brush my teeth and pull on fresh clothes, then go out to the kitchen. “Dad,” I say, “Can you—?” I don’t even know where to start. The salvage yard is supposed to open in two hours. I can’t remember if River’s coming today. I don’t know if Sharon is working. Does Dad have PT today, or a doctor’s appointment? Everything I’ve been keeping straight in my head over the last weeks—it’s all gone to shit. I can only think of getting to her.
“I’m fine,” Dad says, his brow furrowed in concern. “I’ll call Sharon. You all right?”
“No,” I say. “I have to go, but I’ll call.” I pat his shoulder before leaving the house, driving to Kit’s as fast as I can. The whole time, all I can think about is everything that has been violated for Kit—her job, which she loves, the loyalty she has to Dr. Singh, the risk of having to leave this place, the privacy she guarded about her win.
I barely remember to shut off the truck when I pull up to her house.
The door opens before I’m even all the way up the steps.
“Zoe,” I breathe, and fuck, I wish it were Greer. Zoe looks as if she wants to slit me from neck to nuts. “I have to talk to her.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you do.”
“Is she here? Her phone is off, and there’s no answer at work. This was not me who did this, Zoe. This was not me.”
“Who was it?”
“It was my partner, he—”
“How did he know to go to her boss? How did he know that would work on her?” And yeah—it’s exactly what Jasper said. It’s because I fucking told him, when I’d still been keeping him in the loop about what I’d learned about Kit, when I’d still been lying to myself about why I wanted to be around her all the time, why I wanted to know so much about her. I have never hated myself more, and I’ve almost gone to prison, so that’s saying something. “You told her you wanted to be with her, that you loved her. Do you realize what she thinks?”
“It wasn’t about the job, Zoe. That was never about the job. I swear to you. I need to see her. I’ll do anything for her.”
“You tried to just push her. Right into the fucking fast lane,” Zoe says, and I have no idea what that even means, but at least she hasn’t slammed the door in my face yet. It’s Zoe and Greer who Kit wanted me to go to, before she’d even really listen to me about Beaumont, and somehow I know it’ll be Zoe and Greer who I’ll have to get through if I ever want to see her again.
“Please,” I say, and it’s almost a whisper, how it comes out.
She sends a long, assessing look down at me. I’m grateful to be on these steps below her. I’ll get on my knees if she wants me to, but there’s something in her expression, some whisper of familiarity or sympathy that makes me think Zoe’s been where I am. She’s had to beg for forgiveness too. “She had to leave town. Her dad—he’s not well.”
My mind empties of everything about Beaumont, about what I have to explain to Kit. “What happened?”
“Her brother called yesterday afternoon. Kit’s dad maybe had a stroke. They don’t know much yet. She flew out to Ohio last night.”
“Zoe, Jesus. Do you know where she is? What hospital?”
“I’m not telling you that. I’ve told you enough.”
It doesn’t matter. I’ve listened to everything Kit has ever said to me. I know roundabout where her dad lives these days, or at least where she sends his money. I’ll find the hospital closest. I’ll go to every goddamn hospital in that state if I have to. I can’t imagine her alone right now. I can’t imagine not being with her.
* * * *
In my job as a recruiter, I’m on the road for probably 150 days out of the year, and while that’s pretty exciting at first, mostly, after a while, it sucks—it’s all mediocre food and nondescript hotel rooms and a regular feeling of jet-lagged fatigue. But it’s also massive frequent flyer miles, and I use God knows how many to get myself on a flight to Ohio.
I don’t bring extra clothes, a toothbrush, anything. I call my dad from the airport, where I drive immediately after leaving Kit’s, asking if he’s okay for at least the rest of the day and tonight. I call Sharon too, to make sure I haven’t dropped the ball on his care in any way, and thankfully neither of them asks much of anything, other than whether I’m all right.
I’m not all right. I’m panicked. I’m not a nervous flyer, ever, but on both of those shitty regional flights I’m a sweaty first-timer, clutching my armrests and keeping my jaw clenched tight. I keep thinking, what if I don’t get to see her? By the time I’ve touched down, I’m sweaty, tense all over, and I take a few minutes in the airport bathroom to rinse my face, calm down so I can think long enough to make the calls I need to make.
I luck out, at least, in finding the regional medical center where Kit’s father has been admitted, paying an unholy amount of money to a cab driver to make the hour drive there. And I lie like a fucking dog to the receptionist in the lobby, saying I’m family, and it’s wrong, but I don’t care.
All I care about is seeing Kit.
When I do see her, she’s at the end of a long hospital corridor, her small form huddled in the hard plastic chairs that are always an extra cruelty at hospitals. I spent days in an almost identical one, next to my dad. Sitting across from her is a small, plump woman with bottle-blond hair, her hands clasped as if in prayer. And beside her is a tall, lean man with jet black hair and a beard. He sees me first and stands as I approach. This is Kit’s brother—despite his height and his light-colored eyes to Kit’s almost black ones, there’s a similarity to their faces, to the arrangement of their features.
Except on this dude, those features look mean as hell.
“No,” he says, walking toward me, putting out a hand. “No.”
“I’m Ben Tucker,” I say needlessly, because from the look on his face I know already that he’s heard everything he thinks he needs to know about me. “I came to be with Kit.”
“I’m her brother. And I don’t give a shit what you came for.”
“Alex,” Kit says from her chair, and then she unfolds herself, standing wearily. Oh, fuck, she looks so tired. Her cheeks seem gaunt, and the pale skin under her eyes, nearly transparent even when she’s well, is purpled with fatigue. I level a look at this Alex person, try to fill it with as much accusation and judgment as I can manage. Why isn’t he feeding her, making sure she sleeps?
As if you have any right, I think to myself.
Kit stands beside her brother, setting a quelling hand on his forearm, which I now notice leads down to a clenched fist that he has rested at his side. I’m not immune to such a show of aggression. Part of me wants to take out all my anger, all my frustration, on this guy, this guy who’s acting like he’s Kit’s protector and I’m the big bad wolf come to blow her house down. I feel it close to the surface, that urge, that hair-trigger intensity that was under my skin almost every day of my teen years. But I won’t do that to Kit. I won’t make this worse for her.
“I’ll talk to him,” she says, looking up at Alex, who scans her face in concern.
“You don’t have to,” he says.
“I know. But it’ll be faster this way. I’ll take care of it.” Faster this way. Faster, I know she means, to get me out of this hospital, out of her face, out of her life. I feel sick.
Alex nods, then turns to glare at me before heading back down the hall. But he sits a few seats closer than he was before. He’s keeping an eye on us.
When Kit looks at me, she’s wiped any expression of recognition from her face. I could be anyone. I could be another hospital employee, someone she just wants to deal with and get rid of. “Kit,” I say, but even though I’ve thought of nothing but her since I left home, I haven’t thought at all about what exactly I’d say in this moment, when I’d see her, white-faced under these fluorescent lights, looking slight and weary and so, so finished with me. “How is your father?”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but it’s less defiant than it is an effort to stay warm, or to self-contain, somehow. She’s holding the pieces of herself together. “He’s not awake yet. We’ll know more when he is.”
“Has the—is the doctor good? Answering all your questions? Because sometimes it helps if you—”
She cuts me off. “The doctor is fine. She’s very helpful.”
“That’s good,” I say dumbly.
“Ben. I don’t know how you heard about this, but—”
“Zoe told me.” Kit clenches her teeth together, and I know Zoe must’ve broken confidence, must’ve done exactly what Kit had told her not to do. But somehow that gives me a strange sort of hope, that Zoe would do that, that she’d believe in me enough to tell me where Kit was. “Don’t be upset with her.”
“I’m not,” she snaps, then takes a deep breath. “But listen, this is a family matter. And I know you’ve come a long way, but—I’d really prefer that you leave.”
I search her face for something, anything, to tell me she’s lying, to me or to herself.
“Kit, you have to know—”
“No,” she says, an echo of her brother. “I don’t.”
She’s right—she doesn’t have to listen to me, to my explanation about Jasper, about how I’d told him stuff about Singh before I was involved with her, before I knew where this was going. Here, in this place, I doubt she cares, or at least I doubt she can let herself care, not until her father is out of the woods.
“Just let me be here with you. I’m so worried—”
“You know what, Ben? I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry that you’re worried. I know that’s hard. But this isn’t about you. This is something that’s going on with me, and I get to pick who I want to have around. I get to choose. And it’s not you. It’s really, really not.”
“I’ll do anything,” I say. “I’ll wait outside, if you want, or I’ll—what if I check into a hotel? And you can call, if you want to—” It’s me who breaks off here, something cruel twisting in my chest. This is familiar—I have done this before. I have begged this way before, a long time ago, and it was the worst day of my life, worse than the day I got arrested. Half of me doesn’t care—half of me wants to keep going with this until I’ve lost any shred of dignity I have left. But the other half of me? Something ices over, a soft frost, and I feel my spine straighten.
Kit looks at me, hard, a flash of something in those dark eyes. But then she lowers them, shakes her head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to want to. I don’t think—I’m not going to want to see you again, okay? What happened with Beaumont, and Dr. Singh, that’s really terrible, and I’m going to have to sort through that later, when things are…” She doesn’t finish this thought, and I know why. There’s a sort of superstition that steals over you when you’re in the hospital with someone you love. You’re always looking for wood to knock on, always wanting to say don’t jinx it to any doctor or nurse who promises recovery. Her chin trembles for a split second, and I reach for her, instinctively, but she turns her body just so. Just so that I can’t get near her. “But I don’t have to sort through much to know that I can’t trust you,” she says. “And right now—all I’ve got energy for is the people I can trust.”
I can feel it, right then, my throat closing up—not for me. It’s for her, for the way she looks so small, and so in pain. I swallow, once, twice, to force the feeling down, and it’s ugly, the feeling that replaces it. That soft frost, it’s hardening into something else, something I don’t want Kit to see. I’m rooted to the spot, though. Looking at her, I can’t bear the thought of walking away and leaving her here.
But I don’t have to.
Because Kit walks away from me.
* * * *
Someone other than me, someone with a bit more optimism, or someone who didn’t actually see that look in Kit’s eyes when she saw me, may have stuck around, waited it out. But not me.
I don’t get a hotel room. I don’t stay overlong at the airport.
I go back home.
It feels like it’s been the longest day, like it should already be tomorrow, but Jasper’s call had come in early this morning, and in the end, I’m off my last flight before midnight. I don’t drive home right away, though. I drive to the salvage yard. At this time of night, it’s as dark and menacing as all the kids used to think it was. I let myself in, disable the alarm, and head straight back to the office, where I’ve been working on the Baltic chandelier. It’s maybe half assembled now, the largest pieces in place so that it can hang straight from the hook I’ve put it on. Every day I’ve been here, I’ve worked a bit on assembling more of it.
What I want to do, what my instinct is: to pick up the baseball bat my dad keeps under his desk—from before he had an alarm for this place—and smash this chandelier to hell. To watch all the pieces shatter, hear the sound they would make, feel the crunch of them under my boots.
What I do instead is take it off its hook, less gingerly than I should, and carry it upstairs to the east wing, the graveyard, where I first found it. I don’t bother rehanging it. I set it on the floor, its layers collapsing into themselves, the prisms tinkling against each other, against the ground. I go back to the office, pick up the tray of spare pieces I have gathered on the workbench, and carry this upstairs too. Again, I resist an urge—to scatter these all over, to make it next to impossible to find all the pieces again in this mess. Instead, I set the tray beside the broken-bodied chandelier. Maybe River will come up here sometime, find it, and start in on it instead of me.
I stand in that room for a long time. And I don’t do anything but live out all my aggression in my head. In here, there’s tons of stuff to destroy, to smash up, to grind into dust. My body is still, but coiled—I can imagine the release I’d feel in picking up those window frames, breaking them over the top of the dresser in the corner. I can hear the wood split, can feel splinters that would go into my hands and arms from the impact. I could tip that dresser right over, and it would make the most satisfying thud on this floor. It would shake everything in here. It would feel really, really good.
But I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t been that person in years and years.
Still, I can’t shake the sense that what I did with Kit was pretty close to what I’m imagining—I smashed up the room of her, of us. I went in reckless that first time I’d met her, and I’d been reckless about my involvement with her—I waited too long to get myself off her case. I didn’t tell Jasper enough when I finally did. I fell too fast, too hard, told her I loved her too soon. I barreled into that hospital, didn’t have the right things to say. I acted like the brash, feckless kid I’d grown up being, that I’d worked hard to leave behind.
After a while, I go back down the steps, reset the alarm, lock up. I’m so tired that I hardly remember the drive back to my dad’s, but I’m dreading getting into bed, closing my eyes and seeing Kit there. So it’s a minor relief that my dad’s waited up—I may not feel ready for talking, but at least it gives me an excuse to put off the tossing and turning I’m sure to do all night.
He’s in the recliner. He’s got the TV tray of clock pieces pulled up again, but this time, he’s using both hands—the left one’s shaky, pale, a little smaller than the other one, but other than this, Dad looks almost like his old self, as if I’ve never been here at all.
Fitting.
“Up late,” I say.
“That’s my line, kid.”
I sit on the couch across from him, scrape a hand down my face. “I fucked up, Dad.”
“Let’s hear it,” he says, keeping his eyes on his clock pieces, his hands busy.
I give him an abbreviated version—what I’d told Jasper about Kit and Dr. Singh when I’d still been working on her case, what Jasper had done with the information without telling me first, what Kit thinks now about me and her, about why I’ve been with her. “Now her dad’s sick, and today I—I flew all the way there, tried to be with her. I tried to tell her it wasn’t me who did this, with Beaumont, but…”
“She’s probably not in the mood to hear that,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Probably she’s too worried about her dad to hear anything you’ve got to say.”
“I know,” I say, dropping my head back.
“Maybe you ought to have stayed. Got a room nearby, in case she needs you.”
In spite of myself, I lift my head up to cut him a sharp look, but only because he’s floated the idea I was too chickenshit to do myself. “I’m not going to fucking stalk her, Dad. She said she didn’t want me around.”
“Tough thing, that.”
Holy shit, I am not in the mood for this. I am not in the mood for my dad’s weird, monkish approach to advice, where he says hardly anything at all and I’m supposed to sort out the answers in the silence. “I don’t think I’m right for her, anyway,” I say. “She’s pretty settled in here, with her life, and I’m headed home in a few days. Long distance wouldn’t have worked. It was a temporary thing. We don’t—we don’t really fit.”
He snorts, half laugh, half scorn. “Don’t be an idiot, Ben. I was married to someone I didn’t fit with, and what you’ve got with Kit, it’s not that. Maybe you’re not going to be able to work it out with her, but don’t say some damn fool thing about you not fitting with her. You know you did.”
I do know I did. But right now, I want to go on lying to myself about it. I want to pretend I’m going to get on a plane on Sunday night, fly back to my life in Houston, sleep in my king-size bed with its two pillows and extra-hard mattress and not think about Kit at all. I want to pretend that it’ll be easy, at some point, to just check-in, make sure she’s okay, and then go on with my life as if I’d never fallen in love with her.
As if I’d never thought at all about living a whole different life, for her.
“So you’re going to leave, then,” he says. I look over at him, at where he’s still got his eyes down on the clock. Despite the words, he’s not said this with any judgment, and that’s how he’s always been. He’d been the same when I’d announced I’d go to Texas, when I’d told him I’d be staying there once I’d taken the job with Beaumont. I always wondered whether he thought I should have stayed, taken over the yard, been closer to him. But he’s done fine without me. He’s had a whole life without me, with Sharon and his work. He loves me, but he doesn’t need me here.
“We ought to turn in,” I say. I rise to go over to Dad’s chair, still shadowing him a little as he pushes himself up, even though now he uses all the stability training he’s got from the trainer.
When he puts his good arm around my shoulders as we walk, I know he’s trying to take care of me now.