Chapter 2

Ten Years Earlier

 

My first reaction upon hearing the news that blared from our texts and messaging apps was how to comfort London.

Sage was arrested for murdering his father?

It was unfathomable. Like one of those stories that start with a small grain of truth and then spreads like a wildfire, picking up more crazed ideas until this is its distorted reality.

I looked from my phone to London’s face, her expression riddled with panic, horror, and alarm. Her face was white as a ghost and she teetered on her heels, still half naked.

Jumping into action, I gently pulled her down to the bed and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Her body trembled violently, as if in shock, as she slumped against me.

My voice had an oddly serene and calm resonance to it. “I’m sure it’s all a very big misunderstanding. We’ll find out the truth.”

She vehemently shook her head to the contrary. “No. I knew something like this was going to happen. I didn’t do anything, Cam. I let it happen.”

I’d never heard sobs as gut-wrenchingly loud and pained as I did in that moment. It was as if a torrential rain was pouring through the room, so loud and destructive. Flooding us with grief.

“Baby, you know there is nothing we could’ve done.” But even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie.

Over the past few years, we’d both claimed witness to the bruises and black eyes that appeared on a regular basis on Sage’s body. He’d blow it off any time we asked about it, but we knew. It was so obvious they were from his father. The SOB was a nasty drunk and it wasn’t often when he wasn’t drinking. If Sage wasn’t careful to avoid him, his father would beat the shit out of him.

I wasn’t sure when it all started or how long it had gone on, maybe his whole life, but Sage never talked about it. Not even to me when we were alone together. If I said anything that sounded even remotely like a question about his home life, he’d tell me he was fine and to “let it go.” And I did. Because who was I to say anything? What could I have possibly done to help him against the brutality of an abusive, alcoholic dad?

Sage’s dad was infamous in our small Tennessee town for being a public disturbance and a regular in the town jail. I don’t know why everyone turned a blind eye to the possibility that if Merle Hendricks was such a menace in public that there was a probability he was twice as bad to his kid in private. But nobody dared to get involved. They simply looked away and “prayed for the little Hendricks boy” in church on Sundays.

Fucking hypocrites. Fat lot of good that did.

I searched around for our clothes that had been scattered around on the floor of the hotel room, handing her the beautiful prom dress she wore not twenty minutes earlier. I felt a stab of fear and anger pummel me in the stomach, which churned with the possibility of what might have happened if everything had gone as planned that night.

It was supposed to be a celebration. The three of us together. Sequestered away together in a small hotel room in the neighboring town where we’d be able to do the things we wanted with each other. Our last night together before we graduated and took the world by storm.

 

But those plans came to a screeching halt the minute we were notified about Sage.

Not knowing what to do or where to go, we dressed in relative silence, just the occasional sniffle and tear coming from London. The evening shouldn’t have ended this way. It was supposed to be a perfect night for the three of us.

My thoughts drifted back to Sage and the conversation we recently had over our futures.

“You gonna leave for Nashville right away, man?” I’d asked him as we sat in my dad’s fishing boat and fished for crawfish in Pitney’s Pond – which was more of a lake than a pond.

I should’ve known things weren’t good by the way Sage gave me an unnerving sidelong glance and smirk.

“As soon as I fucking can. Wouldn’t you?”

I’d shrugged my shoulders, uncertain of what to say in response to that.

But Sage let me off the hook with a chuckle. “The only things here for me are you and London. No other reason to stick around this town any longer than I have to.”

His voice is forlorn and lost. I knew his childhood was riddled with pain and adversity. He lived in a run-down trailer off Marsh Road, just past the Gleason’s farm. His dad had a beat-up old truck that only ran half the time, and Sage had to get around to and from his job at the grocery store on a second-hand bike.

Where London and I shared a commonality of two sets of parents that loved us and provided us good homes, Sage had nobody but us.

We’d always been friends. Different people with different upbringings, but something bound us together. The three of us. Although we all had our own interests and lives outside of school – I had sports, London with her dance and academics, and Sage had his music – we just gelled. People thought we were an oddity, the three of us. Like peanut butter, jelly and mayo. You wouldn’t think we’d work, but it just did.

I’d also come to know over the years, since maybe our early teens, that Sage liked me as more than a friend. It was in the way he’d smile at me, his brown eyes glinting with something darker and needier. Heavier than a way you’d look at just a bro-friend. He’d always be careful not to touch me, but his gaze would linger when he thought I wasn’t looking.

Sage had never come right out and told me he was bisexual, but I knew. Maybe that should’ve bothered me that he didn’t confide this in me since we were best friends and all. But I was too much of a coward to ask, afraid of what he might say. I didn’t love him in that way. But I still loved him as my friend and I stood by him no matter what.

London’s terrified voice shifted my thoughts back to the present, as I buttoned the last buttons of the rumpled tuxedo shirt I’d worn to prom that night.

“What should we do, Cam? Go down to the jail and ask to see him? Should I call my dad? We need to help Sage. We have to be there for him. He needs to know we’re there for him.”

Wrapping my arms around her trembling body, I kissed the top of her head, the fruity scent of her shampoo wafting through my nostrils, her hair now soft and wavy, streaming over her shoulders.

“Let me call my dad first and see what he thinks. He knows a few attorneys and was in the military long enough to know a little bit about the judicial system and process.”

I wasn’t worried that my dad wouldn’t know, but I worried he would hold me back from getting involved. And that just wouldn’t do. No sir. I’d do anything to make sure Sage was okay and wouldn’t need to spend even one night in a jail cell.

We gathered up our remaining things and walked to the door. Glancing back, I took one last wistful sweep of the room, mentally giving a good-bye to the night we had planned. Sage and I had wanted to make it perfect for London. He’d even written her a song he was going to play for her on his guitar.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. It was supposed to be a final farewell to the three of us. Our send-off before I went to boot camp and joined the Air Force, Sage went off to Nashville to start his music career and London went off to college.

But sometimes the universe tips you on your side, shaking loose any semblance of control you thought you had, and knocking you on your ass. Those earthquakes are meant to remind us that we have no fucking control over anything.