Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tom
Leila was the one to save Tom.
Not Aidan, who opened the door for him when he returned from his futile argument with Callum. Aidan took one look at Tom’s face and all but yanked him down onto the couch to talk, in a mirror version of what Tom had done for him on the nights Aidan had come back drunk and volatile and lost in old memories. But Tom couldn’t keep still. He couldn’t collect his thoughts enough to answer Aidan’s questions, or even hear them. He paced Aidan and Liam’s living room, giving one-word answers to what he thought Aidan had asked, watching the concern grow on Aidan’s face with every response he gave.
At one point Liam came downstairs, woken by the noise. He said reasonable words that Tom couldn’t focus on. He placed a comforting hand on Aidan’s arm, and held him back when—Tom could tell—all he wanted was to stand up and shake some sense into Tom. He watched Tom not with the pity that Tom had feared, but with the concern of a close friend—but no amount of concern would save Callum now, or bring Tom out of the helpless rage that wound itself around him like the coils of a snake, like a whirlpool pulling him down to his doom.
And then Leila peeked her head out of the spare room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she studied the scene with bleary confusion. Tom happened to see her before the others did. As he met her eyes, a bolt of memory hit him, clear enough to illuminate the darkness. It had been a month since he had left the military. Just like every night, he had spent half the night staring at the ceiling, and the other half pacing the meager length of his shoebox-sized apartment. As the horizon began to turn gray, he had dragged himself into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face in an attempt to shake off his sleep-deprived exhaustion. Normally he tried to go through this ritual while looking at himself as little as possible, and turned away from the sink—and the mirror hanging over it—as quickly as he could. This time, though, he had stayed where he was, staring at himself in the dirty mirror.
He had been afraid of seeing his face, the blistered red lines that had already begun settling into permanent white scars. But as he studied himself, he found that the scars were the easy part. They were just scars; it was just skin. Surface damage, nothing more. He would carry them for the rest of his life, but that seemed only fair to Tom—he would, after all, have to carry the memories for just as long.
What scared him was looking into his own eyes.
He tried to find some trace of the person he had become over the years, some flicker of hope for the future. Instead he saw the same person he had seen in the mirror the night he had decided to leave Carrie. His face was older now, and scarred, but his eyes were the same—dark with the helpless rage he had tried to hold back for so long, and with the terrible knowledge that no matter what he did, it would always come down to this in the end. His control was an illusion; the love he felt for the people in his life was only a prelude to tragedy. It could all be stripped from him so easily. Burned away like the skin of his face.
So maybe it was better for him to burn with it, to fall back onto the same self-destructive path he had followed in his youth. Maybe all his thoughts of a different future had been as much of an illusion as the control he’d thought he had. Where had his control been when he had begged for the torture to stop? Where was it now as he stood here in the same clothes he had worn for three days, unable to even fulfill his body’s basic craving for sleep?
He could almost feel the old anger coiling around his neck like a noose—no, like a snake, hissing dark truths into his ear. None of it was real. You convinced yourself you could be different, but look how wrong you were.
And then the imagined whispers cut off, replaced by the tinny ring of his phone.
He thought about ignoring it. But the sound came again, spiking into the place behind his eyes in a way he knew would blossom into a full headache before too long. Picking up the phone was the only way to make it stop—so he picked up. And heard Aidan’s voice on the other end. “Tom? I need your help.”
“Dad?” Leila now said, her voice uncertain. “Do you need help?”
Three years ago, Tom had held himself together for Aidan. He had found his control again, and the remnants of the person he had become. He had pieced his new self back together again, and promised himself this was the last time he would have to do it. He had never let the snake escape again; he had never let his control slip. Because Aidan needed him.
Aidan didn’t need him anymore. But Leila did.
“No,” he told her as his body finally stilled. “Everything is all right now.”
For the next two weeks, Leila became his anchor. Whenever he thought too hard about the danger Callum was in, whenever he began to feel the snake escaping its prison, he went and found Leila. Whether he talked to her for a few minutes, or simply sat with her in companionable silence, just knowing she was there helped calm the noise in his mind. He couldn’t fall apart while she was still counting on him, and so he didn’t fall apart. He would find his control again, because his daughter needed him. He would piece himself back together one more time.
He started waking at dawn again, and going for daily runs. He tried to tell himself the routine was helping to ground him, but the truth was, it felt more like going through the motions. He came back from his run each morning feeling no different than when he left. He didn’t know what had changed—but it didn’t matter. Leila still needed him, and so he wouldn’t fall apart, whether he had a routine to help hold himself together or not.
He didn’t think about what would happen once the two weeks were up. But when the last day came around, he found himself picking up Aidan’s phone—borrowed for this call, for a little extra security—and setting it down again, unable to take the step that would ultimately wrench Leila away from him.
He made the call in the end, of course. No matter his doubts about Carrie, no matter his own selfish need to take care of Leila, he knew he couldn’t keep Carrie in the dark forever, or rip Leila away from everything she had ever known. The sound in Carrie’s voice when he told her the news was as if she had spent the past month dead and his words had brought her back to life. For a second, listening to her, he could almost convince himself he was doing the right thing.
She said she would come by that evening to get Leila, but she showed up three hours early. When Tom answered the door, he almost didn’t recognize her. However bad she had looked when Leila had first gone missing was nothing compared to now. She wore a bathrobe, a skirt meant more for hot summer days than chilly autumn afternoons, and yesterday’s lipstick. The knots in her hair looked like she hadn’t brushed it in three days.
Leila’s absence, and his silence, had done this to her. He had done this to her. But he quieted the voice of guilt. If he hadn’t done what he had done, Leila wouldn’t be safe right now.
Carrie craned her neck, trying to look past him. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs.” Tom stepped aside so Carrie could come in. “I asked her to wait up there while we talked.”
“What is there to talk about?”
“Leila has said a few things… and when I called that night, you…” He had to say it outright; there was no other way. “I’m concerned about how much you might be drinking, and what you might be using besides alcohol. I don’t want to send Leila back to a home with a parent who isn’t clear-headed enough to care for her properly.”
Carrie’s face darkened. Maybe he had been too blunt. But if there was a good way to ease into a conversation like this, he didn’t know it.
She looked like she might argue—but instead, she dropped her eyes. “You’re right.”
Tom, who had braced himself for a fight, was suddenly not sure how to respond.
“I was out of control, for a while,” said Carrie, still staring at her lap. “I wasn’t a good mother to Leila. And when you had her, and I didn’t know what was happening, it got worse again. But it will never get that bad again. I promise. I know that’s what everyone says, but…” She swallowed hard. “I learned my lesson the hard way. There were consequences that I…” She shook her head, seemingly unable to continue. She swiped at her eyes. It took a few seconds before she could speak again. “The cost was too high.”
He wanted to believe her. But he knew how these stories usually ended. Maybe she would learn from her mistakes, but it was just as likely that she wouldn’t, and that Leila would pay the price.
If she weren’t leaving, maybe he could find a way to help her. At the very least, he could keep an eye on Leila. But she had to leave. It wasn’t safe for Leila here. Whatever her life with Carrie was like, it would be better than what would happen if Callum’s father found her again.
“Let me come with you,” said Tom, trying not to sound too desperate. “I know things between us are… what they are, but with as little time to prepare as we’ve had, it won’t be easy finding a place to stay and a job that pays enough to live on. It would be easier with two adults than with one.” As Carrie opened her mouth, already shaking her head, he kept going. “I’m not saying I want anything to happen between us—you don’t need to worry about that. What we had is part of the past; whether it was good or bad, it’s over now. I just want to help take care of Leila.”
Carrie waited for him to finish. But when he was done, she shook her head again. “It would make things too complicated. I’m sorry.”
“Of course,” Tom said woodenly. He swallowed past a lump in his throat. “I’d like to see her again someday. After all of this has settled down. I don’t know where I’ll be, but I’ll give you Aidan’s contact information. You can reach me through him.”
He grabbed a sticky note from the table beside the couch and scribbled down Aidan’s address and phone number. He held it out to Carrie like a question. She took the note and shoved it into her pocket without reading it. “Sure. I’ll keep in touch,” she said, in a tone that told Tom he would never hear from her again.
“We should get going.” Carrie walked to the stairs. “Leila? Are you up there? I’m here, sweetie. It’s time to go home.”
“Mom?” Leila’s voice echoed from above. A second later, she pounded down the stairs to fling herself into her mother’s arms. When she finally pulled away, her eyes glistened with tears.
Forcing her to leave with a mother she didn’t want to go back to would have been impossibly difficult. But this… this was almost worse. Tom had to look away.
He didn’t see Leila cross the room, didn’t realize she was standing in front of him until she wrapped her arms around him. “I’ll miss you,” she whispered in his ear.
“I’ll miss you too, Leila. Every day. Every second.” He held her tightly for what was probably the last time. “We’ll see each other again. Maybe not soon, but someday.” He hoped he would find a way to keep that promise. He hoped, but he knew the odds.
“Leila,” Carrie said, so gently that Tom couldn’t even resent her for it. “We have to go.”
Leila’s arms fell away. But Tom didn’t let go. Not yet. Once he let go, he knew, he would have no more reason to hold himself together. He could already feel the snake writhing in the back of his mind, waiting for him.
“I have to go,” said Leila, her voice thick. Not all her tears from a moment ago, Tom realized, had been from happiness.
Tom let go. And watched as, with one last backward glance, his daughter disappeared from his life.
* * *
Tom lost himself quietly, between one breath and the next, between the click of the door closing and the sound of Carrie’s car pulling away.
He didn’t start pacing again. He didn’t hurl anything at the wall, although he wanted to. He didn’t have the energy for any of that. The rage underneath, when it had broken down the walls holding it back, had burned that away along with everything else—his hopes for the future, the quiet calm he used to cling to, the lies he had once told himself about how he was in control.
After he had decided to help Aidan, he had found ways to hold the snake at bay. He had resurrected the new version of himself he had thought was lost forever. If he tried, he might be able to do that again.
He just didn’t see the point anymore.
He sleepwalked through the days, deflecting Aidan’s questions and Liam’s concern, ignoring the sharp looks Aidan kept sending his way. He quietly made plans to leave. The longer he stayed here, the more he was putting Aidan and Liam in danger—not only from the Syndicate, but from Tom himself. He was a bomb waiting to explode, and he wanted his friends far from the blast radius.
The night he decided to leave, he didn’t say goodbye. Instead, he waited until the small hours of the morning before he crept down the stairs and eased the front door open as quietly as he could. He hadn’t left a note, but his bed was made, and everything he had brought with him was in the small bag he had in his hand. Aidan and Liam would figure it out. Hopefully, they would understand.
He made it halfway out the door before Aidan caught his wrist.
“Don’t,” Tom warned in a low voice. He could already feel the anger bubbling to the surface, looking for any excuse to erupt.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Aidan demanded. “I know you were only keeping it together because of Leila. And now she’s gone, because you’re a better person than I am, and you did what was right even though you knew it would rip you apart. And now, what, you’re giving up? Except I can’t let you do that, because I still need you.”
Once, the thought that Aidan needed him had been enough to bring him back. Not this time.
“So whatever we need to do, whatever doors we need to kick in or walls we need to break down, we’re going to do it,” said Aidan. “And we’re going to do it together. Just tell me where we need to go.”
Tom shook his head. “Leila is where she has to be. And Callum chose to be where he is. There’s nothing I want more than to go back for him, but he doesn’t want to leave, and if I care about him, I have to respect that. They’re gone, and—” The other Tom would have said, I have to accept that. The other Tom would have sat down and meditated for a while and then moved on with his life, too much in control of himself even to grieve. “They’re gone.”
Aidan’s face darkened. “So then what, you’re just going to lie down and die?”
“I’m going to leave,” said Tom. “And you’re going to let me.”
“Like hell.”
Tom yanked his hand out of Aidan’s grip. “The person you want to help doesn’t even exist. I created him to hold in the anger, but he was never real. This is who I am when all of that is stripped away. I’m not the person who picked you up at the police station three years ago; I’m the one who smashed a bottle of wine against your wall. I joined the military because I knew I was going to explode someday and hurt everyone who was standing too close, and it helped for a while, but now I’m right back where I started. And when I do explode, I don’t want you to be standing close enough to get hurt. So please, just let me go.”
Aidan only scoffed. “You can’t say that none of what you did for me was real. You can’t tell me that’s not who you are. So maybe you’re a human instead of the Buddha you thought you were. So what? Welcome to how the rest of us live.”
“If that person was real, I wouldn’t be back here.”
“What wasn’t real was the death grip you had on all your normal human feelings. No one has their life together as much as you thought you did. But everything else? The way you drove six hours to get me out of that police station, and never complained when I kept you up half the night with screaming nightmares? That was real. And how you always gave me advice that I knew was right even when I didn’t want to listen—that was real too. Which is how I know you’re reasonable enough to listen when I tell you that you’re full of shit. You didn’t create some fake version of yourself. You grew up. And that’s not something you can lose.”
At Aidan’s words, the snake rose up, tightening around him until he could barely breathe. The bubbles of rage grew closer to the surface. But underneath all that, some part of him paused to listen, and to think.
“You can make this a fight if you want,” said Aidan, with a pointed look down at Tom’s free hand, which had curled into a fist without Tom realizing it. “But you know I’ll win. So you might as well stay here and listen. The first thing you need to do is stop telling yourself you’ve lost them, because you haven’t.”
He had almost started to make sense until now. “They’re gone,” said Tom. “You can’t argue with that.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they’re still at Carrie’s apartment, packing up their lives and coming up with a plan. It took you three days to leave, and you don’t have a kid to worry about. So go down there and try harder. You’ve spent twelve years being noble and staying away—now fight for your daughter for once. Tell Carrie that Leila needs her father in her life. Or that she needs someone who knows how to keep her safe. If nothing else, just go and hug your daughter one last time.”
Tom’s rage crested, bubbling into his chest and filling his throat until he thought he would choke on it. He didn’t want Aidan’s false hope. He just wanted to get out of here before the explosion came and Aidan became a casualty. He needed to get out, and Aidan seemed set on stopping him.
But he also wanted to see his daughter again. Even if it was only to give her that last hug.
He forced his fist to release. After a moment, Aidan let go of his wrist.
“Whatever happens,” said Aidan, “I’ll be here. Don’t forget that.”
The streets were quiet as Tom drove to Carrie’s apartment, but the drive still took an eternity. With every red light, he pictured them walking out the door. With every minute that clicked by on the dashboard clock, he imagined Carrie’s car driving away. At last, he pulled up in front of her building. This time, he barely noticed the shabbiness as he rushed up to the front door.
When Carrie buzzed him in, he had to rest a hand against the wall and wait a few seconds before he was steady on his feet to move again. She was still there. He wasn’t too late.
It took several knocks before Carrie opened the apartment door. If he hadn’t already known she was there, he would have assumed she was long gone. At last, the door opened, and Carrie stood in front of him, her shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat. “Whatever you’re going to say,” she said, her voice rough, “I already know.”
Tom had thought he was done with false hope. But at her words, it was as if his heart had returned to his chest. She had to know he had come back because of Leila—so had she changed her mind? Had she been hoping he would come back and make his offer again?
“I’m going to say it anyway,” he said as he stepped into the apartment. His body felt twice as light as it had on his way up the stairs. “I’m not ready to give Leila up. Not when these past few weeks are the only time I’ve had with her in twelve years. I want her with me, or I want to come with the two of you. I understand why you don’t want me in your life, and I respect that, but she’s my daughter. Regardless of my place in your life, I want a place in hers.”
Carrie’s eyes widened. For the first time, Tom saw how red they were. He opened his mouth to ask her if she had taken anything, but stopped as he saw the faint wet lines on her cheeks and realized she had simply been crying.
“You don’t know.” Carrie’s voice was confused. “I thought you came because…”
“Because of what? Is Leila all right?” He looked past Carrie, but didn’t see his daughter, only two half-filled suitcases lying open on the kitchen floor.
“I’ve done something terrible,” Carrie whispered.
“Where’s Leila?” She had to be here somewhere. She was safe with Carrie—that was why he had given her up, so that she could be safe with her mother. “Leila? Are you in here?”
Nobody answered.
Tom took a step toward the closed bedroom door. Carrie held out a hand to stop him. “Just listen. Let me explain. Please.”
“Is she in there?” He raised his voice. “Leila? Answer me.”
“She’s not in there.”
“Then where is she?”
Carrie swallowed. “This past year was really hard. We were doing okay, between my waitressing and the money you sent. But six months ago, I lost my job, and…” She looked down at the floor. “I didn’t realize how much I had been using until then. And it’s not like I could give it all up cold turkey—not if I wanted to find another job, or be a mother to Leila. I wouldn’t have been any use to her like that.”
“What does this have to do with Leila? Where is she?” The lightness he had felt a moment ago was gone.
“I thought I could pay them back. A friend had a job lead for me. But it didn’t work out, and…” She clasped her hands together, tightening her grip until her fingers went white. “A few weeks ago, they came here. They tore this place apart. They said I must be hiding the money somewhere. But I didn’t have it, and there was nothing here valuable enough for them to take. They were going to kill me, and… and then Leila came back from school…”
“You gave her to the Syndicate.” Tom could barely hear his own voice through the roaring in his ears.
Carrie’s head jerked up. “No! What kind of person do you think I am? I told them they could go ahead and kill me just as long as they left her alone. But they said… they said they had planned to make an example out of me by killing me, but that this would be a more effective example.”
“You said she had disappeared on the way from school. You said you didn’t know who had taken her.”
“I couldn’t tell you the truth. You would have hated me. And it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway—I didn’t know how to find them, and there wasn’t any point in going to the police.”
“I would have at least known where to start.” But none of this mattered now. “That was weeks ago. We saved Leila. Where is she now?”
“They came back to kill me, once they were sure they weren’t getting Leila back. It was just bad luck that they came that night. We were almost ready to leave. A few more minutes—that was all we needed.”
“They took her.” Had he spoken aloud? He wasn’t sure.
“I know they think you’re dead—Leila told me. I didn’t tell them you were alive. I said Leila had come back to me on her own.” She offered the words like some kind of consolation prize. As if it made any difference to him now that Leila was gone. As if he valued his own life over his daughter’s.
Carrie watched him, eyes wide and desperate, her tears beginning to flow again as she waited for his response. She wanted his forgiveness, or at least his understanding. He wanted him to tell her that this was all okay.
Tom didn’t speak.
He turned and left the apartment, closing the door behind him.