Chapter Thirty
Aaron
I blinked my eyes open to find myself standing on a darkened road, woods on either side as cars sped by.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked, glancing around, and turned to Emma anxiously. “Is she here?”
She lifted her gaze to me. “No. You are.” She nodded for me to look over my left shoulder.
I pivoted my gaze and my heart nearly stopped. “What the fuck?” I growled, staring at the three bodies that laid at the side of the road, a banged up and crumpled cream-colored Lexus farther down the embankment.
“Heeelp!” the woman’s weak voice called. My mother. “A-Aaron,” she croaked out, calling my eight-year-old self.
I had no idea how I’d moved so close, but the next thing I knew, I was standing right over the bodies of my father, my mother, and myself, just moments after that fatal crash. It wasn’t a car accident because my father had purposely driven us off the road. He’d tried to kill us all.
“He died on impact. Tossed from the car after the first flip,” Emma stated, standing next to me.
I glanced over at my father’s lifeless body. He had massive head wounds, his legs contorted in an unnatural way. I looked up as I heard a car speed past the scene.
“Help!” my mother wailed, trying to raise her hand to get the car’s attention.
Anger filled my chest.
“They left us to die,” I growled. “Why the fuck have you brought me here? I need to find my wife!” I insisted.
“I am helping you. Your anger clouds your vision, Aaron. You need to learn to see people for who they really are,” Emma countered, patiently.
“I see them for who they are. Look at that…” I pointed angrily at another passing vehicle. “They all just fucking sped past us, leaving us to die. They could see the scene even from the road.” The mangled vehicle should’ve been evident to the passing drivers that someone need their help.
“Emma! Emma! Save him!”
I turned, hearing my mother call for Emma. I frowned, as I watched Emma move from my mother’s side to mine.
“Heeelp,” my eight-year-old self croaked out, laying there in a pool of my own blood.
My heart squeezed in my adult-sized chest as I watched my younger self suffer. Just as I remembered that night, Emma moved to stand over me. She lowered to her knees next to my side.
“Heelp. It hurts.” I sounded so weak.
“Shhh, little one,” Emma consoled, moving her hand to cover my chest.
I remembered that moment. It’d played out in my mind repeatedly, throughout the years. I’d tried to tell myself I’d imagined it. I’d been laying on the ground unable to move due to the massive pain in my chest and stomach. I’d been ejected from the car’s backseat, through the windshield. I suffered minimal damage to my head, cuts and bruises, but had been impaled by large shards of glass on my chest and abdomen. Emma’s hand covered my chest and the searing pain I’d been in immediately ceased, and I felt covered by a warm glow.
I watched it all play out right in front of me, some twenty-eight years later. Emma leaned down to whisper in my ear that everything was going to be all right. I glanced up, watching yet another car pass. My mother had stopped yelling for help then. All I heard were her soft, tortured moans of agony.
“You knew my mother,” I stated low.
Present-day Emma walked up beside me. “And she knew me, very well. I was with her from the time she was a child as well. She begged me to keep you safe until help arrived.”
I snorted. “Help. All the cars that passed. Not one of them stopped. Selfish bastards.”
Emma shook her head. “This moment right here is what has made you the most cynical. Not even your father could’ve done the damage this one moment did.”
“No,” I shook my head. “That moment just finished what my father started. He taught me he was an asshole. They,” I jutted my head at another passing vehicle, “taught me that most people are assholes.”
“Oh, Aaron.”
“How is this helping me find my fucking wife?!” I yelled.
“Look at them, Aaron!” Emma shouted for the first time ever.
I would’ve been surprised if I hadn’t been so angry.
“Those people. Look at them!” she insisted, moving closer to me, touching my forehead.
We were suddenly inside of the backseat of a car. I looked down to my left to see a little boy who couldn’t have been more than three years old. His dark brown eyes were wide with fright.
“James! Those people look hurt!” a voice from the passenger seat beckoned.
I turned to see a dark-skinned woman, with a panicked expression, saying to the man in the driver’s seat. “James! Did you hear me. Ow!” she howled when the man abruptly punched her in the ribs. She curled over, holding her side in pain.
“The fuck you want me to do, huh? I got all this shit in the car. You’re high as hell. You want me to call the police?” he yelled, then shook his head. “Nah, those people will be all right,” he stated. The car accelerated as he pressed his foot to the gas, leaving my dying family in the distance.
“And the next one,” Emma stated, touching my forehead once more.
Again, we were thrust into the backseat of an older model car.
“Breathe, baby, breathe,” the male driver in the seat encouraged.
“Ahhh! John, it hurts!” A woman shrilled.
I bent at the waist to see into the front seat. Immediately, I noticed the swollen belly of the blonde-haired woman. She held her stomach and breathed through another contraction. Her loud breathing eventually turned into a moan, which turned into another shrill yell.
A sight outside the window caught my eye, and from that vantage point, I saw my father’s mangled vehicle, our bodies at the side of the road. I looked to the man driving the car to see his focus was on the woman next to him.
“He never even saw you,” Emma stated as we passed. She touched my forehead again and we were back on the road.
“What’s that supposed to prove?”
“Perspective. It changes when you get up close.”
I remained silent.
“Sometimes people can’t see your pain because they’re too busy dealing with their own. Those people who passed you that night had their fill of their own pain, in one way or another. They couldn’t see yours. But, Anita, the one who was with James, she was able to look past hers for a little while. When they arrived home, she snuck off to a local pay phone and called the police, reporting the accident. It could’ve been the next day you were found. That road was so seldom traveled.”
“What does this have to do with Patience?” I asked, growing impatient.
“Perspective, Aaron. Widen your perspective.” She touched my forehead again.
That horrible scene of my childhood faded to black.
****
I blinked my eyes open, and we were back in the past again, but not of me as a child. This time, we’re in the middle of the street and I see myself hold the door open for Patience, that first night at Buona Sera. My chest tightened as I watched the scene play out before me. Patience and I walking down the sidewalk toward the bookstore. I moved to get closer, to watch us, but I was stopped by a hand on my arm.
“No, watch from here. There’s something you need to see,” Emma commented.
I stilled, looking from her to the scene. We waited a few minutes, until Patience and I emerged from the bookstore.
“Keep watching,” Emma stated.
I turned to watch us walk down the street.
“No. Not there.” Emma turned me back to the bookstore. “There.”
Lifting my gaze, I froze. The nerdy, bookstore clerk peered out of the glass window. I inched closer, needing to get a better look for some reason. But before I got too close, he moved from the window, to the door, peering out, watching Patience and I. He stepped out from the doorway, glancing over his shoulder before following us, leaving the bookstore unattended. We entered the ice cream shop not too far from the bookstore and he stood there, watching through the window.
“He followed you that night,” Emma whispered. “To her apartment…” She trailed off, but her hand touched my forehead again.
In an instant we were fast forwarded to later that evening, to the front of Patience’s building. I followed Patience inside, and a few moments later, the same bookstore clerk was there. He stood outside of the building. I could only see his profile from my vantage but he appeared to be pissed. His fists tightened at his waist and he stomped his feet, eventually yelling, scaring a few passersby, but he was obviously too far gone to even notice. He just kept standing there, as if he could see something.
“How long did he wait there?”
“All night,” Emma answered without hesitation.
I swallowed. “He was in love with her.”
“Obsessed,” she countered.
“That was almost seven years ago.”
Emma finally turned to me. “Obsession rarely goes away.”
My stomach muscles clenched. “It’s him.”
Emma nodded.
“Show me more,” I demanded.
Emma obliged, showing me scene after scene of this fucking maniac waiting outside of Patience’s apartment. We flashed to her graduation day, when we’d gone in to pick up the gift I had ordered. At the time I hadn’t caught it, too enamored with Patience to see it, but from my new vantage point I watched as the bookstore clerk threw daggers my way. But when Patience wrapped her arms around me, kissing me in front of him, his rage-filled eyes turned in her direction.
The next scene was from inside of the bookstore again, only Patience was alone, a solemn expression on her face. Somehow I knew it was because of me.
“Hey, Patience. It’s been a little while,” he intoned.
She gave him something that was supposed to be a smile but it was just a movement of her lips.
“Picking up.”
Patience nodded, taking the book and quietly paying for it.
“I’ll see you soon,” he stated, hopeful.
Patience shook her head. “I’m moving tomorrow.”
He went pale as a ghost. “Wh-where?”
“Oakland. Thanks for your help, Sam. Take care.” She exited the bookstore and again, he peered out of the window, watching her every step.
“Final scene,” Emma informed.
Suddenly, we were in front of another brick apartment building. I didn’t recognize it at first; I knew it wasn’t in Williamsport. I looked around and stopped short when a male figure wearing all black passed by us. I caught a glimpse of his face just before he lowered his ski mask. It was him. The night he attacked Patience.
“Seeing her pregnant sent him over the edge.”
My jaw firmed as I watched him patiently wait outside of the front door until someone exited, allowing him to slip in, unnoticed.
“I want to see it,” I told Emma.
She shook her head.
“Emma!” I growled, needing to see the next scene.
“No, Aaron. Seeing him attack her won’t do any good now. You need to get back to help her. Now.” Before I could protest, Emma touched my forehead and I was back out on my bedroom balcony. I wasted no time. I turned from the balcony, moving quickly through the bedroom doors and down the stairs until I reached my office.
“I know who has her,” I blurted out, bursting through the office.
All eyes were on me.
“Who?” Joshua, Carter, and my father shouted in unison.