6
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Jessa asked, her voice frantic.
She tore through the house and out the front door, looking everywhere for him, but she knew that Michael was gone. There was no note, no trace that he had ever been there. He had taken his pack and everything he owned with him. A little part of her already knew that he was gone, but the rest of her was still hoping that it was some kind of mistake. He wouldn’t leave her like that, would he?
Milo had been the last one to speak to him the night before. He had wondered the same thing, what was going on, when he had seen Michael walking away with his bag on his back. Milo had been sitting on the porch enjoying the quiet scenery and keeping an eye out to make sure that they were not seen coming in.
He had asked him where he was going and Michael just said that he had to go for a while. Milo tried to get more information from him, but he was not giving anything up. There was a sadness in Mike that Milo couldn’t forget.
“Just take care of them while I’m gone,” Michael had told him.
“Are you going to come back?”
Michael nodded that he would. The last thing he wanted to do was leave them, but he had to. “Yes, I will be back. You guys just go on towards the coast and I will track you to wherever you are. I have to take care of something.”
Milo didn’t want to have to be the one to tell Jessa. While she was nice most of the time, he had seen her upset and the truth was that she scared the living shit out of him. “You can’t leave like this. Jessa is going to be devastated.”
Michael knew that it was bad form, but he couldn’t be the one to tell her. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but he knew that he couldn’t be there when her eyes welled up and she would look at him like he was leaving her for good. He didn’t want to have to explain himself. Michael wasn’t sure how to explain it, anyway. All he knew was that he had to get revenge for his family before he could be whole again. Jessa had gone a long way at helping him see that there was life after all of it, but there was still the need for him to fix that one last piece of him that just wasn’t right.
“Just tell her that I will be back as soon as I can and that I love her.”
Milo had shaken his head. “It should be you to tell her those kinds of things, Michael.”
“I know, but I can’t. Will you do that for me Milo?”
He nodded reluctantly, indicating that he would, but he didn’t want to agree to it. Milo didn’t want to be the one to break her heart and Michael hoped in the back of his mind that he would actually do as he said he would.
“Yes, Mike, but I wish you would tell her yourself.”
He just shook his head. “If I could I would, but if I do, I will never leave. It is impossible to leave a woman like her. She has ways of making a man forget everything.”
“I’ve heard.” Milo got red-faced when he realized what he had let slip. He looked embarrassed and barely able to hold it together.
Mike slapped the boy on the shoulder and told him again to keep them safe. “I will be back soon Milo, just keep them safe and going east. I will be back before you know it.”
The memory was not serving Milo well at all. As Jessa looked at him with anger and that look that he dreaded to see, there was no way that he wanted to tell her what he had to. He had to tell her about it all and he just couldn’t find the words. The way that she kept asking wasn’t helping and Milo wanted to just run away. It was the first time that he had felt that way in his new group, but there was no way that he wanted to be in the middle of it.
Jessa could see his stress and tried to tell him that it was going to be okay. It didn’t feel like it was going to be okay, Milo and Jessa were both stressed out and the rest of the house was getting up from the commotion.
“What’s going on, mom?”
Jessa looked back at her little boy and she was as speechless as Milo was. “I’m not sure, baby. I think that Mike had some things that he had to do. I was just asking Milo if he was going to be back or not.”
Milo nodded that he would be. He had even more eyes on him and the young man was afraid that he was going to be back to stuttering again.
“He is coming …back. Just had to go.”
Jessa was not satisfied with the answer, but she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to get much more from Milo as upset as he seemed to be. It was clear that he didn’t want to be the messenger of bad news, but he really didn’t have a choice. It was a chore given to him and one that he had promised to take care of.
Jessa and the rest of the group waited for more, but there was no more forthcoming. Milo didn’t even know why he had taken off, no one really did.
Jason wondered about what the two had talked about before. Michael was very interested in the emblem that he had drawn for him and he wondered, even hoped, that it was those people that he was going to see. There was a capability about Mike that he did not possess and he too wanted some kind of revenge for what had happened to the rest of his family. He didn’t say anything out loud to ease anyone’s fears. Jason didn’t want anyone to try and stop Michael. He wasn’t able to take care of it, but maybe Mike could.
“Well if he says he is going to catch up, then I think we should keep on going,” Jason piped up.
Milo sighed with relief, thankful that someone had taken his side. Jessa was still not convinced, but she didn’t want to make her son upset any more than he had to be. There was something that she wasn’t being told and she was bound and determined to find out what it was. When she looked at Milo in such a way, he knew that he was going to have to tell her more. Neither one of them knew what Jason knew though.
The group got started a little later than the day before. Jessa looked back one last time at the place where she had last seen Michael. It was impossible to not feel abandoned. She couldn’t believe that he had left her. She had a few choice words to say to him when she saw him again. She sighed deeply. She was going to be lonely without him. In fact, she was already aching deep inside, feeling more heartsick than she had since her husband died. She hadn’t cared so much about another man since then, and now she felt like it was all falling apart again.
“It will be okay, mom.”
She nodded at her son with a smile that she hoped reached her eyes. “It will have to be.”