Chapter 49
Carla
I paced the floor of my tiny room, the distant night sounds were calm and quiet at this hour. From the sunroom down the hall, Roy snored fitfully, sitting up in his medical bed after another long day of intense physical therapy. Mom was in her room, alone in her big king size bed, I assumed she was sleeping but, who knows? She could be up in the middle of the night, pacing like I was.
We each had our own private worries in this house, I suddenly realized, and though mine paled in significance to Roy’s or even my mother’s, did I not deserve to worry as well?
I chided myself, shaking my head at my self-indulgence. This wasn’t me at all. And it wasn’t Kellan, either. We’d been through so much together, he and I, to wind up in this place—empty, dark and alone. If only one of us would reach out and text the other, call the other, hell, even visit the other, I was sure we could clear everything up.
Instead we waited, filled with stubborn pride, neither reaching out to the other in days. Ever since we’d both stormed out of the last oceanfront condo Spencer had shown us, both men had been radio silent. I’d been tempted to call one or the other about a hundred times a day, but instead I’d played the same game, none too eager to be the one to make the first call.
Now look at me—tired and twisted, pacing back and forth in my tiny room, praying for sleep but knowing it wouldn’t come. I gave up, just before dawn, and dressed for the day. Simply, as I always did, in jeans and a T-shirt, socks and sneakers, for whatever the day might bring me.
It would be the usual, as per habit. I’d get Roy washed and bathed just after nine, feed him by ten, our appointment at his physical therapist’s by eleven. Then lunch—an ordeal in itself—by noon—doctor’s appointment at two, we’d stroll through the park at four, have dinner by six then a ton of pills before I set Roy and Mom up in the sun room, watching their favorite old movies until Roy fell asleep an hour or so later.
It was like so many days, one after the other, and while it was no picnic for Roy and Mom, I’d begun to fray at the corners of my life…with my patience, with sleep, with Kellan and Spencer, with my very sanity.
I rolled my eyes at my own dramatics, but it didn’t make my heart beat any slower or my blood pressure lower as I crept out of my bedroom, down the silent hall and toward the kitchen. It was too easy to wake Roy, whose hospital bed was just around the corner from the kitchen, with the slightest sound. So instead of making coffee for myself, I’d started stocking up on chocolate bars, grabbing one I’d laid out the night before from the kitchen table.
Backtracking, I let myself out the door at the other end of the hall, creeping silently down three steps before my shoes hit sand and I could finally relax. Free of the house where I’d spent so much time lately, free of the burdens that defined my day, I felt like the title of that famous movie and could finally… exhale.
I paused near the crooked palm tree at the end of our property line, tugging at the foil wrapper of my candy bar and inhaling the first bite with all the dark chocolate indulgence I could muster.
It filled my mouth with sugar, cocoa and caffeine, a taste explosion I wasn’t sure I could replace if Kellan and I ever did get our own place and I could make coffee freely again, without the fear of waking Roy and starting my day of service two hours early.
It wasn’t that I resented what I was doing for my family, that they needed it or weren’t able to do it for themselves. I was here, committed and happy to do it. It was just the relentless grind, the frantic pace and mind-numbing boredom of it all. Compared to South Beach, I might as well have been in a retirement home and, what’s worse—there seemed no end in sight.
When I first arrived at the hospital after learning Roy’d had a stroke, I feared the worse. When he survived, even thrived, I’d been so overjoyed at his prognosis I’d never looked back. Selling my business, moving in with Mom, cleaning up her credit, securing her loan, renting out my condo, none of it had mattered as long as, one day soon, Roy would walk again, talk again, eat and drink and wipe himself on his own again.
But “soon” had turned into, “well, a few months.” And “a few months” had turned into “a few years” and now here I was, only able to breathe outside the house, feet in the sand, sucking down chocolate bars instead of coffee because that would be too loud.
I followed the ocean, sneakers in the sand, alone and very, very lonely. My feet seemed to follow the old, familiar path down the beach toward Kellan’s cottage out of habit, hoping against hope he might be as restless, as lonely, as vulnerable and anxious as I was.
But we were out of sync yet again, his cottage was dark and silent, the small beach out front deserted, the only footprints were that of a lone seagull before the waves erased it completely. I felt alone after that, quiet and desolate and dark as I could be.
I sank onto the sand, far from the waves, finishing my chocolate bar, folding the wrapper and sliding it in my pocket, watching the time on my cell phone to make sure I got back for Roy’s wakeup call and preparing him for another long, grueling day.
But before then, I just wanted to sit, calmly and quietly, in the sand in front of Kellan’s cottage. Pathetic, I know, but better than suffocating inside my tiny bedroom, waiting for the alarm clock by Roy’s bed to go off.
The waves crashed and fizzed on the beach, the sky changed colors as the sun came up, the lone seagull returned, walking alone on the silent beach, shadows flitting across its white feathers until at last the sun rose, the time neared and I stood, wiping sand off my butt and peering back one last time at Kellan’s cottage.
There was a light on now, a rosy glow in the shadowy light, making my heart skip a beat to think I might see him, or even a shadow of him, pass by. I wanted to run to the door, knock until he answered and scoop him in a hug, smothering with kisses both desperate and grateful, but my time was no longer my own.
Half an hour earlier? Sure, maybe, but now I had just enough time to walk back along the beach and slip into the house before Roy’s alarm clock woke him and he panicked, thinking I wasn’t there.
The thought made me sad. For him, for mom, for me… for Kellan. Had I ruined a good thing by dragging Kellan to Siesta Key and forcing him, good-natured as he was, into doing my family’s bidding? Had I grown selfish in my desperation to help my family? And had Kellan grown tired of the commitment, to the point of backing out of the house we’d been going to buy together?
A simple phone call, a text, even a knock on the door would have answered my questions. Kellan was no wimp, and he would have told me one way or the other how he was feeling—if only I could summon the courage to ask. Then again, it was harder and harder to do when you were afraid of the answer…