Page 165 of The Sound of Him

I wander.

I’m back in my office.

All but four screens are black. There’s the view of Pasternak’s plane, police coming and going as they do whatever it is they need to do with it for the case they’ll be building. The case that won’t matter because Kellan will make sure Pasternak doesn’t see the end of the month. There’s the view of the two agents’ body cameras still at the scene.

Then Keaton.

Elliot is sitting up in the ambulance bed, more blankets laid over him. The paramedic is monitoring an IV that’s going into his left arm. The woman is typing on her phone.

Keaton’s arm is outstretched, holding a phone in front of Elliot so he’s facing the screen. I can’t see who it is but I know anyway. I know because I know Keaton. I know because no one else could put that happy look on Elliot’s face. It’s his mom. He’s video calling with his mom.

I turn off my entire computer system.

I wonder if Keaton knows what happened to my mom.

Or dad.

I think wondering that should hurt.

I think I’m tired again.

I - I think - uh.

I think…

There’s movement to my left.

I look over.

Matt.

“There you are,” I whisper.

I think I had been looking for him.

If I wasn’t, I should have been.

Everything is so much brighter, so much warmer, with him.

My own personal sunshine.

Matt stretches his arm out toward me, his hand open, his palm up. I just blink at it. I can’t, for the life of me, think of what he would want from me. I have nothing to give.

I am an empty shell. Even his warmth can’t fix that.

He steps a little closer. His eyebrows furrow as he darts his gaze between me and his hand. Then he turns it, palm down, and reaches for me.

There was a time, a few weeks after Keaton had brought me to Kellan’s house, when Kellan had come into my room in the middle of the night. I had been tossing and turning already, restless, caught in a space between the terror of nightmares and the terror of a reality that I still couldn’t believe was real. But when my door opened with the softest creak, I had gone perfectly still.

As if being still and quiet would keep him from finding me.

As if that had ever fucking worked.

Something had touched my foot and I had felt myself leave my body. I wasn’t trapped anymore. I was away from it. Floating. Whatever was about to happen to that little boy who was fucking stupid enough to believe the safety was real wouldn’t happen to me. I was safe.

I had watched from outside my body as Kellan carefully laid another blanket over me. Then, after pausing and mumbling, “Oh, fuck it,” laying another one on top of that.

I hadn’t slept that night.