Page 42 of Ruin

“Yes. I…I am sorry. I assumed you would want to stay again. I can take you back to the hotel later if you would like,” I stammered, shocked by her question.

I thought we had a nice day? Maybe she was too emotionally spent and needed some alone time? Regardless, she needed to be here…with me.

“I’m sorry. Yes, I’d love to stay again. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. Dinner after the bath should help. Maybe I’m hangry,” she said with a laugh, the corners of her mouth attempting to turn up into a smile despite a frown fighting viciously against it.

“Absolutely. I will leave you to your bath. I will be out in the living quarters whenever you are ready. No rush.” I smiled as I walked toward the door, closing it tightly behind me.

How do I tell her that I understand exactly what she is going through without coming off as an invasive dick? I cannot. There is no way. I was an invasive dick.

As I made my way down the dark stone hall and up to the living quarters, waves of her emotions came crashing again. The sadness, the fear. And then…anger?

No, no that’s not Claire.

Something was off.

I ran through the room toward the terrace, quickly pushing back the glass doors and making my way to Sam without pause. He stood guard at the corner of the terrace, his vision locked on the last sliver of sunlight that peered up from the edge of the dark sea.

“Is something going on, Sam?” I questioned as my eyes scanned the surroundings.

His face looked puzzled as he shifted toward me. “No…not that I know of. Is everything okay?”

“I do not know. I noticed anger. It was very distant but close enough to cut through what I was sensing from Claire,” I replied as I continued to look around, hoping for an answer other than what may be obvious.

“I mean. Is she angry?” Sam questioned, his tone low as he dropped his head.

“No. I do not think so. And, anyway, it did not feel like her,” I replied.

We spoke to the other two conti that flanked the staircase at the patio level. The four of us stood in the sand, scanning the horizon for anything out of place. As the sky turned from orange to dark blue and stars began to scatter across it, the feeling only grew louder. Until finally, in the distance, movement made its way toward up the shoreline slowly.

“Fuck!” I yelled, panic filling the air around us.

“I see them,” Sam muttered as he motioned to the conti below, his finger pointing toward the boat in the distance.

Despite my panic, a smile crept its way across my face as the hunger settled deep in my core and blurred everything else out of existence. “We have company.”

Finally.

Chapter Fourteen

Claire

My body slipped into the tub and warm, lavender-scented water enveloped me. I thought back to five days before, even though it felt like a lifetime ago.

As I stepped out of the elevator, the familiar sounds of distant beeping and the smell of hospital-grade disinfectant hit me. I had been coming here to the assisted living facility every weekend for the last few years, and it had become like a second home. I had mourned our family home where my sister and I grew up after it was sold to a new family just over a year ago, the day I finally accepted that my parents would never leave this place.

My mother lived alone in that house for over a year while my father was already here, receiving treatment for the multiple sclerosis that slowly took over his body. When my mother was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer a year ago, she joined him here after a total hysterectomy failed to remove the cancer before it spread. Now, they spent what was left of their days together.

To anyone else, it would have been a tragedy—two people, deteriorating at the same time, entwined in illness and inevitability. But not them. My impossibly romantic, maddeningly hopeful parents saw it as divine symmetry. A fated testament to their love.

“We love each other so much,” they’d say again and again to anyone who looked at them with pity in their eyes. “God knew we’d have to die together, too.”

I stood silently outside their room, my eyes closed as nurses rushed past and patients took afternoon strolls, IV poles in tow. I never quite shared my parents’ positive take on dying but supported their effort to look on the bright side. They seemed to take solace in the fact that neither of them would be alone—in death, or life—for very long. Regardless, I always took a moment and checked myself before entering to ensure I wouldn’t lose it and break down when I saw them.

I feel entirely too young to lose both my parents.

Sure, they were in the seventies now and the average life expectancy was around seventy-six these days. Everything made sense, yet it didn’t. I still needed them. I knew it, they knew it, and God knew it. And I couldn’t help but feel a little anger boiling below the sadness.

I slowly pulled the cold metal door handle toward me as a flood of warm light greeted me. Their room was decorated with photos of Sarah and me as knitted blankets were strewn across their beds. Warm lamps they had brought from our old house illuminated the space—a sharp contrast to the cold fluorescents from the ceiling fixtures above—those lights stayed off, always. My mother said it made them feel like patients and not people. They had resolved a long time ago that they would make their space their own and live in as much peace and comfort as they possibly could.