Page 31 of Melt the Ice

“She’s gone, Abby.” My voice cracks. “I wasn’t enough. Why am I never enough? She…” I heave, vision blurring as the air seems to thin. “She didn’t even say goodbye.”

I rock back and forth from my spot next to her on the floor, but the shaking won’t stop. I feel like I’m on a tilt-a-whirl, spinning wildly out of control, and can’t catch my breath while also trying not to toss everything in my stomach onto the floor.

“Whoa, hey. What’s going on? Do I need to drive down to the ranch and have a little chat with someone?” she snaps.

I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but it’s no use. It’s stuck there like a swallowed piece of shattered glass. “My mom, Abby,” I choke out, almost dropping my phone as the words spill from me. “She’s gone. There are empty pill bottles everywhere. It doesn’t make sense. She never took pills. She didn’t even keep Advil in the house, not even when I was a kid.”

Silence comes from the other end of the line, my skin becoming more clammy by the second, cold sweat beads on my forehead. “Shit. Hold on,” she mutters. There’s rustling on the other end of the line, then her voice rings through loud and clear. “Hannah, call Collin, tell him to meet us at Monroe’s mom's house,” she yells. “We’re on the way. Stay on the phone, though, okay?”

I don’t have a chance to answer before she asks. “Can you take some pictures of the scene before anyone moves anything?” She’s being gentle, too gentle.

I run a hand over my face, feeling it stretch with the pressure. I nod, even though I know they can’t see me. “Yeah.” It’s all I can manage right now.

I take the photos, bottle after bottle, the carpet. The body. Her. My mom. The woman who should have loved me but never did. Dead without a single word. Imaginary rope tightens around my neck with every click of the camera, numbness seeps through my bones until eventually, my legs give out.

My mom won’t be getting back up. She’s not going to explain. She’s not going to love me. Not now, not ever. I lean against the far wall and stare at her. My chest is scarily tight as I wait for the grief, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, I feel anger. Hot and loud and so freaking wrong, guilt cuddles up behind it. What kind of jacked-up person gets mad at a dead woman? Me. Apparently. Because she just left. Like I never even mattered. There was no, “Hey, Son. I’m sorry I wasn’t what you needed.”

She gets to be at peace while I’m still here carrying the weight of it all. The nights I listened outside her door just to make sure she was still breathing, even when I so desperately didn’t want to be. The birthdays she never acknowledged. The “I love you,” she never said back.

I would have taken anything, table scraps, a glance. Anything to prove she saw me, that she knew I was here and trying for her. Now there’s nothing left to fix. There are no more chances. Just me, sitting in a room that was always chilly, now twice as cold without her.

I don’t hear the front door open. I don’t even know if they were trying to talk to me on the phone. I heard nothing. I see nothing until Abby’s in front of me, yelling my name.

“Monroe!” Her arms wrap around my neck, her cheek soft against the scruff of my beard, her tears wetting my still dry face. “Damn it, Monroe. I’m so sorry.”

Then Hannah’s there, a gasp, followed by her quiet sob. She wraps herself around my left side, arms tightening around my ribs. Wilder slides in on the right, arms wrapping around all three of us, a silent but solid presence. They don’t try to fix it, they just hold me, not knowing they’re the only thing holding me together.

“Let us know if we need to move, Collin,” Abby whispers over her shoulder.

“Did you move anything?” Collin, Abby’s brother, who happens to be a homicide detective, asks.

I lift my eyes, letting them land on her once more. Still cold and unmoving. I try to speak, but it catches in my throat, coming out as a rough cough. “I flipped her over. She was face down when I got here. I’m sorry.”

Collin squats down beside Abby, blocking my view of my mom. I’m grateful for it, I can’t look at her anymore. “Don’t apologize for trying to save her,” he says. “But there’s nothing you can do from here. I think it’d be best if you headed home. You can come by the station tomorrow, you’re welcome to stay, but…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.

I give him a weak nod. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

Hannah leans into me, offering her gentle strength as her husband helps me stand. My knees buckle, but he’s ready. He always is. Wilder drives me to the ranch while the girls drive back in my Jeep. “Do you need anything?” he asks as he walks us through my front door. Scarlett. I think. But I know I need to try to make it through this on my own. Leaning on her may just be setting me up for further destruction.

I flop back on the couch, eyes focused on the wood beams in the ceiling, counting them as if I don’t already know there’s eight. “Someone put the flowers in my car on Lettie’s doorstep,” I say, not making eye contact. His hand lands on my shoulder, squeezing before he heads for the door.

He pulls it open. “Call if you need us. You know we’ll be here.” I nod, movement stiff, practiced while I hold my breath, waiting for the door to close behind him.

The soft click of the door echoes like a bullet out of a chamber through the empty house. Walking to the kitchen, I pull out the bottle of tequila sitting in the freezer. Unscrewing the top, I flick it off, sending it flying across the room, clanking a few times when it hits the floor.

“To never knowing how it feels to be loved,” I whisper. The words scrape their way out of me, the kind of truth that burns worse than any drink ever could. I tip the bottle back, welcoming the bitter taste, the brief warmth against my taste buds, and the numbness that eases the ache clawing at my chest.

Back on the couch, I take gulp after gulp until my hands start to tremble from how hard I’m strangling the neck of the bottle. The bottle of Don Julio drops to the floor with a dull thud, one that ricochets through me. The finality of the day sinking in as the room starts to spin.

I let my head fall back, eyelids heavy, and a strange peace settles over me. Not the good kind, but the quiet kind. The kind of quiet I’ve been chasing for longer than I want to admit. The kind of quiet that doesn’t hurt when I think about visiting her. The kind of quiet that says it’s time for me to live for myself.

The thought settles in the part of my heart I’d caged off for my mom. It aches, but it’s oddly comforting as I let the darkness take me.

Maybe she’ll love me in heaven.

The pounding on my door shakes through my body like Tom when Jerry would hit him in the head with a rubber mallet. My entire body goes rigid as I will the ringing to stop. “Get up and let me in, Monroe!” Abby’s forceful yell slices through the door, making me sit up fast enough that my vision swims.