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“And you’re grouchy.”
“You’d be grouchy too if someone kept interrupting your sleep,” he said.
“I want to be insulted, but it’s hard to be,” Rob said.
“Why do you want to be insulted? I thought for sure you’d be saying I told you so more than anything else.”
“You’re wallowing in the guilt of messing up so badly you don’t know what today is. Here I was thinking it had to do with me that you were looking like shit.”
He thought for a second and then realized today was the anniversary of Rob’s death.
The day he thought his world was going to end when another person close to him died.
Left him.
Instead he’d been thinking that three people left him.
It was worse with Vivian though.
She was still around town where he could see her. Touch her. Get close enough to smell her.
She wasn’t going to be visiting him in dreams and telling him he was an idiot. She wasn’t going to lecture him and then laugh it off only to return and bust on him like it never happened.
There would be no “everything is going to be okay” like he had with Maureen and Rob.
He’d said goodbye to Maureen, but he hadn’t needed to. She was also there.
He never got to say it to Rob, but he returned.
He didn’t say it to Vivian either and something told him she wasn’t returning.
“I should have listened to you and let it go. But I thought she was in danger. I needed to know.”
“Don’t use that excuse. You know it’s a lie. Not only did she tell you she wasn’t in danger and that the identity change was by her choice, but that you only could access what you did because of your position. And remember, if we want to dish the plate of lies, yours is full.”
“I never lied.”
“Here we go again,” Rob said. “A figure of speech and you know it. Technically she never lied either.”
He knew that now. He knew it then too. “Fine. I messed up. Now she hasn’t talked to me in days. She’s gone.”
“She is only a few blocks away,” Rob said, laughing. “You’ve got the opportunity to do something with her that you didn’t with us.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
His sister came into his vision next to Rob. “You can go talk to her in person, Brent. You can tell her how you feel. You can’t rely on the fact that we know what is going on with you. You can get on your knees and you can beg. And you can tell her you were wrong,” Maureen said seriously.
“You can hold her,” Rob said. “You can make her see and feel what you do. But you’ve got to want it. The question is, do you?”
“Look at him,” Maureen said. “His heart is broken in a way he’s never felt.”
“Yeah,” Brent said. “It is.”
“Then fix it, “Rob said.
“Because you can,” Maureen said.
“What if she doesn’t want me back?” he asked.
