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“I’m leaving today.”
I coughed like I’d taken a direct hit to the chest, as if the air had physically been knocked out of me. “Today?”
He nodded. “We’re heading up to Somerset and I’m leaving straight from there.”
“I can go. I’ll drive your mom home.”
“No. Henry’s coming. We’re good.”
“But I want to—”
“What?” he barked.
All I could do was shake my head in stunned disbelief. Last night I was his world. It wasmehe came running to.Igave him comfort when he was suffering. Now, just a few hours later, he was speaking to me as if I was no more than a needy child testing his patience.
“There’s not going to be a service, Charlotte. There’s no mahogany casket, no priest, no flowers.”
“What’s happening?”
With his eyes cast down, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “I have to go.”
Simon was pleading with me to understand. But I was selfish, foolish, and just wanting so badly to hang on to him. “You’re leaving me.”
“You always knew I was leaving.”
“Not yet, though. And I just…Last night you said—”
“Do not do this to me.”
I stood there, numb and wordless, watching as he turned his back on me, got into his truck and drove off. It was a good five minutes before I managed to step back and close the door, the realization finally setting in.
He’s not coming back.
* * *
Simon
It burns on the way down. I imagine the cheap liquor eating away at my insides as it winds its way through my system.Just one more, I pledge as I take another swig. Only weak people numb themselves with booze and drugs.
Timmy was weak.
I’m not.
I know this. I know that when this bottle is empty, I’ll fall into a deep sleep that will help me forget, but just for tonight. I know I won’t be looking for a crutch tomorrow because I can’t.
I cannot fail.
But tonight I let it all crash down around me: the careless, mechanical way the prison administrator expressed his condolences, the apologetic look the clerk gave us as he handed over the manila envelope with my brother’s meager belongings, the sorrow that will weigh my mother’s shoulders down for a long time to come, and Charlotte.
I walked away from her, couldn’t look her in the eye. In the light of the morning after, I hated myself for using her body as a vessel for mine to grieve. Drunk and lost, I went to her after we got the call. Climbed into the bedroom window she opened for me. Climbed into her bed and cried like a damn child as she held me. Pressed into her soft body and lost myself in her goodness. Told her I’d love her forever.
I handed her that paper bag before turning my back on her, getting in my truck and peeling out without a glance backward.Tying up loose ends, I told myself. As if she was just something I needed to cross off my to-do list before I left this town for good.
Do notdo this to me.
Those were the last words I spoke to her. Do not make me feel bad. Do not pretend like you thought I was going to stay. Do not act like last night changed anything. Do. Not. Cry.Please, I wanted to beg her.I have to go, I pled in silence.
Follow me, I’ll wait for you. That’s what I wanted to say, what I should have said. But instead I went with coldhearted and cruel. The words and the way I delivered them were meant to sever, meant to make a clean break.
