Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) (34 page)

Only after I committed every detail of her broken state to memory did I speak. “Hey, Mom.”

Her eyes fluttered and then closed.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so, so sorry. If I’d known, I never would have ….” My voice cracked, and I stopped and looked away. I stopped, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

I never would have … what
?

What would I have never done? Would I have never allowed myself to get involved with Allie in the first place? Would I have never allowed myself to fall for her? Or would I just never have admitted it to my mom? Would I have kept it a secret for as long as I could?

A million different conversations that I’d had with Allie went through my head.

“How are you going to explain ‘us’ to your mom?” she had asked. “She won’t forgive me, Adam. She shouldn’t. We can’t get past this, and even if we could, the people who we love can’t. You may think now that you can forgive me, but what happens a year from now when I do something stupid and piss you off? How easy will it be for you to hate me again?”

“If I have to choose, I’ll choose you,” I had responded. “I can live without them, but I can’t live without you.”

And then I’d told her I loved her, as if nothing else mattered. Love conquers all and all that bullshit. At the time, it had seemed so simple. But Allie had more foresight than I did. She had known all along that this would be our biggest challenge. She had thought it was insurmountable, and I’d foolishly tried to convince her otherwise. I knew that she still worried about it. I felt it in the way she looked at me sometimes, as if she thought I might vanish at any moment. She had looked at me like that on the plane coming to Dallas.

I looked at my mom again and pushed thoughts of Allie out of my head. I needed to focus on my mom. She needed to be my primary concern right now. I felt guilty for even thinking about Allie when my mom was suffering in a hospital bed.

“Mom,” I finally said again. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes opened. She stared at the ceiling. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “I’m going to take care of you.”

Finally, she turned to look at me. Her bloodshot eyes were tired and sad. “You’re not leaving?” she asked in a raspy voice that sounded as bad as she looked.

“No, Mom. I’m staying.”

Her eyes fluttered closed again, but the faint smile that played across her lips remained.

She needed me.

_________________________

The drive to Allie’s parents didn’t take as long as I hoped it would. It wasn’t nearly long enough to get my head screwed on right. It was possible that it was just because I was so damn tired … I’d been up now for more than 27 hours … but everything seemed completely hopeless at the moment.

I had begged Warren to stay with mom. I hadn’t actually had to beg him. Even though he was also running on no sleep, he seemed happy to do it. And when I asked him not to let on where I was going, he hadn’t batted an eye.

That was Warren. I’d always been able to count on him.

I pulled up in front of her parents’ house, and, luckily, Allie didn’t make me come in for her. She trudged outside with her bag, and I got out to get it for her. I threw it into the miniscule trunk and realized that I was glad that we had packed separately. This whole scene would be even worse if we had to go through our things to separate everything out.

After I slammed the trunk shut, I turned and nearly ran into her. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn’t even realized that she hadn’t just gotten into the car. Without saying a word, she wrapped her arms around me and rested her head on my chest. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “This is all my fault.”

“It’s nobody’s fault.” I didn’t believe that, and my voice gave me away. But it wasn’t her fault. I’d been playing the blame game all night, and not once had I come down on the side of blaming Allie. No, this was my fault. I had brought this on all of us.

“She’s going to be okay, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, the doctor says that she’ll be good as new in a few days,” I said, though I also had doubts about that.

“I think I know what happened, Adam, but can you tell me? I feel a little lost right now.”

“Let’s get in the car, and I’ll tell you about it.” She didn’t argue with me though she pulled me a little tighter before she finally let go.

Once in the car, I filled her in on what the doctor had told me, though I was careful to stick to the physical aspects of her condition. There was no reason to tell Allie what the doctor suspected as far as my mother’s emotional condition. It would only upset her, and I didn’t want her going away any more upset than she already was.

In fact, I didn’t really know what my mom’s emotional state was. She had spoken very little all morning though I suspected she would talk to Warren more than she would talk to me. The psych consult wouldn’t take place until later this afternoon. At some point after I returned, the shrink was supposed to see her. He would dissect her and hopefully fix what the medical doctors couldn’t.

The doctor from this morning hadn’t actually said it, but there had been no need to actually say it aloud. I knew he suspected that the overdose had been intentional. No matter what their ultimate diagnosis was, I would have a hard time accepting that.

After I told her all I could about my mom’s condition, there wasn’t much else to say. We sat in silence. Unlike our drive two days ago from the airport, it wasn’t a comfortable silence. It was the kind of silence that puts you on edge and makes you want to punch something. It was the kind of silence that feels like the bottom is about to fall out.

“How will you get back?” she finally asked.

“I’ll take an airport shuttle or a cab back to my mom’s and grab her car. I can drive it until …,” my voice dropped off. Why was I having such a hard time finishing sentences today?

“Until you can come home,” she finished.

“Yeah,” I said.

She looked out the window and didn’t say anything else until we pulled up at the rental car lot. Without a word, she got out of the car and headed for the small building to check in the car. I unloaded her bag from the back and gave the car a last once-over.

She had tried so hard to do something nice for me. I’d been genuinely surprised, and it had been a great start to a weekend that we both had a lot of mixed feelings about. I ran my hand down the smooth curve of the passenger fender and wished that the rest of the weekend had gone as smoothly.

“We’re all done here. I mean, the car’s checked in,” she said, her voice breaking, behind me. “I had him call you a cab, and the airport shuttle should be here in a minute to take me to the terminal.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning toward her. Things with Allie had never felt this awkward. Not even in the beginning, when I’d professed to hating her, had it been this awkward. In fact, despite all odds, being with Allie had always been easier than it should’ve been.

It wasn’t easy now.

Allie looked off in the direction of a bus that was rumbling in our direction. “Adam ….”

“Allie …,” I said at the same time.

A faint, sad smile played across her lips. “You don’t know when you’ll be coming home, do you?” she asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Is there anything you want me to send you?”

“No. I’ll be okay,” I said, as the bus pulled to a stop no more than 10 feet from us. “This is your ride.”

“Yeah,” she said sadly. “Call me when you can, okay? I understand that it might be hard.”

“I will, and I’ll try to text you if I can’t call.”

She bent and picked up her bag. “Okay, I’ll see you when you get
home
.” She seemed to stress the word ‘home’ as if she wanted to remind me of where my home was. She dropped her bag again, stepped into me, and wrapped her arms around me again. “I love you, Adam. Don’t forget that, okay?”

“I won’t forget, babe. I couldn’t.” I ducked my head and kissed her on the top of the head. I took a deep breath to remember the smell of her. When I couldn’t take it any more, I finally wrapped my arms around her, too.

We stood silently like that for several minutes. To anyone observing, we were just another couple saying goodbye at the airport. To us, it felt like so much more.

Finally, a throat cleared behind us. I let go of her, and Allie retrieved her bag for the second time. Without looking back, she turned and climbed onto the bus. As it pulled away, I realized that I hadn’t said it back to her. I hadn’t told her that I loved her.

I should’ve told her that I loved her.

CHAPTER 20

Alexis

Time was at an absolute standstill. I got up every day and went to work. I came home to a dark, quiet, musicless apartment. Rubber Cat sulked. I sulked. It was the saddest, sulkiest apartment in all of Manhattan.

Luckily, I was busier than ever at work. The settlement negotiations that had broken down before Thanksgiving meant that we were going to trial after the first of the year. There was more work than people to do it, and it meant a lot of early mornings and late nights. I was thankful for the diversion, but it still wasn’t enough to make me forget.

Every night when I finally dragged my tired ass home, I stood in the apartment and assessed whether anything had changed. Rubber Cat and I would do our customary walk-through, checking to see if Adam’s backpack was still leaning up against the couch in the living room. We always looked to see if his iPod was still on the stereo. And then, we checked to see if his clothes were still in the closet. It was only after I confirmed that everything was exactly as I’d left it that morning that I could breathe a sigh of relief.

As I would put the key in the door and turn the knob, I was never sure what was worse. The fear that I would find that he hadn’t returned was torture. But the fear of finding that he had returned and had taken all his things was unimaginable agony. Every day was the same while I waited for something to change and simultaneously hoped that it didn’t.

True to his word, Adam texted. Once per day, he texted. No more and no less. His texts were informative without providing any answers. They were kind, yet detached. They came from his phone number, but didn’t seem like they were from him at all.

And with each one, I grew more agitated. I tried to give him his space. He needed time to deal with what had happened. He needed time to help her recover. He didn’t need me pestering him to come home. However, it became painstakingly clear that time wasn’t going to bring him back to me. If anything, he continued to drift further and further from me each day. I knew it without laying eyes on him. I knew it without hearing his voice. I wanted to call him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too afraid of what he would be forced to say if confronted.

It was on the 10th day that I finally broke. I couldn’t say everything I wanted to in a text, but I didn’t want to force him into a phone call. So I wrote an email.

You know what they say about emails … that they’re impersonal and shouldn’t replace actual communication? This email was nothing if not personal. I poured my heart and soul into those 463 words. I begged him to hear me … to listen to me.

I read and reread it. I weighed every word to make sure that it conveyed exactly what I wanted.

And when I was done, I made Ethan read it. Though relationship counseling wasn’t really his thing, he’d done a lot of it since Adam and I had gotten together. When I’d gone AWOL a few months ago, he had counseled Adam and kept him company. Now that it was my turn, he obliged me though I was sure that it made him a little uncomfortable.

Only when it was perfect … when every word was exactly where I wanted it … did I push send. And then I hoped with every piece of my fractured heart that it brought him back to me … if not today, then some day.

Adam

During the 10 days after my mother’s accident, time became this strange continuum. It continued to move forward though I felt none of it. I was rooted in place, and if someone had told me that it was 2005, I couldn’t have argued with them.

By some fluke, my mother passed her psych evaluation and was discharged from the hospital just two days after she had been wheeled in. The doctors recommended that we enroll her in a treatment facility, but she refused. She insisted that it was just a one time thing, a blip on the radar that wouldn’t repeat itself.

I spent the first few days hovering over her while she walked around in a haze. I cooked her meals. I reminded her to shower. I even picked out her clothes. She seemed incapable of making the smallest of decisions. Eventually, though, she started to make a comeback and had gone back to work one week after being released.

We fell into a familiar rhythm. During the day, I worked at the shop. I spent the mornings helping Warren with whatever rolled in that day. In the afternoons, I crawled under the Pontiac. By the fourth day, I’d systematically dismantled it.

I spent the evenings with my mom. We watched whatever was on TV and talked about nothing in particular. Our conversations gradually became less forced though we never talked about what had happened. She seemed content to leave it alone, and I was afraid that if I tried to bring it up she would become defensive. I didn’t want all the progress we’d made to be for nothing.

Around nine each night, she excused herself to go to bed, and I would be left with nothing but my thoughts to entertain me. It was then that I mentally berated myself for everything I had done wrong, for all of the mistakes I’d made and for all the people I’d let down. It was only in the dark quiet of the night … when I knew my mom was sleeping … that I allowed myself to miss Allie.