Skygods (Hydraulic #2) (40 page)

A siren blared past the building, then faded down the street. I waited for Samuel’s answer. All that met me was a heated look and unfathomable eyes. He was too far inside his head for my words to reach him.

He kissed my palm. “Come to bed with me. I’m sorry I’m in such a fuck-awful mood.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

The fire was growing. I could see the subtle changes in his demeanor much sooner than I had the last time. He clutched at my hand, thumbs kneading my skin almost frantically. “Samuel, forgive me, but I need to ask—have you been taking your meds?” He turned his face away. I tugged on his hand, bringing his eyes back to mine. “Answer me.”

“Yes.”

But how would I know if he hadn’t?

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“I just saw one a few weeks ago.” He shook off my hand.

I was getting nowhere. Defeated and exhausted, I decided to turn in for the night.

“Where are you going?” he blurted, his panic reaching across the room and grabbing me by the throat.

“To the couch. I thought you might like some space. That you might be cross—”

“There’s no need,” he pleaded. “I won’t touch you tonight, I promise.”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, it’s okay if you do,” I stuttered. “I just didn’t want to intrude, that’s all.” So I followed him back to the bedroom, pillow clutched to my chest. We rolled to our respective sides, whispered our good nights, and slept.

And yet, at four a.m., I woke to find Samuel’s side of the bed cold. The faint
clack-clack-clack
of a keyboard ambled around the apartment, and I couldn’t deny the truth…

It was happening again.

As New York coffee shops go, this one was not noteworthy. From what I could tell, there was one on every block. But we hadn’t chosen Starbucks because of its appeal factor. We’d chosen it because it was easy to find.

“All you have to do is hop on the train,” Caroline had explained, “hop off, leave the subway and there it is. You can’t miss it.”

I’d lied to Samuel. This morning, like a shy teenage boy approaching a girl about a dance, he’d asked me if I wanted to attend the neighborhood church with him. “I find peace there, talk to some nice people.” He shrugged, flushing at my dubious expression. “I usually go when I’m in town. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that,” I hurriedly explained. “I’m sure it’s really beneficial. It’s just…I’m meeting someone for coffee this morning.”

Now, I sat at a corner table across from Caroline. An already volatile Samuel would have flipped if I’d told him the truth, so I told him my coffee friend was a critic for a magazine here in the city. (I’d never actually followed up with Mr. Avant Garde, and he hadn’t called, so I assumed I was in the clear on the cuppa offer.) Here I was, only hours after passionately rebuffing him for his secrets, doing the same thing—keeping secrets.

Caroline rubbed her temples. “Have you called his father? He might be able to convince Samuel to see his doctor.”

“No.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. It was wrong not to inform Alonso and Sofia, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet, not until I’d tried to help him on my own. “How did you manage it, Caroline? Get Samuel to go?”

“It didn’t happen often. Samuel’s very diligent in monitoring his moods before they become out of control. The few times it did, I scheduled the appointment myself and then informed him he was going. If he fought me on it, I usually pushed him like a stubborn mule until he relented just to shut me up. I wouldn’t recommend it for you, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because Samuel appreciates that you don’t treat him like a disobedient toddler. Let someone else do that for you.”

Like Alonso.

My elbows hit the table with a
thunk
that shot pain through my funny bone. “He has a day packed with interviews tomorrow, followed by a charity event that will be in all the New York social diaries.”

“You’ll just have to play it by ear.”

I drummed my fingers on the table, knowing it was time to bite the bullet. “Look, Caro, I want to apologize for the way things went down between us. Honestly, when I heard you and Samuel were dating, I was crazy jealous. I’d already decided to dislike you before you set foot in Lyons, and that wasn’t fair.”

She shrugged. “I admit I have an abrasive personality. You wouldn’t be the first to dislike me.”

“True, but I probably didn’t make the best impression when I crashed Samuel’s book signing in Boulder.”

Caroline studied me with those glittering eyes. “Tell you what,” she relented. “I’m really not supposed to release the names of Samuel’s doctors without his permission. But you need to take a look at the calendar I kept for him, starting two years ago in February. You might find some old appointments still useful.”

Clever. I hadn’t thought of that. “Thank you so much.”

“Next time, Kaye? Don’t be afraid to snoop through his medicine cabinets for names. Invading his privacy is the lesser of two evils, in this case.”

“I understand. Thanks.”

She caught my forearm, just as I was lifting my coffee mug to my lips. “Do you
really
understand?”

I bristled. “Of course I do. I was there with you in LA. I saw it, firsthand. I lived it.”

“No. Seven years is living it. What you saw? Just a taste.” She glanced around the nearly empty coffee shop, as if she expected someone to swoop from behind the counter and cuff her.

“I have something for you,” she ventured. “Something I was supposed to give you that night in the East Village, when you slept in my room. I never did because, at the time, I didn’t know what to make of it.” She took a tattered, browning tablet from her briefcase. As she slid it across the table, I recognized it at once—it was one of Samuel’s Moleskine notebooks, its pages dog-eared with age.

“I have a box full of old papers, drafts, files of Samuel’s writing we backed up from his old laptop. He knows I have it, but he hasn’t asked for it back yet.”

“I’ll send someone over for it later this week.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s probably wise to pick it up yourself. But this—” she tapped a chipped nail on the notebook “—he hasn’t seen it, doesn’t even remember this. Open it.”

I did. What I saw took my breath away.

It was the note—his good-bye letter—written over and over and over again. Pages and pages of pen scribbles, a notebook full of notes, as if he’d been copying detention lines:

Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

Red, blue, black, even faded pencil, put down and picked up again at a later time, perhaps over days. Some of the lines were illegible, some widely spaced and others over top of each other. Some, near perfect. There were slight variations in the wording, but always, “the roots between us are dead,” as if he was trying to convince himself more than me. I drew in a shuddery, terrified breath.

“Samuel’s laptop was full of frenetic writing, too, though nothing like this. I told you his work from that time period was harsher? That was an under-exaggeration. It was frightening. Abstract ideas and stories with no cohesion, and all incredibly dark—like stumbling through a nightmare world, then randomly waking only to fall into another nightmare. Samuel would let me use his laptop because my desktop computer was on the fritz. It was wrong to snoop through his personal files, but his other writing—the things he’d shown me—was so amazing, I couldn’t help myself. But what I found shocked me. That’s how I began to get a clue something was wrong. Somehow I
knew
it was more than the drugs. I should have called someone when I first saw the files, but I had no experience with those sorts of things.”

“So a doctor or Alonso has never seen this?”

“Not this. They read through Samuel’s other episode writing, thought it was drug-induced. After the incident in Raleigh, they decided it was more.”

“Did you copy or distribute any of it? Has Togsy seen it?”

“I didn’t. And no.”

I could only take her at her word.

“That night, after I put you in my bedroom.” She pressed her forehead between shaky hands. “It was horrible. All I could do was watch Samuel torture himself running sprints up and down the street, while that imbecile East Village crew stood outside and laughed, ribbing each other about how high Cabral was. Then Alonso arrived and took his son inside, heartbreak all over his face. Samuel picked up this notebook and began the frantic writing. Alonso just
stood there
. His own father stood there in agony, watching him, soaked through from hours of running.”

“Poor Alonso,” I murmured.

“Then he stepped out to call Sofia. When Alonso left, Samuel quit writing and slapped the notebook shut. I’ll never forget the pleading look on his face. ‘Take this to Kaye and put it in her backpack. Make sure you put it in her backpack,’ he kept repeating.”

By now, tears streamed down my cheeks. “But you didn’t give it to me.”

“Only a piece of it.” Caroline tugged the notebook from my grasping hands and flipped through it, until she found a page with a missing rectangular chunk. I recognized the lines of writing on that page, more than the others. Precise, swooping letters, more carefully written than most of the notebook:

Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

“Rather than give you the entire thing, I cut out one line, folded it into your sweatshirt pocket so you wouldn’t find it until later, and placed it in your pack. Deep down, I knew what I did was wrong, but I felt like I was protecting him from more hurt, you see.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I thought you were too timid to face the problems of the real world. That you’re too focused on yourself. So I didn’t give you the book. Even if I had, it’s such a small thing, it probably wouldn’t have changed much.”

I slammed my hands down so hard, our mugs rattled in their saucers and coffee sloshed out. The barista shot me a wary eye. “It would have changed
everything
. Maybe our split was inevitable because of our youth and insecurities. But I would have
known
. I would have
seen
.”

“Maybe.”

“Without a doubt.” I picked up the notebook and hugged it to my chest. “This was meant for me instead of you, Caroline. I should have been the one to call a doctor, to stand by him in rehab, and mental health clinics, and meds adjustments. I should have been the one to hold him and tell him it would get better.” Rage and regret churned in my belly like a sickness. “You should have given me the notebook like he asked, but you stole it. Why?”

“Because I thought you were poisonous,” she whispered. She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Look—I didn’t have to tell you about this at all, so don’t give me grief.”

I swiped runny mascara across my cheek. “I’d hoped…maybe…we might have become friends someday. Probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, huh?”

She shook her head. “It’s not possible. I have associates, Kaye, not friends. I don’t want them.”

“Then I am very sad for you.”

I didn’t miss that in all of her explanations, not once had Caroline apologized. Never in a million years would she admit to being sorry. She was too proud. Brushing the last of my tears away, I rose from the table and purposefully placed my half-empty coffee mug in the dish bin, then made for the door.

“Kaye,” she called after me. I paused. “You and Samuel should publish your book. It’s a beautiful love story.”

I stared at her, struggling to rise above this flood of emotion. I searched for the flicker of amity I’d felt pass between us the other afternoon. One last chance. But she’d buried it, and it was gone for good. Somehow, that only made me sadder.