Here Without You

Once outside, I resume our one-way conversation.

‘I’m such a coward – I’m terrified that if I meet River, he’ll become important to me. And when everything ends with Reid, I’ll lose him too.’

I find our spot – a secluded bench surrounded by waist-high camellia shrubs covered in white blossoms. Taking a seat, I face Deb’s chair to me and stare at her beautiful hazel eyes. She blinks slowly, seemingly focused on something in the distance over my shoulder. Positioned as I placed them before we left her room, her hands rest in her lap, fingers twitching as they sometimes do – just another involuntary movement, doctors insist.

‘I know you’d tell me I’m being spineless,’ I say to Deb now. ‘Only you’d say it more gently, like: Dori, you’re braver than this. It’s true, though – I’m gutless where Reid is concerned. If I talk to him, I’ll want to believe in everything he says.’

My eyes fill, my heart compressing as I wait for the pop that never comes. ‘I know I’m hurting him, and I hate that.’ After his last text: Please, goddammit it, not again – I almost caved. It took every ounce of willpower not to answer him. ‘But it wouldn’t be fair to try to keep him when I have nothing to offer him in return.’

I swipe the tears away before they have a chance to track down my face.

‘There’s something I never told you about that decision I made four years ago.’ I take a shuddering breath. ‘I’ve never felt a middle ground between acceptance and remorse. Every day for the last four years, it’s been one or the other. Black or white. There was no grey, but I could bear it, because I had you. When I lost you, I began slipping into perpetual guilt. Carrying that secret, alone, for the first time, while trying to balance the idea of a benevolent God with a God who could let this happen to you – it was like falling into quicksand.’

Reid saved me from going under. He’d needed me to help him see who he could be, and in return, he allowed me to be myself in a way I never have. I was content to accept that happiness as long as it lasted. To try to make him happy while he was mine.

‘Deb,’ I whisper, leaning closer. ‘I feel hollow. I feel separate from everything and everyone. Nothing is touching me except the things that hurt. You always told me that if I helped other people, even if I was just going through the motions, it would keep me grounded. It would eventually help me define and know myself again. But it’s not working this time. I don’t know who I am, in relation to anyone else. I’ve lost me.’

When I get home, Dad is brewing his Saturday afternoon ‘sermon-busting coffee’.

‘Hey, sweetheart. How was Deb?’

I almost say the same, but that’s not what he means. ‘The roses looked beautiful in her room, and when we got back in from a circuit in the garden, the whole room smelled rosy.’

He smiles. ‘You don’t think she minds that they’re pink?’

I don’t think she notices that they’re pink.

‘No, Dad.’ I smile, handing him the keys to the Civic.

‘If you might need the car later, just keep those,’ he says.

I shake my head. ‘Nick is coming over. We’re going to get an early dinner and catch up before he goes back to Wisconsin tomorrow. Our breaks are on consecutive weeks instead of the same one.’

‘Oh? That’s a pity.’ He looks hopeful, and I bite back the desire to tell him that ship has long since sailed.

‘It’s okay.’ I shrug. ‘At least I get to see him once.’

He clears his throat, and I know before he speaks what he’s about to say. He and Mom are so transparent. ‘Seeing Reid this week?’ he asks as I’m walking towards the stairs, my face turned away so he won’t notice the way I close my eyes and breathe through my nose, schooling my voice not to betray me.

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Oh. Have you two –’

‘Dad, I’m not ready to talk about it,’ I say, and thankfully he drops it.

I’ll never be ready to talk about it.

Nick arrives an hour later. The doorbell echoes through the house, and then I hear his voice in the foyer, comparing notes with Dad on the Badger basketball season. My father never took that relaxed tone with Reid … but I have to quash my irritation over that. There’s no purpose to it, after all.

‘Hi, Nick,’ I say, arriving downstairs. He beams and hugs me, and as he releases my shoulders, I ask, ‘Have you grown?’

His brows elevate hopefully. ‘I dunno. Have I?’

I laugh. ‘I think you have! Boys gain weight in a whole different way than girls! Seriously unfair.’

He smiles down at me. ‘You do seem shorter.’

‘Shut up.’ I punch him half-heartedly and we turn to go. ‘I’ll be back in a bit, Dad. Don’t get into any trouble while Mom’s at work.’

‘Aw, pumpkin – you’re no fun!’ he says in pretend objection, chuckling and shutting the front door behind us.

We turn to cross the porch and stop on the top step.

Reid is halfway up the walk. When he sees me with Nick, he stops abruptly too. In the span of those two seconds, a smile blooms and dies on my face. Whipping his sunglasses off, Reid glares at Nick and then at me. His jaw locks, fists clenched at his sides, as we all stand immobile and dumbstruck. He’s clearly angry, but so beautiful I can hardly stand to look at him.

‘Dori?’ Nick finally says, breaking the tense silence.

‘Would you mind waiting in the car, Nick?’