Chapter Twenty-One #2
I don’t deserve it. I know he’s right. I’ve been lying to myself.
Yes, I gave Raffe my son because I was confident that he and Rachel would do what was best for him.
However, there is a part of me that did it because I knew it would connect me to Raffe forever.
Even if he didn’t know it. Even if I was gone and wouldn’t know anything past that moment.
It would still be woven into the universe.
If I’m honest, there was this thing inside of me that yearned to be linked to him, something other than our last moments together.
“Jenny! Jenny, I’ll kill him. I promise you I’ll kill him someday. Don’t give up. Just please don’t give up. I’ll find you. I’ll find you!”
I tried to be quiet, because I could hear how much the sound of my pain was torturing him. But it hurt so bad, and I was so scared.
The toilet flushes, and Dirk pushes me back to wash my face. I shove him away and go back for another violent round of being sick.
I threw up every day for two whole months after they took me.
They told me it was because I was fighting them.
Miraculously, it went away the first time I gave in freely.
I got the message loud and clear. They controlled me.
I didn’t like being drugged or sick, so I just gave up and did as I was told from then on out.
When I’m finished, I lean against the side of the tub, struggling to catch my breath. “Please tell me they didn’t do to him what they did to me.”
He calmly flushes the toilet and then sits on the floor beside me.
I try to scoot away from him, but he stops me by wrapping his hand around the side of my neck and pulling me to face him.
He begins to run the washcloth over my eyes before moving on to the rest of my face … just like my mother used to do.
“I’m not a child,” I say, trying to pull out of his grip.
“Fourteen-year-old Jenny didn’t have anyone to wipe her face. She does now.”
I can’t tell what I’m feeling. I’ve never talked to anyone about this … ever. It makes no sense that it’s happening here with him. The same man who saved Raffe.
When he’s finished wiping my face, he looks me in the eye. “One thing you’ll learn about me is that I’m not as soft as my sister. I won’t lie to you.”
My heart breaks into a thousand pieces because I see it in his eyes. Raffe has shared his deepest and darkest secrets with this man, and they are terrible. That is why he came here. He’s worried I’ll hurt his friend.
“Is he … okay?” I whisper.
“You know how it is. It will never leave him, but he has allowed himself to be happy.”
It’s strange sitting here on the floor with Dirk. He doesn’t seem like someone who sits on the bathroom floor very often.
“I’m sorry I triggered you. That was not my intention coming here,” he says.
I know he means it, because he said so himself. He doesn’t lie.
“It’s not your fault. It happens. Sometimes it’s as simple as a dragonfly landing nearby.”
His face softens, and he reaches out and tugs a piece of my hair. “Jackson’s little one looks just like you.”
I dip my head and smile. “I loved meeting her today. She’s the sweetest.”
He nods and looks away. I see the struggle on his face. He came here wanting to be mad at me. It’s hard for him to let that go, but I see he’s trying.
“How often do you think of him?” he asks.
“I think about Jackson every day. He’s a piece of my heart.”
“Not him.”
Oh. It’s clear he’s expecting the truth. Do I want to give it to him? He was so hostile when he first arrived.
He taps my hand with two fingers. “I’ll keep it between the two of us. I don’t know why, but I need to know.”
A knot slowly crawls its way up my throat and lodges itself right in the middle.
“Please tell me,” he begs.
“He’s the biggest piece of my heart. Late at night, when there is nothing to hang on to, I think of him. He sits with me in the dark. Sometimes I wrap my blanket around myself and pretend it’s him.” I stop, realizing how crazy I sound.
Dirk sits quietly, unmoving. It makes me feel comfortable enough to continue, even though it scares me.
“For a long time, I sat in the pitch black of this place. I didn’t turn the lights on.
I didn’t go outside. I was terrified they’d find me.
” I glance up at the light fixture. “He was here with me through it all.” I sit up a little straighter, remembering how proud I was when I turned it on for the first time, eventually moving on to the other rooms. “Being here in the silence was like being in a cocoon. Slowly I began to morph into something different, and even then, he never left my mind.”
He looks away from me as he mulls over what I’ve said.
“Everything is changing, and it’s making me itchy,” he admits.
“Well, that is one thing we have in common.”
It makes him laugh sadly. “I’ve been looking for someone to take my grief out on, and unfortunately Raffe took the brunt of it. I said some pretty horrible things to him yesterday.”
I stand up, holding my hand out to him. “How about a drink?”
“You don’t strike me as the drinking type,” he says, but he accepts my offer, taking my hand.
“Bill left a bottle of whiskey here. We each had a couple of drinks to celebrate the first time I left the house. We were saving the rest for my next goal, which was leaving the property. I was kind of a work in progress.”
Once in the kitchen, I open the cabinet and point to the bottle on the top shelf. Dirk gets it down, running his thumb over the label like a long-lost friend.
“He only drank the best,” he says quietly.
We take it outside and sit on the front porch. The tip of my finger points toward the path. “I can’t tell you how many days he stood with me at that front gate. He never got upset with me when I couldn’t do it. We just tried again the next time he was here.”
“So, you’ve never left?”
“I have.”
He shakes the bottle, confused.
“The first time I left was for his funeral.”
His eyebrows jerk in surprise, and he sits forward. “You were there?”
I nod shyly. “Rachel sent me a letter, letting me know. It was the one and only time she ever communicated with me, other than the letter I received in my mailbox simply letting me know she had passed.”
He looks at the bottle in his hands. “Well then, this has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?”
“I guess it has. I have to warn you, though. I’m a bit of a lightweight.”
Dirk pours each of us a glass, and then he holds his up. A ray of sun bursts from the trees, cutting into the amber liquid. “To getting past the gate.” He tips his glass toward me.
My eyes fill with tears, missing my friend. I tap my glass against his. “To Bill.”
He nods somberly. “To Bill.”
We shoot back the whiskey, and he refills the glass. The next toast is to his sister.
I’m not sure how many we make, but the night moves slowly as we laugh and joke. I listen with enthusiasm, just like I used to do with Bill, soaking in every story I can. I’ve missed this, having another voice to listen to besides my own. Having a friend.
Dirk helps me stand, and I fall against him. He scoops me up. “You are a lightweight.”
“I tried to warn you,” I say, closing my eyes as he lays me on my bed.
He leaves me there but returns a few seconds later with the small trash can from my bathroom and a glass of water. When he sets it on the nightstand, his hand pauses mid-air.
My gaze follows his.
“Bill left it in my mailbox the last time he was here. I always wondered if he somehow knew it would be the last time.”
“You weren’t jealous of her?” he asks, setting the water down and picking up the framed picture of Jackson and his parents.
“No. She’s one of my angels,” I slur, my eyelids falling closed no matter how hard I try to keep them open.
I feel his hand press against the side of my face before sleep pulls me under.