55. Chapter 55
Beep. Beep.
“I need you to do something for me, Jase. No questions asked.”
Even in his near-death state, Jason Young managed to conjure the same commanding tone that set the rules Jase’s entire life. His mother’s photographs were still spilled out on the sheets in front of him and he didn’t know what to do with her sudden reappearance in his life.
“What is it?”
“No matter what happens, promise me you’ll see it through. I mean it. Don’t come back until it’s done.”
Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeep.
The last memory of his old man came crashing through the drowsy fog of a late-afternoon nap.
One minute Jase was taking advantage of a lucid dream, inching his hand up Lindsey’s legs across his lap in the back seat, the next his father’s eyes peered out through the sunken holes and gaunt cheeks of a man who would be dead in a few days, imploring Jase to do one last thing.
Promise me you’ll see it through.
He had seen it through. That was the problem.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The machines. Jase hadn’t heard them in a while, or one very long day. He’d been so preoccupied with Lindsey and the money, he’d forgotten to beat himself up over not being with his dad when they stopped beeping. Now the machines found him in New Mexico.
The map to Lubbock had ended in the parking lot of a sporting goods store. They cracked the next seal, then filled the station wagon with camping gear from the supply list that accompanied the next letter and groceries from the convenience store across the street.
Texas finally released them in the late afternoon, and a little more than two hours later they reached the end of the fifth map. Somewhere within the Santa Rosa State Park where they would be camping for the night was a rocky shore where Jase’s parents had taken a Polaroid.
Now, helping a woman he wouldn’t be sleeping with assemble a tent he wouldn’t be sleeping in, the memory of his dad’s request and the beeping of those god-awful machines throbbed in Jase’s temples like a delayed hangover, joining the headache that followed him from Austin into the desert.
He rubbed his eyes and drank a beer. He probably should’ve been drinking water. Taking a fucking nap.
“Did you hear me?” Lindsey asked.
“Huh?” He couldn’t hear anything above the beeping. The throbbing.
“I need a hand with this pole.”
I bet you do.
No, he couldn’t even make jokes. Jase squinted to bring the assembly instructions into focus. Across the campsite, Graham and Helen were already loading sleeping bags into their dome tent.
“These are useless,” he said, tossing the creased paper aside.
“You okay?” She dropped the pole and reached for his arm. “You’re sweating through your shirt. Let’s do this later.”
“It’s my fucking head.”
He buried a palm in his left eye to squeeze out the pain. Lindsey fished aspirin from her purse, and he washed them down with the rest of his beer.
“You need to hydrate. You look awful.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Jase tossed the bottle of pills back into her purse and shoved his palms into both eyes now.
“Here, sit down.”
Why did you do it, Dad? Why did you send me across the country when you were so close to the end? What could be so important?
Beeeeeep.
The ground shifted beneath his feet. When was the last time he slept—really slept, not just dozed against the car door or tossed and turned on stale motel sheets?
Days, weeks…months? His old man was in the ground, and he never got to say goodbye.
Thanks to Graham, Jase had to fight his own instincts to save their six million dollars.
How—seriously, Lindsey, how—was he supposed to honor her wishes and keep his hands to himself if she kept putting her bare legs across his lap in the car?
And how—seriously, Dad, how—was he going to keep her happy long enough to collect at the end, knowing how it felt to touch her and wanting to do it again, but it was the one thing he couldn’t do if he wanted her to stay?
“Jase.”
Lindsey reached for him, as if she didn’t know he deserved punishment for missing the most important moment of his father’s life, the very last moment of it, and why were his ears ringing, his head splitting, his stomach rolling up his throat—
What’s happening to me?
“I’m sorry,” he forced out, pushing past her and stalking down the road.
Jase didn’t puke because Jase didn’t puke. He wasn’t the guy who made a big deal about feeling a little sick. After six days stuffed like a sardine in the back of the station wagon, Jase was losing his mind.
He trudged through the park—alone, finally, the way he wanted it—plowing through the nausea and headlong into the pain threatening to split his skull. His eyes leached unintended tears as his brain swelled. Jase didn’t cry. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t know what this was.
Beep. Beep.
Would the silence have been worse? Could he have handled being there to hear the machines stop their infernal beeping? Was that why his dad sent him away at such a critical hour? To save Jase the agony of watching the life leave his body?
He hit a stone outcropping at the edge of a lake, stripped down to his boxers, and jumped in. He didn’t realize fully what he’d done until the shock of the water forced the air from his lungs, and he sank into the frigid depths, surrounded by still darkness.
Silence. The way he needed it.
Beep. Beep. Fucking beeeeee—
He broke the surface gasping for breath.
For a while he bobbed there, a man removed from the problems he left on shore.
The water didn’t wash away the machines or the guilt—they were branded on his soul now—but the pressure in his brain was less and he could see straight. The aspirin must’ve been kicking in.
The opposite shore came into focus, and he knew he’d seen it before. Jase climbed with numb limbs back up the outcropping and pulled today’s Polaroid out of his jeans to compare. His parents, oblivious to his plight, smiled up at him from what he swore was this very spot.
No matter what happens, promise me you’ll see it through.
Graham was justified in hating him. Jase hated himself too. How could he deny his old man’s wish—the instructions that kept Jase from Ohio when their dad died?
Don’t come back until it’s done…and whatever you do, don’t tell your brother.