Prologue #2
In those quiet moments, something began to shift inside me. Every important memory took place within these walls. Every scraped knee, every Christmas, every heartbreak and triumph… The nuns had been there. Father James had been there. And maybe, just maybe, God had been there too.
He’d been quiet and patient, but He’d been there, waiting for me to notice.
On the days when I wondered if I was all alone, God brought me the nuns and their unwavering love.
In the hours when I questioned if anyone cared about me, he brought me the other children and their friendship.
In the years that passed, I started to believe the world had turned its back on me.
Instead, God brought me Ryan, who, despite being a negative Nancy, was always real with me, always cared in his own way.
“Whitney?”
I lift my head to see Sister Beatrice and Father James, and my stomach bottoms out. Father James is a staple at Sacred Haven, but he rarely shows his face in the girls’ wing, not unless something is wrong.
“What?” I ask, jumping to my feet. “What happened?”
Sister Beatrice opens her mouth and promptly closes it. She glances at Father James, and he gently rests a hand on her arm in a gesture of comfort before looking me in the eyes.
“It’s Ryan,” he says, his voice quiet.
“What about him?” I demand.
“He’s no longer with us.”
I hear the words, but they don’t fully register. “I know that,” I blurt. “He’s been gone for three years.”
“No, child,” Sister Beatrice says as she moves toward me. “Ryan was found dead last night. His cause of death isn’t official yet, but the police believe he overdosed. He listed you as his next of kin at his job, and there’s a detective here who would like to speak to you.”
My knees threaten to buckle, but I manage to remain standing. The air around me thins, and breathing becomes difficult.
“Are you up for speaking to the detective?” Father James asks.
I nod, unable to speak. The three of us walk to the room reserved for what should be the best day in an orphan’s life, the room I’ve spent years lingering outside of, watching happy moments that happen to everyone else but me… and Ryan.
“Miss Crane?”
I smile weakly at the man addressing me. He’s wearing a suit that’s too big for his frame, and his face is weathered by too much exposure to the sun.
“Yes, that’s me.”
He stretches his arm to shake my hand, and I do the same.
“I’m Detective Marsh. I’m sorry to be meeting under these circumstances, but I wanted to make sure you got this,” he says, handing me a thick envelope. “There wasn’t much in Mr. Sands apartment to indicate he had many friends or any family, which made this stand out.”
On the front of the white envelope is my name, scrawled in Ryan’s sloppy writing. Under that are the words ‘my person’. Tears roll down my cheeks as I take that in. The boy who tore down my defenses with his cynical gloom and doom thought of me, the girl who was never wanted, as his person.
I don’t open the envelope until I’m back in the shared girls’ room, but when I do, the tears fall faster.
Whitney-
If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I’m sure my death comes as a surprise to you, but for me, it was just a matter of time (see, it’s not all magical rainbows and bright colors). Maybe on some level I was trying to take myself out, but I guess we’ll never know.
You might not care that I’m gone. Shit, this might be the one good thing that came from time. But something tells me that you do care, so there are a few things I need to say.
First, I never once thought you weren’t lovable. I know, I know… I really made it seem that way, but it was never true. All those fucking people that came through Sacred Haven looking for a kid to call their own… they were stupid for passing over you. I mean, not taking me made sense, but you?
I laugh at his words, but it’s a broken sound fueled by heartbreak and regret.
Second, you deserve more than the world has to offer you, and surprisingly (I hope you’re sitting down because this will knock you on your ass if you’re not), everything you need and more can be found right there in that place you already call home.
Please tell me you were sitting down!
Again, laughter breaks free, and this time, it’s a bit more genuine. As infuriating as Ryan could be, he did always have the ability to make me laugh when nothing else seemed to.
I’m sure you want an explanation, but before I do that, I’m going to tell you a few things that only the nuns know about me.
I was left at the home when I was 7. You see, I had parents, had a family with siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents.
The problem with ‘family’ is that the only give a damn they possess is what they think society requires them to feel.
In reality, my parents, my fucking ‘family’, couldn’t have cared less about me. I think they tried, or at least that’s what I tell myself when what’s real tries to swallow me whole. At the end of the day, they deemed my one and only sin too much to handle.
And you know what that sin was? The sin that made my ‘family’ throw me away like trash?
“Yes,” I whisper, wiping my cheeks. “Yes, Ryan, I want to know.”
My one and only fucking sin was… drum roll please… wetting the bed.
That’s it. I slept so soundly, so deeply that I sometimes didn’t wake up if I had to take a piss. That’s why my parents got rid of me.
Now, quit clutching your pearls, Whitney, because coming to Sacred Haven was a blessing I didn’t fully appreciate until recently.
If my parents had kept me, I would’ve faced a childhood full of abuse because the punishments for wetting the bed were cruel (I know you heard me screaming at bath time in the evenings so you can use your imagination to figure out that particular trauma).
My mind races with all the possible ways Ryan was punished by the people who were supposed to love him unconditionally, and my stomach clenches at what I’m able to imagine.
I spend the next ten minutes reading my friend’s words, the ones he left only for me.
He goes into detail about the day he was brought to the home, about how his brother and sister cried when his parents dragged him out of their house.
He writes about how the nuns would sit with him at night when he had nightmares or how they would spend hours with him when he cried because he missed the people who abandoned him.
He describes the quiet moments with Father James in the home’s chapel, how he was prayed with and for, or how he was never judged by strangers.
When I get to the last page, I take a deep breath because I want to keep reading, but I also don’t want the letter to end.
If you’ve made it this far, then I know I was right about you… you’re one of the good ones. I have 2 more things I want to say to you, and then I’ll let you get back to whatever life you’ve built yourself.
You need to know that I’m so grateful for your friendship.
You might not have always liked me. In fact, I know you didn’t.
It was pretty plain in the way you bitched when I was teasing you or in the way you always slightly turned away when I was around.
But ya know what? You never once actually stopped being there.
You (and okay, the nuns and Father James) were the only person that I could count on being there.
I’m sorry if my callous words made you feel like no one would ever want you, but I think that was my way of keeping you close.
I didn’t want to lose you, Whitney. If I didn’t have you, who did I have?
I don’t know if that makes sense, but shit, I hope it does.
In my own way, I loved you. Hell, I still love you.
Not romantically or anything like that. My love for you was incredibly simple, and yet, complicated by the life I’d been dealt.
It was (is) a deep, raw, unsullied love.
It’s unconditional, and even though I’m dead, it’ll always be there.
So, in the moments when you’re thinking that no one loves you or that you’re not deserving of love, remember that I did, I do, okay?
And lastly… remember at the beginning of this letter when I said that everything you need is right there at Sacred Haven? I hope so because if not, you really should get your memory checked! (I hope that made you laugh)
Anyway, I meant it.
I might have left that place without looking back, but I shouldn’t have.
Out here, out in the ‘real’ world… life is fucking hard.
I thought I was doing good because I got an apartment and a job.
I had friends who I’d hang out with. But when all is said and done, I didn’t really have shit.
Those ‘friends’ are the same people who introduced me to heroin.
Fuck, Whitney, the way the drug made me feel…
I became invincible. I started by smoking it, and the incredible high lasted for 15 to 30 minutes.
A whole goddamn half hour where I felt like I was the best thing since sliced bread.
But then that wasn’t enough, so I started shooting up, and that was even better because the high would last hours. HOURS!
And then it didn’t last.
I chased a feeling that never even really existed, and while I did that, I let everything else in my life go.
I stopped calling you (I’m so damn sorry), I stopped caring about work or bills.
There was nothing more important in my life than doing whatever it took to feel that good again.
I don’t know why, but my boss didn’t give up on me, not completely.
He realized what I was doing and gave me an ultimatum: get help or get fired.
I chose help. I think on some level I made that choice for you because I knew if you found out how bad I’d gotten, you’d have been disappointed.
Anyway, I found an NA meeting that was held at a church a few blocks from my apartment.
I was there every single day. I resented my boss, the meetings, everything. I wanted to feel good, not ashamed.