Chapter 32 Shiloh
Thirty-Two
Shiloh
I showed my ID at the window and passed through the metal detectors, feeling like I was trapped in a bad dream that began the night of the grand opening, and I couldn’t wake up.
A corrections officer led me to the visiting room, my stomach twisting in knots.
The room smelled sharply of musty sweat and vending machine food.
Ronan was already there.
I moved on numb legs to the table and sat down across from him.
He looked as beautiful as always but different somehow.
Maybe it was the orange county jail jumpsuit or the fact that we were surrounded by armed officers and inmates, but he was less like himself.
Right there in front of me but far away too.
“Hi,” I said, my throat dry.
He looked up, his expression softening to see me, and then it shut down again. Turning hard.
“How’s Frankie?” he asked. “They won’t tell me.”
“Not great, but he’s going to live.”
I reached for him, and a CO barked at me, “No touching.”
I jerked my back, feeling small and helpless. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Ronan said and then set his hands on the table between us. The clank of the handcuffs seemed louder than it was, the bruises on every knuckle jumping out at me.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice small.
Ronan knew what I meant. He rubbed the fingers of one hand over the other. “Doesn’t matter.” He leaned over the table to me. “Listen…”
“Doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.” I stared, incredulous, ignoring the twinge of doubt that nipped at me. “We can still fight this. Go to trial, but you have to tell me—”
He was already shaking his head. “Shiloh, listen to me. We don’t have a lot of time.” He nodded at a corrections officers stalking the visitors’ room. “No matter what happens, I’m going to take care of you.”
“What does that mean?”
“The money from Nelson. I have a lot left. Almost all of it. It’s yours now. Rebuild the shop. Or save it for tough times or…whatever you need.”
I crossed my arms, a cold feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. “This sounds like goodbye.”
“Because it is.”
“No!” I smacked my hand on the table, drawing the eye of the CO. I lowered my voice to a hiss. “If you didn’t do it…”
I checked myself, hearing the doubt in my voice again. My gaze couldn’t stay away from his bruised knuckles while his words from the other night, I’ll take care of it, echoed in my mind.
No! I have to trust. Trust and keep going.
“You have the truth on your side,” I said.
His expression was grim. Resigned. “Truth and justice aren’t always the same thing.”
“So that’s it? What about us?”
“There is no more us, Shiloh,” Ronan said, the words slamming into me like hammer blows. “No matter what happens, I’m going away for a long time. You need to move on.”
“What? Move on? No.”
“This is humiliating,” he seethed. “I hate you seeing me like this. I can’t fucking stand it, Shiloh.
If I have to do this for ten years… If you have to do this shit for ten years…
Metal detectors and collect calls and two-hour drives for thirty-minute visits…
” He shook his head gravely. “I won’t do that to you. I can’t.”
“You can’t just…cut me off,” I said, disbelieving. “You can’t.”
“I have to,” Ronan said, his voice thick. “For your safety. They’ll keep going. Harassing you. I made it worse. I brought this to you.”
“No, Ronan.”
“Promise me, Shiloh. Promise me you’ll live your life. Don’t wait for me.”
“No, I’m not going to promise that. I can’t.”
“You have to.” He swallowed hard. “I’m letting you go, Shiloh. You have to let me go too.”
I stared, agony clawing at my heart. “No. No. I will not let you do this. I will not…”
Right before my eyes, the love fell out of Ronan’s expression. Turned ice-cold. Stony. His gaze flattened; his tone emptied of humanity. “I did it. I beat up Frankie. I wanted to kill him for messing up your shop.”
I sat back, pushed by the sudden danger emanating from him. “You’re lying.”
“I’m going to take the plea deal.”
“No. You can’t. You’re just saying this to push me away. It won’t work.”
He rubbed his bruised knuckles as if drawing my attention to them. “I couldn’t protect my mother, Shiloh. I can protect you.” He tilted his chin up, the dead tone in his voice sending shivers down my spine. “Frankie won’t bother you again.”
“Ronan…”
A CO stopped behind him. “Time’s up, Wentz.”
“No, not yet,” I said, panic rising in me.
This cannot be how it ends. It cannot.
“Time’s up, Shiloh,” Ronan said gruffly, the emotion he’d been trying to hide seeping through the cracks. “End of the road.”
Quickly, he looked away and let himself be taken from me.
I sat, stunned and unable to move, a sick, heavy feeling settling over my chest—years of being without Ronan, pressing me down.
“No.”
It was a tiny whisper, lost in the muted conversations of the county jail visitors’ center that faded away to nothing.
***
The next day, I sat in a Santa Cruz Superior Courtroom, wedged between Bibi and Maryann Greer—one of Ronan’s tenants. They squeezed my hands, held me up as Ronan entered a plea of guilty. The judge’s words would jolt me from sleep in a cold sweat for a hundred nights after.
“Ronan August Wentz, for felony aggravated battery resulting in great physical injury and injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, you are hereby sentenced to ten years at San Quentin State Prison.”
It was so simple. Over so quickly. With one slam of the gavel, the judge snatched ten years from Ronan’s life and ruined mine. Before I could even begin to process it, a guard was walking him out.
Ronan looked back at me, and for a split second, the hard exterior he’d shown me in the jail cracked. His eyes revealed everything—the agony in their smoky depths.
They said goodbye.
Someone let out a sob, and I realized it was me.
***
The following week, I tried arranging another visit, but Ronan wouldn’t take my calls. Then I tried showing up and found out my name wasn’t on the approved visitor list.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Who approves the list?”
The woman behind the glass smiled pityingly. “The inmate, honey.”
A few days later, after Ronan had been transferred to San Quentin, I tried there too. I got the same response. Ronan had meant what he said about me moving on and living my life. Not waiting for him.
Except he was my life, and waiting for him or not wasn’t a choice I could make.
I called Violet, crying, and told her the whole sordid story. She cried with me and said she’d see if Miller could get through to him. But Ronan had cut him off too. Probably Holden as well, though he was still MIA.
The Lost Boys were broken, when that had seemed impossible.
I visited Maryann and her girls at the complex, hoping she’d had better luck.
“He won’t talk to me either,” Maryann said, making us some tea, and my heart sank.
“Who won’t, Mommy?” one of the twins asked.
“Ronan?” asked the other. They were both suddenly on the verge of tears.
“Yes, Ronan,” Maryann said, stroking their hair.
“Are you his girlfriend?” one asked.
“You’re so pretty,” said the other.
“Oh! You’re the one who made that necklace he always wears.”
“Yeah, I made that,” I said, my throat thick.
For when you’re adrift.
Now that pendant was locked in some prison storage room, and I was adrift.
“He hired a management company to take care of us,” Maryann said.
“From prison?”
She nodded. “Apparently, his uncle owned both complexes free and clear. Ronan’s company has orders to keep the rent the same no matter how long he’s gone and to use every penny of our payments to make repairs as soon as an issue comes up. No scrimping.”
Maryann’s eyes filled, and she reached across the table to take my hand.
“I’m on the verge of a breakdown over him,” she said. “I can’t even imagine how you must be feeling.”
Sick. I felt sick at the idea of a life without Ronan.
I left Maryann’s place with hugs from her twins and a promise from her that we’d stay in touch. In the parking lot, I looked up at the corner unit, the window dark.
I ducked inside the car just as a torrent of sobs racked me.
At home, Bibi was knitting on the couch, Ethel and Lucy curled around her ankles.
“Hey, honey,” she said. “Hungry? I have some chicken with biscuits and gravy cooking. Maybe some basil mint lemonade?”
The idea of food made my stomach twist. “Maybe later.”
I sat on the couch beside her and opened my laptop. The shop had been closed, losing money every day. I still had repairs to make before reopening, though it all seemed so tedious. Too much work to do, and I didn’t have the energy—the fire—to do it.
I opened my banking app to see what I had left in savings and saw that Ronan had made good on his word. My account was more than sixty thousand dollars richer.
A little cry fell out of me, and I shut the laptop.
“What is it?” Bibi asked, alarmed.
“He gave me his money, Bibi,” I said, the tears flowing. “All his money.”
“Oh, honey.” Bibi drew me to her and held me against her bosom. My tears dampened the lilac of her housedress. “Then he wants you to have it.”
“I can’t. It feels like…he died and left it to me like his uncle did. Because he won’t talk to me, Bibi. He’s cutting me out of his life, trying to force me to move on.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I was afraid of that.”
“Doesn’t he get it?” I cried. “Doesn’t he understand how much I love him? I can never move on from him.”
Bibi shook her head, her voice heavy. “The boy was shuffled from home to home for ten years after his mama died. He has no idea that good things can stick. That people can care about him for longer than a month or two. In his world, moving on is what people do, so he’s doing what he thinks is the best thing for you. ”
“Joke’s on him. He is the best thing for me.” I sat up, wiping my eyes with the heels of my hands. “He told me he did it. His hands were bruised, and he confessed to beating up Frankie.”
“Do you believe that?”
I didn’t have to think about it; the answer rose up from the deepest part of me, a lone truth in an ocean of grief.
“I know he didn’t.” I looked to her, pleading. “But what do I do now, Bibi? Just what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Bibi faced forward, thinking for a minute. “Ronan has been pushed around by life so hard… I suspect he’s given little pieces of his heart to those he trusted and watched them walk away with them. Now something like this happens, and I worry there’s nothing left.”
I raised my head. “Is there?”
“You have the last piece of his heart, Shiloh. For good or bad. Silence or no silence. One year or ten. It’s in your hands.” She gave my fingers a squeeze. “And it’s up to you what you do with it.”