Chapter 6
Six
brOOKS
Every text I send to Sam sounds worse than the one before.
We need to talk.
Leaving like this isn’t going to fix it.
That one’s horrible. I hate myself for it.
Can I call you?
Better but still terrible.
The bubbles never come. No evidence that she’s sitting there pondering what to say to me. Nothing to show that she’s even considering giving me a second chance.
My brain says I don’t deserve one. My heart hopes for one more than it wants the next breath.
I know she’s at Petra’s, which means she’s likely at The Funnel Cloud. Petra is no doubt plying her with coffee, food, and a list of ways to make my life miserable.
I’d tell Petra that my life is already miserable, but that would just egg her on.
The bandage on my arm reminds me of every stupid call I made the other night. There’s an ugly bruise running down my ribs that’s turning yellow at the edges. Sam would probably say it looks like its own supercell if she were here.
I wish she were.
Sam told me to cut south.
What had I done?
I’d asked Luci.
I drag my hand down my face, wishing like hell I could turn back time.
Sam just needs space. She’ll come around, and by then, I’ll have figured out exactly the right thing to say to fix all of this. Sam runs hot when she’s hurt. She needs room to cool off. Time to let Petra take care of her while calling me the biggest idiot she’s ever met.
She’s not leaving me. She can’t.
“Boss?”
I turn and see Tony standing just inside the equipment bay door.
“Yeah?”
He hesitates, one hand on the frame like he’s not sure if he’s welcome. I want to tell him he’s not. I want to tell him that every time I look at him, I see his hands at my wife’s neck, and all I want to do is choke him.
He clears his throat. “You heard from Sam?”
You can’t punch the man, I tell myself. I try to remember whose idea it was to hire him.
“Why?”
“Just asking.” He shrugs, as if he didn’t just come in and ask a man about his wife after everyone on the team knows she’s not around and what that could mean. “She said once she likes to go to The Funnel Cloud when she needs to get away. Wonder if…”
The thought comes without warning: What the hell is Sam doing telling this man where she goes when she needs to get away?
“What do you wonder, Tony?” I ask. The words come out with a bite.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” he says, backing out of the equipment bay. “Forget I said anything.”
Too late for that.
I look down at my phone after he’s disappeared. Nothing.
She needed space. And as much as I want to blame Tony, I know that I’m the one who made her need that space.
Luci finds me in the warehouse late that afternoon, trying to unwrap the bandage from my arm.
She rushes over, taking control of the bandage.
“You’re just going to make that worse,” she says. “Do you want an infection?”
“I’ve got it,” I lie.
“Yeah, I can see that. That’s what worries me.”
She steps in before I can argue, taking the loose end of the tape and working it around my forearm. Her hands are cool and careful.
“You heard from Sam?”
I grit my teeth. Everyone wants to know my business, and I can’t even talk to my wife about my business.
“No.”
Luci makes a sound under her breath. “I’m sorry. Maybe she just needed a little time to cool off.”
I say nothing, wanting to talk to Sam more than anyone.
“She’s my wife,” I say before I can think better of it. I don’t even know why I say it. Maybe just to hear the words.
“She is,” Luci agrees, smoothing the tape over my skin. “That’s why you need to be careful. You don’t want to rush in there, guns blazing.”
That’s exactly what I want to do, I think, clamping my teeth shut. I want to drive to Muncie, TX tonight and make her talk to me.
More than that, I want to figure out how to say all the damned things I’ve been needing to say for two years and say them.
“She just needs time.”
I’d said the same thing earlier, and it had sounded like a convenient way of passing the buck. But Luci’s a woman. She would know. Wouldn’t she?
I glance past Luci’s shoulder at Tony. He’s fumbling with his phone near the edge of the warehouse. Others are sifting in, getting ready for whatever’s next. I want to tell them all to go home. That this operation isn’t anything without Sam.
But they all need this. Furthermore, the sponsors need this. Need to see that we can get back on our feet after getting hit. It’s not just my job that depends on it. Sam and I could coast on what we’ve made for decades. But they depend on me.
Luci’s eyes follow mine to Tony’s. She lets go of my arm and looks up at me.
“You can give him the stink eye all you like. He’s not going to turn into a puddle of cow shit just because you do.”
I smile down at her, the thought of Tony turning into a cow patty giving me more joy than it should.
“You promise?”
When I look back over, he’s aiming his phone at the crew, recording everyone getting back to work while my entire world is ending.
It’s close to sunset when Hershel finally corners me. He’s been short with me all day long.
He finds me alone in the office, slamming the door shut behind him.
“You going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
I lean back in the chair, trying to appear as casual as possible. “That’s a broad question.”
“And I’m a broad man. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m busy, Hershel. If all you’ve got to do is ream me for what you think I’ve done wrong?—“
“You ain’t busy, Carlisle. You’ve been staring at the desk doing fuck all since you came in here. In case you’re unaware, we can all see you through the office window.”
“I was aware,” I say, turning back to the desk as if the act of doing so will get this man off my case. “I just didn’t think anyone would find it that titillating.”
“Tell me what’s going on, Brooks.”
For a second, I think about telling him to butt out. Then I hear Tony’s voice again.
“I think there might be something between Sam and Tony.”
When Hershel doesn’t say anything, I look back at him.
He’s watching me. Unblinking.
“Have you lost your damn mind?”
“I didn’t say I know. I said think and might.”
Hershel rubs his face vigorously, then looks at me like he’s never seen me before.
“You know, Ozzy Osbourne made some questionable decisions in his lifetime, God rest his soul.”
“Hershel, if you?—“
“But if the good Lord saw fit to give us another concert and he popped right in here at this moment, I’m certain he’d tell you that you were a few bats short of a belfry.”
“I know what it sounds like,” I say, completely ignoring the Ozzy reference because I’ve been down that road before.
“No, you obviously don’t, because if you did, you’d beat your own ass.”
I shove to my feet, wincing as pain flashes through my side. “He texts her at midnight, Hershel. He knows how she takes her coffee. Knows she isn’t sleeping. Earlier, he came in here and told me exactly where she goes when she needs space.”
“Nothing you’ve said screams Sam’s cheating on you with Tony, Brooks. But I have one really important question: Have you actually asked Sam what’s going on?”
I look at him, not wanting to answer because I know what he’s going to say.
“Did you ask your wife one single honest question before you started building a case against her in your head?”
“I didn’t want to hurt her.”
Hershel presses his thumb and index fingers into his eyes so hard I swear it has to hurt. Then he looks up at the ceiling, hands on his hips, and the words are faint, but I’m pretty sure they involve his long-departed mama and Jesus.
Finally, he looks back down at me. “How’d that work out for you?”
I look away.
“No, look at me.” His voice is sharp now, sharper than I’ve ever heard it. “You know what I saw at that clinic the other night?”
“Something tells me you’re gonna tell me.”
“Damn right I am. I saw Sam come through those doors looking like her world was ending. Face so white she looked like a ghost.”
I grip the edge of the desk just to stay anchored.
“And then she gets in there to you, and what does she see? Luci in your arms.”
“Luci was scared.”
“You know who was scared? Your wife. Sam. She thought you might be dead. She ran to you. And when she got there, you were holding another woman, telling her that you couldn’t have made it without her.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Doesn’t matter what you mean when the blade’s already in.”
I flinch.
“She left with tears in her eyes, Brooks. She tried not to let me see that, but that girl was hurting too much to hide it very well. She’s got pride enough to outlast us all, but I saw. And you’re the one who made her cry.”
I didn’t want to make her hurt, I think. I don’t say it. Because I know exactly what Hershel would say to that, and he’d be right.
“Sam’s been devoted to you. She stayed when you benched her.
Watched another woman take her place and didn’t threaten to leave once.
” His voice softens just a bit, but not enough to give me any breathing room.
“I watched the two of you fall in love. Watched both of you build this thing together. And then I watched you cut her out of the thing she loved more than anything.”
“Don’t.”
“Someone has to.”
“I was trying to keep her safe.”
“No. You were trying to keep you safe from having to feel anything that scared you.”
I want to argue. Tell him he’s wrong. Nothing comes out.
“Fix it, Brooks. Or lose her forever.”
The door closes behind him. I sit inside the office until the light completely leaves the sky.
The house is so quiet when I finally step inside it that I’d almost believe I stepped inside the wrong house if it weren’t for all the evidence around me of the life we built here.
Sam’s mug is still by the sink, unwashed.
I absentmindedly open the drawer beneath the Keurig to see if all her flavored coffee pods are still there.
There’s a note on the counter in her handwriting reminding me that a service person is coming to check on the weird clicking sound the new fridge is making.
It’s a stupidly banal thing to focus on, but I trace the handwriting anyway.
In the bedroom, her closet door remains open, the light still on from when she pulled stuff out to take with her. I wonder how long I can keep living inside a museum of everything I broke.
She has to come back. That’s all I can think. When she figures out that I didn’t mean any of the things I said, the things I did, the way they came out…
You’re an idiot, Brooks Carlisle.
When sleep refuses to come, I make my way downstairs to the office.
Only to discover that it’s worse.
Sam’s books crowd the shelves, evidence of all the things she’s loved and studied over the years.
A framed photo of us in the truck cab sits on the desk.
I remember taking it, holding the phone out so I could get both of us in the shot.
She looks happy there, smile wide, leaning onto my shoulder. I look happy, too.
I was because she was with me.
I open the desk drawer, looking for a charger, when I see it: a blue folder with Sam’s handwriting on the tab.
Field Return
For a moment, I just stare at it, as if it can reach up and bite me.
Then I take it out and open it.
The first page is printed research on updated harness systems for chase vehicles. The second is a list of safety protocols.
There’s a note on one of the pages:
Medical clearance? Full physical, maybe a trauma specialist, too? Don’t make him feel blindsided.
There’s more. Equipment diagrams, more checklists, and then a list titled in her careful black letters. Ways to Talk About This Without Fighting.
I’m pretty sure I forget how to breathe.
I stop after the first list item.
Start with: I know you’re scared, too.
How long has she been building this? I’ve been so concerned with Tony and how often she was talking to him that I didn’t even realize that she was sitting here trying to build a road map back to me.
A Post-it note slips out of the back of the folder.
Maybe if he understands I can be safe, he’ll want me beside him again.
A noise comes out of me that I don’t recognize as my own voice.
A dozen memories crowd together in my mind. Her watching me leave from the command desk. Her standing in the mudroom with a suitcase, saying, “I can’t keep waiting for you to decide that I’m worth fighting for.”
Then I see her back at the Funnel Cloud, younger, telling me I was no Bill Paxton from Twister, but she might forgive me for that if I bought her a beer.
I look down at all the lists, all the arguments she's written out.
All the ways she's been trying to get back to me.
She’s been reaching for me this whole time.