53. Noah
Noah
Father John greets me near the altar, hands folded, his smile soft “You doing okay?” he asks.
“Yeah...” I reply dryly.
“If you ever need to talk, we’re here. Always.” He presses a few pamphlets into my hand. Coping with Grief, Finding Light in Loss, Faith Through Pain. They smell like paper and pity.
“Thanks,” I mumble, stuffing them into my back pocket before I can even look at them. I grab the cleaning trolley locked in the janitor's closet. The metal wheels squeak as I push it down the hall and outside.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead as I head into the first set of bathrooms. Cleaning them as I usually do.
I start with the sinks, sleeves pushed up, rag in hand.
The motion’s automatic – spray, wipe, rinse, repeat.
It’s the only kind of rhythm I have left.
I empty the trash bins next, the plastic rustling loud in the empty room, and then I get to the stalls. My hand hesitates on the first door.
It’s the one. Hers. The one she used to draw in, all the sayings, all the jokes, all the stupid pictures, even a character of Jesus peeing on the word sin.
I met her in this stall, cleaned up the constant mess she left me, and I even kissed her in this stall knowing she would be the one who would break me right down the middle.
The hinge creaks as I push it open. My breath stops cold as soon as I step in.
Across the back of the stall door, in bold black Sharpie, are words. I step closer. The world narrows. The air feels thick, almost heavy enough to choke on.
Please forgive me.
He’s going to hurt you if I don’t end it.
I can’t lose you. I’m sorry.
It will never be a lie.
For a long moment, I just... stare. My body forgets how to move.
My lungs forget how to pull air. My pulse is out of wack, it doesn't even know how to beat anymore.
All I hear is blood sloshing in my arteries and silence.
My vision blurs. I blink hard, but the words smear together.
She wrote this. Here. I reached out wanting the ink to still be wet.
I stumble back a step, my shoulder hitting the stall divider. The rag slips from my fingers, hitting the floor with a wet smack. I press the heel of my hand to my chest, like I can hold something inside before it breaks. It doesn’t work.
I pull my phone from my pocket, thumb trembling as I open the camera.
The flash catches the ink, makes it shine.
I take a picture, then another, even though my hand won’t stop shaking.
I can’t leave it there, but I also don’t have the heart to clean it.
I stumble out of the stall grabbing the rag again, spray the cleaner, and start to scrub everything else other than what she wrote.
If I clean it, then her last words will be forever erased, and I can’t be the one that erases them from existence.
I hurry up, and clean much faster than I usually do.
The only thing in my mind is to drive to the police station.
I'm not sure what I would say, or if they would even be willing to look at the picture I took. It may not be worth anything. There’s no way for me to prove it’s her, and they might say it could be anyone, even if I know that deep down inside my soul she wrote this to me.
When I get there, I’m just told to sit down.
A vending machine buzzes in the corner. The blue plastic chairs are cold, biting through my jeans.
I sit, still holding my phone. The photo’s open on the screen.
Her handwriting glows under the harsh light.
I keep running my thumb over it as if it would bring her back and she’s just on the other side of the doors.
Eventually, an officer steps out, middle-aged, tired eyes, notepad in hand. “You said you had information about Charlotte Henderson?”
I nod. My voice cracks when I start talking, “You might think I'm crazy.”
“I’m sure whatever information you have will be useful,” the officer says.
“We were dating.”
“Okay...” He starts writing it down. “And who are you?” He points the back of the pen in my direction.
“Noah Samuel.”
The pen taps on his notepad. “You got identification?”
“Yeah...” I reach into my back pocket pulling out my wallet, flipping it open. I use a thumb to push out the card and hand it over to him. He barely takes a glance at it before handing it back over to me.
“So what d’ya got?” he asks.
“Well, my band was playing at the concert that night. I think... I think her ex-boyfriend, Brody, might’ve hurt her.”
“Mmhmm, okay. Why might you think that?” he asks as he continues to write on his notepad.
“She left me a message at the church.” I tap on my phone, unlocking the screen and showing him the photo. “It was on the stall door. She said she was sorry and he wanted to hurt me.”
“Okay.” The officer writes, nods slowly.
“She was acting weird the past week and she broke up with me that night.”
“What do you mean she was acting weird?”
“Crying a lot, having issues with one of her friends. She was staying with me for a while.”
“I see...We’ll look into that. Brody Thomas is currently in the hospital.”
“My apartment was broken into that night as well, and there's a police report on it. I think the football team at GCU did it. They raided my store before the semester even started. Brody ambushed me there one evening over Charlie.”
The officer scratches his brow and huffs. “Why didn’t you report it?”
“I just didn’t see something like this happening. Just figured he was pissed off. We were seeing each other, and I figured he was trying to scare me.”
“This is tough. We’ll review possible connections with other players, but without footage or a witness, it’s difficult to pursue.” He sighs, checking his notes. “We’ll make a report, but... again, without evidence, there’s not much we can confirm.”
I grip the edge of the chair. “You can’t use the message she left me on the stall door?”
“It’s graffiti. Anyone could have written it and it may not hold up as proof.” His tone softens. “But we appreciate you coming forward. Anything at this point is helpful and I’ll relay all this information for you.”
Appreciate. Like that word fixes anything.
“Thanks.” I shove my phone back in my pocket and stand.
“Have a nice evening.” I dip my hands into my jeans and head outside into the parking lot.
Crickets sing and streetlights flicker. I lean against the hood of my truck, fingers shaking, and bruises still healing on my knuckles from the wall I punched that night.
I take one breath. Then another.
But it doesn’t help. Because no matter how deep I breathe, I can still see those black words on that white wall, burned into my brain like scripture.
How could they just dismiss me like that?
But it looks like Charlie was right about the police – The Thomas family has money, and Brody’s dad is using it to keep the police wrapped around his little finger.
I flip the light on, and my chest caves in.
My truck keys fall to the floor as I stare at the apartment’s wreckage, completely gutted.
Drawers pulled out. Cabinets left open. My grandfather’s records, the old jazz vinyls he played on Sundays, shattered across the floor.
I’ve avoided coming up here, putting this on the back burner in my head and crashing at Omen’s just so I wouldn’t have to face it.
Framed photos lay face down, some cracked, others smeared with dirt and footprints. A box of sheet music he’d handwritten sits overturned, the pages crumpled and bent.
I crouched down, picking up a broken picture frame. It’s one of Gramps smiling with my mom when she was a child. The glass cuts into my thumb, and I drop the picture to the floor, sticking my thumb into my mouth, sucking the bit of blood coming out.
My throat tightens until I can’t breathe.
I’ve never felt so alone. I’m mentally exhausted, I can’t even think about cleaning up the mess.
My feet just crunch underneath it. Walking over a hoard of memories just destroyed.
I head to my bedroom, the second I step inside, I realize my room is untouched.
It doesn’t make any sense. If you were going to rob a place, everything would be destroyed and flipped upside down, but it was untouched.
And I spot the clothes I’d given Charlie.
The ones she’d worn the night she stayed here, folded neatly on the corner of the bed.
I crumble down, pick up one of the shirts, and press it to my face. The smell hits me instantly. Vanilla and smoke, it’s faint, but there and it’s her.
My chest twists. I wish it didn’t smell like her. I wish it smelled like detergent – like clean cotton or like nothing at all – because then maybe I wouldn’t remember the way she laughed into my shoulder, or the way she clung to me like I was the only thing keeping her from drowning.
And now I know what Brody did to her. The truth sits like acid in my stomach. He drugged her. He touched her. He broke her. And I wasn’t there. I should've been there. I should've stopped it. I should've seen what was happening and jumped off that damn stage.
The shirt falls from my hand to the floor. My body blacks out into a pure, hot-white rage. I can’t even control it any longer. I grab my guitar off its stand. It's the one my grandpa helped me buy, the one I played my first real gig with.
“God! Fucking why!” My grip tightens around the neck until my knuckles ache.
Then I swing. The first hit shatters the headstock against the floor.
“Why do you fucking hate me so much!” Slamming it again and again.
The entire time I’m yelling and screaming.
“I’ve done nothing to you!” I leave dents in the wall throwing it against it.
“You always do this! You always fucking take everything from me!” When I slam it around enough, it splits the body clean in two, and I chuck it across the room.
When I finally stop, I’m on my knees, surrounded by broken wood and strings.
My breath comes in short, sharp gasps. My hands are shaking as I cover my eyes with them.
I press my palms into my eyes until all I see is red.
I don’t feel like a man. I’m a fucking coward.
If I’d done what I should’ve that night, if I’d listened to my gut instead of letting my heart win the war, Charlie wouldn’t be missing.
I punch the floor once, hard enough to make my wrist go numb.
“Fuck you! You’ve taken my mom, you won’t even let me have a fucking father! Then you take her! Fuck you!”