Friday, February 25th
Ronan
I’m about to turn off the water and step out of the shower when the bathroom door flies open and Miranda rushes in. She stops in her tracks when she sees me, a wicked grin spreading across her face, her eyes scanning my dripping-wet body.
I yank the towel off the rack and hastily tie it around my waist, though I know it’s too fucking late. “What the fuck?” I growl at her.
“I have to pee,” she says, already unbuttoning her jeans.
“What the hell, Randi? There’s a bathroom downstairs!”
“It’s occupied and I really, really need to go!”
“Jesus, fuck,” I grunt, step onto the little rug in front of the shower, and grab my clothes from the floor to leave the bathroom.
“Don’t be shy, Rony. Nothing I haven’t seen before.” She grins at me. “And it’s still as beautiful as ever.”
“You’re unbelievable,” I say, shaking my head.
“Unbelievably perfect,” she calls after me as I slip out of the bathroom to let her take care of business.
I walk straight to my room, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood floor, close the door behind me, then quickly dry off and pull on a pair of fresh boxer briefs. I’m buttoning my jeans when there’s a knock on the door.
“Can I come in?” Miranda’s voice seeps through a small crack in the doorway. Oh, so she suddenly developed some manners.
I sigh. “Yeah.”
Miranda opens the door wider, then steps into my room. “Sorry about that,” she says with an apologetic look, her eyes rolling over my bare torso.
I press my lips together as I pull a shirt over my head, covering my upper body.
“I really needed to pee badly,” she says with a small smile curving her lips.
“It’s fine,” I grunt, then slip into my hoodie.
“I do respect your privacy, you know.”
I raise my eyebrows at her, cocking my head to the side. “You’ve never respected my privacy.”
“That’s not true,” she says. “I do respect it; always have. I’m just really comfortable with you, Rony.”
I huff. “Maybe a little too comfortable.” I sit down on the edge of my bed to put on a fresh pair of socks.
“Yeah, maybe.” She moves over to my bed and sits down next to me, leaning her head against my shoulder. She smells like wildflowers. “I kind of need a favor,” she says, her voice sticky-sweet.
I shift away from her, causing her to raise her head and look at me. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you have time to look at my truck? It makes a grinding sound when it’s in drive.”
“I have to head into town for a couple of errands, but I can look at it for you when I get back.”
“Bummer. I was kind of hoping to check in on my dad today,” she says, then makes a face like she just had an epiphany. “Or do you mind if I ride with you? You can drop me off at my dad’s, do whatever you need to do, and then just come get me afterwards?”
I shrug. “Works for me.”
“Thank you, Rony!” she says with a bright smile and stands up. “Give me like ten minutes and I’ll meet you by your truck, okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she rushes out of my room.
“Heading out?” my grandmother asks me after I make my way downstairs and into the mudroom where I step into my boots and pull on my jacket.
“Yeah. Randi’s coming with me. She wants to check in on her dad.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, stopping in the doorway to the mudroom. “Would you please stop by the grocery store while you’re in town?” She holds out a small piece of paper.
“Sure.” I step close to her and give her a kiss on her cheek. “Love you,” I say as I pull open the door.
“I love you, baby boy,” she says with the warmest smile on her face.
As promised, Miranda meets me by my truck a few minutes later. She’s bundled up, wearing a heavy coat, her hands gloved. A black beanie covers her head, and a thick scarf’s tied around her neck, yet she still looks like she’s freezing as she shoves her hands into her jeans pockets, shrugging her shoulders up. I watch as she walks around the front of the truck, heaves the passenger door open, then climbs into the cabin.
“Jesus, this truck is not made for little people,” she huffs breathlessly, buckling herself into her seat, and I laugh. She’s so damn tiny, but she definitely makes up for her stature with her larger-than-life personality.
“How’s your knee today?” Miranda asks while we drive along the snow-flanked highway.
“Stiff.” For some reason the cold really affects me, and it only gets worse the more temperatures drop.
“Hmm… I don’t mind stiff things.”
I glance at her, shaking my head while she eyes me with a naughty grin. “You have the dirtiest mind.”
“And you don’t?” she asks, her eyebrows raised.
I chuckle. “I do, but I’ve learned to keep those thoughts to myself for the most part.”
She shrugs. “I don’t believe in that. You have to learn to let things out, Rony. It’s not healthy to keep everything bottled up.”
“Are we still talking about dirty thoughts, or did we once again arrive at the shit my mom did to me?” Miranda has a real fucking knack for trying to force me to talk about the abuse I endured.
“I don’t know,” she says innocently. “What do you think?”
“I think we should change the subject,” I grunt.
“How’s therapy going?” she asks instead.
I knit my eyebrows together, frowning at her. “You’re fucking relentless, you know that?”
“Yep,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Is this news to you?”
“No, but I wish you would back off a little, Randi. This shit is really fucking hard to work through,” I say, my voice taking on a pleading tone. “Just today, okay? Just leave me be.”
I can feel her eyes on me, probably analyzing whether she can push me a little more. I’m really not in the mood today. I mean, I’m never in the mood to talk about this stuff, but I feel particularly on edge today.
Yesterday’s therapy session was exhausting. Doctor Seivert’s attempts to dig into my past, to urge me to reveal the horrors I faced growing up, always make me extra susceptible to nightmares, which usually ramp up Tuesday through Friday, then subside a bit over the weekend, only to disrupt my sleep again the following Tuesday.
Doctor Seivert really pushed me yesterday, refusing to let me get away with vague surface-level responses. She dug and prodded, forcing me to say some truly unnerving shit until I just couldn’t do it anymore and we had to stop our session half an hour early. Not surprisingly, I didn’t sleep great last night, my mother’s shadow encroaching upon my dreams until my grandfather finally woke me from a particularly realistic night terror that left my chest heaving and clammy. He hasn’t had to wake me in quite a while; I really thought I was past the part of my recovery where I’d get stuck in my nightmares. I was obviously wrong.
“Okay,” Miranda finally says and pulls off her gloves and hat, the truck’s cabin having warmed up significantly.
“Do you want me to drop you off first or do you want to run the errands with me?” I ask her, eager for a conversation that doesn’t revolve around anything sexual or my mother.
“Umm, where do you have to go?” she asks, now shimmying out of her thick jacket.
“Pick up a set of tires, then the tack store for some grain, and the grocery store for whatever is on that list.” I point at the piece of paper sitting in the cupholder between Miranda and me.
“How long do you think it’ll take you?”
“I don’t know, an hour?”
“Okay, just drop me off first, I guess,” she says, hesitant.
“Are you sure? We can run the errands together and then I can drop you off and just hang out in the truck if you want? That way if shit hits the fan, you can just leave without having to wait for me.”
She studies me. “You sure you won’t mind waiting?”
“I mean, you’re not planning on hanging out for hours, right?”
“Not really. I just want to make sure he’s still alive and functioning rather than just drinking himself into a stupor.”
“It’s fine, Randi. I’d rather be on standby than you needing me and not able to reach me,” I say with a frown at the fact that I still don’t have access to a fucking phone.
“You’re seriously all the green flags, Rony,” she says, her face full of warmth. I have no idea what that means.
We drive to the auto shop first and Miranda waits in the warm truck while I hoist the heavy tires onto the bed. Luckily I don’t have to do any heavy lifting at the tack store; John happily loads the bags of grain onto my truck with his forklift. I’m getting a lot better physically, recovering way more quickly than I had anticipated given the extent and severity of my injuries, but I’m still nowhere near as strong as I was just months ago. I’m getting there, but the frustrating thing with muscle and strength is that it takes a lot longer to gain it than it does to lose it.
“Let me see your list,” Miranda says as we walk into the small grocery store together, and I hand her the small piece of paper with my grandmother’s handwriting on it. “Okay,” she says, perusing the list of items. “Want to split up? I can get the fruits and veggies if you want to load the drinks?”
This strategy works well. Miranda and I are out of the store and back on the road to Miranda’s dad’s house not fifteen minutes later.
It’s a quick drive from the store to the house, and I pull into the driveway of the small, meticulously kept two-bedroom home just a few minutes later. It has a small front porch with a porch swing and light-blue shutters. I’ve only been to Miranda’s house a couple of times because—much like me with Cat—she never wanted to bring me home with her to risk running into her father, and we would usually spend our time either on the ranch or out in the country somewhere doing god knows what.
“Want me to come in with you?” I ask when I put the truck into park.
Miranda pushes open her door. “No, I’ll be fine,” she says, and I nod. “You’ll wait though, right?” she double-checks, already on her way out of the truck.
“Yep,” I say. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready to head back to the ranch.”
She smiles at me, then hops out of the truck, shoves the door closed behind her, and walks through the front door, which matches the light-blue shutters. It’s interesting when you think about it. Houses provide a shell—a front. From the outside, Miranda’s home doesn’t give away anything about what she’s endured inside its belly, just like my home in New York—with its dark-green front door, its red-brick walls, its clean exterior—never would have provided anyone on the outside an idea of how much pain and violence that house hid deep within it. If houses were a reflection of how functional or dysfunctional the people living in it are, the houses Miranda and I grew up in would be nothing but shattered, burned-down ruins. But I guess the same could be said for people, because I’d like to say that—aside from when I was in the hospital, looking utterly broken and bruised—neither Miranda’s nor my appearance would give away the darkness locked away inside us.
I watch Miranda enter the house before leaning my head back against the headrest and closing my eyes. I’m tired. The extraordinary physical exertion that comes with the work on the ranch, combined with the fact that I’m still somewhat handicapped, doesn’t really help my stamina.
But I have no chance to relax even a little bit. Miranda couldn’t have been inside her house for more than maybe two minutes before she comes storming back out the front door, her face pale, blue eyes wide as she runs to the truck.
I’m already swinging my door open. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s not breathing!” she shouts, her voice pitchy, sheer panic on her face. “He’s on the couch and he’s not breathing!”
It takes only a heartbeat before my body goes straight into autopilot and I run into the house after Miranda. Sure enough, her dad is lying on the couch, face-up, his right arm dangling off the side of the sofa, an empty bottle of liquor on the floor next to him.
“Randi, call an ambulance,” I order as I approach her dad. He couldn’t have been in that state for long because he’s only beginning to turn blue in the face. I immediately understand the issue. He must have passed out from the alcohol and thrown up in his sleep, because there’s vomit all over him and the couch.
I take a deep breath, shut off my brain, and go through the motions, forcing myself to not think about exactly what it is I’m doing as I kneel beside the couch.
I turn him onto his side, then shove two fingers into his mouth to clear his throat of the vomit blocking his airways. God damn it, I fucking hate vomit. I have to work hard to suppress my gag reflex.
I scoop as much of the cottage-cheese-like substance out of his mouth as I’m able while Miranda is on the phone with 911, then move my fingers to his neck to find a pulse. There isn’t one. Fuck.
“Randi, do you know how to do CPR?” She shakes her head, frantic as she holds her phone to her ear. “Fuck, me neither,” I say through gritted teeth. “Okay, put your phone on speaker and tell them to talk us through it.”
I follow the operator’s instructions precisely, pulling Miranda’s dad off the couch, trying to be as gentle with him as possible, but he’s nothing but dead weight. He falls to the ground with a loud thud. Once he’s on the floor, I position myself above him and begin chest compressions, interrupted by the occasional breath I provide him with mouth-to-mouth. I force myself to stay completely disconnected, to dissociate from the moment because I can feel myself getting triggered.
This all feels so damn familiar. Moments flash before my eyes when it was me lying on the floor at home, Steve next to me while I was struggling to breathe, fighting to stay alive.
Weird how time seems to slow down in high-stress situations, how you focus in on just one task while everything around you gets drowned out, how your senses are acutely tuned in on whatever needs to be done right here, right now. I don’t know how long I pump Father Jackson’s heart, how often I lean down to share my oxygen with him before I finally detect a heartbeat.
“He’s breathing,” I say, my voice shaky, and I move my hands away from his chest just as Miranda drops onto her knees next to me, her face contorted with pain. I reposition myself and pull Miranda into my arms while the 911 operator tells us to stay with Father Jackson until the ambulance arrives, which it does a few minutes later.
“I’m going to go with him,” Miranda tells me when her dad is rolled out of the house on a stretcher.
I nod. “Call the ranch when you want me to come get you.”
Miranda hugs me briefly, but tightly, before walking out of the house and climbing into the ambulance behind the paramedic.
I stand in the silence for a minute, just now realizing how tense my body is, how damn exhausted I suddenly feel after that ungodly adrenaline spike. But I don’t permit myself to begin thinking about what just happened and instead walk into the small kitchen, grab some cleaning supplies, and go about scrubbing the couch and carpet. I take out the trash that has been piling up in the house and throw open the windows, letting the place air out despite the sub-freezing temperatures outside. The house reeks of stale vomit, sweat, and alcohol. Once again it dawns on me how the inside of the home doesn’t match the immaculate outside, and I honestly wonder how Miranda’s dad functions when she’s not around.
It takes me a good hour to do even the bare minimum, focusing on what needs to be done rather than the tightness in my chest, the anxiety rearing its ugly little misshapen head. It’s what I’ve always done—keep busy enough to prevent my thoughts from spiraling. Silence is dangerous; thinking is deadly.
The entire hour-long drive back to the ranch I have a desperate need to call Cat. I’m contemplating flat-out breaking the rule of not calling her until Sunday and dialing her number the minute I get within reach of the phone, but I don’t get that far.
“Ronan!” My grandmother’s voice is tight and slightly panicky as she calls me from the kitchen the nanosecond I open the front door.
“Yeah?” I call back as I shrug off my jacket. I look up when both my grandmother and aunt step out of the kitchen and toward me.
“Baby boy,” my grandmother says and pulls me into her arms while Erin looks on.
I raise my eyebrows. They can’t possibly already know what happened.
Erin confirms my suspicions. “We heard you and Randi found Father Jackson.”
I step out of my grandmother’s almost suffocating hold on me. “How the hell do you already know?” Man, this is some small-town shit right here.
“My friend Andrea works at the hospital, and she called me,” Erin says. “She said Father Jackson was brought in. She said you and Randi found him and that you performed CPR.”
“Isn’t this kind of stuff confidential?” I ask, a little taken aback that Father Jackson’s plight—and therefore Miranda’s—is apparently already the talk of the town and beyond.
“It’s a small town, Ran,” my grandmother says, looking me over, her concern for my emotional state obvious. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Morai, it’s not really my place to talk about this stuff. It’s not really anybody’s place.”
“What do you mean?” Erin asks.
“I mean that it’s a private family matter for Randi and her dad, and I’m not about to go and talk about this shit. If Randi wants to tell you, she can, but I’m not going to. You know what you need to know—Randi and I found her dad, he wasn’t responsive, we did what we had to, and now he’s at the hospital getting whatever care he needs.”
“But, Ran, this is—” Erin starts.
“Alright, Erin,” my grandmother tells her daughter, her eyes resting on me. “Are you okay, baby boy?” she asks me softly.
“Fine,” I say, but swallow hard. I’m not fine. I’m triggered as fuck, doing my damnedest not to get sucked into the vortex of anxiety.
My grandmother presses her lips together, exhaling noisily through her nose. “Is Randi at the hospital with her dad?”
I nod. “Yeah. I told her to call the ranch when she wants me to come get her. Morai, I’m going to take a look at Randi’s truck. Will you let me know if and when she calls?”
“Absolutely,” she says with a nod.
***
I don’t get back into the house until well after dark, having worked on Miranda’s truck for hours. My grandmother is on the phone when I walk in.
“Is that Randi on the phone?” I ask my grandfather. He’s sitting in the living room with Martin, a stack of papers in front of them.
“Your dad,” my grandfather says warmly.
“Oh.”
“She’s in there telling him all about the day you had,” Martin says, a caring look in his eyes.
“Yeah, I figured,” I sigh. “How long has she been talking to him? I don’t want to miss Randi’s call.”
“About fifteen minutes,” my grandfather says, his reading glasses low on his nose as he studies me over the rim. “Ran, why don’t you sit down and eat your dinner. Morai has been keeping it warm in the oven.”
I nod and walk into the kitchen, feeling my grandmother’s eyes on me as I move about and as she chats with my dad.
“Hey Dad!” I call loudly.
“Your dad says hi,” my grandmother says with a warm laugh. “He looks okay, Frankie,” she tells my dad over the phone as I open the oven and pull out a plate covered with aluminum foil. “Yes, I’ll let him know,” she says while I uncover the food, happily discovering that my grandmother made turkey meatballs, which has always been one of my favorite meals. That and Irish stew.
“Okay, Frankie, I will. I love you. Bye,” she says and ends the call with my dad.
“Did you freak him out?” I ask, shoving an entire meatball into my mouth as I stand. I lean back against the kitchen counter, the plate in my right hand.
“I just let him know what happened today. It’s my duty to keep your dad informed,” she says, then pats my cheek.
“Uh-huh,” I mumble, chewing.
“He’s just worried about you, baby boy. We all are. Are you doing okay?”
“Today sucked, Morai,” I tell her honestly.
She narrows her eyes at me, then nods. “Yes, I believe that,” she says. “Go, sit down and eat your dinner.”
I take my plate into the dining room where I sit and begin scarfing down my lukewarm food.
“Your dad wanted me to tell you to bring up what happened today with your therapist during your session next week,” my grandmother says from the kitchen.
“Roger that. I’ll pour my heart out to her,” I say, positively devouring those damn meatballs.
My grandmother pokes her head into the dining room. “I can’t tell if you’re telling the truth, baby boy.”
“I always tell the truth, Morai,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Which is, of course, a complete lie.” She laughs, then picks up the phone as it starts to ring. “Soult Ranch,” my grandmother answers. “Hi Randi.”
I put down my fork and get up from the table to walk into the kitchen. “How is your dad?” she asks Miranda, then falls silent. “I’m glad to hear that,” my grandmother says after a minute, then looks at me. “Are you ready for Ronan to come get you, then? Okay, he’ll be on his way shortly.” My grandmother nods at me, relaying Miranda’s response.
***
I collect Miranda from the small hospital in town roughly an hour later, meeting her at the reception desk. She looks worn out and tired, her light-brown hair pulled up into a messy bun. She hugs me tightly before I take her hand and lead her out to my truck, letting her climb into the passenger seat before I shut the door behind her.
“How’s your dad?” I ask when I pull out of the parking lot and onto the empty road.
“He’ll be okay,” she says. “Until the next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, until he won’t be.”
I reach across the center console and take her hand into mine. “I’m sorry, Randi.”
“I want so badly to save him,” she says with a whimper. “It feels like… like I couldn’t save my mom, so…”
I nod. I know the feeling all too well—that desire to save the people you care about and how upsetting it is when you can’t keep them safe. I wonder if this is a result of the abuse Randi and I have suffered—this need to protect others when we’re so completely unable to protect ourselves.
“The doctor advised my dad to consider going to rehab.” She chuckles ruefully. “As if I haven’t been telling my dad this for years.”
“What did your dad say?”
“Nothing. He’s going to drink himself to death, Rony.” Her voice cracks. “And I don’t think there’s anything I can do to stop him.”
I don’t know how to respond other than to keep holding her hand, to squeeze it. I could tell her she’s wrong, that everything will be fine, that her dad is going to get his act together, but the likelihood that he will is slim to none, and both Miranda and I know that. I’m not about to lie to her about the realities of these things.
“He can go home tomorrow,” Miranda says. “Do you think you’ll be able to take a look at my truck so I can pick him up and take him home?”
“Oh, yeah, actually, I already did. The front differential needs to be replaced, but I did what I could for now,” I say. “You can take your truck tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Rony.”
I drop Miranda off directly in front of the small, one-bedroom cabin she’s currently occupying on the ranch, then return to the main house.
My grandparents are still up, sitting on the comfortable leather sofas in the large open living room. It’s obvious they’ve been waiting for my return.
“Hi baby boy,” my grandmother says quietly when I walk into the living room.
“Hey,” I say, feeling decidedly drained.
“How is Miranda’s father?” my grandpa asks.
“He’ll be okay. I guess he’ll be able to go home tomorrow.”
“That’s good news.”
“I’ll make some calls tomorrow and make sure Father Jackson has someone bringing him some food for the next few days,” my grandmother says. “How’s Randi?”
“Worried. Tired,” I say, but don’t elaborate. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed.”
I make my way to the stairs and up to the bathroom where I take a quick, hot shower, then crawl into bed and pass out almost immediately.
I wake up an hour or two later when I hear my door open, then close, followed by quiet footsteps on the hardwood floor. Not seconds later, Miranda slides into bed behind me. She cuddles up against my back, her arms tucked between us, and we fall asleep without speaking.