Chapter 57
chapter fifty-seven
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: quarry
I waited as long as possible to pack for the trip back to Michigan.
Ridiculous as it was, I held a sliver of hope that my attorney would call, saying Maddie dropped the petition or the court refused to hear the case on the grounds of total absurdity.
Or that for once in my whole fucking life, the universe would give me a pass and let me skip the most complicated, convoluted path. But that didn't happen.
It wasn't until reading Percy a bedtime story the night before our eight a.m. flight that I finally took stock of the home he'd made for himself in Audrey's spare bedroom and realized it was time to take it all apart.
Once he was asleep, I gathered an armful of stuffed friends—the ones he wouldn't miss if another nightmare woke him up—and tucked them into the suitcase alongside his boxer shorts and t-shirts.
It felt final in a way I didn't want to look in the eye, as if we weren't just leaving but dismantling everything we'd found here.
I knew this wasn't the end. I knew there'd be another step, another chapter for us—for me and Percy and Audrey—but only if it didn't undo the fragile peace we'd brokered here. Whatever came next, it had to be better than the mess behind us. Anything was better than nothing, right?
But there were limits to that anything. I lived in Virginia.
This custody situation could land me in Michigan.
And Audrey—and the world she'd created for herself—were in neither of those places.
I couldn't ask her to leave any of this and I didn't want her to give up this place and these people for me.
She'd already given up enough for me.
I found her in the living room with her own armful of Percy's toys and books. "Quite the blast zone this kid leaves behind him," I said.
"It's not that bad." She pulled a book from between the sofa cushions. "He's comfortable here. I like that," she added softly.
I went to her, plucking the toys from her hold. "I like it too."
She stepped away, her lips rolled tight together as she nodded to herself. She reached into Bagel's crate and pulled out another book. "He'll want this in his backpack," she said, waving a graphic novel. "I noticed he rereads it a lot."
I took the book and pressed a kiss to her temple. She leaned into me and I hated that we had to leave, that we couldn't hide from the real world long enough to knit ourselves together tight enough that we could stand up to every cannonball that came our way.
"Thank you," I said to her skin. "And thank you for putting up with us. I know you didn't ask for this and—"
Her hand landed on my chest. "Don't thank me," she said. "Just—come back. To me. When you can. That's all I need."
I dropped another kiss on her forehead, held her as close as the stuffed animals would allow. "You won't be able to keep me away."
I returned to the spare room to pack while Audrey resumed the hunt for Percy's stray goods.
She peeked in when I was almost finished, holding his discharge papers from the hospital and antibiotic ointment.
"Could you put that in my backpack?" I whispered, pointing to the forms. "And the antibiotic with my toiletries? "
With a brief nod, she crossed the hall into the room I thought of as ours.
It wouldn't be ours tomorrow; it would be hers once again.
I didn't care to think about her alone in that bed, in this house.
Didn't wish to think about her life without us.
Didn't want to start another argument with myself about asking her to come to Michigan for the hearing.
She had to get her classroom ready for students and had school meetings coming up later in the week, and the last place she wanted to be was Arenac County Family Court.
Once I had Percy's things packed away and his clothes out for the morning, I left his door slightly ajar and stepped into our room. Experience had taught me how to pack for myself in five minutes flat but that didn't make—
"What's this?"
Audrey stood on the other side of the room, my clothes folded in neat piles on the bed and my bags open around her. She pinched a small silver ring between two fingers and stared at me like she'd discovered proof that I was a serial killer.
A startled laugh rumbled out of me because if that ring proved anything, it was that she was the real killer.
"I need you to start talking immediately," she said. "Where did you get this? And when?"
I closed the door behind us and leaned back against it, my arms crossed and a breath trapped in my chest just like the day that ring arrived. The day I knew she was gone and not coming back for me. "I've had it since you mailed it back to me, Saunders. Right after you left for California."
"I never— No. I never would've done that."
"It came with a note saying you'd decided it was time for us to go off into the world on our own and hoping I could understand."
She pressed a hand to her forehead, letting her eyes shut for a second. "I didn't write that note."
If I could've done one thing differently back then, it would've been questioning the validity of that note.
I should've picked up on the stiff wording, the mangled sign-off of Wishing you all the best and lots of love, Your friend Audrey.
The fact that it'd been typed and not handwritten.
But being eighteen didn't come with that kind of perspective.
"I thought I lost it." She ran a finger around the silver band.
"The only reason I went home at the end of the semester was to turn my bedroom upside down for it.
I spent years looking for it. I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking I knew where it was and tear my dorm room apart.
" She peered at the thin band, at the single lilac bloom preserved in clear resin.
Not the lilac stone she'd requested but the placeholder—the promise—I'd given to her on her seventeenth birthday.
"I thought it was gone but you had it. And you kept it right here with you, all this time. "
That part, I couldn't explain. Because there was no clean way to say It was the only real proof I had that you'd ripped my heart out, claimed it as your own, and then mailed the dead, pointless muscle back to me.
To say I could hate you when I stared at that ring and that felt better than missing you.
To say The sight of that ring was torture but nothing hurt worse than being separated from it.
No way to say You broke me and I never recovered.
Because I couldn't lay that blame at her feet.
It hadn't been her choice or her fault, and I'd been too young, too na?ve, too drunk off my resentment of the wealthy world she came from to see what was happening.
To understand that the girl I'd adored so thoroughly, so completely hadn't woken up one morning and decided she didn't want me anymore.
That our plans weren't good enough for her, our promises weren't good enough. That I wasn't good enough.
And I'd let that crystallize into facts as I believed them.
She swept a tear from her lashes and I felt that pain square in my chest. I pushed off the door but she held up a hand, shaking her head as she said, "No. I need you to stay over there for a minute."
I didn't like it but I didn't argue.
She went on staring at the ring, the dainty silver polished to a shine because yes, I did clean it regularly and no, I had yet to grow tired of hurting my own feelings.
"Why did you try to stop my wedding?"
Her words were quiet, almost as if she didn't intend for me to hear them. But they were also a wall, solid and tangible enough for me to flatten my hand against.
"I know I was terrible to you that day," she continued, "but I was scared that my father was going to see you. I knew he'd do something heinous and I couldn't let that happen. Not after everything I'd done to protect you."
My jaw tightened and I felt it all the way in the back of my neck. "You could've left with me instead. Saved everyone a lot of grief."
"Why were you there?"
I crossed my arms, leaned one shoulder against the door. "Because I had to see it for myself. That it was what you wanted."
"But you knew it wasn't."
"Mmhmm. Yeah. Pretty obvious, considering you looked like you were being marched to the gallows," I said.
"You let me go through with it," she said.
"What was I supposed to do, Audrey? Kidnap you?
Throw you and your fucking ball gown on the back of my bike, and take off?
The restraining order had just expired and you fucking told me to leave.
You hadn't answered a single email in four years and all the letters I sent came back undeliverable, and—"
"Emails?" She glanced up at me then, all agony. "What emails?"
I stared at her for a moment, that teenage vow still pressed between her fingers and our history filling the room, ghosts and shadows curling in around us. "Then you don't remember everything that happened that night in Sedona. With the ecstasy," I added.
Even more color drained from her face. "What are you talking about?"
"After you danced with every bull rider in southern Utah—"
"It wasn't every bull rider."
"One bull rider is enough for me." I held her gaze until the corner of her mouth kicked up.
"You said something about how you left for California and it was over, and you were alone.
And I couldn't understand how you'd say that when I emailed you for months.
A year went by without a single response but that didn't stop me. "
I'd always known her parents had a hand in sending her away but it was the ensuing silence that'd really fucked with my head. To my mind, even if her parents were calling the shots, she wouldn't have turned on me like that. And it hadn't occurred to me that they'd screw with her email.
She brought a hand to her neck. "I never—" Turning a pained gaze to the ceiling, she said, "I didn't get them."