Chapter 41 #2
The alley spit me out into a small park surrounded by a black iron fence with thickets of bald cypress and a great, hulking live oak at its center.
It looked like it’d been there for centuries, posed and waiting as the city rose up around it.
Dark shapes huddled in the shadows of the park, but I found an open space at the base of the tree.
I sat down in the swampy heat, feeling the sweat trickle from beneath my wig, and I flung it off into the dirt. I wouldn’t be needing that anymore.
A figure a few feet away pulled back their hood and studied me. Their eyes were wild and familiar, and I peered through the dim light to get a better look.
“What you starin’ at?” the figure asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I answered. At least I no longer had to pretend.
“You don’t look like you belong here, angel. Maybe you should move along.”
I hadn’t felt this comfortable in months. I was exactly where I should be. “You’d be surprised.”
“Suit yourself,” the figure scoffed, and it turned into a husky cough. “You got a family, angel?”
“I used to.”
“What happened to ’em?”
I imagined Micah right then, standing in the kitchen. Looking out the window and wondering where I was. The pain he must be in.
I shook my head, attempting to clear the image.
“I used to have a family, too,” the figure said in response to my silence.
“What happened to yours?”
“I left ’em. It was better that way. I would have hurt ’em if I’d stayed.”
“I know what you mean.”
The figure threw off their first layer to reveal a woman draped in a surprisingly clean shawl with tarnished bangles on her wrists. Her hair was a silver cloud that in another context might have looked chic and bohemian. “Would you like me to tell your fortune?”
I laughed at this notion, and then quieted, afraid the woman would think I was laughing at her. “How much?”
The woman smiled and said, “For you, angel? No charge.”
I nodded, and the woman closed her eyes and held her hands up. She sat frozen like that for a few minutes, and I started to regret this decision. These were precious moments I was sacrificing for meaningless whimsy. Then, the woman spoke.
“I see you in the mountains. There is a man with bright eyes, and a few women, but I can’t make them out.”
She paused for a moment, squinting into the future. “Ah, yes, and a child. A beautiful baby girl with the man’s sparkling eyes, and your tall, strong frame.”
Tears collected in my eyes, and I whispered for the woman to please stop.
But she kept rambling on about this cheap fantasy of a life, and I shouted for her to shut up. The woman quieted abruptly, stunned by my rudeness. She cursed and spat on the ground near my leg, then gathered up her various bags and waddled toward another part of the park.
I looked at my phone. Only one hour left.
Where did the time go? Did the woman bewitch me?
I opened my backpack and took out the sleeping pills I’d been prescribed by a psychiatrist my therapist had referred me to.
Then I took out a glass bottle of Coca-Cola I’d bought at a gas station.
I used the burner to pop off the cap like Micah had taught me on the trail fifteen years ago, and I remembered us drinking them when we stopped in a little town in Virginia.
I took a sip, and it didn’t taste like the memory. It tasted like pennies and white sugar, and I thought, Good, let it be ruined.
A twig cracked nearby, and I jerked my head toward it. The silhouette of a man in a white suit, shining as if it had its own light source, appeared at the edge of the park, and stood, unmoving.
Watching.
Waiting.
My birthmark burned across my chest, and I imagined how I might escape.
I could climb the fence behind me and run in the opposite direction.
I saw myself getting lost in the throngs of revelers along Bourbon Street, finding a hotel, curling up in a bed.
The man would appear once again in the corner of the room, or out on the balcony, or in the bathroom as I took a shower.
As soon as I was alone again, he would find me. It didn’t matter where I went. I could not stop what was coming.
My only hope was to escape my own body—this fearful, shrinking, claustrophobic shell I’d been carting around for months.
All you have to do is swallow the pills and lie back. Do it. Do it now.
Another silhouette appeared a few feet away, but this one was different—both soft and statuesque in the moonlight. She glowed like a goddess in the murk.
“Oh, thank God,” Hess wheezed. “I’ve been looking for you for hours.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hiding the bottle of sleeping pills beneath my thigh.
“It’s okay. I was just worried.” Hess leaned against the tree and tried to catch her breath. “Are you all right? What happened?”
I eyed the man waiting at the edge of the park. I checked my phone. Forty-five minutes left.
I would tell her whatever was necessary to get her to leave.
“Yes, sorry. I needed to get some air after seeing that tape. But then I got lost and ended up here.”
“Okay…”
“I can meet you back at the rental.”
“But how will you find it?”
“I’ll ask for directions.”
“I’ll just sit here with you. I’m in no rush.”
“I told you—I need to be alone right now.”
Hess didn’t respond and instead sat down next to me. Before I could protest, she said, “I want to tell you about the day before your mother died. The last time I ever saw her.”
“You already told me—”
“But not all the details. Please, humor me.”
I checked my phone again.
Forty-four minutes.
Enough time for a story. Perhaps after she finished, I could get her to leave. I nodded.
Hess continued, “I remember it was a week after she disappeared. We hadn’t left the cabin yet, because I wanted to be there in case she came back.
I probably should have taken you somewhere else, but I wasn’t thinking.
I was so terrified something had happened to Lou; it was the only explanation that made sense.
I knew she’d been struggling, but the woman I knew wasn’t capable of abandoning you like that.
“Then, that morning, there was a knock at the door, and there she was, standing on the porch. She looked rough, like she hadn’t slept or eaten, much less bathed, in days. I took a step forward, and she took a step back. I’d never seen her flinch from me like that.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, Lou! Are you okay? What happened?’
“She didn’t respond; she seemed out of it, and her eyes kept roving around. I tried to get her to come into the house, but she insisted on staying out on the porch.
“I told her, ‘Lou, just tell me if you’re okay. We can take you to the hospital if you’re hurt. Then you can tell me what happened.’
“She said, ‘No. No hospitals. I’m fine. I just needed to… clear my head.’
“I had been so convinced that something extraordinary had happened, that I couldn’t fathom what she was saying.
“I asked her, ‘What are you talking about? Where did you go?’
“And all she said was, ‘Nowhere special.’
“I still couldn’t grasp what was happening. I said, ‘What do you mean? Why did you leave Rhea locked in a trunk?’
“Lou’s face drained, and she asked, ‘Is she okay?’
“I said, ‘She’s fine now. Hopefully she won’t remember it. But she was so sick and scared when I found her. Do you know how dangerous that was? She could have died.’
“She glanced behind me at you napping on the couch, and I swear, this shadow passed over her features. She said, ‘It’s hard to explain.’
“Now I was furious. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, Lou, what is going on?’ I didn’t know how to talk to this person in front of me. It was like someone else had taken over her body.
“She said, ‘No matter what I say, you’re not going to believe me. So maybe it’s best if I say nothing at all.’
“I looked at her, searching for my Lou. She was so dirty and thin. She reminded me of the addicts that hung out in downtown Nashville. I thought, Oh God, she relapsed. I asked if she was on drugs, and I told her I would get her help. But then she almost smiled, and she said, ‘I’m not on drugs. I wish I was on drugs. I wish it was that easy.’
“I thought back to when she broke up with me ten years earlier, and I wondered if maybe it was happening again. She’d decided she needed her freedom, and now she was leaving us.
“When she refused to give any explanation, I told her, ‘Then we’re not coming to California with you,’ just to test her. We were about to go out there to prep for her first movie, and we’d already rented a house for the summer.
“She didn’t even fight me. She said, ‘I think that’s for the best.’ She looked upset, but not in a way that I’d ever seen her. I thought she must be feeling guilty, like she had the last time she left me, and I just couldn’t believe it was happening again, after everything.
“She said it was time for her to go, and she went over to the couch, and she hovered there for a second, watching you. Finally, she sat down and laid a hand on your back. You didn’t wake up.
She closed her eyes and stroked your ear and the little wisps of hair that curled around it.
She started to hum ‘Lullaby for a Demon Child,’ which I’d never seen her do before.
We sang to you all the time, but never that song.
“Then she stood up, and for a moment it was like I could see her again. There was my Lou. She took both of my hands and squeezed them hard. She said, ‘I won’t tell you to take care of her, because I know you will.’ She smiled, and her eyes went glassy.
‘Thank you for saving me, and for this beautiful life, my love. I couldn’t have had it without you. ’
“I thought, She’s really leaving us, isn’t she? Shocked, I said, ‘How dare you do this to us. After everything we’ve been through, you’re just going to walk away? You promised you would never leave me again.’
“She looked upset again and released my hands, then headed to her car. I kept shouting at her, but she didn’t turn around. I told her she was selfish, and a bad mother. I said I would never forgive her for this, no matter what she did.
“Then I watched her drive away, and she was gone.