Chapter 5
Five
The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.
—Food for thought
Sage
Three months later
It started out with quick glimpses while I was in town.
Just a small slip of a look here.
A distorted face in a police cruiser there.
A man turning the corner in the grocery store there.
My brain was no longer on survival mode, but it was damaged, nonetheless.
I mean, why else would I be seeing my dead husband everywhere I went?
But I ignored it, thinking my mind was just playing tricks on me.
I went to work, hired a dog walker to come play with Neo once a day while I was at work, and I settled into my new normal.
The more time that passed, the more I realized that I really liked it in Bear Pass, Montana.
Sure, everyone told me not to say ‘I want to move here’ until I experienced my first Montana winter, but I was really loving the area.
The views were great. The weather was everything that Little Rock wasn’t. The people were nice. The hospital wasn’t overwhelming.
Overall, I really enjoyed it here.
If only I could stop seeing my dead husband.
But then I went to work one day on the labor and delivery unit and BAM.
There he was.
I’d been having a really good day.
I’d made a new friend named Eddy—though that was a nickname for Edith. I’d actually held a conversation with a few of the nurses and they’d asked me if I was staying, instead of joking that I wouldn’t make it through a winter.
And I’d gotten some really freakin’ cute photos of Neo on his afternoon hike up a mountain courtesy of the dog walker.
All was well in my world.
Until it wasn’t.
I’d picked up some IV fluids, my intent to deliver them to Eddy’s room before I headed out for the day, when I pushed open her door and came to a sudden and bone-jarring halt.
Gentry.
In the flesh.
Right there for everyone and their brother to see.
I’m not sure what I said or did in that minute and a half I was in Eddy’s room.
I knew that I dropped off the saline like everything was okay.
But inside…
No, inside, I was freaking the fuck out.
Gentry.
Alive.
Well.
Not dead.
Not in prison.
ALIVE.
I hurriedly exited the room, then the floor, then the hospital.
I was almost all the way home when the red and blue lights lit up my back window.
I pulled over on autopilot, not quite adding two and two together at first. I mean, later, I’d look back at that moment in the hospital room and see Gentry dressed in the sheriff’s department uniform.
Then I’d think to myself, yeah, you should’ve kept driving and gone far, far away.
Another state, perhaps.
But I didn’t.
I pulled over on autopilot.
I came to a stop.
Then I stared in the rearview mirror, waiting for the officer to get out.
But the man that I’d been running away from had been the one to step out of that officer’s vehicle, and my already confused head went a little more fuzzy.
There I was, in the end of my workday, at my new job, and wondering if maybe I was seeing things.
But no, I hadn’t seen things.
I’d seen exactly what I thought I’d seen.
The man standing at my door, my husband, was fully alive and breathing.
He was missing some tattoos, had a beard, and was wearing a police uniform of all things.
He’d followed me out of the hospital room I’d seen him in and now we stood staring at each other in the middle of a deserted highway where no amount of harsh setting sun could change what I was seeing.
“What. The. Fuck.”
Gentry’s eyelid twitched.
He was older now.
He had gray at his temples and his beard.
But his once gray eyes were now brown.
And again, he was missing every single one of his tattoos.
What in the world was going on?
“Herb,” he said, and I flinched.
There was no love ever between us.
But the night that I’d been assaulted, he’d held me in his arms while we waited for the police, and I’d shared my name with him.
He’d laughed and had teased me about being ‘Herb’ to him.
The name had stuck, and he was the only one to ever call me that.
Now, here he was, back from the dead, proving that he was exactly who I thought he was.
“How?” I asked.
Honestly, I was surprised that I was able to get words out at all.
He lifted that tattoo-free hand and said, “Can we go somewhere more private?”
I nodded stiffly. “Lead the way.”
He did, all the way to my RV, as if he knew exactly where I’d been living all this time.
He knew where I lived!
Which also meant the motherfucker knew damn well and good where I’d been, so he could’ve shared that he was alive this entire time!
And now that I thought about it, wasn’t it a fucking coincidence that I was in the same place that he was?
Let’s be honest here.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
This was a plot.
I parked, got out, and stiffly turned to face his cruiser.
When he got out, I couldn’t stop myself.
I had to know.
I walked up to him and poked him in the chest.
“What the absolute fuck are you doing alive?”