Chapter 19
I NEED TO TALK TO MY mom.
It takes three tries for my fingers to go steady enough to hit the right contacts.
She picks up in less than two rings, her voice sounding like she just woke up, but I know that’s not true.
She rarely sleeps, and when she does, it’s restless and broken.
More often than not, I find her on the sofa in the middle of the night, staring at the television, trying to quiet her mind enough to drift off.
“Violet?”
I take a breath and try to speak, but it comes out as more of a gasp. “Mom.”
“Violet, honey, are you okay? What’s happening?”
I can hear the fear in her voice.
She knows I don’t call her late at night unless something is wrong.
Very wrong.
“Can I come to Gran’s? I need to see you,” I say. “I should’ve just come straight there, I’m sorry. Everything... everything is ruined. Everything has blown up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to breathe...”
“Oh, my girl. I need you to take a few deep breaths and tell me what happened,” she says, soft, and the warmth of it calms me just a touch. “Do I need to come get you?”
I take a few steadying breaths.
My keys are still in the ignition, headlights spilling color into the storm raging down. “I’m at the gas station near the interstate. I just needed a minute.”
“Do you want to tell me what went down?”
“Travis... Travis has a daughter.”
Her silence tells me she is as shocked as I am.
A moment or two passes. “Oh, honey. I didn’t... I’m sorry.”
I tell her everything, and when I’m done, my shoulders slump and tears roll down my cheeks.
“Come to me, sweetheart. I’ll help you. We’ll get through this, I promise you.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “I will head your way now. I should be there in a few hours.”
“I’ll keep the porch light on,” she says. “But please—drive carefully, baby. There’s a band of storms, it’s bad out. Don’t push it, if you need me to get you, I will.”
“Yeah, I know.” My face is wet, cheek pressed to the steering wheel. I close my eyes so tight it hurts. “I’ll be careful, Mom.”
I want to crawl back through the phone, into those arms from when I was younger and storms made me shake.
But I’m grown, and this is my mess. I hang up before I can change my mind or say something I’ll regret.
I don’t move for a long time. There’s this metallic tang in my mouth, the taste of another secret, one I’ll never be able to swallow.
Eventually the dashboard flashes a fuel warning and that’s enough to pull me upright.
I wipe my face, blow my nose with a napkin from the glove box, and roll myself out into the night.
There is a gas station about five miles ahead.
I’ll clean myself up, get some water and coffee, and try and make it to Gran’s place without having a complete breakdown.
My phone hasn’t stopped ringing, and the second I pull up, I turn it off.
I can’t deal with that right now.
I can’t deal with any of it.
Turning the car off, I get out, my legs jelly.
The air presses into me like a lead weight, sharp in my nostrils, rainwater pooling at my boots, pavement slick beneath me.
The highway is quiet and empty beyond the neon buzz of the station sign; I’m alone, save for that electronic humming.
I grip the pump handle, the numbers flickering, then blur as hot tears flood my cheeks.
I shove the nozzle back into its cradle just as headlights split the darkness.
A black SUV glides to a halt, engine purring.
It is parked right next to my car, not at another pump.
It’s as if I know, even before I turn and stare, that something bad is about to happen.
My entire body stiffens, my skin prickles and the whole world feels like it comes to a stop.
The driver’s window winds down. I see a ring flash under the glare, catch sight of a gaunt face—a very familiar one, at that.
Jeremy, leaning forward, all lean angles and predatory grace.
He’s so thin these days, cheekbones carved in shadow, but his smile is the same evil emptiness that terrifies me.
Our eyes lock.
My hand drifts to the car door, ready to launch in, but I’m not quick enough.
His hand moves, a smooth, fluid motion, and a gun appears, black and cold as the night.
He cocks it; the click reverberates in my skull.
I freeze, senses stripped naked. No prayers, no cries—my breath just vanishes.
I am animal, pure instinct and raging heartbeats.
He fires.
The blast isn’t thunderous, it’s an internal crack, like a bone snapping.
Pain detonates in my chest, distant and searing simultaneously.
My knees give out; I collapse onto the cold, wet pavement, the sting of rain lacing with the fire blooming in my torso.
The SUV skids away, into the darkness as if it never existed.
I don’t know if I’m screaming, but I know my mouth is open.
My ears are ringing.
My hands go to the wound, as if I can do anything to stop the bleeding.
Blood wells beneath my fingers, hot and sticky.
My vision narrows to a tunnel of warmth and light.
Above, the station bulbs buzz like trapped insects.
I don’t feel pain, it’s as if it lasted just a second before it went away.
Now, all I can feel is the cold drops of rain on my skin and the pavement beneath my back, cool and wet.
I hear the distant yell of what sounds like a teenager. In seconds, a young guy, maybe eighteen, is kneeling before me, voice cracking as he screams.
“Miss,” he begs, shaking my shoulders.
I can’t answer him.
Blood is filling my mouth, the taste so metallic I want to vomit.
He shakes me again, causing the blood to spurt out and splatter on his face.
He’s screaming now, and I’m not even sure if I’m doing it along with him.
I close my eyes, blissful peace, as I hear him desperately yelling down the phone, no doubt to 911.
It only feels like seconds have passed when I hear sirens wailing in the distance. Hands press into my shoulders, pressing something against my wound, frantic pleas to stay awake.
I lie there, blood soaking my shirt, heart slurring its rhythm.
I think of Travis, maybe his lie was the only mercy he had.
I think of Dad and Mom, how they guarded me with their broken love.
And a tired warmth spreads through me. I drift on a current of quiet, weightless and free.
They beg me—“Stay with us!”—but my eyelids flutter closed.
This is letting go.
I’m floating, but not in the way I expected.
There’s no white light, no parade of the dead, no Lillian pacing the border of remember and forget.
There’s only me, and blackness, and the strange collapsing of my life into smaller increments—the taste of metal, the shiver of wet hair clinging to my cheek, the searing memory of the trigger pulled.
I want to open my eyes, but the effort is too much, and there’s no reason.
I don’t want to see pity in the face of the kid with blood on his chin.
I don’t want to see the gas station, with its flickering bulb, or the rain drizzling down the windshield of my car.
All that ever mattered is already behind my eyelids, replaying at double speed.
I am just a ghost, hollowed by every cowardly choice and clumsy act of love.
Maybe the universe wasn’t hunting me for what I did, but for who I am—a girl who falls hard and never apologizes for the mess she leaves behind.
Maybe the whole tangled orbit of Travis and me, the way we could never quit each other, was only meant to end like this.
Maybe Mom and Dad did their best, and that best was, in the end, not enough.
I forgave them, but maybe I didn’t do it with enough heart.
I wanted to save Travis, but I forgot to save myself on the way.
Maybe the cold gas station concrete is the only place I ever really belonged, pressed flat by the honest weight of everything I tried to outrun.
Rain needles my cheek, shocking enough to jolt a last, ragged breath out of me.
Inside, my chest feels hollow, as if the bullet carved away not only the tissue and blood but the gravity that kept me here.
I imagine Lillian is somewhere nearby, not as a vengeful phantom but as the truest voice in my head.
“Let go, Violet,” she would say, and this time, I try to listen.
It’s funny, the things you think of just before the end.
Not the college I never went to or the child I never was or even the future I never had.
It’s the softness of Travis’s lips, the smell of my mother’s hands after a day spent in the garden, or the way my dad hugged me so tight it took everything away.
It’s the way the world keeps spinning, utterly indifferent, as my breath slows to a trickle and fades.
I let go.
And in the silence between two heartbeats, I forgive us all.
The end isn’t a flame or a trumpet, but a small, satisfied sigh.
Like finally getting to the last page of a story that always hurt a little to read.
TO BE CONTINUED...