Chapter 32. Haley
Haley
A few days after the gig with Dante’s Inferno at the Backstop Bar, Paige got the call. Her mother had been accepted for her clinical trial and she needed Paige to help her through what was expected to be a very rough first week.
I met Paige in the downstairs hallway just before the cab was due to arrive to take her to the airport. She took one look at my suitcase and frowned. “Where are you going?”
“I’m coming with you.” I pulled my warmest jacket from the closet. Riverstone had already had their first few snowfalls of the season.
“You already missed a week of classes. You can’t miss any more.”
“I talked to my profs. Three of them post their lectures online, and I have friends in the other two classes who can give me their notes. My profs are going to waive the assignments for the week I missed so I don’t have to play catchup, and I’m only going to miss one test, which I can make up afterwards. ”
Her mouth opened and closed again. “But…”
“Mom checked with the FBI and they didn’t think I needed any more protection,” I assured her. “The election is in a few days and then all the political drama will blow over. No one is after me, so I don’t have to worry about grumpy bodyguards telling me what to do.”
“What about your music?” she protested. “You need to get back out there. You haven’t done an open mic in forever, and what about Stefan? Or other record execs? You might miss a chance to be discovered.”
“One week isn’t going to make a difference, and I still haven’t figured out how to draw out the emotion Stefan was talking about,” I said. “It will be good for me to get away.”
Paige bit her lower lip, considering. We both knew it was all for show. If it had been my mom in the hospital, she’d have done the exact same thing.
“Work?” she asked.
“I’ve got people covering my shifts.”
“Your show,” she said firmly. “You already missed a show. You can’t miss another.”
I pulled open the front door. “I taped a show in advance and Chad is going to put it on for me. If you don’t want to accept that I just want to be there for you, then tell yourself I’m coming because I really need to get out of Chicago and visit home to ground myself. Anything else?”
Paige dropped her bag and wrapped her arms around me. “Thank you.”
I gave her a squeeze. “Someone has to be there to line up the medical staff. You set a high bar when I was in the hospital.”
We cabbed it to O’Hare and then flew into Charleston where we rented a car for the two-hour drive to Riverstone.
I hadn’t been back since Matt’s funeral, but nothing had changed.
The sign on the highway was still slightly crooked, and no one had cleaned off the yellow spray-painted happy face over the a .
Winter had arrived early and a blanket of snow covered the fields and forests, turning the town into a winter wonderland.
From festive gardens to a magical open-air market and a decorative walking trail lit up from early November until early January revealing whimsical holiday decorations and themes, Riverstone was unparalleled for spirit at Christmas.
We drove straight to the hospital and were able to meet with her mom’s doctor right away.
“Everything is looking good,” the doctor said to Paige.
“We’re just finalizing the paperwork and your mom should be able to start tomorrow.
I’m glad she won’t be alone. The side effects are significant for the first week, until the body adjusts. ”
“She’ll be well looked after,” I said. “And if anyone messes with her, Paige will whack them with an amp, or wrangle them into submission. I was in the hospital the other week and she had people lined up outside my door to treat me.”
“She’s exaggerating.” Paige blushed. “I just wanted to make sure she had water and warm blankets and pillows, and she wasn’t in any pain and they’d checked everything that should be checked and—”
“You’re scaring her, babe,” I said, laughing. “I think she gets it.”
When I had Paige settled in her mom’s room with candy, soda, and snacks, I drove across town to our family home.
Mom had mentioned that she’d started paying someone to look after the house because she wasn’t able to visit as often, and our sprawling two-story Arts and Crafts–style house looked tidy and well-kept.
Even the Christmas lights that Matt and Ace had put up one winter were turned on, giving the house a festive glow.
I took a quick walk through the main level—dining room, living room, den, and bar all with warm hardwood floors and the same comfortable mismatched furniture that had been there forever.
Mom had never been into decorating and Dad had an eclectic sense of style, except when it came to the kitchen, where everything was big, bold, and modern with granite countertops, stainless steel industrial appliances, and custom black-walnut cabinets.
We never used his specialty equipment after he passed.
Even Ace, who often came over to help with dinner, only used the basic kitchen supplies.
It was a full year before I could even sit at the kitchen counter, much less attempt to make something more complicated than mac ’n’ cheese.
Upstairs, I passed Mom’s tidy bedroom and our shared family bathroom, bracing myself to pass Matt’s room, when I saw the open door.
I should have expected Mom to do to Matt’s belongings what she’d done to Dad’s, but it was still a shock when I saw that she’d stripped Matt’s room bare.
She hadn’t left a stitch of clothing or even a pair of shoes.
His model planes, books, and old toys were gone from the shelves, and she’d taken down his posters and even the covers from his bed.
The only reason I knew he really existed was because one Christmas he’d carved his name into the wooden floor.
I dumped my bag in my bedroom. Over the years we’d redecorated as my interests had changed.
Pink walls had become blue when I’d moved on from princesses to sea creatures.
Posters of unicorns had given way to pictures of boy bands and inspirational sayings, and my final year of high school, I’d finally packed away the cheerful cotton candy bedspread on my white four-poster bed and replaced it with white and teal.
After making up Matt’s room for Paige and changing my bed linen, I checked all the windows and doors and then made my way to the garage to open it up for my car.
Although our neighbor had turned on the heat when I called to say I was coming, the garage was cold enough to make me shiver.
I reached for the button to raise the door when I noticed five large black containers stacked near the stairs, all sealed up with tape.
The sender address was the Joint Personal Effects Department at Dover Air Force Base.
Matt’s belongings.
Again, I shouldn’t have been surprised they hadn’t been opened. Mom had packed all Dad’s things away in containers the week after he died and never opened them. Covered in dust, they took up most of the shelving on one side of the garage.
I’d come home to support Paige and to ground myself, not to stir up painful emotions, but my conversation with Chad kept playing over in my mind, and the memory that I’d let slip free was still there, painful edges dulled to leave warmth behind.
“I’m not going to open them,” I said out loud. Still, I didn’t move. Matt was in there. Pictures, clothes, the instant camera I’d given him in case he ever lost his phone, maybe even the old MP3 player with all the songs I’d helped him choose to deal with the pressure when he was away.
I don’t know if I changed my mind because I’d thought I was going to die in that warehouse and now I had a second chance to do things right.
Or maybe it was because I’d lost Ace again and there was no room left in the black box where I’d put all my pain.
I don’t even know if it was because Mom had tried to erase Matt’s memory, but he’d stubbornly refused to leave.
He was still there, etched into the floorboards like he was etched into my heart, and now he was waiting to see me again in a stack of black boxes by the stairs.
I went back inside, pulled on my jacket and hat, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and returned to cut the tape and open the top container.
And there he was.
I studied Matt’s military picture, soaking in the familiar smile, the blue eyes, and the dimple at the corner of his cheek. A wave of sadness swelled inside me, stealing my breath away. Breathe. Breathe. You’re fine.
This time I didn’t lock the feeling away. This time I let it fill me, take me into the darkness, tumble me around and pull me under again. I drew in a breath and then another, feeling the pain and loss eddy and swirl through my body until I was floating, calm in the dark sea.
I put aside a letter addressed to Ace and went through the pictures of Matt and Ace with their military buddies, one of him and Ace at their high school graduation, and an old family picture from one of our camping trips.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a picture of my dad, but he looked exactly as I remembered him with his ear-to-ear smile, the blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, and the strong arms that had always made me feel safe.
A wave of nostalgia washed over me, and I was back in the darkness struggling against the current until I stopped fighting and let it carry me to a time when I was safe and loved and I was my daddy’s baby girl.
I managed to get through the first box—clothes and shoes, a few odd items that must have held meaning for him, the instant camera and his MP3 player, and at the bottom, in a velvet pouch, Dad’s high school ring.
I remembered fighting with Matt over who would get the ring when Dad died, never imagining that only a few years later he’d be gone and the loss would be so overwhelming, something so trivial wouldn’t matter.
But now, for some reason, it did.
I wanted Dad. I wanted his memories. I wanted to touch his things and smell his scent and see the things that had been important to him.
I made my way over to the shelf and pulled out one of the gray boxes that held my dad’s things, dragging it across the concrete floor into the light before I pulled off the lid.
Inside I found his aprons, recipe books, certificates, potholders, and some of his clothes.
I pressed his favorite camping shirt to my face, and I smelled him—pine and barbecue sauce, campfire smoke, and the lingering spicy scent of the cheap cologne I’d given him one Christmas.
He always wore it camping to scare off the bears.
This time the darkness roared like a monster wave sweeping me off my feet and crushing me under. My shoulders heaved and my lungs burned as I fought for breath. Tears spilled from my eyes and a sound ripped from my throat, a sob that was more a howl, eight years of pain rendering my soul in two.
“I’ve got you, bug.”
Soft arms wrapped around me, a warm breath on my cheek, my nickname a whisper that I could hear despite the crashing waves, a voice deep and soothing.
Familiar. It grounded me. My feet found earth and I held fast as the water swirled around me, through me, washing my soul clean and taking the darkness with it.
I didn’t ask Ace why he was there.
He just was, like he had always been when I truly needed him.