Chapter 19 #2
“I have to go,” I interrupt, stilted because I can’t breathe. I can’t stand here for another second pretending I’m not broken.
Her smile falters for the first time, and she looks at me with narrowed eyes. That’s when she notices the state I’m in.
The way I’m dressed, the dirt and dust on me, the red around my eyes. The tremors running through my body that I can’t make go away. “Are you okay?” She says softly, suddenly so full of concern, like she didn’t do this.
When she lays a gentle hand on my shoulder, I shake it off. Hurt flickers across her face, confusion creasing her brows.
“Lily?”
I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and let her look at me like that, like I’m hurting her, not after everything.
My feet lead me toward the gate.
Behind me, Diana calls my name, and I know people must be staring, but I don’t care.
I don’t turn around.
I don’t cry on the walk back. I should. God knows I should be sobbing, screaming, coming apart at the seams. But whatever piece of me that had anything left to give, I think it stayed behind with Diana.
All I feel right now is numb.
Completely, frighteningly numb.
The only sign that something inside of me is wrong is the way my stomach won’t stop twisting with anxious flutters I can’t control, making me feel sick.
I cross my arms, pressing down hard, but it doesn’t help.
I walk the whole long, hot road back to the RV, hearing nothing but the echo of Diana’s voice.
That was so sweet, Lily.
But still, no tears come.
When the RV comes into view, Pat is already outside, taking up my previous post, pacing in the grass out front.
The moment he spots me, his eyes go wide, and he rushes toward me. “Jesus, Lily, what happened?” His voice is higher than normal, panicked.
I don’t know what my face looks like, but from the look on his, it must be bad.
“She married him,” is all I can manage. Two words. Flat like someone else is saying them.
Pat stares at me, covering his mouth with his hand. I can tell he’s waiting for something, for me to crumble like I always do when it comes to her. But I just stand there, arms wrapped tight around myself, staring straight through him.
“She married him,” I repeat, and I don’t even know why. But that’s when Pat’s own hazel eyes fill with tears, like he’s heartbroken for me.
He trails after me in silence, following me into the RV. I stand in the middle of the tiny space, staring at nothing, not bothered to try to make it less tense.
“Let’s go,” I say after a long silence, meeting his eyes with cold determination.
“Go?”
“Yeah. Let’s pack up everything and leave. We don’t have to live in this shit hole anymore, nothing’s keeping us here.” He stares at me like I’ve gone off the deep end.
“Lil, don’t you think we should, I don’t know, wait a few days? Think about it? You don’t actually wanna leave Di.”
“I have thought about it.” He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, so I barrel on. “Diana doesn’t need me. She has Scott. She has her big house and her fancy clothes and her rich friends. She’s got everything she wants.”
Pat frowns, like he wants to argue for her even though he doesn’t even like her. One look at my face must shut it down because he sinks back.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Pat rubs the back of his neck, staring at me with a mix of heartbreak and frustration. “Lily, running right now, it’s gonna feel different when it doesn’t hurt so bad.”
“I don’t care.”
He huffs through his nose, clearly thinking I’m being unreasonable. “The council meeting’s coming up. You and Diana, you gotta present your case for the garden. You know, all those signatures we spent the whole damn summer collecting—”
“Where are they?”
He reaches into the drawer by the sink and pulls out the thick stack, crumpled from passing through almost every hand in town. He holds them out to me gently, like they’re the key to changing my mind.
I take them and flip through. Hundreds of names. Old townspeople, young families, teenage girls who scribbled their signatures with hearts. All of them believed in our cause.
In a way, they believed in us.
I walk outside without a word.
The metal trash can sits off to the side, dented from whatever Pat’s done to it all these years. “Lily?” he calls after me, letting the door slam shut behind him.
“What’re you doing?”
I dig in my back pocket, and when I find what I’m looking for, I flick it open. The sound cuts through the air like a snap.
I hold the corner of the stack to the flame. Paper curls fast, turning to ash. And when it’s burning steady, I drop the sheets into the can and step back.
Pat watches, mouth open, stunned.
“Jesus Christ, Lil! What the hell?”
“They can pave over the whole damn garden,” I say, my voice flat. “Put a parking lot there. A building, a fucking whore house. I don’t give a shit.”
The flames swallow every bit of it, the ink melting into nothing. Pat doesn’t say anything back. All he does is stare, and I know he sees it.
The part of me that she broke beyond repair.
“It’s where she ruined me,” I whisper, looking out across the empty field, at Rosehill, the only home I’ve ever known. “I never want to come back here.”
Pat swallows hard, but then he nods, finally getting it
“Okay. If you wanna go… We’ll go.”
The flames come up high, swallowing the summer whole. I wait for the ache to hit me, for something to rise in my chest, sadness, regret, anything.
But there’s nothing.
Only the empty space where Diana used to live.