Chapter 8
I check out of the hotel. Still, my husband hasn't called.
Not once.
Yesterday leading up to it was the worst, but today... I can still feel his hugs. I can still hear myself laughing from when I was a little girl.
I lost him because he was a hard worker.
He and my mom had gotten divorced, and even though they didn't necessarily wanna be in each other's lives, I still talked to him when I could.
I still loved him. He was my father. And then...
I don't know what state of mind he was in, but from what I heard, he got electrocuted on a job site.
I lost him two years before my mother. It's like all the bad luck that the world could save for me, it did.
And what was worse is that I lost my mom suddenly because of something stupid.
Yes, I was mad at her, and I hadn't been talking to her.
I blamed her for pushing my father away after the divorce, and I did cut off all communication with her.
She wasn't really the nicest to Dad. She drove him to drink a lot of the time.
And, yes, my father was his own person. He was an adult; I understood that full well.
But my mom wasn't a saint either. She was just a nasty person, or maybe they just brought that out of each other, far be it from me to speak ill of the dead.
I don't think I was so nice either. I acted up sometimes, not because I wanted to be mean, but I was frustrated and trapped. My mom took out her anger and depression on me, and I was just done having that toxicity in my life. I didn't wanna do it anymore.
But had I known that earthquake was gonna hit and that building was gonna collapse with her in it, I would have done things differently. Had I known that was her trying to call me because she was dying, I would not have ignored her call.
I remember that day so clearly, looking at the call, seeing it pop up, rolling my eyes, and refusing it.
There was a part of my heart that wanted to pick up the phone because despite how angry I was with her and how much of an asshole she could be, she was still my mom, and I loved her so much.
I kept telling myself I would get back to it.
I would call her eventually, or I would pick up the phone one of those other times.
I didn't know that call was gonna be the last.
She was trapped. They found her with a huge piece of concrete slab and a beam that had completely crushed her midsection. And her final act, her final call, was her trying to reach me. They found her with her cell phone all dusty in her hand, and the last dial on the recent call list was me.
Oh my god. Every time I think about it, I wanna kill myself. Not literally, but it hurts so bad. I can't even be mad at her anymore. I'm just mad at myself now because I wasted that time.
Why didn't I pick up the phone? Why?
I didn't even know about the earthquake until way after.
And the thing is, when I first heard about it, in my mind, I just hoped that Mom was okay.
I never imagined it would be to the point where a whole building collapsed on her.
It happened to be that the building was old, or it was just wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything.
A few other people lost their lives, too.
But the crazy thing is, it was only six other people.
I know life is important, don't get me wrong, but when I think about the fact that my mom was one of only seven people who died out of the fifteen hundred people that were in that building...
I don't even know what to say. It's almost like there's someone up there laughing at me.
Like, Here, give her a person who cares about her, who loves her.
I was there with him. I didn't even know anything about his background when we first met.
He hid all that wealth from me, maybe on purpose.
But I saw him. I saw the guy he was, the person, the human.
And I thought he saw me, too. You cannot tell me that my husband did not love me.
Even now, I still think there's a part of him that does. Or maybe I'm just hoping he does.
And it's rough. Give me a great guy, and then take him away slowly so I can feel every single bit of hurt. So I can feel him slipping from my fingers like water, knowing there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Maybe I should just hang back, you know?
Maybe I should just stop trying. After all, I'm the only one who is trying.
Maybe he's in a really bad state, and he needs someone to pull him out.
But why the fuck is that my job? I'm a woman.
I'm his wife. He's supposed to be leading.
He's supposed to be protecting us. I should be protecting him, too, but I am the only one who has been doing it.
Some people may argue and say I'm ungrateful.
My husband's a multi-millionaire, right?
He gives me everything I want, except for the one thing I want more than anything.
I don't give a shit about the money. He knows that.
I loved him exactly as he was, even when he had that dorky-ass haircut.
Yes, he was attractive, but in a weird, nerdy kinda way, and I loved him despite all of that.
And goddamn it, what am I doing? I feel so lonely.
I can't even talk to my mom. I wish I could have that last phone call back, not even to talk about me, but just to be there to comfort her.
Because if I feel like this right now, I feel like I have no right to.
How bad did she feel, lying there unable to breathe, with her guts crushed under tons of debris?
She held onto life just so she could call me, probably to tell me she loved me.
And the thing is... my voice mailbox was full.
I feel myself laughing at the memory of it, because my voice mailbox was always full, and that was something she always got on my case about.
"Clear your damn mailbox, Melody! Come on now, people can't reach you. Come on, Melody, clear your mailbox. We can't leave a message if we wanted to. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and I can't reach you for shit."
That's what she always told me. And what did I do? Not a damn thing.
I would have gotten her last words to me if she could even speak.
They tried to tell me that it was fine, that most likely, even if she had gotten through to me, she wouldn't have been able to say anything.
That's how bad it was. Like, the debris was so heavy that they don't even know how she was alive enough to make the call in the first place.
They said she probably didn't even know what was going on.
But she called me. She went out of her way to call me. The way her phone was set up, she would have had to scroll down and click me specifically. She probably just wanted to hear my voice one last time.
I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate, hate, hate, hate myself.
They tell you to go to counseling, and maybe it's just the two counselors I went to that were just not great, but I wasn't feeling it at all.
They felt like they were just there to collect a check.
Like they weren't really listening to me, just asking me questions that I could ask myself, like, "How did that make you feel? "
And then, right in the middle of me talking, they cut me off and say, "Okay, that's our time. We'll have to finish this up next week."
Are you fucking serious?
And then, on top of all of that, I start to feel good, you know? I start to feel happy.
When Daniel and I met, it was like a dream come true.
It was wonderful. We vibed so well together.
I never imagined that he and I would get along.
He's not really, necessarily, the kind of guy I would go for.
And honestly, I thought it was a trick or something, because...
I don't know. I know this is gonna sound weird, but he looked so damn good. He’s packed on more muscle over the years, surely, but when I first met him, he was just so charismatic.
I figured, Oh, that's just someone who is like that with everyone.
It's not like I sought him out. I met him through Fabian. I was twenty-three, and I was still recovering from the emotional devastation of losing my parents in the years prior. I knew he was in corporate, he was a rising corporate star. I didn't know how ambitious he was at that point, honestly.
When I first started talking to him, I didn't know who his father was.
I didn't know that he came from money. I just knew that he was sweet.
I knew that he was a confident presence, and he always knew what to say.
Sure, he could be blunt and out of pocket sometimes, but that's one of the things I loved about him.
My soft-spoken, artsy nature mixed with his bones of steel, big chest, and confident assertion...
it's what I like in a man. The kind of man that you read about in romance novels and anime.
And he always had a sweet side to him. A side that he didn't show anybody else, just me. I felt so honored.
The way that everything lined up was just so awkward and so fitting. It really felt as though it was meant to happen.
Back then, I was working at Echo Valley Wildlife Haven. Well, it wasn't really job-work, just more so a way to volunteer and keep my mind busy. I still got paid, a minimal amount. But I loved what I did, and it was enough as supplemental income.
I love animals, so sometimes, if there’s an opportunity, I’ll try to help out. And I was advertising quite a bit. I didn't even know that the place existed before then.
I had been volunteering at Echo Valley for a few weeks, and that's when I first met Fabian.
He showed up for his first volunteer orientation, dragging this cute little, high-energy five-year-old along with him, a little boy that looked just like him.
Fabian had very long brown hair and just had this very nice energy about him. He was really cool, good people.