Chapter 97
Davian
The Only Thing You Need
I Miss You
L?v Li
Like a man possessed, I stared at the navy-blue stuffed animal in my hands, turning it from side to side, and images of nights when she had held it close flickered before my mind’s eye.
I should have lain down with her. In every single one of them.
Her stuffed bunny had eventually lost her scent. Still, I held it to my chest at night as if it might come back someday. As if she might come back someday.
I wasn't able to sleep anymore. Something I hadn't been able to do properly for months. My last meal must have been two days ago, and without Lara, I wouldn’t even bother going down to the kitchen anymore.
Sooner or later, I would drown in mountains of laundry, would rot away, like all the withering plants in this house that my daughter had started watering for me a week ago.
I was no longer the Davian who had his life under control. Never again would I be that man. That New Year’s Eve, he had fallen off a cliff and was still in free fall, ready to shatter on the jagged rocks at the bottom of his abyss.
How much longer would I keep falling?
It was nothing short of a miracle that Lara was still living here, that she put up with me, even though she cried herself to sleep every night.
Even the strength to sit down beside her and hold her in my arms had completely vanished.
Bad lover, bad father…
There was nothing left of me that was still of any use.
The last time I had opened my email inbox had been weeks ago.
Back then, it had already been flooded with emails from my publisher.
I hadn’t opened a single one, had – when I had no longer been able to bear the calls – thrown my cell phone from the porch across the entire garden, where it had disappeared into the creek that ran behind our property, with a loud splash.
To this day, I envied my phone for that luxury, which I was not granted.
But every time I thought about ending it, I ended up under my desk, Quill’s letter in my hand – I couldn’t go a single day without it – and a few seconds later, all the feelings I’d been dragging around with me all day under the milky veil of numbness burst out of me.
A cancerous tumor of emotions that kept growing, fed by the tiniest things in this house that reminded me of her. And this house literally breathed memories.
There were the photos Lara had taken of and with all of us over the past few months.
Photos of her and Quill on campus. Photos of Quill with Streusel in her arms, from the day they had taught him to swim.
The ones from Christmas, where she was laughing as if she’d never had a single day of worry, because I had tickled her just a second before Lara had snapped the photo.
And then there was the photo that Lara had framed and placed on the nightstand next to my bed.
The one where she was lying in my arms and I was holding her close, leaning against our living room fireplace.
Me, in the dark blue Christmas sweater Lara had given me for Christmas, and Quill in one of her usual navy sweaters.
Lara had taken it at Christmas.
Just two weeks ago, I had realized that this was the only photo of us that existed.
But it wasn’t just photos.
There was her toothbrush, staring at me on those mornings when I somehow managed to make it to the bathroom.
Her boots by the front door, mocking me whenever I took off my shoes. Something that didn’t happen often, because I had only left the house three times since she was gone.
Tiny sticky notes about things from her books that she hadn’t wanted to forget, and yet had left lying around everywhere in the house, on dressers and windowsills.
Books that she had taken from my shelves, read, and forgotten to put back.
Clothes. There were clothes everywhere. And to this day, I still found the long dark hairs on my laundry that I used to tease her about back then. Now that they were becoming fewer with each passing week, I missed them, because they reminded me of how it had felt to kiss her silky hair.
Just as I missed the coffee stains she used to leave everywhere. The coffee rings on my desk. The cookie crumbs on my passenger seat. Her laughter, which had brought life back into this house whenever Lara had told her something funny…
Even after three months, I still found objects that no one had touched since she was gone, left exactly as only she had ever placed them.
At first, I had made sure to leave everything in its place so that her traces would remain in this house. But by now, it just hurt to find fragments of her here.
As if she had never left.
As if she were about to run into me around the next corner, look up, with those adorable red cheeks that made me want to forget everything else in my life and kiss her until we ended up in our bedroom, where I would remove the unnecessary fabric between us and plant a thousand kisses on her papyrus skin.
Every time I tested a pen, I subconsciously wrote her name. Her real one. Not Gravia, not Quill, not Feather…
Blue.
On top of that was the damn dog, who would whine and sniff at the things Lara hadn’t yet stowed away in Quill’s closet, as if even he missed her.
At some point, when I had no longer been able to stand it anymore, I had taken her coat off the coat hook next to the door and stowed it up here in her closet so that Buddy wouldn’t whine at it anymore.
This room was filled with her, and I was certain that even if I cleared everything out of here, I would leave traces of her behind. Traces like the tiny ink splatters on the wall next to her desk.
Quill pens were scattered everywhere, along with manuscripts, all of which I had read through to feel close to her.
Those had been the only hours when I had felt her presence.
As if she were telling me a story… and another…
and another… Until there had been no more pages left.
Only folders full of disorganized notes and world-building plans, so detailed that I was certain she must have spent months working on them.
The three books she had been writing while she had been living under this roof – while I had run away from writing – were her last intellectual property, which I was ready to protect with my life.
Shit, she should have published them. So much talent. So much potential… So many stories that deserved to be read…
I wanted to do it for her.
But with what strength?
Sending them to my publisher came with so much other stress that I felt too fragile to handle. They would change things, and I wouldn’t be strong enough to stand my ground.
If my feather could see me, she would no longer be proud of me.
At night I slept in her bed, imagining she was with me. With her stuffed bunny in my arms.
I focused on the bunny in front of me until despair overwhelmed me and I clenched my fist around its belly.
My breath caught.
There was something hard.
Under Questioning
Luke Richards
I squeezed again.
There really was something there.
I tried to feel it. It was small, rounded…
Overwhelmed, I stared at the stuffed animal before checking the back for a seam. And indeed. As I felt around, my fingers brushed against a rough fabric scar.
Without hesitation, I tore at it, pushing aside the gnawing fear of destroying this bunny, because if there really was something inside that Quill had put in there...
My fingers bumped into cold metal. Familiar metal.
I swallowed.
With growing nervousness, I pulled out a bullet. Then another. And another…
What the…
At some point, I hadn’t seen them in her pants pockets anymore. And I had prayed that she hadn’t thrown them off bridges, though I would have understood if she had no longer been able to bear the sight of them. That had been the time when I – the fool I was – had pushed her away.
Even to this day, I could slap myself for that.
I had expected to find those bullets anywhere, but not inside a bunny she held close to her chest every night.
She had never intended to throw them away. Not even if I had sent her out into the world.
Something in my stomach tightened painfully.
“Dad…”
Visions of Gideon (oder wo anders?)
Sufjan Stevens
I flinched and automatically pushed the bullets back into the stuffed animal.
“Hm?”
For a moment, Lara stared at the bunny in my hands. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if she’d just been crying. And she cried a lot since Quill was gone.
Because of me.
“You need to eat something.”
I just nodded and looked back at Ink.
If not even I had been able to save her, how could I ever have been so naive as to believe that a stuffed rabbit could?
Lara disappeared again, probably completely fed up with me and my state, and I would understand if she were to slowly start hating me and eventually leave. It would be best for her. My Pumpkin needed a fresh start. Far away from me. From this town.
How am I supposed to keep going, Quill? How? This damn bucket list is worthless without you. No book in the world that I could write is worth it if I don’t write it for you. If you don’t read it for me.
“Davian”
I looked up again.
Monica.
She seemed more alive than Lara and I, even though I kept noticing her eyes turning glassy.
“Mm…”
She entered Quill’s room, looked around as if something about the place felt unsettling to her, crossed her arms, and began rubbing her upper arms as if she were freezing.
“How much longer do you plan to hole up in here?”
I stared at Quill’s closet until my gaze drifted into the emptiness that mirrored my inner state.
“Until she comes back.”
Monica sighed.
“Davian… She’s not coming back.”
A tear slipped from my eye.
Of course she wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point of my answer.
Monica stepped over to the bed, sat down on the edge, and for the first time in years, I felt like a small child in need of help.
Her hand landed on my lower leg, covered by sweatpants.
“I’m sorry.”
I was unable to look at her.
“Are you? Or are you secretly glad that I’m no longer seeing a nineteen-year-old?”
My voice was emotionless. Equally empty.