Flying, page 39
part #5 of Girl With Broken Wings Series
“I never knew you could worry so much,” she says with a smile.
“Just about you,” I blurt, because yeah, guess the levels of awkwardness weren’t high enough. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“Yes,” she says.
I kind of laugh a little. “Do you believe in God?” I ask her.
“Uh,” she says and looks down at her hands.
“Heaven always seemed, I don’t know, kind of boring.” I lean back and give the floor a little push with my feet so the swing gently sways. “Fluffy clouds, people playing harps, like some really boring country club. But maybe we go somewhere after we die. I’d like to think that.” I look up at the sky, at all those tiny glowing dots. Thousands of stars and planets hidden in the darkness. Black holes and entire galaxies. Maybe Maya and Tarren and Tammy and Mom and my dad are up there, living on in some new way. “Maybe they’re happy. Free,” I say.
“I meant, yes,” Francesca says.
I turn to her with a smile. “Dr. Lee’d be up there too, of course. Probably complaining that his halo was too bright or the cloud fluffiness wasn’t consistent or something.”
“No, I mean…” her voice jumps. “I mean, yes.” She looks right at me, grabs my hand. “Yes.”
“Yes?” I look down at our clasped hands, confused. She’s shaking.
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
I stare at her, uncomprehending. “Me?” I finally manage.
“You. Gabe. You.” She’s smiling now. Crying. I watch the tears streak down her face as her breath comes out in fast little puffs.
I understand, of course, and pull my hand out of hers. “You really feel that sorry for me? Oh my God.” I stand up and start stumbling down the stairs of the porch. I don’t know where I’m going, but I need to get away. Can’t go back to the house to get my stuff. That would mean passing right by her again. Into the woods then. Guess I’m becoming a mountain man.
“Sorry for you?” Francesca grips the edge of the swing and looks confused. “No. It’s…”
“You’re too nice,” I croak. “Too nice. Anyone ever tell you that?” I can learn to eat acorns. Grow out a beard for warmth. Sleep on leaves.
“Gabriel Fox!” She’s on her feet, stomping toward me, and she is definitely not nice right at this moment. I stand on the bottom step of the porch, fascinated and kind of terrified, and truth be told, more than a little turned on.
She walks down one step and grabs my duster coat in both hands. “I don’t feel sorry for you. I love you. I just didn’t know it for a long time. I never knew who you really were, not until last year when you told me everything. And then I wasn’t sure if all of your flirting and those looks were real. Not until now, this week.”
“But Tarren….” I stutter. I hadn’t missed the lovey-dovey looks she always threw at him, though they cut me to absolute ribbons.
“It was a crush. Just a crush when I first moved in with Dr. Lee.” Francesca looks at me. “Tarren never gave me an arrowhead worth a million billion dollars. He never built me a porch swing. And he never made me laugh. Not once.”
I just stare at her, because seriously, did I just have an aneurism? Is this my final death dream as my brain shorts out? “I’m…I’m….really fucking messed up,” I manage.
“You’re brave. You’re caring. You’re loyal. You’re kind,” she says, her voice fast and her accent growing thicker as she rushes over syllables. “I’ve seen you at your best and your worst. I know you, Gabe. I see your courage and your heart, and…and…and…” She looks at me, exasperated. “I love you!”
I grab her off the porch, swing her around, and then I’m kissing her all over, from the tip of her nose, the side of her neck above the scarf, her hands, her chin, until she grabs my face and presses her lips against mine.
It’s more than I deserve, so much more than I deserve, but I’m not giving her back. Not ever.
In that kiss, I don’t know how to feel. All the heaviness and sadness is still here inside of me, but my heart is racing, and my cheeks are getting hot. I know Maya didn’t believe in an afterlife, but I do. I know that she is up there somewhere beyond those twinkling stars with Tarren and Tammy and my parents. I know they are at peace, and I know they would want me to try and find some happiness. So, as I kiss Francesca and before I take her into the house to run my lips all over her body, I feel them all around me. Lifting the sadness away. I’m so light, I could almost fly.
Chapter 70 – Tarren
When I return from my watch of the mountain, Maya is determined.
“We look for Gabe,” she says. Rain stands near her shoulder, not touching, but it’s clear they’ve mended things, or at least started to. His eyes dart to Tammy, asleep against my shoulder and then to me, but he doesn’t say anything.
I open my mouth.
“He’s alive,” Maya insists. “He has to be, but he wouldn’t go to the mountain. Not if he thinks we’re dead.”
“Where would he go?” I ask.
She looks at me like the answer is obvious. “Home.”
I know the truth, but I also see that she needs to try. She needs to search, just like I need to go to the mountain. I nod and walk to Tammy’s room to begin packing a bag for her.
We set out early Sunday morning, and our trip to Farewell is different from the thousands of road trips we’ve taken before. Tammy is a squirming, fussy presence, always demanding attention. Everything about her disturbs the normal cadence of the ride, from the kick of her heels against her car seat, to the occasional tantrums, and the smells that arise when she needs to be changed.
There is also Rain, cooing at Tammy, tapping endlessly on his phone, and sitting with Maya when I pull over every two hours so that she can set up the Prism in some quiet park or empty lot. This every-other-hour feeding scheduling was my condition for agreeing to the trip.
Then there is the other big difference. The lack of Gabe. That huge, humming personality, that endless stream of words, the same songs sung with unflagging enthusiasm, the Chuck Norris jokes – all missing. It hurts in a way I’d almost forgotten, how it was after Tammy died, when everything was the lack of her. Maya and I both abandoned him, and Gabe could never stand to be alone. We both know the outcome, what he would have chosen.
When the pain of this knowledge becomes too much, I look in the rearview mirror, see my daughter, and remember that I have someone to protect. A reason for being.
With trepidation, I turn on the radio. The media is buzzing about an explosive interview on one of the major news networks tonight. Someone is coming forward, claiming that a secret vigilante network existed that fought against the Hamps.
“It’s a Totem Member,” I say, seeing Maya’s eyes widen with hope. “Gabe wouldn’t go public. He’d know better.” I pointedly look at Rain in the rearview mirror.
He frowns. “My guys wouldn’t talk.”
“You’d better shut down your entire network,” I tell him. “Go underground. It’ll get messy.”
“It’s not one of…”
“It is,” I tell him flatly. “Has to be. If they admit to anything, you’ll all be implicated. Murder is still murder.”
Maya turns in the passenger seat to look back at Rain. “How much does each person in the network know about the other?”
“Nothing…not much,” Rain amends. “We operate under our code names. Only the inner circle knows. That’s Me, Chain, and Bear.” He leans his head back against the seat. “Shit. You think it’s one of mine?”
I drop him off at a car rental agency, and he and Maya share a long kiss before he lopes into the building. Then it is just the two of us and Tammy in the back for the final three hours of the trip.
“What state are we in?” I ask Tammy.
She puts three fingers in her mouth. “Amawica,” she finally says.
“That’s a country, not a state. We’re in Co-lo-ra-do.”
“Meow!” she answers. “Meow, meow.”
“Uh-oh,” Maya says. “Looks like she’s morphed into Princess Shooting Star Kitty again.”
“Meow!” Tammy hollers.
I hold in my sigh. Utilizing the imagination is important at this age and should be supported, though why this means I have to let my daughter drink and eat out of bowls on the floor when she turns into Princess Shooting Star Kitty, I don’t know. I need to start potty training her, and it’s time that she begins to work on her numbers and letters.
Fall semester just started, so I’ll need to look at enrolling in college this spring. Can I take a full course load and still care adequately for Tammy? There’s something else I’ve been thinking about, too, though my mind wants to flinch away every time it approaches this subject. The scars. The extra money Danielle left me is enough for all my schooling…and enough to cover laser treatment for the scars and the burns on my body. But is it right? I’ve always carried the scars as a memory of what I did to Tammy and as a penance. Do I deserve to let them fade? I know what Tammy would say. Actually, she wouldn’t say anything. She would throw her head back, laugh, and probably call me a doofus. Then she’d order me to forgive myself.
“What are you thinking?” Maya asks me suddenly, and I know I haven’t been keeping good control over my aura.
I answer carefully. “I was planning.”
“For the future?”
“You need to start planning, too,” I tell her and try to keep my voice gentle.
“Sometimes I get lost,” she says. The sun is high and bright in the sky. “I think that I’m back in that tiny room with that tiny window. That this is all a dream I’m dreaming from that room.”
We drive in silence for a while.
“And if Gabe is dead, it’s my fault,” she continues. “It’s because I abandoned him. How could I have done that? He was so messed up, and I just left. How can I plan anything knowing that?”
After careful calculation, I respond. “I’m afraid, too.”
She makes a little scoffing sound. “Of what?”
“Tammy,” I say.
“Meow!” my daughter responds at once to her name.
“You’re supposed to call her Princess Shooting Star Kitty,” Maya corrects mildly.
I glance in the rearview mirror at Tammy’s chubby cheeks, the dark hair that has already managed to tangle. “She’s so small, so vulnerable, and there are so many things in the world that could hurt her. Not just car accidents and fires and floods, but people. Words. What happens when she goes to school? What if the children are cruel? Or when she gets older? What if a boy…” My hands tighten on the wheel. “I know I can’t protect her from everything. I can’t protect her from life.”
Maya turns to face me. “God, I feel sorry for all of her future boyfriends.” She smiles at me. “Tarren, you’re right. She’s going to get hurt. A lot. A thousand little cuts and bruises and some broken bones and broken hearts along the way. You can’t suffocate her or swaddle her up in bubble wrap. The only thing you can do is try to teach her to make good decisions and then love her anyway when she makes bad ones. Let her know that you love her every single day.”
“I…I…” Before Tammy I was so good at keeping everything carefully wrapped up inside of me. I could tuck my emotions away no matter how strongly they stormed. “I’ve read everything on child development, but I can’t do what you do. What Gabe could always do with kids. I can’t make her smile and laugh.”
“I know,” Maya sighs, “but that’s why I’m here, and when we find Gabe, he’s going to fall in love with her. We’ll make her smile and laugh and keep you from turning into a parental despot.”
“Thanks,” I say, but all I can think is, Gabe will never know Tammy. He will never get to make her laugh.
Tammy is limp with sleep in her car seat when we finally turn down that familiar gravel road and begin those last few miles deeper and deeper into the woods of Farewell. The sun is lower in the sky now, lighting the leaves like gold.
We pass the rusted mailboxes of our secluded neighbors, then Dr. Lee’s cabin. I feel the pinch of his loss in my heart, but the wound of Gabe is so big, so painful,l beside it. An old truck sits in the driveway.
“Francesca is back,” I say.
Maya gives the cabin the barest of glances and then looks forward. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see from the tense lines of her body that she is only focused on the road in front of us and the house that sits at its end. Her hands grip the sides of the seat, and her legs jog up and down as if she were secretly trying to pedal us faster toward our destination.
We curve around the final bend, and our house stands in front of us.
I immediately see all its little flaws as I always do when we’ve been away from it a long time – the rusted gutters, the few loose shingles, the faded paint. We never really took care of the house, and that bothers me. We never had the time. I do now, I think, but I already know I won’t live here. Not with the memories and the ghosts.
“Maya,” I say, “don’t get your…”
She jumps out of the passenger seat and jogs to the house. She’ll be able to sense his aura if he is inside; if he is alive. I unstrap Tammy, sniff at her diaper, and then pick her up. She wraps her arms around my neck.
Maya stands on the porch and stares at the front door. The look on her face tells me what I already knew, and yet the fresh stab of pain still surprises me.
“Why is Maya cwying?” Tammy asks.
“Because she is very, very sad,” I tell my daughter.
Chapter 71 – Maya
The way my heart breaks is slow and silent, like an iceberg drifting through warm waters growing smaller and smaller until it is gone. Gabe’s smiles. Gabe’s endless, stupid Chuck Norris jokes. Gabe’s random use of accents in the middle of conversations. That horrible shit he always ate – bacon cheese onion rings. All of it melting away.
We walk through the rooms of the house. No body. At first, I count this as a tiny blessing, but then as my mind slowly begins to shake off the initial wave of shock, I start imagining Gabe dead of alcohol poisoning in the bathroom of the worst, most seediest bar in some no-name, one-stoplight town. Or lying in a puddle of blood in a fleabag motel, his brains dripping down the moldy walls behind him.
The tears drip, drip, drip down my chin, and Tarren’s tight aura, tinged with red, only confirms that we both know the same thing. Gabe is really, really gone.
“We should pack some bags while we’re here,” he says. His practicality sounds ruthless, but I know Tarren better. He needs the structure of purpose, a mission to hide within, no matter how small.
“Yes, okay,” I say robotically, while all I can think is, Gabe is dead. Gabe killed himself. Gabe thought he was all alone.
When Tarren lets Tammy down, she scurries over to me, and I wish desperately that she would just go away. I can’t handle her big blues eyes and crusty nose. She raises her arms.
“Maya, ow, ow?”
I ignore her and begin walking up the stairs.
“Maya sad? Maya ow, ow?” She follows me, hopping loudly up each stair, like this was a game. Like the world is somehow good and fair. I pull in a deep, deep breath, scrub away my stupid tears, and lift my niece into my arms.
“Yes, Maya ow, ow,” I say softly to her.
I carry Tammy to my bedroom, which used to be Diana’s bedroom. The heavy scent of chamomile still hangs in the room, a potent memory of pain and a reminder of the monster that still lingers within me. I go to the bookshelf and pick up my favorite picture, the one where Diana sits with a chubby Gabe on her lap. His curls are adorable.
“This was your grandmother,” I say softly to Tammy, holding up the picture so she can see. “And your Uncle Gabe. He was younger than you in this picture.”
“He was a baby,” she sings and wriggles in my arms until I let her go.
“Here.” I hand her the picture. “Be careful with it.” The picture doesn’t have any glass in the frame anymore, and I worry about her smudging her fingerprints on it. When I grab an extra duffle bag from the closet, the first thing I fill it with are the rest of the photos on the shelf. I wonder if Gabe ever found my birthday gift and if it gave him any solace or just more pain. I wasn’t sure which I wanted more when I left it for him.
After the pictures are carefully tucked in my bag, I look around, trying to determine if there is anything else worth taking. Everything about this room is familiar. The faint smell of Diana’s other perfumes beneath the scent of chamomile. The way the evening light puddles down on the clean white comforter.
I look up, and my eyes travel the familiar pathways of Avalon. The drawing hasn’t aged well. The pencil marks have faded, and the paper is curling at the edges. I consider taking the drawing with me, my last link to Ryan and my old life, but I’m going to leave it here. Avalon was the dream of another girl who thought the world could easily be divided into dark and light, who thought she could put an ocean between evil and greed and depravity, as if those things didn’t live inside us all.
I go through my drawers and then the bathroom filling up the rest of the duffle bag with my favorite clothes and accessories. I take one bottle of Diana’s perfume, the only way I know her.
“Come on Princess Shooting Star Kitty,” I say, and Tammy jumps up onto my back.
Heavy steps take me to Gabe’s room. The door is already open and Tarren is inside. He carries a newly filled duffle bag as well. We both stare at the rumpled bed, the smoldering look of Keira Knightley on his wall, done up in her Pirates of the Caribbean regalia. That horrendous beanbag chair still proudly represents all the worst parts of the 90s. How many times did I beg him to throw that thing out?
Gabe is almost a physical presence in the room. His scent is here. The echoes of his laugh. The feel of his vibrant energy, the color of topaz waves. Blue as blue. True as true.
“We’ll have to tell Francesca,” Tarren says.
I honestly don’t think I can stand it, saying the words out loud, breaking her heart. I remember the last time I saw Francesca at Dr. Lee’s funeral, how the tender shades of deep violet had swollen in her aura when Gabe draped his arms around her as if he could shield her from the world. Those colors had whispered of a new kind of love. A little uncertain maybe, but undeniably there, blooming in her aura like a shy flower.
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