Find Me in Manhattan (Finding #3) (23 page)

Sarah

“You like carrots don’t you, Raine?” I asked the newest horse to join the barn. She came a little less than two weeks ago, and here we were, best of friends already. Daddy inherited her from Old Man Crumley from down the road.
FYI: Down the road in the South could mean anywhere from thirty feet to thirty miles
. Old Man Crumley lived a town over and knew Daddy from church. We didn’t call him “Old Man” to his face, but that was what he was. I swore he was at least a hundred and six years old, if not older.

I had taken a liking to Raine. She was kind of an ugly horse with a spotty gray color. Her spunky disposition almost made her unlikable to others, but I found it endearing. It was possible that I related to her lack of enthusiasm for men, even Daddy. Especially Daddy.

It had been over three months since I left New York, and I was still upset with Daddy. Jameson was long gone, shipped out to some maximum-security facility in upstate New York. Captain Thompson informed me that they found plenty of evidence against Jameson when they started investigating his lawyer, who was charged as an accessory and had his own shiny cell in a New York penitentiary. I was grateful that I didn’t have to go up there for the trial. My statement was only a small piece of the puzzle, but even so, the captain called to keep me informed and apologized every time for the snafu that caused me to end up with a messed-up head. I still had headaches and dizzy spells, which the doctor promised should go away with time.
Yeah. Right.

Raine backed away from me to go back to the dark corner of her stall. She was finished snacking on the carrots, so I let her be and headed back up to the house. I had business to attend to anyway. Dr. Wright had been sending me interviews to transcribe and enter into the database. He was trying to convince me to finish my coursework online and write my dissertation, but I couldn’t seem to find the motivation to complete anything but menial tasks these days.

I opened my email and found two new interviews. They made me think of my sergeant, the one who sent me away, the one who hadn’t so much as let me know he was still alive. After the last phone call with the captain, I wanted to call him. I wanted him to know it was over, to know I was safe.
Maybe then we could be together.

Pride stopped me. He never saw me as anything more than someone he needed to protect. When he realized he couldn’t stop the world from hurting me, he gave up. Given, it was a pretty terrible situation, but that wasn’t what I spent the last three months trying to forget. No, I spent the last three months trying to forget about him.

I still daydreamed about him. Hell, I dreamed about him at night, too. Sometimes I pictured the life I wanted with him, and it was always in New York. I hated that I had ever second-guessed us. If I hadn’t, we might still be living it up in the middle of Manhattan. I would be working on my research and going to class. He would be building amazing cars, and at night, we would be together. We would go to poker nights on Thursdays and eat takeout or go out the rest of the week. He would show me Chinatown and Little Italy while we held hands and laughed together. It wouldn’t be the glamorous New York that Jameson showed me. That wasn’t Michael. His New York would have been the real New York, and it would have all the romance a girl could ever need. The idea of New York with Michael made my chest hurt. I couldn’t cry to relieve the hurt because there were no tears left. I was all dried out, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hurting. But I also knew I wasn’t the only one.

With a sudden urge to bring on more pain, I decided to try to find out how he was. I had so many questions for him.
Was he okay? Did he go see the doctor I recommended to Phil? Did he find someone else? Did he go back to his old ways with women?
Jealousy burned inside of me when I thought of that last question. Sending me away like I meant nothing didn’t mean that I stopped caring about him or stopped loving him. While I wished he felt the same way about me, I also needed to know that he was doing well.

With my mind made up, I began to search for my phone. It was lost somewhere in my room. I let out a frustrated growl when I couldn’t put my hands on it right away. Finally, I found it under my bed. It must have fallen at some point. Since I hadn’t been using it, it had plenty of time to die. “Argh.” I pulled at my hair, making my scar and head hurt.
Where was my flipping charger?
I found it plugged in behind my dresser. Once I plugged it in and seven years had passed, the dumb phone finally turned on. The second it had enough juice, I dialed Michael’s number.

It went straight to voicemail.

I called Amy.

No answer.

Lana.

Again, no answer.

I couldn’t get anyone on the darn phone. The whole world was conspiring against me.
What was the point of all this convenient technology if no one actually used it?

I texted my friends, if you could consider Amy a friend, asking them to call me then sent Dr. Wright an email asking him if he knew how Michael was doing. I kept it professional even though I wanted to have a total girl moment and freak the fuck out. Okay, I was having that moment. I just didn’t let it translate into the email…I hoped.

When I couldn’t stand waiting for someone to call back anymore, I forced my feet into my boots and went back out to the barn to hang out with Raine. She was the only one who understood me these days.

Michael

The plane landed in Newark with a thunk and a jolt that I felt straight down my spine. It was nice to be home even if I wasn’t planning to stay long. I dropped my bags at my apartment and headed out to the track. My bike glided smoothly through traffic, and I gave her an extra pat on the seat once I climbed off her. She was a good bike, and I was still debating on whether or not I should keep her.

Joe greeted me with a big hug and rough pat on my back. “Welcome back, son.” We both pretended we didn’t have tears in our eyes as we greeted each other.

“Is it ready?”

“As you requested.” He led me over to bay three where a car sat with a sleek black cover hiding it from me. “You ready for this?”

“Yeah.” We each grabbed a corner of the cover and revealed the sleek gray monster. It was a 1965 Aston Martin DBS with a few upgrades, just like I had always wanted. It was perfection.

“Rebuilt and re-mastered to your specifications. It should be a smoother ride, but if you fuck it up on those country roads, you’re on your own. I’m not coming down to Alabama to rescue you.”

“You test her?” I ignored his warning. He would be there in a second if I needed him in Alabama.

“Yeah. One thirty. Not bad for a rebuild and an old man.”

“Let’s see if a young guy can do better.” The surprise on his face was priceless. It was even better when I climbed into the car comfortably and closed the door. I felt no fear, no panic, no darkness, and no overwhelming sensation of suffocating. Just peace. I had Dr. Reed to thank for that. No, I had Sarah to thank for that.

I breathed in the smell of the new leather then waved to Joe to get in the passenger seat. He hurried to climb in without saying a word. We lined up at the track and waited while the second hand on his watch ticked to the twelve.

“Three. Two. One.” I gunned the engine. A thrill shot through me as I shifted gears effortlessly. I felt myself laughing at the excitement as I drove the long track only slowing down when I hit one forty.

We were both laughing as we climbed out of the car. “Take that, Old Man.”

Clapping distracted me from Joe’s response. Randy stood there with a grin on his face while Phil looked at me with the respect I hadn’t felt since we had been discharged.

“Looks like we have another driver on our hands.”

“Welcome back, Mike.” Phil shook my hand and pulled me down for a hug with a rough slap on my back. This feeling of euphoria could only be topped by one thing, and I was going for that just as soon as I took care of one other thing.

Michael

Driving the DBS felt like the dream I had always imagined. I had seen the beat up hunk of junk on an online auction going for a ridiculously low price. With the money I saved up, I paid Joe to rebuild it to my specifications over the sixty days I was gone. Sixty days of allowing what I thought was a quack of a shrink to put me in the worst possible situations only to induce my panic. It turned out the guy knew what he was doing. Where sitting in a room talking about my problems or the God-awful journaling didn’t help, exposing me to my worst fears made me open up as if there was nothing holding it in anymore.

I blacked out. I cried like a baby. I swore I had at least three heart attacks, and that was just the first day. Then we sat down and talked, and for some reason, it was like he had ripped the scab off. Everything came pouring out of me. I would go to sleep each night feeling like we had made progress only to wake up the next morning to find nothing had changed when he put me back in the simulator.

The day came that he made me sit in an upside down Humvee for hours. He played a high-pitched ringing that wasn’t necessary because I heard it in my head without any assistance. He played a recording of people shouting, and I relived the memory over and over. We talked about my fear, my guilt, my feelings of responsibility, and my need to be a hero. We talked about it all until I could sit in that Humvee without blacking out.

Then the true test arrived. He wanted me to drive a Humvee down a dirt road. He even had a little cutout of a Middle Eastern boy standing at the fence line of his ranch. Apprehension controlled my body as I shakily started the vehicle. It was strange not having the guys climb in around me.

We had been on a recon mission and borrowed vehicles and additional equipment from the ground crew. On the way back to the base, Phil was next to me. Moretti was in the back on coms. Crow, our medic, was back there with him. There were four more guys in the first vehicle and four behind us in a third. We were all on the lookout for suspicious activity. We had to pass through one small village on the way to the base. The village was regularly patrolled and deemed friendly. Still, we were cautious. Locals turned on us all the time.

We were nearly out of the populated area when I saw a boy. He was alone and watching us with no expression on his face. I wondered what he was thinking about. When I was his age, I was thinking about girls and cars. He didn’t have that luxury. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I turned and saw a glimpse of something sticking out from the dry desert. My brain registered it and the warning began to form when
boom!
The explosion rang out around us. The first Humvee tossed one way, and we went the other. Alaska, the weapons specialist in the first vehicle, was thrown right into my eye line, but I was trapped. I couldn’t get free, and Phil was on top on me with metal sticking straight through his leg and no feeling below his arms. Moretti and Crow were able to crawl from the vehicle. Crow was trying to pull Davis from the first vehicle while the four guys from the third Humvee came running to help. Phil was shouting orders from on top of me. Moretti was calling out commands into the radio. I was trapped watching as everyone helped but me. I held Phil steady. Alaska bled out. Only one of the guys from the first vehicle survived but survived is the best he will get. He had permanent brain damage from the explosion. Everyone from the third walked away without a scratch. My Humvee? We were a different kind of story.

I told Dr. Reed about Moretti. He goes to therapy three times a week but still has to swallow a concoction of pharmaceuticals to be all right. We talked about feeling guilty for not being able to do more to save Phil from being confined to a chair for the rest of his life. Then there was Crow. He chose to take his own life, and it wasn’t something I could easily get over. I had let him down, too. How could I not feel guilty?

We addressed it all, and after thirty days, I felt things start to turn around. Then he brought up Sarah.

Sarah

“I brought you an apple this time, Raine.” Yes, I was talking to the horse. I liked her. She didn’t talk back. She didn’t accuse me of wallowing or not being myself. She didn’t remind me that I lost my dream career in my dream city with a man who could have been the love of my life. She also didn’t care how I wore my hair when my head hurt, which it did today.

It rained today, so the headache was worse than normal. It was how it always went. My mother fed me pain pills like candy when the weather forecast called for rain. Daddy had already watched the weather daily for the farm. Now they watch if for me, too.

I wasn’t an invalid. I could have gone back to school. I could have moved out, but I didn’t see the point. My mind told me that depression after trauma was common, but I couldn’t find a way to dig myself out of it. This time it was too much. Every time I gave my heart to a guy, he gave it back. Sure, I wallowed for a bit after each breakup, but this was different. I didn’t give my heart to Michael. He stole it, and damn him, he still hadn’t given it back.

I was functioning. I had good days and bad days, like everyone else, but it still seemed that the only one to understand me was Raine, the horse.

“I didn’t leave a message,” I told her. “I heard from Lana. I chickened out from asking about him, though, so I still don’t know. She and Tony are still dating. She sounded really happy when she told me that Tony had moved into our apartment with her. New York real estate’s a killer, Raine. Even if I wanted to move back, I wouldn’t have anywhere to live.”

Raine whinnied like she was telling me something. I pulled a carrot out of my back pocket. I carried those around like some people carried their wallets these days.

“Yeah, girl. I know. I’m not leaving you. I was only thinking. I miss the pulse of the city. Everyone is always in a hurry. It was exciting.”

Raine rubbed her nose against my palm looking for more food. “No more,” I told her causing her to huff indignantly.

“I miss him, you know.” I rubbed her head and scratched the top of her snout, just the way she liked it. “He had this way about him, such power and grace, but with sex appeal and a sense of humor. He was smart, too. He can build anything and tell you everything about cars. All he wanted to be was a hero, and somehow he didn’t realize he already was one.”

Raine kicked her leg a couple of times then turned to the back of her stall.

“Good talk, Raine. Thanks for listening.”

Michael

“Why do you feel you can’t have what you believe Phil and Amy have?”

“Because I don’t know how to do that.”

“What were your parents like, Michael?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were they affectionate?”

“I guess. My mom gave me a hug every morning before school until I told her it wasn’t cool anymore. Kids were mean, and I wasn’t about to get made fun of for hugging my mom.”

Dr. Reed laughed. “Typical adolescent boy. What about how they were with each other? Did you perceive a loving relationship between your mother and father?”

“Yeah. My mom did whatever my father wanted. They were on a strict schedule. My father arrived home from work at five thirty every day. My mother had dinner on the table by six, and we all ate as a family until my sister went to college. We kept up the routine with just the three of us until I started playing sports in high school. I think my parents stuck with the routine alone after that. Even after I quit sports, I was rarely home for dinner.”

“What about that makes you believe they loved each other?”

I thought about it. My father didn’t show affection. Where I couldn’t keep my hands off Sarah, I never saw my father touch my mother in a loving way. They obviously did touch at some point. They had two kids, but I wasn’t going to think too much about that.

“I don’t know,” I finally admitted.

“I think your reluctance to start a committed, romantic relationship stems from two things. The first is your insecurities about your night terrors and blackouts, which we have aggressively addressed over the past thirty days. The other is the fear of the unknown. Your feelings for Sarah are new to you. You didn’t grow up in that kind of household, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means you don’t know what to expect. You don’t prioritize traditional gender roles like your father might, and you don’t exactly respect his opinion on most things, do you?”

I couldn’t believe it. From that little that I shared, Dr. Reed understood my relationship with my father better than Phil did. Like I said, this guy was good.

It was that particular conversation and the several ones following that had me in the car on the two hour-long drive to a house I had been avoiding for nearly ten years. I pulled on the street in front and stared at the place. A white four-door Cadillac CTS sat in the driveway of a house that hadn’t so much as changed the color of the shutters since I left. A small metal sign by the front steps still read “Pearson” with the numbers to the address.

With one final deep breath, I climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. I heard movement but kept my eyes down. The door opened, and I heard her gasp. “Michael.”

Without fear, I looked up into the familiar eyes that looked older and now glassy. “Hi, Mom.”