Searching for Neverland (43 page)

“Caleb, they’re getting you,” Savannah cried out, as the zombies descended on Caleb’s character.

“Tell me that was the sound of you killing zombies,” I said quietly, and he shook his head. “Stay here.”

I was out of the room before I could even think it was a rational idea. My mind was only focused on one thing, and that was Josh. Had Carlie shot him? I prayed that she’d just fired a warning shot. She’d better not have hurt him.

Another shot rang out, and the panic almost overtook me.

As I tore down the stairs, my heart was racing out of my chest. Not Josh. She couldn’t hurt Josh.

I rounded the bottom of the stairs into the living room and came face-to-face with what looked like a murder scene in the front hall. Blood and chunks of something else were splattered all over the walls and the front door. My hand instantly covered my mouth, and I couldn’t help crying out.

Josh was on the floor, his chest slumped forward, his h
ead resting on his knees. Beyond
him was Carlie, her body splayed out against the wall by the front door, the gun lying by her open hand on the tile floor.

Josh looked up at the sound of my voice, his eyes red-rimmed, and my heart started beating again. He had blood on his face and chest, but he was alive.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, as I rushed to his side, the smell of blood nearly overwhelming me.

I’d heard two shots, and from the blood seeping out of the side of Carlie’s head and the direction of the splatter, it seemed one shot had been aimed at her. And it appeared self-inflicted, but where had the other one landed? In Josh?

I almost couldn’t breathe.

Josh shook his head. “I tried to stop her,” he croaked, as the tears streamed down his face. “She wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t get her to listen.”

“Are you hurt? Did she hurt you?”

“No,” he croaked out, and I let out a huge sigh.

“It’s okay, Josh,” I said, taking him in my arms and holding his head against my chest. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay, but what else was I supposed to tell him in that moment, as one of his oldest friends lay dead a few feet away
, having committed suicide in front of him
. There weren’t words for something like that, especially because I knew Josh blamed himself.
I could just tell.

“Taylor?” Caleb called from the top of the stairs. “Is everything okay?”

I froze. I could not let him or his sister see the carnage downstairs. “Everything is fine, Caleb, but I need you to stay with your sister right now, okay. Stay in the room. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I assured him.

“You’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Is Josh okay?”

“I’m fine, Cale,” Josh called out weakly.

“Josh is fine, buddy,” I told him.

“Okay.”

I realized then that he hadn’t asked about his mother, and some part of him must have known she’d taken her own life. It broke my heart to finally understand the burden Caleb had been carrying around for years, knowing his mother was sick, trying to diffuse her irrational behavior, and doing what he could to be strong for her and his sister. I doubted Savannah would ever
truly
understand how her mother could have done what she did, because she was always shielded from Carlie’s true nature. Caleb had made sure of that.

A pound
ing on the door pulled both my
and Josh’s attention toward it.

“That’s the police,” I confirmed, and he nodded.

“I’ll let them in. Go upstairs with the kids,” he commanded, taking charge.

I nodded, releasing my arms from around him. He slowly pushed himself to his feet, and I took stock in him, making sure he didn’t have any injuries. It appeared like the blood on him was all Carlie’s.

The police pounded on the door one more time. “Police. Open the door.”

I left the room just as Josh was opening the door to
them with his hands in the air
in a non-threatening way.

“Keep your hands up, son,” the officer said as he and his partner moved into the house. “O
h
shit.”

I knew then he’d seen Carlie’s body
. It was q
uite an
image – one I
knew I’d never get out of my head. I must have been in shock at that point, though, because all I could think about was getting to the kids. The fact that blood and skin and brains were splattered all over our house didn’t register. The fact that someone had committed suicide didn’t seem real, and my own feelings toward the situation didn’t matter. It was Caleb and Savannah who I was worried about.

Caleb met me outside of his and Savannah’s room.

“Van’s asleep,” he said, as soon as he saw me

Then he burst into tears, so I ushered him into my and Josh’s room and wrapped my arms around him as soon as the door was closed. He fell against me, sobbing and gasping, as he let out everything he hadn’t let himself feel for so long. My eyes filled with tears for the little boy who’d probably done everything he could in a vain attempt to help his mother overcome something that was bigger than he could have ever imagined.

“She killed herself, didn’t she,” he said after a few minutes.

“Yes,” I told him quietly, knowing it would do no good to sugarcoat anything.

“I always wondered when it would happen.”

I pulled back and looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?”

Caleb wiped his eyes and went to sit on the edge of our bed. “She always said she was going to kill herself,” he said, shaking his head. “She’d say things like ‘If anything ever happens to you or Savannah, I’ll kill myself’ or ‘If you ever leave me, Caleb, I’ll kill myself, I swear it’. She said it all the time, and I just knew it was going to happen one day.”

I sat
down next to him. “Cale, you know when people say that they’re just exaggerating. Your mom loved you and Savannah so much, and she didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

He shook his head. “No, it was more than that. Whenever she said it, she had this look in her eyes, and I just knew she was serious.”

I put my arm around him and pulled him close. “She was sick, Caleb,” I said, knowing it didn’t help things any.

He nodded against my chest. “I know. I wish I could have helped her. Maybe I didn’t love her enough.”

Oh, I equally loved and hated how his ten year-old mind worked. He was such a sweet kid, and it completely broke my heart.

“No, Caleb. Don’t ever think that. You loved her
so
much, and she knew it. I don’t think anything could have helped your mom. She was
really
sick.”

He nodded, but I knew it would take him a long time to realize I was right. This was all too much for a kid to digest, and I hated that he had to deal with it at all. He’d already had to deal with losing one parent.

Caleb looked up at me, and I could see hope mixed with something else in his eyes that I realized was fear. “I think I want to see her. I want to say goodbye.”

Flashes of the
police and the
horror movie scene downstairs flashed in my head, and I shook it vigorously. I would not let him go downstairs. No way.

“No, Cale. You can’t, but we’ll have a funeral for her, and you’ll get to say goodbye then.”

His shoulders slumped. “I guess she’s not really in there anymore. Do you think my mom’s in heaven?”

I nodded, having no idea if I was right or not, seeing as our family had never really been religious, and I was even less familiar with
The Bible’s
stance on suicide, but I truly hoped Carlie was in a better place now.

“Yes, I think she is.”

“Do you think she’s with my dad?” he asked hopefully.

I smiled. “Yeah, buddy, I do. I think she’s with your dad.”

He nodded. “Then she’ll be okay. He’ll take care of her.”

God, my heart was literally breaking into pieces.

“What will happen to Savannah and me now?”

“You’ll stay here,” I answered automatically, having no idea if that was even feasible. We weren’t their family, but it seemed like the most comforting answer in the moment. I was sure we’d deal with the legal stuff later, but it wasn’t important just then.

“Okay.”

A knock on the door caused us both to look up. Josh stuck his head in the door and Caleb launched his body into Josh’s arms and started crying again.

“I know. I know,” he said, as he stroked Caleb’s back and let him cry. Then he looked up at me. “They want to talk to you.”

I nodded and headed downstairs to talk to the police.

Before I got to the top of the stairs, Josh called out to me, and I turned around. “I’ll call Brad in a few minutes and let him know we won’t be in tonight.”

I just nodded, having completely forgotten about the party we were hos
ting that night at the bar. Things
had shifted so rapidly that my brain wasn’t even acknowledging more than what was going on in front of me and how I could shield the kids from it all.

“Thank you. I love you,” I said softly, but in that moment I realized how lucky I was that he was even standing in front of me.

The reality of what could have happened had started to hit home, and I knew just how close I’d come to losing him. I also knew that based on how I was feeling, that would have destroyed me, and what I felt for him ran so incredibly deep – deeper than I think I ever realized.

He smiled a small smile and mouthed, “I love you, too.”

Chapter 27

“Where are we?” a sleepy Savannah asked as soon as I pulled into my parents’ driveway.

She’d been asleep for a few hours, and I’d made Caleb stay with her while J
osh and I talked to the police and
they did their examination of the potential crime scene and called the coroner in.

The whole time we were downstairs, I noticed neither Josh nor I faced the direction of the front hall or looked over at what the police officers were doing. It was not like watching CSI, and what took minutes on that show, took hours as they pieced everything together just to be sure Carlie’s fatal injury had been self-inflicted.

I’d never been interrogated by the police before, and I was suddenly afraid of blurting out something incriminating, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. The whole process was unsettling in more ways than one. Josh held my hand, and I tried not to think about the fact that
there was a dead body
in my house, and we now had two orphan kids upstairs, and we had to tell one of them that her mother was never coming back. Inside, I was starting to freak out.

How in the hell did I get here?
Was the burning question that rotated over and over again in my mind. My life had overnight turned into a made-for-TV movie.

“We’re at my Mommy and Daddy’s house,” I explained to Savannah.

Caleb, who was sitting next to me in the front seat, turned around to look at her. “Van, you remember Tanner, right?” Savannah nodded. “This is his house. We’re going to get to play with him.”

I noticed how he diverted her attention to things she was comfortable with. She loved Tanner. I should have gone that route, but I was like a fish out of water, and the whole night was finally starting sink in, and I was in serious danger of losing it in front of the kids.

“Where’s Mommy?” Savannah croaked, her voice scratchy.

“Mommy’s not here right now,” Caleb explained, in the strongest voice I’d ever heard on a ten year-old. The kid was a rock when he needed to be. “We’re going to spend some time with Josh and Taylor again.”

“O-thay,” Savannah said, as she stuck her thumb back into her mouth.

I practically collapsed into my mother’s arms as soon as I saw her. I dropped the three backpacks I was carrying – one for Savannah’s clothes, one for her school things, and one for my things to stay overnight. Josh would be there in an hour or so after he finished dealing with everything
still
going on at the house. I had no idea how we’d handle cleaning up the mess in the front hall, but I guessed we’d figure it out.

I’d called my mother, not sure where else we could go since we couldn’t stay in the house, and all my other friends lived in one-bedroom apartments or had roommates, including Josh’s mother who had moved to a condo on St. Pete Beach after his father passed away. My mother was more than happy to welcome us into her five-bedroom house that had more empty rooms than ever since Trey had moved out.

“Thank you,” I said, as I hugged her tight. In that moment, I really needed a hug and the comfort only my mother could provide.

“We’ll talk later,” she whispered in my ear before she pulled back from me and knelt down to be eye-level with the kids. “You must be Caleb and Savannah. I have heard so much about you from Taylor and Tanner.”