“Yes, it does,” I replied, voice shaking as I wiped my tears away.
“Well, then, you have your answer.”
I followed him as he walked down the hall to Jayden’s room, and then Gracie’s. He stayed in each room for at least five minutes, watching them sleep, his hand gently supporting them as he pressed a kiss to their foreheads.
He was a good father. I knew that.
“Have you ever thought about what will happen to them if you’re killed?” He knew exactly what I was referring to. “What would happen to them . . . and me?”
“No. I can’t.” We walked into our room. His eyes went to the mountain of tear-soaked tissues next to my nightstand. Tears he knew were for him, for us, for this.
Ignoring what he saw, he took off his shirt and jeans and got in bed. He faced the wall. I faced the window.
The truth was, Jace was lying. He’d thought about what would happen if it had been him on that ship, or any other fire. He knew the dangers.
Every day when I woke up, I told myself that I would change this shit and tell Jace how I felt. How I wished he would just talk to me. And every day I when went to bed, it was still the same, and I was left with nothing but my own guilt because I’d had the chance to change it and didn’t.
Some people didn’t have that luxury any longer.
At times like this, when you’re fighting for control and for something you know deep in your bones is worth fighting for, so much doesn’t get said and never will.
I have these moments where I know everything will be fine, but then there are the times when I’m not so sure. I see it for what it is, and maybe believing everything will be fine is different from actually knowing, or it being true.
Why is that?
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Taking a deep breath, and then another, I gained the courage I needed to speak in the darkness, where I couldn’t see his eyes. “What are we doing?”
“What are we doing?” His tensed tone let me know he didn’t want to talk about this. He never wanted to talk about it. And as always, he was very much in control of the conversation and could twist it the way he wanted. “That’s really a question you want me to answer?” I felt the bed dip as he rolled over to face me. I did the same. Maybe in the darkness, we could do this. “It’s a bullshit question, yes?”
It made me want to push, pry, and find out more. Why did he think it was a bullshit question?
Why did he do this to me? Why there was so much that never got said when so much
needed
to be said?
And then he surprised me.
“I don’t want to lose you.” His voice was barely above a whisper, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted me to hear him.
“I don’t want that, either.”
“Then give me some time.”
Sunday, December 16, 2012
J
ACE AND
I said no more to each other that night.
You’re not surprised by that, are you?
Since Logan’s death, Jace had shut down, that was evident. Everything had gone to shit. Honestly, I had shut down, too.
Gracie was acting out, throwing fits every time I turned around. Jayden was going through this phase where he peed on everything. And I mean
everything
. It was as if he was marking his territory, and I couldn’t keep a diaper on him.
Drove me fucking nuts.
But because Jace had literally shut down, I was left to deal with it on my own. Every time he left me on my own to deal with this, he took a piece of my heart. We were supposed to be in this together, and right now we weren’t.
At some point I started to ask myself how much more he could take before there was nothing left.
Sunday morning Jace went into work for an eight-hour shift. I intended on hanging out with Lauren and Kari, since Judie had graciously said she wanted to take the kids to the Hands-on Museum and then keep them overnight.
I was all for that.
With some time to myself, how did I use it?
Well, I cleaned the house, did laundry, and went to the grocery store. Then I had time to think when Jace sent a text saying he’d be home late.
You wanna know where all that curiosity got me?
Stalking Jace.
And by “stalking” I mean scaling the side of a building and nearly getting arrested.
When Jace didn’t answer his phone that night, I went to the one place I knew he’d be. At Brooke’s.
This was where I decided to complicate things further.
After dropping the kids off with Judie, I picked up Kari. She thought we were going to dinner. She was wrong.
“Will you help me with something tonight?” If you could have seen my face, you probably would have laughed at me. In that moment, I was thankful for wearing deodorant.
“That depends.” She gave me a confused look and then shrugged.
“You might get arrested.”
“Count me in, then.”
That part was easy. Convincing Kari to do anything illegal was easy because she had this obsession with
wanting
to be arrested.
Then I picked up Lauren. She was outside, with the neighbor she stalked, arguing about something I couldn’t quite hear.
When she got in, she all but slammed the door. “Can you believe he thinks I
work
this corner?”
Kari smiled. “You mean as in—”
Lauren didn’t let Kari finish. “Yep.”
“How do you feel about that?” I asked her, watching her neighbor depart. “He thinks you’re a hooker.”
“Not good.” Lauren laughed.
“Yeah?”
“Pretty shameful actually.” And then she broke down into a pout, her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m a horrible mother.”
“No, you’re not.” I didn’t need Lauren breaking down tonight. I had a plan, and damn it, she owed me from Thanksgiving.
“I wouldn’t leave my kids with her if I were you, Aubrey.”
I’d turned to glare at Kari when Lauren reached around and smacked her upside the head. “I have a problem here. Help.”
“You have many problems.”
“Let’s just focus on one here.” Lauren turned back around to put her seatbelt on. “I’m turning into our mother.”
“There’s rehab for that.” Kari wasn’t helping. But she had a point. Lauren, despite what you might think, knew she had a problem. It was sitting in her lap. At some point I knew she would see what it was, but not tonight. I wasn’t about to get into that.
As we drove, I thought about my plan.
I wish I could slap myself sometimes before I do shit. I really do. Then maybe I would knock some sense into myself before I did things like this.
The more Lauren yelled into the back seat at Kari, the more I smelled alcohol. “Have you been drinking?”
She handed me Jayden’s sippy cup from the back seat. “Nobody’s stopping you from doing it.”
“Do you really put booze in Gavin’s cups?” I pulled into traffic on Washington Street and tried not to run over the hobos who thought they owned the goddamn road. “I thought Axe was joking about that.”
“Don’t judge. Single mother here with daddy issues.”
“You’ve never met your dad,” Kari had to add.
“Which is why I have daddy issues,” she pointed out. “Back to your problems, Aubrey. Where is Jace, and why are we stalking him?”
“No one said anything about stalking.” Kari suddenly seemed extremely excited. “Are you serious, is that what we’re doing?”
“I think he’s at Brooke’s house.” Some dude in a Nissan cut me off and I almost rear-ended him. “Goddamn stupid fucking drivers!”
“Yet another reason I use them. Spill proof.” Lauren smiled when she caught the sippy cup she was using. “So we’re going to Brooke’s house, then?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so lost right now.” Kari wasn’t great at keeping up with conversations. She was easily distracted.
I looked at Lauren. “I’m about to make you feel a whole lot better about your life.”
“Doubt that.” She knew exactly what I was referring to.
“Why would Jace being at Brooke’s house be a big deal?” Now that Kari had voiced this question, I almost backed out.
“Aubrey has gone crazy and thinks he’s cheating on her,” Lauren informed her.
I should have gone alone. It would have been easier.
“I didn’t say that. I just want to . . . I don’t know.” This sounded even worse when I tried to explain it. “It’s been a couple weeks since Logan died . . . and nearly every day since the funeral Jace has been over there. Which I get. I do. I know deep down it’s just him being there for her, but he’s not talking to me and I just . . . ” My words drifted.
I sound pathetic. I really do.
“You just want to see for yourself,” Kari finished, our eyes meeting in the review mirror.
“Yes.”
“Cool.” Lauren clapped her hands together. “Now that we have that settled, stop by McDonalds.”
“Jesus . . . ” When you went anywhere with Lauren, she demanded certain things. Like McDonalds. I was getting impatient.
“Hey, you want me to help you . . . in turn, you’ll feed me.”
Kari popped her head forward. “I could eat.”
I drove twenty minutes around downtown, caught every stoplight, and managed to get Lauren and Kari their food. Which, by the way, could have fed the entire firehouse.
“Where do you put all that food?” I asked Lauren. I could tell by the way Kari was watching her that she had the same question.
“My ass,” Lauren said, shoving a handful of fries in her mouth, and then taking a swig from her sippy cup.
“How do you stay so skinny with those eating habits and all the alcohol you drink?”
“Cigarettes and Red Bull.”
Seemed logical. To her anyway.
Another dozen stoplights, and we found ourselves outside Brooke’s condo. And there was Jace’s truck parked on the street. My heart hurt that he could talk to her, but not me.
“What do you think he’s doing in there?”
“Probably fucking her.” Of course Kari would say that.
“Kari!” I slapped at her.
“What?” She moved away, laughing, “I was joking.” She smiled. “Kind of.”
If I had binoculars, I would have known, but I didn’t. Just I was thinking about going up there with maybe some lame-ass excuse that I’d just come by to check on Brooke, Lauren got out of my car and started climbing up a tower crane across the street next to another set of unfinished condos.
Brooke’s condo was on the fourth floor, and that seemed very dangerous to me.
Lauren had a thing with climbing. Always had. And up she went.
“Get down here!” My order fell on deaf ears. I doubted she could even hear me. Between the traffic and the steady mist of rain, she couldn’t hear a damn thing up there.
I looked over at Kari next to me. She shook her head as she leaned against a parking meter, her arms propped up and toying with the ends of her hair. “She’s going to fall from that thing and break her neck.” She peered over at me. “How will you explain that?”
“Me?” Kari rolled her eyes as I spoke, completely ignoring me. “You’re here, too.”
Reaching inside the pocket of her hoodie, she pulled out my keys and dangled them in my face. “I have the getaway car . . . butt crack. You suck at this.”
“I should have never invited you.”
“Aubrey?” Lauren yelled out, but it was more like a distant plea. I thought for sure she would slip on the metal and come crashing down, but she was like a baby monkey up there.
“Well” — Kari pointed at Lauren — “She may be turning out just like your mom, but at least she has a career at the zoo if prostitution and rehab don’t work out for her.”
Lauren asked me something, but I couldn’t hear her. Looking around, I could see the lights in Brooke’s condo were on. What if they could see Lauren?
Fuck. This is awful.
“I don’t see why we don’t just go knock on the door.” Kari, still using a parking meter as her perch, was watching a homeless man across the street who seemed to be looking at Lauren on the tower crane like she was Wonder Woman. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
Yes
.
“No.” I refused to admit failure. “It wouldn’t.”
Sure, it would have been easier in one sense, but then Jace would know I was checking up on him.
For a good two minutes Lauren yelled at Kari and me as if we knew what she was saying.
“I wonder when she’s going to figure out that we can’t actually hear her?” Kari pulled her hood over her head. “She should stop drinking. It’s killing all her brain cells.”
I kept glancing up at the condo and my sister dangling from a tower crane. The realization that I was damn near thirty and stalking someone like some kind of jealous high school girl wasn’t lost on me.
In fact, it was all I could think about.
“Come on, Lauren! Let’s go!”
She must have heard that, because she started to come back down. And I might add here that a police car had pulled over two blocks up and was getting out of his car. He had to have seen us.
Kari smiled. “This could get interesting.”
When he began to walk toward us, that’s was when I really started to panic. Kari was completely calm. Even waved at him.
“Lauren, hurry!”
Don’t think I wouldn’t have left her if it came down to it. She chose to climb that damn thing. That was her problem.
Nice, Aubrey. Leave your sister.
Just as I was about to run away, Lauren was nearly down. About ten feet from getting off that yellow monstrosity, she slipped and nailed her chin.
I thought for sure we were heading to the hospital.
“Son of a bitch!” she cried out, but she obviously knew if her drunk ass didn’t want to go to jail for climbing a tower crane, we had to get out of here.
Every time I looked up, the officer was closer and Kari was getting giddy, rolling from her heels to her tippy toes, ready to run.
Once Lauren was down, bleeding from her chin, she took off running up the street and down an alley.
“Where are you going?” All three of us were running now, laughing out of fear and panting. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we gained any ground or made ourselves less obvious about what we were doing here, but at least we managed to blend into the alley.
That was when I face-planted, driving my face into the pavement, and now we were both bleeding.