The Righteous and The Wicked (32 page)

Danielle waits for Emma in the parking lot of St. Simon’s. Knowing that Aaron still lingers, she wants to speak to Emma alone. Emma exits the building burdened by a tote bag stuffed with papers. She looks lost, disheveled. Her shoulders are slumped. Danielle can’t stand to see her in this much agony.

“Emma!”

Emma’s head snaps up and a small smile of recognition floats across her face.

“Hi, Danni. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you, do you have a minute?”

Emma gets in the passenger seat of Danni’s car and lets out a heavy sigh. “Eric’s gone.”

“I know. Sean told me.”

Her head perks up. “Has Eric called him? I tried to call him a hundred times, but his phone is disconnected.”

“He called right after he left. He said he needed to leave and that he left you a letter.”

Emma looks confused. “I didn’t get any letter from him. He just left me, Danni.” Her voice cracks and she sobs. “And Aaron is back. He said one of my friends called him and told him I needed him.”

“Well, that has to be bullshit. I didn’t call him and you know Abby wouldn’t either. Listen, Emma, I found something on the night of the party. When Eric ran out, I chased after him, and he dropped this.” She hands Emma the beaten box.

Danielle watches her face as she reads and fondles the key. Emma doesn’t react the way Danni expects. She crumples the note and grips the key.

“Why? Why would he say these things and then disappear? I feel so empty. So lost.” She begins to cry and covers her face with her hands.

“I think he left because he was ashamed. I’m sure he’ll come back.”

Emma unleashes fury on Danielle. “What makes you think that? Just because your life is perfect doesn’t mean everyone else’s will be. It’s fucking over, Danni. He’s gone. And my stubborn, almost ex-husband is my roommate. My life is a joke.”

“Your life is not a joke. Aren’t you always telling me that things happen for a reason? Even if we don’t see why at first, it will all become clear when the time is right?”

Emma wipes her tear-streaked cheeks. “I just don’t believe that anymore.” She grips the key until it digs into her palm, until it hurts.

“I know that you’ve had promises broken and I’m sorry you’re hurt, but you have a choice—you can sit in the bottom of the ditch and wait for someone to throw you a ladder, or you can climb out by yourself. What’s it going to be, Emma?”

Emma stands beside Aaron, washing dishes after dinner. Her eyes are glued on the path. She runs the dishtowel over each dish Aaron hands her and places it back in the cupboard like a mindless zombie.

Aaron looks at her out of the corner of his eye. He thought she would snap out of it, but it’s been almost a month, and there’s no change in her. She has lost weight and all she ever wants to do is sleep. He may have mistreated her, but he does love her and it’s killing him to see her this way.

“Let’s take a walk,” he says.

Emma doesn’t protest; she just follows him out of the house and down the street. They walk toward the bike trails and she stares at her feet.

Aaron stops. “Emma, look at me.”

She lifts her eyes to his. Aaron stares at her gaunt, pale face and the black circles beneath her eyes.

“I can’t take this anymore, baby. Please just let me in. Things were good with us for so long. Remember when we were just friends? What if we tried to be that way again? Please? Baby, can we at least just try?”

He reaches his hand out to her. She stares at him, considering what he said. She nods and takes his hand.

The silver trailer follows Eric’s Jeep like a shadow. Tired and hungry on an endless road, he’s a man without roots, without a home, yet not completely detached. For the first time ever, leaving a place hurt him.

Voices battle inside his head.

“
Go back to her.”

“
You need to do this alone. You can’t keep living with this burden.”

An invisible thread is connected to his heart. It pulls and stretches as he gets farther and farther away, but it doesn’t break and he doesn’t turn back.

When he wakes in his trailer, he has no idea where he is. It feels like a piece of him is missing. He sits up and gets his bearings. It’s better if he stays away, but he’s not sure he can do it. He leaves his tiny cage and walks through the streets of Toronto. He ambles down an alley lined with posters and flyers. One catches his eye
.

Dr. Michelle Daryn, Recovery Specialist.

He tears it down from the paper-covered wall and he is no longer aimless.

Weeks later, Eric has done nothing but eat, sleep, and go to his therapy appointments. It feels like bullshit. It
felt
like bullshit, but now it’s making sense. He sits on the couch and fidgets. His leg bounces from nerves as he waits for her. She’s in a conservative dress and with good reason. She doesn’t tempt his heart, because his heart belongs to Emma. Dr. Daryn tempts his darkness.

She’s hot, sexy, and smart. Eric has to fight against his impulses at every appointment, but she’s helping him in a way a man never could. His addiction is right there, out in the open, every time he’s here. Every day he is getting stronger.

He’s learned that he’s in control of his impulses and not the other way around. Whether they are sexual or violent, Eric can
choose
to indulge them. Dr. Daryn has helped Eric to see he is the master of his behavior. She’s making his life make sense.

“How have things been?” She sits in her armchair, peering over her glasses, her clipboard placed in her lap.

Eric leans back, exasperated. “I miss her. That’s how I’ve been.”

“Then why don’t you go back? You’ve made a lot of progress here. Why don’t you return to her?”

“You know why I can’t go back. She deserves happiness. She doesn’t need my poison.” Eric drags his hands over his face.

“Do you think that Emma thinks you’re poisonous?”

“I don’t know. Probably not . . . she told me she loves me.” Eric remembers her voice, and her smile, and her lips. He gets lost in his thoughts for a minute.

“And
you
love her.”

“Yes. So much. I let her in . . . she let me in . . .” He tries to think of the right words to explain the bond he feels to her.

He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “When you show someone a piece of your pain, you share it with them. They take it and keep it with them, and it’s as if a part of you is theirs forever. I’ll never feel whole without her.”

“Well, part of loving someone is loving
all
of them—good and bad. You love
all
of Emma. What makes you think she doesn’t love all of you? You’re trying to protect her, but from what you’ve told me, she doesn’t seem to
want
protection. She wants you.”

He wishes this were true. He wants to give in and go back, but his shame won’t let him. “That doesn’t make it right.”

“Who says love is right? You resisted Deborah and haven’t been with any other women. You haven’t given in to your addiction since you committed to Emma. You haven’t had a violent outburst. You need to try to let yourself be happy, even if you think you don’t deserve it.” She leans forward in her chair, forcing Eric to look her in the eye.

“Eric, you
deserve
happiness. You are worthy.”

Another night without her. Restless, he tosses and turns. Sleep has been a stranger and the empty side of the bed taunts him. His heart wants to fill it with Emma. His demon would fill it with a victim but Eric’s strength and resolve to be better overshadow those impulses. Still, he can’t sleep.

Thoughts of the house he built plague his mind. He sees it standing empty beside Emma’s. A constant reminder of his absence. Breaking her heart every day. He feels helpless. He left a skeleton for her and the decent thing to do would be to get rid of it.

He looks out the window of his trailer at the rising sun. Dreams of returning to her fade further from him with each day that passes. Dead dreams are not new to him, but this one hurts more than the others have. The warmth from the faint light sinks into his skin. He closes his eyes, and it’s her face he sees, her eyes filled with hurt.

Though their future is uncertain, he’s not totally helpless. He can make some of her pain go away. He paces back and forth, struggling with hesitation and indecision, and then he picks up the phone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Emma drives home from work, approaching the street she once shared with Eric. Aaron’s friendship and company have been some comfort to her, but she’s had visions of never coming back to this place. She thinks of searching for Eric and presses her foot to the gas pedal of her old car, envisioning herself leaving with just the clothes on her back. Going from town to town until she finds him.

Instead, she slams the brakes and turns onto her lonely street. Every day she passes his empty wooden house, now becoming overgrown with late summer grass. Every time she drives by this once precious place, she holds her breath, like she’s passing a graveyard. She closes her eyes as if that will make the pain go away.

Today, she doesn’t hold her breath or close her eyes. She makes an abrupt turn down Eric’s old driveway. She’s going to use the damn key he gave her. She’s hoping for a sign—a clue about where he has gone. She takes her keys from the ignition and runs her thumb over the gift that Eric never got to give her. The key that has lived unused on her keychain for months.

She steps up to the front door of the house Eric built and, as she slides the key into the lock, she hears a sound. A car. A chill of hope runs through her blood. She doesn’t want to turn around, but she hears the car get closer.

It drives up behind her and stops.

Emma lets her hand drop, leaving the key still lodged in the lock of the unopened door. As she turns around, her face flushes and her hands shake. She remembers the person she sees. The blond woman getting out of the white car is the woman from the carnival.

“What do you want?” Emma demands.

Deborah doesn’t answer, but opens her trunk, and pulls out a long stake with a sign attached to it. The sign reads “For Sale”, and it’s as if that stake sinks into Emma’s battered heart.

“I’m here to put this house on the market. Eric decided to sell it.”