“It’s not a bad thing to look forward, Bailey, and stop looking back. I know this is hard for you. I also think it’ll be easier in the long run, happier even.”
“Well, since they’re disconnecting my electricity the Monday after next if I don’t pay the bill by then, and I haven’t a penny to pay them, I’m taking it as a sign from God that I’m supposed to be Memphis bound. ’Sides, it’s too damn hot in Arkansas in the middle of summer to go without electricity.”
Her mom chuckled. “So, Michelle is going to sell your furniture for you in her garage sale next month?”
“Yeah. The store has a delivery truck, so she’s going to send it over next weekend and have them move my furniture to their warehouse until next month. She keeps telling me she’s going to send me the money, and I keep telling her to keep it since she’s the one who gave me all the furniture anyway.”
“She’s a good friend to you, Bailey. I know you’re going to miss her.”
Bailey said nothing. She was choked up at nothing more than the thought. This place had been her home once upon a time too. She’d been a good student; she’d won a few awards in writing, and she’d been one hell of a swimming competitor too. People not only knew who she was, they knew her for the right reasons. People still knew her plenty well, and they also knew her for reasons she couldn’t run from. Her fall from grace had been ugly, and people had long memories in these parts. So, why was this so hard?
Part of her really did wish Darren had said good riddance. It would have helped. If she knew for sure she was doing the right thing for him, at the very least she could rely on that getting her through this decision, but he’d been so damn stoic. He held his emotions and opinions close to the chest around her in a way he never used to. He truly wasn’t her Darren anymore. He was a shell of the man she used to know, and this had to be the best thing for them both. It had to. She’d give him the distance he needed, and maybe someday he’d remember what an amazing man he could be. Maybe someday he could move past what had happened and find some shred of peace in his life. He deserved that.
Michelle arrived later with some old pictures of Jess, Michelle, and Bailey. They’d spent all their time together, and the only reason Michelle wasn’t with them on that fateful spring break was because her college’s spring break didn’t coordinate with theirs. There were more pictures than Bailey recalled having ever taken, and they pored over them for hours. They giggled, they laughed, and they cried. A lot. It was hard for Bailey to look at pictures of Jess’ vibrant eyes and then remember the dead ones she’d seen looking back at her in the wreckage of the car. It was hard to see so much life in her best friend’s image and know she was responsible for taking it away. At the same time, she couldn’t help but laugh at some of the pictures.
Jess had always been the star of a room. Bailey had been plenty popular too, but Jess was just the type who commanded attention. She was beautiful, but at the same time, she could be loud and brash, and she wasn’t afraid to make a fool of herself. That meant there were plenty of pictures of Jess being a complete and utter dumbass, and there was no way of looking at those and not laughing. By the end of the night, Bailey was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.
She woke the next morning, and Michelle was gone. She would be at the furniture store by now, and Bailey would be spending the day packing again. On the coffee table was a picture Michelle had left. It was of Bailey and Jess. They were suntanned and standing on the beach at the lake, but they weren’t wearing skimpy bikinis or trying to look like women. They might enjoy the attention they got when they did, but they also knew how to get dirty, and that was obviously what they’d been doing on this day.
Jess wore an old, tattered T-shirt with the arms cut off, and the front of the shirt was covered in mud. Her long, dark hair was tangled and held off her forehead by a bandana. Her arm was slung around Bailey’s shoulders and Bailey’s was likewise slung around Jess’. Bailey was wearing a black halter top, and she was covered in as much mud and sand as Jess was. She wore jogging pants that had been cut off into shorts, and her hair was up in a high, messy knot on the top of her head.
Bailey couldn’t remember the day for sure, but she knew they’d been out traipsing through the woods around the lake. They’d catch painted turtles before setting them loose after a while; they’d give the dead fish that washed up on the shore a proper burial by tossing their carcasses back into the water; they’d pretend they were in another world while they explored the thick and humid woods. And in the end, they’d show back up at the beach looking like two homeless beach bums, smelling of dead fish and lake water.
They’d no doubt been camping and boating during summer break, and Darren was most likely nearby laughing at their absurdity while he rolled his eyes. Their smiles were genuine and carefree. They weren’t posing to look good. They really didn’t give a shit if they did or not. They were just being young and fun. They had their whole lives ahead of them to be serious and grownup after all.
Four Years Before
“Honey, I have some bad news.” Her mother’s eyes were already tearing as she looked at Bailey through the glass. The tears were nothing new, but the announcement of bad news was. Bailey gritted her teeth and braced herself for it. She could do nothing else but wait for it. “Your dad is sick. Lung cancer.” Bailey’s face must have looked panicked because before she could respond, her mother rushed on. “He’s seeing an oncologist in Little Rock regularly, and he’s doing well. The chemo is taking a lot out of him, but we’re really hopeful, honey.”
Her mother had that nothing-can-get-me-down sound to her voice, and it terrified Bailey to no end. It was a contrived inflection, and she was trying to convince herself as much as she was Bailey. “Then why isn’t he here? You can only make this trip once every couple months, and he’s never missed yet. Why isn’t he here?”
Her mother didn’t respond right away. She looked like she was pleading with the world to open up and swallow her. Bailey understood. It couldn’t be easy to have this conversation through a glass window with your daughter who was sitting in jail and had been for over a year and would be for at least another four even if she behaved well. “Just a bit under the weather’s all. He’ll bounce back, baby. He’s a fighter. Don’t you worry ’bout your daddy. You know he wouldn’t want that.” Bailey nodded, but she was barely hearing her mother’s words.
Her ears were buzzing, and she knew there was so much to say, but she was failing to figure out what exactly. “Well . . . well . . . I mean . . . what are the doctors saying? Has it spread, how big is the tumor? How . . . well, I thought he’d quit smokin’. How . . . I just don’t understand.”
“Well, he smoked for years, and. . .” Her mother’s eyes flit away for a moment. “Well, he’s been smokin’ a bit more . . . lately.”
Bailey’s face fell. She could feel it in the slack muscles around her mouth. “You mean since his daughter was sent away to prison for ten years?”
Her mother didn’t even respond to that one. “Baby, the docs say he could have been sick for a while and no one knew. He smoked for years. You can’t blame—”
“Like hell I can’t.” And then she was crying. Living in a prison wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Hell, she didn’t mind the food, she didn’t mind the mattress, she didn’t even mind some of the other women there, but it was this. The helplessness of what this place did to a person. She was supposed to be with her family right now. They needed her, and she couldn’t be there. She deserved this type of punishment, but they sure as hell didn’t.
That was lesson number one she learned: your punishment is a far-reaching thing that destroys more lives than just your own. Her parents didn’t deserve this, Bailey did. She sat sobbing like a child as her mother tried to hold it together for her. That pathetic image of the loved one with their hand on the glass wasn’t just some overused cliché picture. It was Bailey’s life, and it was exactly what her mother was doing at the moment.
Her mother was standing bent over the table of the small booth she was sitting in with her hand pressed to the glass as though she could get to her daughter if she just pushed hard enough—as though she could send her support and love through the glass with just enough force. “Please, Bailey. You can’t think of that right now. He’s going to be fine. He really is. Stay strong, okay? Your daddy expects to see you when you get out, and he’s not going anywhere.”
Bailey stood, nodding her head. She told her mother she loved her and asked her to tell her dad too. Then she hung up and staggered away. The guard that escorted her from the visiting room didn’t bat an eye. She didn’t act as though a sobbing prisoner was anything at all to concern herself with. That’s all Bailey was. One of thousands of prisoners with a sob story. Hers was no better and no worse than any other. They didn’t give out awards for being the saddest creature in this place.
Bailey lay on her bed, and she stared at her ceiling. She spent a lot of time doing that. She knew every crack and crevice up there. She knew where a cobweb had made its home, and she watched it every day for signs of life. But there was no one home. Even the spiders were allowed to leave and move on from this place. Someday Bailey would too, but it would be many years from now. She couldn’t help but wonder what her life would look like then. Would she be happy again? Could she be happy again?
Now
It was a week after Bailey had told him she was leaving, and he was sitting in his car outside her home, staring at his steering wheel. He didn’t know how to do this, and he wasn’t even sure why he was doing it. But he was absolutely going to fucking do it.
He knocked, and he waited. He could hear her feet padding to the door, and his heart pounded. When she pulled the door open, he watched as her lips parted, and her chest instantly stilled as she held her breath.
“Stay.”
She stared as he spoke, dumbfounded.
“Don’t leave.”
She shook her head as though she could make sense of what he said if she could rattle her gears back into place. “What? Why?”
“I need you here!” His lips trembled as he spoke. “Because I know if you leave, then this is the place I’m going to be for the rest of my life.” His hands were trembling and his chest was tight. He felt as though he were breaking apart.
“Savoy?” She didn’t understand.
“No. This.” He shook his head in frustration. “This! Us. I need to deal with this. I have to, or . . . or I swear to God, it’s going to kill me.” He could feel his eyes tearing. “I hate you. I really and truly hate you.” He looked over her shoulder, seeking understanding that he just couldn’t wrap his head around. “But . . . I still . . . Stay. Convince me not to hate you because . . . because hating you is the end of me.”
She started crying then, and he stood forcing his diaphragm to work, trying to calm his emotions—the emotions that had been running rampant since he’d heard her say she was leaving and his heart had lodged in his throat. It made no sense at all. He’d been prepared to leave, and yet, hearing her say she was leaving was painful.
“Darren, I. . .” She was going to say no, and that damn panic hit again. He grabbed her, pushing her against the wall. She gripped his waist, and he groaned quietly. She had to stay. He meant every word of what he said. He could feel it in his core, though he couldn’t rationalize it to save his life.
He dropped his forehead to hers. He was so close to her, and it soothed him in a way he didn’t want to admit—in a way he recognized from another lifetime. “Please stay. Please.” He was almost whispering, but he could feel her head nodding even though he couldn’t see her. He relaxed for the first time in days, and he sighed. Her fingers were still gripping the sides of his waist, and he could feel their tension release as he relaxed, but she didn’t pull her hands away, and he was so infinitely glad she didn’t.
She held her place, and she let him keep her against the wall. It was far too intimate, but everything they did, even what they did in anger, seemed to feel intimate—always had. He needed to walk away, but he couldn’t. He also couldn’t give her more than this. He wanted to. He wanted to collapse against her, pull her into his arms, crumple to the floor with her in his lap, but he wasn’t lying when he said he hated her. Or maybe he was. He didn’t have a fucking clue anymore. He wanted to hate her. That much he knew. He wanted to hate her because it felt right, and it felt powerful even through the helplessness. But he was no longer sure he was capable of hating her.
He still couldn’t figure out why he needed her to stay, but the words he’d said to her were the God’s honest truth. He knew he had to deal with this if there was ever a hope for him. When he was planning on moving away, he was secure in the knowledge that she would be here in Savoy. He could find her when he needed to, when he was ready to. But her leaving, that was intolerable. She could disappear forever, and he wasn’t ready for that. It felt as though his very last chance at redemption and sanity was dissolving, and he just couldn’t handle that.
“What am I supposed to do here? My mom needs to go to Memphis, and I’m not going to ask her to stay. But I have nothing here.” Her voice cracked for a moment.
“I can’t help you with that. Your life is your own. What you do with it is too. Just don’t run away. That’s all I’m asking. I promise I won’t run, either.” She nodded. Her eyes were wide, terrified if he were guessing, and he didn’t quite know what that meant. Was she really afraid of him? Was she afraid of what would happen between them? If she was, then she wasn’t the only one. He was afraid too. There was something so incredibly tantalizing about her. To him, she’d always been the most captivating creature in the world. She still was.
“What does this mean for us?”
“Nothing.” He focused on her eyes, studying her reaction. He knew it hurt her feelings to hear him say it, but it was the truth. He didn’t know what to expect from any of this, and he certainly didn’t intend to make up and play nice with her.