Page 92 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

But she’s not here.

An hour of panic feels like a lifetime, and before my very eyes, the dream of escaping grows smaller and smaller. Something bad must have happened. What if she got in an accident? What if she’s sick?

But there’s a worse reason pushing its way forward: What if she truly believed I wasn’t coming?

A flash of headlights blinds me, and my heart jumps as I think maybe it’s her, that maybe she got a ride. But then my stomach turns to lead as my parent’s car pulls up in front of me.

“Keith,” my mother calls through the passenger window. “Get in the car.”

I cross my arms and shake my head. “No.”

“Keith, get in the car,” my father yells.

Does he not understand that it won’t work? I’m not afraid of them anymore. The thought of that tiny life growing in the woman I love gives me more strength than I ever thought possible.

“I’m leaving with Dusty,” I say. “And we’re never coming back.”

To my surprise, they don’t yell anymore, in fact, they look . . . sad. Is it possible that my leaving has finally prompted them to be loving parents? The engine shuts off and my mother opens her door.

“Come home, dear. She’s not coming.”

I back away, fighting against the dread of the past hour. “No! No, she’s coming. I was late but she knows I’d never leave her . . . she’ll be here.”

“Darling . . .” my mother says in a voice I’ve never heard before. Then she holds out a white envelope to me and my heart thuds in my chest. “She dropped this off at the house for you.”

The envelope isn’t sealed, and for one horrible moment I realize my parents know all my darkest secrets, but they’re here anyway to bring me home. To bring me this. I snatch it from my mother’s hand, pausing at its weight. I upturn the envelope and something small tumbles out onto my palm.

The guitar string ring I made her.

The ring I gave her with the promise to love her forever.

The ring she returned because she couldn’t accept that promise.

And as it sits heavy in my hand, it’s as if the weight of the world collapses on top of me. The envelope shakes in my hands and my vision blurs—so obscured by tears that I can’t see. I cry, like a newborn baby, sobbing at the bus station, until my mother’s arms wrap around me. I take a breath, hanging on to her, and squeeze her tight, as though she’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.

She strokes my hair and shushes me, her voice unnaturally gentle. “Come on, dearest. Come home.”

And because I don’t know what else to do, I nod and get in the back seat while my father grabs my bags and tosses them in the trunk.

The car ride home is silent. My brain is whirring, throbbing against my temples. There is nothing but pain in my chest. My lungs. Every square inch of me. As if my heart has shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. I thought she wanted me. I thought we were going to be a family. And the baby . . . But she had doubts. Didn’t I hear it in her voice over the phone two nights ago? She wasn’t sure. She tried to talk me out of it. Was I more ready than her? I thought she loved me. Loved us. But maybe I’ve just ignored a truth that’s been there all along and I chose never to see. That I always loved her more. It’s why she never stayed. Why she didn’t fight to be with me.

She loves me less.

She loves me only a little.

She doesn’t love me at all.

Tears spill down my cheeks so intensely that I barely register the black van in the driveway when we get home. Nor do I notice the men in white uniforms that approach me until they’ve grasped my arms so tight I instinctively try to fight them off. I frantically look to my parents, to my brother’s horrified face as he watches from his bedroom window upstairs.

“Mom! Dad!” I cry out.

But they simply stand and watch as I’m dragged into the back of the windowless van.

“It’s for your own good, dear,” my mother says.

Their faces have lost the compassion I saw fleetingly at the bus station. It was all an act, and I was stupid enough to fall for it. Apparently, everyone in my life is an award-winning actor. My parents. Dusty. How could I have been so stupid not to see through it all?

The doors of the van slam shut, then everything is black. I hardly care what happens to me anymore. This van could take me to my death and I would welcome it, because she left me behind again.

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