Page 69 of Our Last Resort

“I said, I’ve got it.”

“Gabriel, it’s okay, it’s just a—”

But he really has, in fact, got it. Gabriel has gathered all the plastic pieces. He tries to fit them together. They resist his clumsy attempt, slip out of his hands and back onto the floor.

“Fuck it!”

Before I can try to help again, Gabriel has picked up the base of the charger and hurled it at the wall behind me.

I don’t move.

I’ve never known Gabriel to have a temper. Not with me. Even as kids, we knew how to disagree peacefully.

Well. Clearly, things have changed.

Or maybe they were never what I thought they were.

“I’m going to get some air,” Gabriel says through clenched teeth. “Don’t follow me.”

I wouldn’t dream of it.

No, seriously.

I let him go.

For the first time in twenty-three years, I truly let him go.

24Escalante, Utah

The Sixth Day

I turn off the bathroom faucet and sit on my bed.

Gabriel’s side of the suite is alive with his absence.

It’s too easy, in this moment, to believe that this is it. That he’ll never come back. That we’ll never make this right.

Too easy to believe that things only get worse from here. That this is the kind of moment my life inevitably serves up. That I am built for loneliness, for loss.

There are things I remember, in my worst moments. Whenever I’m having a bad day, or whenever I feel ashamed or embarrassed, there’s a movie my mind likes to play.

It’s made of memories. The kind I like to think I shoved into a mental trunk before locking it and throwing away the metaphorical key.

That image sounds healthy to me. A coping mechanism.

But.

My memories are not carefully organized. My mind is not a trunk.

It’s something more dangerous. With its nooks and crannies, its hidden labyrinths, my mind is a beehive.

A beehive like any other: Approach at your own risk. Poke your hand in, feel the heat of a thousand stings.

25The Only Town We Knew, Hudson Valley

Fifteen Years Ago

I didn’t realize until years later that this is how the story always ends.

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