Page 88 of Into the Mountains
“Anne, do you want to play a game with me?” Cammie comes from the hallway with a board game in hand. My heart lurches as I think about the last time that particular game was out of its box, the four of us sitting in the breakfast nook, taunting each other as the night went on. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at Ticket to Ride the same way again.
Distracted now, Mom looks toward Cammie and then the box she’s holding in her hands. I wish I would have thought to go grab it for her. Dad and I are still so new at all of this and she doesn’t get irritated very often. She gets confused, but never angry.
“You’ll have to teach me how to play. I’ve never played before.”
“Deal,” says Cammie and it’s as if nothing had taken place in the last ten minutes. Like Mom didn’t struggle with taking her medicine and she didn’t almost have a violent outburst. Back to whatever normal is for the Monroe household.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I already know who it is before checking it. Elias has that aura about him. He’s the type to call immediately and defend himself.
I don’t bother answering and send him straight to voicemail. For once I don’t feel guilty about it either. Usually I have the compulsive need to answer calls and texts as soon as I can to make sure I’m not needed in one way or another. I can’t do that anymore. My guilt is reserved for her at home, the sticky mixture has only grown throughout the night and I have a feeling there won’t ever be a way to shrink it back down. Not for a long time. This kind of guilt isn’t digestible.
And it only gets worse as Mom places a hand to her chest and starts to rub her palm back and forth as if she’s massaging it. Asif she’s in pain. Her face scrunches together and I look toward Cammie, who sees it too.
“Are you alright Anne?”
“No,” she answers as she continues to work her hand into her skin, a misplaced attempt at making whatever pain she is feeling go away.
What happens next will etch itself onto the inside of my mind for the rest of my life. The sound that escapes her throat, filled with so much pain, the way her body slumps off the couch barely missing the corner of the coffee table. The way she lies lifeless on the floor for what seems like hours as Cammie does CPR, before paramedics arrive only to pronounce her dead a few hours later in the hospital. Dad and I standing outside of her room grasping at each other like we are the other’s lifeline. And I suppose when we were in that hospital we were the only connection to Anne in that moment in time. The two people that mattered the most to her, the memory of them faded from her mind by the end.
How did that night go from having the time of my life with a guy I loved completely to having my heart shattered by him? And then somehow going from that to watching my mother die in front of my eyes?
Time is a weird, complicated thing. The moment she collapsed feels like it all moved in slow motion, but at the same time, it was all so fast.
Too fast and too slow at the same time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ELIAS
PRESENT DAY
“Are you okay?” I ask Charlotte. She’s been quiet since we got into the car and started driving back to town.
“You know, if this were a few weeks ago, I’d lie to you and say I was perfectly fine.”
I don’t interject and decide to let her continue when she’s ready. She does after a few more moments of silence.
“But it’s not a few weeks ago and it’s not me coming to Blue Grove for the first time either and seeing who I thought was my arch nemesis.”
“A little bit of enemies, sure, but arch nemesis seems a little harsh,” I joke. We’ve had plenty of differences in the past and our blood has run more than hot around each other for a variety of different reasons, but I never thought of her as the Lex Luther to my Superman, though maybe I’d be the Lex Luther in this situation.
“You know what I mean.”
“This isn’t a few weeks ago or even a year ago,” I say, bringing the conversation back around to whatever was on her mind before.
“No, it’s not. So, I guess I’ll be honest and say I’m not okay. Some memories rushed back that I’ve kept buried for a while. It’s not like I haven’t thought of them over the years, but in this moment, one word was all it took to bring it back with a clarity I haven’t had or wanted to have in a long time.”
I hesitate to ask my next question, but there’s something in my gut telling me that she’s ready to talk about this particular memory. “Do you mind sharing it with me?”
“Did I ever tell you about the day my mom died?” From the corner of my eye, I see her head turn toward me.
“No,” I respond, shaking my head.
She inhales deeply and lets it out in one shaky breath. “It was that same night. I went home after we broke up and she was lucid. She had been for a bit and I wasn’t there. She comforted me and called you an idiot.” She chuckles through the tears now slipping down her cheeks.
“And then she forgot again, disappeared back into the maze that was her mind and after a few minutes, she was gone…heart attack.”
I reach over the center console and place a hand on her thigh. Her hand comes to rest over mine, fingers interlacing. A few minutes later we pull up to her apartment, the night seemingly coming to life when the headlights flick off. I make my way around the hood to open her door with a creak.
