Page 70 of When I'm Gone
As far as he could tell, being arrested was good for one thing—bringing into focus the most important parts of your life. On a day when he thought discovering Dr. Neal and Jessie’s connection was the worst moment he could imagine, sitting in a cell, rubbing his chafed wrists and dreaming up horrors on the wall, made him feel like a fool for ever being obsessed with Neal and those letters.
If Neal had helped cover up the adoption and the death of Luke and Natalie’s child, if they had a deep connection because of it, or even if they had planted Neal’s daughter into his home as a spy, Luke didn’t care. Natalie was dead and he was alive. One more reason he should be living for his kids, not for some dead woman, even if that woman was the one person he’d ever felt loved him unconditionally. The kids were worth more than his pain.
On the last night of Natalie’s life, Luke pushed the fancy white couch in the living room up right next to her hospital bed. He had spent large portions of the past several nights sleeping in a chair, but it made Natalie feel so guilty. When he let his body settle into the stiff cushions of the pristine fabric, Natalie put out her hand.
“Will you hold my hand tonight?” she asked. Luke took her frail hand in his, counting the bones on the back of her hand through her skin. “Ah, that’s nice.” She sighed and one tear slipped out of the corner of her lashless eyes. It followed one of her new wrinkles, the ones that came once she lost the protective layers of fat under her skin. He loved kissing those wrinkles and pretending they’d grown old together.
“You’re too far away; get up here.” She tugged at his arm, and Luke cautiously crawled up into her bed. Weakly, she tried to shift over to the other side of the bed but stopped, out of breath after her first attempt.
“I’ve got you,” Luke whispered in her ear, letting his lips brush her cheek as he moved her over the last few inches.
“Thank you,” she whispered, always grateful for anything Luke did. You don’t have to thank me, he wanted to shout, but he wasn’t mad at Natalie. He was mad she was in pain and that soon she’d be gone.
“I love you, Nat,” Luke said, nuzzling his nose into her neck and wrapping an arm over her torso.
“I know, I know.” She patted his back, like she was comforting one of their kids. He cried a lot back then, even though he tried not to. It was his intention to make those last moments with Natalie happy ones, to leave the kids with thoughts of a cheerful farewell. But that night, he didn’t want to pretend to be happy. Sometimes Luke wondered if some ancient instinct told him his wife was that close to death.
“This reminds me of what it was like when we were kids. All we’re missing is pop and Twizzlers.” She took a labored breath, and Luke picked up his arm.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No.” She grabbed his arm and pressed it back down on her stomach. “I like feeling you. I miss your touch, I miss kissing you, I miss ... everything.” She kissed his forehead again. “I want to go back and do it all over again. Can we start over? Is that a thing?”
Luke tried to turn a sob into a laugh, but it came out sounding like he was choking. “You want a do-over? If this was a video game, I could erase the memory, and we could start at the beginning.” He curled his body around hers, trying to touch her in as many places at the same time as possible. “But we’d lose everything, all the levels we’d beat and coins we’d won. I’d do it; would you?”
She was silent for a moment, and Luke wondered if maybe she’d fallen asleep. Every night she took a sleeping pill to help her sleep through the pain, and it was probably kicking in.
“No,” she answered suddenly. “I wouldn’t start over, not if it meant giving up our memories.” Her breath hitched in her chest, and he watched her collarbone go up and down with each cry. “That’s all you’ll have left of me, memories.”
Luke couldn’t talk. If it hurt to think about losing her while she still lay in his arms, he didn’t know how he could even breathe once she was buried under six feet of dirt. “We won’t forget,” he finally forced out. “I could never forget ...”
“I hope you’re wrong”—her tone turned suddenly hard—“about death. I want you to tell me I’ll see you again, that our years together weren’t a waste.” She pushed Luke’s head back with her chin, and he looked up at her eyes. Still deep and blue, they were the only thing unchanged by chemo and cancer and impending death. He didn’t believe, he hadn’t for a long, long time, but when he saw those sparkling eyes, the ones he’d first noticed as a boy and saw every day when May asked for pancakes or Clayton giggled at a television show, he couldn’t tell her that. He loved her enough to lie.
“I’ll see you again. I promise ...” He pulled her limp hand up to his lips and kissed her fingertips. “I promise.”
“Mmmm, thank you, Luke.” She closed her eyes, her body falling asleep part by part. “I’ll see you soon ...” She breathed out before succumbing to her medication and exhaustion. He waited until he was certain she was asleep and then rolled off the hospital bed, pulled her favorite fleece blanket up to her shoulders, and then settled back into the couch, where he got his first full night’s sleep in weeks. When he woke up in the morning to the sun shining in from behind the front window curtains, Natalie was dead. He’d slept through her last breaths.
“Hey!You have a visitor; get up!” A loud voice shattered Luke’s memory. He wiped at his eyes, not wanting anyone in this place to think he’d been crying. Squinting through the poorly lit room, Luke tried to make out who could possibly be visiting him in a holding cell in the middle of the night. An officer, dressed in his street uniform, stood at the door to the cell. Luke rubbed his eyes, and the man came into focus. It was Brian Gurrella.
“Luke, you okay?” Brian held a tray of food, a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel, an apple, and something that looked like a juice box lying on its side. “I have your dinner. Made it myself.”
Luke wasn’t hungry even though he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Still, he crossed the cell and took the steel tray from Brian’s hands.
“Thanks.” He placed the tray on a bench without inspecting it further, only caring about how to get out of that cell and back home to his family. He returned to the door and Brian, who was watching him carefully.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Brian asked, his thumbs looped through the belt loops on his pants. There was none of the usual humor in his face. No, he looked like a cop ready to interrogate a “perp.”
“I have no idea. Really. I guess I had a busted taillight and got pulled over, but after that ... I don’t know what happened.” Luke approached the door, wrapping his hands around the bars. “What did they tell you?”
Brian stepped back, like Luke was too close or potentially dangerous. “I’m not really supposed to discuss charges with you. I heard you have a lawyer coming. This isn’t official. I just wanted to talk to you, man-to-man.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I have nothing to hide.” Luke pressed his face between the bars. “Please, what did they say?”
“Fine,” he said, brushing out a wrinkle on the front of his uniform. “They said you had drugs in your car, pills. That you had them in bottles, ready for distribution.”
“I’ve never seen those before, damn it,” Luke growled, squeezing the metal bars until he was sure he could break them.
“I have to tell you, Luke, that’s what they all say.” Brian shook his head like he didn’t know what to think. “No one sits in that cell, looks back at me, and says, ‘Yeah, I did it. I sold drugs.’ So you can see why it’s hard to believe you.”
