Page 16 of Between Here and the Horizon
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Ronan’s car keys were in the ignition of the SUV in the garage. There was an orange Post-it note on the middle of the steering wheel that said, USE THE CAR SEATS on it.Of course I’m going to use the goddamn car seats. Helpful, Ronan. Really fucking helpful. You know what would have beenreallyhelpful? You not killing yourself, that’s what.
I screwed the Post -it up and quickly threw it into the glove box.
Connor pulled the most dramatic, unhappy face when I opened up the back seat door for him. “Do I have to sit in the back? Dad normally lets me sit up in the front with him.”
“Sorry, kiddo. There’s a booster back there for you. Amie, look at your car seat. Isn’t it cool?” It was red with green dinosaurs all over it. Amie clapped her hands when she saw it; Connor looked like he wanted to set the entire car on fire. Disgust radiated off him in scorching degrees.
“This is bullshit,” he mumbled under his breath. His eyes flickered to me, his shoulders stiffening as he waited for my reaction. I gave him none, which, by the looks of things, made him really mad.
I’d dealt with enough kids like him at school though, acting out to get attention. If you gave them nothing, they generally learned it was pointless and stopped after a while. Connor’s situation was more complicated, though. He was going to do more than act out when he learned about Ronan. His whole world was going to come crashing down.Again. How the hell wasIqualified to handlethat?
I didn’t know where I was supposed to be going when I drove down the long driveway and out onto the road, but I tried to appear confident, if only for the kids’ sake.
The morning slipped by. We drove around the entire island at least twice before I really saw any of it—rolling hills, so green and lush that they almost looked fake; steep, rocky cliff faces that plunged wildly down into white water and the raging sea; tiny little whitewashed houses with peeling green window frames and scruffy dogs tethered to posts out front; so many decrepit looking fishing boats rocking to and fro along the coastline, fraying lines caked in salt crystals threatening to snap under the tension of the boats trying to drift away. It felt like another time, in another world completely.
At around lunch, the storm finally hit. The thunderheads that were lurking out over the ocean finally rolled in, and thunder and lightning crackled overhead. The children weren’t scared at all. I parked the car at the side of the winding, narrow road that headed back to the house, and the three of us sat and watched the battle in the heavens commence. We counted the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunder…
One…two…three...
We didn’t make it past three; the fury was right on top of us. It felt safe in the car, even though we probably weren’t. For a second, such a brief, unbearably small snatch of time, I didn’t think about Ronan swinging from the ceiling fan. I didn’t think about CPS coming in the morning to take the children away. I just sat with them in the car and we shrieked and howled every time the ground shook beneath us, and the sky rippled with light, and everything else was just noise.
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Negotiating bedtime with Connor was like negotiating peace in the Middle East. It was well after nine by the time he finally agreed to climb into bed, and that was only because his head was nodding and he could barely keep his eyes open any longer.Jurassic Parkhad gone on at seven, and Amie had been so excited within the first twenty minutes that she’d exhausted herself and fallen asleep straight away. I’d carried her up and put her in her tiny single bed in the room next to mine, and she hadn’t even stirred. Connor had made it to the last fifteen minutes of the film before he got up off the couch and staggered sleepily off in the direction of his room, silently, unwilling to admit defeat.
Fifteen minutes later, I was on the phone with Mom, balling my eyes out. It took three solid attempts to explain what had happened before she understood what I was saying.
“You aren’tserious?” she hissed down the phone. “George? George? Where are you? Ophelia’s bosscommitted suicide!”
Dad picked up the other line in the den. “What did you say?”
I let Mom tell him; I didn’t have the energy to get it out all over again. Now that the children were asleep, I finally didn’t have to hold myself together anymore. It was a relief, but it was also frightening. I felt out of control, like I was barely retaining my grasp on reality.
“You have got to come home, honey. I knew there was something off about this whole thing. Honest to god, what a terrible thing to do. What a thoughtless bastard. Those poor little mites.” Mom was outraged for everyone involved, including me, but the children bore the brunt of her sympathy. Having my mother feel sorry for you was not necessarily a good thing in a situation like this. It tended to make her hysterical. “I mean, really!Really!” Her voice was getting higher and higher. “I just can’t believe it. How could someone be so self-serving? If you want to kill yourself you wait, until after your children have finished college. It’s just not done! I can’t believe it. What an asshole. What a completeasshole.”
“Calm down, Jen. Calm down. We don’t know the whole story,” Dad said, ever the peacekeeper. “Your mother’s right, though, darling. Come home as soon as you’ve handed the children over tomorrow. That’s not a healthy environment for you to be in right now.”
I didn’t tell them about Mr. Linneman and his paperwork. If they knew Ronan had essentially left his kids to me in his will, they would go ballistic, and I couldn’t deal with Mom’s voice raising another decibel right now. “I know. I will. I’m going to book a flight as soon as I get off the phone.”
The restaurant was going to be shut down. I wasn’t going to make the money Ronan promised me if I didn’t stay and see out the six months, there was no two ways about that. But maybe, if I was really lucky another job would come up as soon as I landed back in California. There might be enough time to build up a little bit of capital and save the business from going under if I started waiting tables at a second job as well.
“Look, guys, I’m so sorry. I’m beat. I’m going to have to go and sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I know what time I’ll be getting back, okay?”
My parents both wished me goodnight, and Mom told me to take care of myself about fifteen times. I was headed up to bed, trying not to look in the direction of Ronan’s study, when I felt a familiar niggle of doubt shoot through me. Why did he do it? Why? I was never going to know if I didn’t read that damned letter. I wanted to go home, yes, but how frustrating would it be to never truly understand what had happened and why? If I didn’t go into Ronan’s office and get that letter, I was going to be in the dark forever. And heowedme, damn it. He owed me an explanation. What he did wasn’t fair to me, and it really wasn’t fair to his kids.
I halted on the stairs, fear already prickling at my skin. I was going to do it. Being afraid was stupid. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum had taken Ronan’s body away hours ago. There was nothing in there now, but the unreasonably superstitious part of me was convinced Ronan’s spirit was still lurking in there, poking around in among the books and all of his papers, waiting for someone to come visit him.
Stupid. Really stupid.
I marched down the stairs, across the hallway and straight into the office, holding my breath. Nothing happened. The room was empty. The chair Ronan must have used to climb up onto his desk had been tucked neatly away. All of the sheets of paper on his desk were straight, apart from one small white envelope—the one I had come in here to find. It sat on top of a thick, leather-bound book that looked like it had been carried around by someone for years, all covered in scratch marks, a deep brown oil mark down the spine, probably from extended periods of handling. On top of the envelope and the book, something glinted and shone in the dark—gold and purple. A medal. A purple heart.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself.
The room, despite the fact that it was full of brand new furniture and still had that universal Ikea smell of flat pack bookcases and fresh woven fabric, was already filled with a sense of emptiness that chilled me inside.
Ronan had claimed the room forever now. No matter what, the space would always carry the history of his actions within its four walls. I picked up the medal first, turning it over in my hand. It looked pristine, brand new, like it had never been handled before. George Washington eyed me balefully from the cast of the metal, stern and cold. I dropped it back on the desk, snatched up the letter, then retreated out of the room at a run, my heart beating out of my chest.
