He leaned over to look at me. “You’re different from any girl I ever met,” he said. “You deserve someone better than me, anyway. Don’t you worry. You’re going to be something.”
“I’m not thinking about me. I’m thinking about us.”
“There will still be us,” he said. “Just not in the here and now but someplace where no one can reach us or h
urt us anymore.”
“Where?”
“In the bottle. I’m on that ship waiting for you.”
He started to float back into the bottle.
“Stop it,” I said. “Ryder! Don’t!”
I must have been shouting for a while at the top of my voice, because my throat was aching when Jordan shook me and I opened my eyes.
“Sasha. What happened? Why are you screaming?”
“What?” I looked at the bottle.
“I’m sorry. I was in a meeting and didn’t pick up my messages until a half-hour ago. I came rushing home. What is it? What’s wrong? What were you yelling about?”
“He’s in the bottle,” I said.
“What? Who’s in the bottle?”
“Ryder.”
I closed my eyes again. She put her hand on my cheek. It felt cool and comforting. I smiled, and then, when I woke the next time, it was dark outside. There was just a small lamp on in my room. I groaned, and Jordan appeared, seemingly forming out of the shadows. She had been sleeping in a chair near my bed.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I ran my hands down the sides of my body to see if I was all there. That’s how light and empty I felt.
“You have to eat something. I’ll have Mrs. Caro make some oatmeal for you and some tea and toast with jam. Do you remember what happened to you?”
I sat up and wiped my eyes. Images began to return, but they were so vague and distant I wasn’t sure when it all had occurred.
“How long have I been sleeping?” It felt as if it could have been days.
“Five or six hours, I think. Donald brought you home after you fainted at school, and apparently at Dr. Battie’s orders, he gave you sedatives. I spoke with Dr. Battie, and I also spoke with Dr. Steiner. She told me what happened. It’s all my fault. I should have insisted that you remain home longer.”
“Yes, Donald brought me home,” I said, more and more coming back to me.
She nodded. “He’s been in his office downstairs with the door locked ever since he came home from work. I suppose he’s been speaking with his attorney and trying to devise some sort of defense.” She smiled gleefully. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that office.”
I stared at her. It was sad the way people who were supposedly once so in love, who had shared so many happy moments and once cherished each other, got to a point where they could happily inflict pain and suffering on each other. Was love only one side of a coin, the other side being hate? Was it this easily flipped? It was something I had wondered about with my own parents, of course. I could understand why Jordan was so upset, so hurt, and why that fit snugly into anger. Like my mother, she had been betrayed. She had eagerly risked the most intimate and vulnerable part of herself, her heart, her faith in someone else, someone she believed would love and protect her forever, and now she was deeply wounded. How would she ever believe in anyone or anything again? This was really what Donald had taken from her and what my father had taken from my mother.
“I’ll see to your food,” she said. “And bring it up to you myself. Just keep resting.” She paused. “What exactly is that in the bed with you?”
I looked at the ship in the bottle. “A gift Ryder had left secretly in my locker before he ran off to join me,” I said. “This was one of the things he made, his hobby.”
“How beautiful.” She smiled. “At least he left you with a treasured memory,” she said in the tone of someone who longed for one herself.
She headed out. I put my hand on the bottle and closed my eyes.
Jordan didn’t return with my food. Mrs. Duval brought it up instead. I could see from the look on her face that all hell had broken loose downstairs. She didn’t want to say anything about it to me, probably worried that I was too weak or fragile to take more tension.