My mother meant well, I knew it. She just didn’t like seeing me sad. Hell, I didn’t like being sad. I had expected Garrett would leave eventually, but I had always expected to have plenty of time to say my goodbyes. I just wasn’t ready to have him totally gone from my life without any notice at all.
For months, we had spent every single day together and then suddenly he was gone. I tried to understand why he had left; my brain knew it wasn’t his choice and he had probably no option to stay. But my heart hurt. It hurt thinking of Garrett living his life without me.
Even though we had settled on our relationship being just fun, deep down I thought it might be more someday. I thought he would grow to care about me and decide he wasn’t going to run off to Washington for that job.
But as the details of everything unraveled, I learned that Garrett wasn’t going to a job in Washington. He wasn’t going anywhere. My father had been hired by the FBI to hide Garrett at our home and keep him safe until he testified against some drug dealer or something. It all sounded really good and legitimate, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that Garrett had lied right to my face. He hadn’t just done it once; everything I knew about the man was in question.
“You know your father and I weren’t allowed to tell you about the program. We are sorry we had to lie to you. But Garrett, I mean Malcolm, wasn’t allowed to tell you either. You can’t stay mad at us all forever.”
“I’m not mad, mother. I’m tired. Can you just let me sleep?” I lied.
Of course, I was mad at Garrett, or Malcolm, or whatever his name was. And I was also mad at my parents for keeping me in the dark during the whole thing. If my parents were allowed to know all the details, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t have been told about everything.
Instead, the three of them conspired to keep me in the dark and pretend that Garrett was a totally different person. This Malcolm guy wasn’t even someone I would have liked. I hated the corporate guys who were so self-absorbed that they couldn’t see a decent woman standing right in front of them. I liked Garrett, the drifter who wanted to make something of himself. That was the man I had fallen in love with.
“All right, but I’m coming back to check on you after breakfast.”
“Maybe make it after lunch so I can actually get some sleep,” I said as I pulled the blankets up over my head.
I wasn’t mad at my mother or my father; frustrated would have been a better word for it. As an educated woman, I understood there were rules in place around them agreeing to work with the FBI. In fact, I found it pretty cool that they had been hosting FBI witness protection people for the last twenty years. It made a lot of sense to me when they started explaining everything. I remembered so many of the men who had been at our ranch. It made a lot more sense that those men were from the program and not people my father had chosen to hire.
Like the guy who never worked past noon. I could never figure out why my father kept him around. It had been one of those things that baffled me and my father never could give me a good explanation for keeping the guy. It was a relief to have some of those puzzle pieces from my past finally falling into place. But I stubbornly still wished that they had been able to tell me the details of what was going on. If I had been informed, I would have been much more emotionally prepared when Garrett left the ranch.
I wasn’t mad at Garrett, or Malcolm, either; if I really thought about it, I wasn’t angry—I was sad. My mother had explained to me that he wanted to say goodbye before he left and she told me how sad he had been that they made him leave without seeing me. From what she told me, I could tell that he was a decent guy, but it still didn’t change the fact that I had started to have feelings for a man who wasn’t at all who he said he was. And even if I did get over that information, he was gone and would never be back again.
My heart still hurt though and I couldn’t make the hurting stop. Garrett and I were friends, at the very least, and I thought he would have given me some sort of clue to what was going on. He couldn’t have thought I would tell anyone. I wished I could talk to him, or write to him, but my father didn’t have contact information for him at all. Well, I hadn’t specifically asked for it, but I assumed he didn’t know how to get in touch with Malcolm. Once the FBI came to take him away, my father’s job was complete, and Malcolm was back in the hands of the government.
I knew that Garrett’s real name was Malcolm Edwards, but I didn’t know much more about him at all. It was weird to have known a man intimately and then found out he wasn’t that person at all. I Googled him and found out he own an airline or something like that. There were photos of him out at clubs with beautiful women and partying with celebrities; that man, Malcolm Edwards, looked like the man I fell in love with but he wasn’t the same person.
Tons of questions constantly ran through my head when I remembered conversations that we had had together. Were his parents really dead? Did he really come from Wyoming? Was he re
ally writing in a journal so he could write a book someday? There was no way of knowing what had been real and what had been just part of his story.
I questioned everything that he said, every conversation and confidence we had had together. How much of the Garrett that I knew was the same as the real man named Malcolm? I might never have the answers. There was a genuine possibility that I would never see Garrett again and that I would have to learn to live with the questions that were filling my mind constantly.
My mother was right; I needed to get up out of bed and start participating in my own life again, but I was just so tired. My whole body physically hurt at the thought of climbing out of bed and each day I put it off. I kept telling myself it would get better. I would stop missing Garrett. I would get over him. But the truth was that it had been two weeks and I still missed his touch terribly.
Garrett had been a great love to me. His personality, his smile, even his damn body were embedded in my brain and I couldn’t forget about them. I didn’t know if I wanted to forget about them. I had fond memories of our time together and I just needed to figure out how to combine those fond memories with the reality that he was gone and would never be coming back.
As much as I wanted to sleep my morning away, I just couldn’t sleep. My mind raced with thoughts and questions about Garrett and I finally sat up in bed and turned the news on. The morning national news was bound to lull me back to sleep.
“International drug smuggling king, Frank Gordano, was found murdered in his cell this morning,” the newswoman said. “He was set to stand trial after murdering a pilot with Edwards Aviation last year. The CEO of Edwards Aviation, Malcolm Edwards, had been in hiding preparing to testify against the drug king. It’s unknown if he will retake control of his company now that Gordano has been murdered.”
I sat up in bed at looked at the screen in awe as a picture of Garrett, or Malcolm, flashed across the screen. He looked so different in the picture they had of him. He was in a tailored suit with his hair shorter and it took me a minute to realize the person on the screen and the person I knew were the same. He didn’t look like the douchebag I had seen in the clubs when I had searched Google for him.
When my father had explained what the protection program was and how it worked with our ranch, I knew that Garrett had been mixed up in something dangerous. I knew it the moment I had walked out of the barn and saw poor Ralph and Devin murdered. Garrett looked so distraught in that moment and I only wanted to comfort him, but he wouldn’t even allow it. I could only make assumptions as to why he pushed me away, but it didn’t matter any longer.
I was happy for Garrett though. The news that the man who wanted him dead was actually dead himself had to be good for him. I hoped he would be able to get back to his own life and maybe even forget about the horrors he had gone through at our ranch. Even if I never saw him again, I wished only happy things for Malcolm. Under the lies that I still had to sort out in my head, I knew he was a good man. Maybe not the right man for me, but he was a good man.
The news had given me a small feeling of closure though. Garrett was going to go back to his old life and I figured I would have to go back to mine. There was no use in sleeping my life away, I needed to get up and get moving. My mother was right: I had a life of my own to live and lying around in bed wasn’t going to help me at all.
Reluctantly, I climbed out of bed and into the shower. I was going to make an effort at my day and see if I couldn’t shake the feeling of loss that had been hovering over me since Garrett had left. It felt like he was dead to me and I supposed the man I knew was dead. Instead of Garrett, there was a man named Malcolm walking around the world and getting back to the life he had taken a break from. Garrett didn’t even exist; he was a made-up person who had hidden at my family’s ranch to stay safe. Garrett was no more real than a dream and it was about time I tried to forget about him.
Most of my memories of Garrett seemed skewed by the picture of the man I saw on the television. That man looked like he hadn’t struggled a day in his life, he was rich and good looking. Malcolm Edwards wasn’t the man I fell in love with and the reality of that hit me hard as I walked toward the gathering room to help my mother with breakfast. The man that I had shared so many conversations and nights with had talked about losing his parents at a young age and struggling hard to get where he was. It didn’t seem to match up at all with that rich man I had seen on the news.
Work on the ranch had returned to a somewhat normal pace again. My mother and father had decided to stop working with the FBI and take a much-needed break from that world. Life went on for us and that meant we were up early and taking care of the ranch, just like normal. The animals that we cared for didn’t care about the drama that was going on around us; they still had needs and we still had to take care of them.
“You got up,” my mother said excitedly as I walked into the kitchen area.