Her first call came
a little before eight, right as I was rolling the last few yards toward my destination. The porch lights weren’t on, nor were any of the other lights inside, and the paint had long ago flaked away from the exterior . . . but it was home. It was my home. Our home. The one we’d purchased together, had planned to fix up together, and had hoped to ranch the land surrounding it together. It looked like a piece of shit, closer to needing to be demolished than fixed up, but it was our piece of shit. It had been our dream. Once upon a time.
I worked up a glare as I stared at it. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”
It didn’t respond.
“I don’t know what the hell wire tripped in my brain to think I could fix you up, but I think I’ve finally come to my senses and seen you for what you are: a piece of shit.” I was drenched in sweat from the journey, panting from being parched and exhausted, but I felt like I could have cursed at that house all bloody night long. “I guess the two of us really do deserve each other. We’re both falling apart, more damn work than we’re worth, and should be steam-rolled. You want to make a bet on which one of us will give out and break down first?”
This time, the house answered in the form of a few shingles sliding down the roof to the ground.
“I’m a serious competitor, so if you think dropping a few shingles will make me shiver in my boots, you’re wrong. Now if your roof caved in, that would be something else, but right now, my money’s on you outliving me.” The hospital bill buried in my back pocket started to burn. “What money I have left, at least.”
Fresh out of insults and profanities to throw the decrepit relic in front of me, I heaved myself forward through the overgrown weeds and brown clumps that crunched beneath my wheels. The brown clumps were the remnants of a yard that had once been brimming with green grass and flowerbeds that had been kept in bloom every season save for winter.
Thank God there was a small lip leading to the porch instead of a long stairway because then I would have had to drag myself up to the front door instead of rolling. Somehow, the latter option seemed more dignified. It took a few hard rolling, rocking tries to get the front wheels popped up onto the porch and a couple more to get the rest to follow, but once that had been accomplished, the rest was easy. I’d taken the screen door off months ago since it had been hanging on by a sliver, and we didn’t keep the front door locked since if someone wanted to break in, all they needed to do was crawl through one of the many broken windows lining the first floor.
As soon as I was inside, I flipped on the hall light. Thankfully, it fired on. One of my first chores when we’d first taken ownership had been changing out all of the dead bulbs—which was mostly all of them—and replacing them with long-lasting, energy-efficient ones. I didn’t know why I’d dumped the extra money on lightbulbs when the regular ones had always worked just fine, but I guessed it had been a sign of how much pride I’d taken in owning that piece of shit. Ironic.
My second call from Josie came as I was rolling toward what we’d planned to make our master bedroom. It had been an office, but since neither of us could stay cooped up inside of four walls during daylight hours, an office would have been wasted space. Instead we’d decided to make that our bedroom since it was huge and had the largest windows in the house spread throughout it. Upstairs, there were a handful of smaller bedrooms, but we’d figured those would wind up being our . . .
Once upon a time we’d figured that. Before I’d become an impotent, paralyzed cripple who was more trouble than he was worth.
That cheery thought was responsible for my fist cracking against the hall wall, causing enough dust to erupt around me to make me cough. That was the other thing about this place . . . well, one of the many other things about this place—it was caked in no less than a half inch of dust and smelled like a potpourri of mildew and filth. Not exactly the fresh-baked bread or lemon cleanser I was used to after spending so much time at the Gibsons’ these past couple years.
After I ignored her second attempt to reach me, my phone started buzzing with text messages. I didn’t look though. Not yet. Not until I was inside our room and on the blow-up mattress we’d left there for when we needed a “work break,” which had been at least once every afternoon or evening we’d spent working on this place.
I needed to lie down, catch my breath, and recollect my wits before I answered Josie’s texts, which were still chiming every few seconds. I needed to muster up my depleted strength so that my weakness didn’t do something stupid. Like tell her where I was or what I was trying to do or that I loved her and always would and beg her to come get me.
It took some work to figure out how to get out of the wheelchair and onto the air mattress that had shifted into the corner of the room. Josie and I normally kept it right in the middle, but I guessed the wind had gusted through the broken windows and blown it into a corner. There were a few brown and green leaves on top of it, but I didn’t bother to brush them off. I just lowered myself onto it as carefully as I could and fell back into it the moment my ass hit the mattress.
I lay there for I didn’t know how long, staring at the paint peeling off the high ceiling and accepting that I’d never be able to climb the tall ladder to peel off the old before painting on a new coat of the cheery blue color Josie had picked. The rest of the walls she’d wanted to be repainted in white, but the ceiling she wanted blue. It had seemed an odd choice, but when I’d asked her, she explained it would be like staring at a bright blue sky and that no matter how gray the day or mood, we could fall asleep remembering that a blue sky was always close by.
But I hadn’t gotten around to the ceiling yet. I didn’t have a blue-sky ceiling above me to lift my mood and bolster my determination, so I lay there and stared at the gray, moldy, cracked ceiling, letting it affect my mood accordingly.
That was when I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked her texts. I stopped reading after the first few. Each one became more desperate, more pleading, chewing away at my resolve like I guessed Josie knew would happen when I read them. So I stopped reading her dozens of texts and started typing my own. Listing a time and a location, I asked if she’d meet me tomorrow night to discuss the future. I kept my message short and straightforward, knowing that would alert her that something was up but also knowing she’d be there even if I’d requested a meeting on the top of the Empire State Building.
Her response pinged an instant after I’d sent mine. What’s going on? Where are you? You’re scaring me. You’re not supposed to scare me, Garth.
I swallowed, resisting the urge to let her know I was okay or where I was or that everything would be okay and reassure her as I knew she needed. If I kept giving her what she needed whenever she needed it, that would only make the break harder, more jagged. Instead, I turned off my phone, closed my eyes, and tried to fall asleep.
I was still trying to sleep when the sun rose hours later.
I ARRIVED EARLY, partly because I hadn’t been sure how long it would take me to “roll” my way there, partly because I’d known Josie would get there early, and partly because I couldn’t have sat inside that big house a minute longer without going crazy. There were lots of parts of why I arrived at the top of that hill early and stopped beside the big maple, planning to use it for both shelter and support.
Below me was a little watering hole, maybe only a couple times bigger than the swimming pool at the community center in town. It was located on the property Josie and I’d been hoping to purchase and would have been nice for watering the cattle on occasion. It also served as a perfect spot to cool off on a hot day and make love beneath one of the trees. The watering hole was a little ways from the house but thankfully not too far. Given the uneven ground and lack of road or even a rudimentary trail, I wouldn’t have been able to make another five miles after yesterday’s journey.
My hands were covered in blisters—ones about to burst and ones that already had—and my arms, back, and chest had never felt as sore as they had this afternoon when I’d woken up after finally falling asleep around six this morning.
I’d texted Josie to meet me at the watering hole tonight around nine o’clock . . . but it wasn’t me she’d be meeting. No, I would stay camped up here a ways above the water, knowing she’d never see me from where she’d arrive, especially with the cover of darkness.
I’d made a call yesterday, somewhere between mile four and five, after my plan had come to a successful head, and all that was left was implementing it. Implementation started with a call to Colt Mason. Actually, it had started with a call to directory services, who connected me with the Mason household’s butler, who’d finally relented and given me Colt’s cell number after I managed to convince him Colt and I were old friends.
Colt had been surprised by my call. He hadn’t masked his surprise either. When I’d asked if he’d meet me out here tonight, he’d tried every which way to say no without actually saying it. When I mentioned Josie’s name and how I was worried about her and said I wanted to talk to him about her, he’d given in and agreed to meet me. I’d had to give him directions to the watering hole, but even Colt Mason should have been up to the task of navigating a few back roads to find a watering hole in the middle of nowhere. I hoped. Otherwise this whole thing was for nothing.
I watched the sunset that night from high up on my hill, feeling as if it was the last sunset of my life because, in a way, it kind of was. My life with Josie, as I’d always wanted it, was coming to an end tonight. My life on my own was starting tomorrow, and I didn’t need a glass ball to drop ou
t of the sky into my lap to know that sunsets would never look the same without Josie in my life.