I grab the bottle from him and take another drink. I know he’s right. Know she wanted to try and fix it. That was one of my favorite things about her, wasn’t it? How sweet she was. How innocent. But then I see Ash again and the pain squeezes me so tight I can’t breathe. “It’s still not enough.”
“Then you’re a bigger pussy than I thought,” Maddox says.
“And what are you running from? Don’t sit there and pretend you’re not fucking weak too. Don’t pretend she’s never shed tears over you.”
“Touché.” He takes a drink. “Did she tell you she found Mom the first time she tried to kill herself? That Mom knew Laney would be home soon. That she’d be the one to find her, yet she still slit her wrists in the unlocked bathroom right before Laney got home. That my little sister was scared to death her mom would die and she sat in her blood with her mom’s head in her lap and when she was okay, that same mom yelled at her for saving her. That she was pissed she was alive and blamed Laney.”
“Fuck.” I drop my head backward. Look at the ceiling. I knew she had tried to kill herself, but I didn’t know the details.
“I know you lost someone but you’re not the only one. She watched her mom almost die, more than once. She still loves her and cares about her, even though she always gets shut down. She lost her dad that day too. She lives with those memories. Lives with the knowledge that her mom will never love her like she should, yet she’s a whole hell of a lot better than we are. She doesn’t fucking run. She’s stronger than we could ever hope to be.”
Maddox pushes to his feet, hands me the bottle, and grabs his bag. “And for some reason, she loves you. Hurting you will be something else she lives with. It will eat her up inside and it will kill another part of her, like Dad and Mom did. Like even I do, but she’ll keep on living. I wish I was that brave.”
I watch as her brother walks away, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he goes.
* * *
“I hiding! Find me!”
Ash’s voice echoes around me. I look at the couch, his favorite hiding spot, and he’s not there.
“Hurry! Find me!”
“Where’d you go, little man? You found a new hiding spot. I can’t find you.” I’m smiling, proud of him for finding a real place to hide this time.
I search the living room, but he’s not there. The kitchen. Our room. Angel’s room. The bathroom.
“Daddy! Find me!”
My heart is starting to hammer and I’m beginning to sweat. “Where are you, Ash? I can’t find you.”
I look in the backyard and through the house again and I’m running now. Freaking out because I can hear him, but I can’t see him. I have to find him. How can I lose my own son?
“Daddy. Hurry.” His voice comes from the other side of the front door. Everything stops. I start to shake. I can’t go out there. If I do, I’ll find him and I don’t want to see him out there.
“Ashton?” I creep toward the door.
“Here, silly,” his voice says from outside. My hand shakes as I open the door and he’s sitting there, in the yard, eating pancakes. Holding his favorite shirt on his lap.
“Ash. Get in the house. You have to come inside.” I’m fucking crying now because I know if he stays out there he’ll die. I can’t let him die this time. He’s my son. He thinks I can do anything. I have to save him.
“Can’t.” He shakes his head. “Can’t go in.”
“You have to.” I try to grab him, but I can’t. It’s as though there’s an invisible barrier around him keeping him from me. “Ash. Come on, little man. You have to come inside. Come to Daddy.”
“Can’t,” he says again, and he’s looking at me with syrup on his face, his big, happy smile.
I try to grab him again, but I can’t get within a couple feet of him. I’m panicking now. “You have to try. You have to come in the house or you’re going to die!”
At that, his little smile morphs into a frown. And I know he knows. Know he’s known since before I came out here that he can’t leave this yard. That he’s going to die.
“Sorry, Daddy.” He grabs the shirt. And then he gets up. He walks toward me and he hugs me. I don’t know what happened to whatever kept me from him, but it’s gone and he’s in my arms hugging me as tight as his little body will let him.
But I know. I know I still can’t save him. “I’m sorry. I love you. I wanted to be better for you. I wanted to protect you and do better for you than my dad did for me.” Tears are running down my face and I’m holding him, squeezing him tighter than I probably should, but I can’t let him go.
“I lub you too.”
I look at him and smile.
“Smile!” He claps his hands. “Daddy’s happy.” And he has that huge grin again. The one that makes me feel fucking invincible. “Play!”
So I play with him. We play chase and hide-and-seek and he laughs and I laugh. We tumble to the ground and I wrestle with him and tickle him. And then he just stops. Stops and looks at me with those brown eyes that are just like mine and the dark hair that’s just like mine and he climbs into my lap in the middle of the yard.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
So I do. I tell him about a boy who was the coolest kid I’ve ever known. How his smile made everyone happy and how he makes me love pancakes and how there is no one in the world as important as he is. I tell him how much I love him and how much his auntie loves him and how happy he makes me.”
For the first time in any story I’ve ever told him, Ash interrupts. “Happy?”
“Yeah, little man. Happy.”
“I like it when Daddy’s happy.”
Fuck. I do too. I didn’t have a lot of happy in my life, but those two years away from home, living with my sister and with him… I was happy. Knowing I was going to college and that I’d be someone he could look up to, it made me happy.
“I want to be happy.”
“Then do!” He smiles. Like it’s that easy. Like I should just know that and be able to do it.
“I love you,” I tell him again.
“Lub you. I like Daddy’s stories.” And he wraps his arms around my neck. Squeezes me, and this time when he goes, there’s no car. No blood. No little broken body. He’s just… gone.
I jerk upward and jump out of the hotel bed. The empty bottle of whiskey is sitting there. It sounds crazy, but I swear to fucking God I feel him. I remember how it felt to have him in my lap and to have his arms around me and to play with him and the exact sound of his voice when he said I love you.
“I like Daddy’s stories,” he’d said, and suddenly my fingers itch to write. I pull open all the drawers until I find a pad of paper and a pen and I start filling it. Writing on the front and back of every page. Writing to Ash. Writing about Ash and life and poems and stories. Whatever comes to my head, I write it.
When the paper is gone, I run out of the room across the street to the corner store and buy every notebook I can find before I’m back in the dark room again writing to my son. About him.