“I love you, Daddy,” I’d say to the silence. “I miss you.”
I crumbled in that laundry room every single day.
When was it going to get better? Why was the pain fiercer than it was yesterday?
Mourning didn’t make sense when you weren’t getting anywhere.
Aston
It felt like I was back there again; a kid left to his own devices, shunning the world around him. My wall came up, and it felt better this way. I felt numbed out. Nobody could hurt me like this.
I was in agony, so I opened my books and drowned in numbers and problems and anything that consumed my brain. My emotions were mute this way, and it was the kind of thing I needed to endure the guilt of what I’d done.
He died and it was my fault. He clutched me to him as he bled out, his eyes focused on mine, until they weren’t anymore.
“Come back, come back,” I’d sobbed. “Come back.”
He didn’t come back, and now I was reminded of him everywhere I turned in this house. I felt imprisoned. I couldn’t handle the walls that were closing in on me. I needed out and away.
Knock. Knock.
Fuck.
Knock. Knock.
She knocked every fucking day. She never stopped. Every night, every morning, every time she left a tray of food there to rot, she knocked on that fucking wall, waiting for me to return. But I didn’t want to return. I couldn’t handle this pain anymore.
*
The end came when I woke up in the middle of the night, my chest pressed tight. I could hardly get a breath in. I rolled off the bed and collapsed to the floor, trying to inhale and exhale. My vision blurred, and I ended up balled in the corner, knees to my chest. Me, a hulking man of 200 pounds, cradling myself like a small child and sobbing.
His lips had moved. I swore they had. He’d tried to tell me something just before he went. I wanted to know what it was.
“What were you trying to say?” I whispered.
I’d never know, and there was a horrible finality in that. I’d never get closure. When you were responsible for taking the life of someone you loved, how selfish did you have to be to seek closure in the first place?
I’d always been selfish, though. I should have died when I was five. That was the first strike against me. I’d felt my soul slipping away, but I fought it because I was in my real mother’s arms and she was warm and comforting.
Then I was selfish with my adopted father, begging him not to hurt me, to never leave me, to stay. I guilt-tripped him and he took me in. Look how that ended, with me over top of him, watching the life bleed out of his eyes.
And then there was Elise... If I’d ignored her affection, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t obsessed, none of this would have happened. None of it.
The worst thing that ever happened to the Wright family was me. It was a painful realization, but it was true, and the truth was a hard pill to swallow.
Knock. Knock.
My head shot up. My hands shook as I glared at that fucking wall. Why didn’t she stop? Would she never go away?
Knock. Knock.
Knock. Knock.
Knock. Knock.
I ignored her. She needed her mother to feel better, not me. I couldn’t give her the support she sought. Dad had been right. We would never have worked.
I was an idiot for ever believing it.
18.
Elise
I woke up one early morning to the sound of movements next door. It was the most noise I’d heard from Aston’s room in forever. The last time had been when he’d crashed to the ground in the middle of the night, but he’d ignored my knocks, so I didn’t know what had happened and any attempt at seeing him would have been unsuccessful. He kept his door locked, and the wall felt like it was now a hundred feet thick and a mile tall.
More movements. I pressed my ear against the wall and listened in. He was rummaging around non-stop. I heard the sound of drawers close and the closet swung open and shut, followed by a zipper and something wheeling across the floor.
My heart lurched when it hit me. He was leaving early. He wasn’t meant to go for another two days. He was running, leaving me behind. Was he even going to say good bye?
His bedroom door opened, and I waited for him to come to me. Instead, he kept walking. I slipped out of bed and left the room. His bedroom door was wide open. His bed was done, and as I peeked inside, I saw how bare it was.
This was really happening. He was leaving.
I frowned, confused and upset. I glanced at his desk and then on the floor outside my room. He didn’t leave a note behind, nothing to justify his abrupt departure. I turned around and raced down the stairs just as I heard the front door shut. I didn’t run out after him. I swung by the kitchen and glanced at the counters, hoping for a note to prove me wrong. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. In that split second, with me standing at the threshold of the kitchen, my gaze on the front door, burning anger ripped through me.