Lost in La La Land(63)

She would never recover from being away from her kids in la la land.

I left the hospital in Palm Springs and went directly to the airport, with the window open and my face in the fresh air. I no longer feared the rebirth of spring or the bloom of summer. I no longer hated the feeling of being alive.

Life was for the living and I was amongst them again, a place Lana never wanted to be.

I lived it for Jonathan and Danny and Lana.

I lived it for the kids we would never have and the lives that would never be real.

My heart was no longer with the dead. Splintered little pieces of it remained, but I felt them returned to me in the night when I slept, truly slept. Jonathan or God or maybe the devil himself, returned them with every real dream I enjoyed or suffered. I woke most days refreshed. Sometimes I woke sweaty, shaking with a nightmare, but even those moments were better than being in the dream.

Those nightmares were my regrets and guilt overwhelming me, a feeling I deserved.

Gilda had been a great woman and her death was partially on my hands.

I should have acted sooner.

I should have cut Lana off.

I should have had her admitted.

I should have acknowledged to myself that my machine was evil, that I was too.

I just never did the things I should, not soon enough.

I got lost in numbers and codes and what-ifs and possibilities.

When I landed back in Rhode Island, exhausted and yet enjoying the sensation of being so tired my eyes would hardly remain open, I was jolted awake by a smile from across the airport arrivals gate.

It was the one I had grown to love.

We were friends, and that was okay.

It wasn’t my place to ask for more.

I hadn’t earned the right to more.

Like Anne Elliot, I had chosen the wrong thing, costing me the love of a man I deeply respected.

Mike waved me over as I headed down the arrivals ramp.

“How is she?” he asked, still concerned about my sending Lana to the hospital she had always enjoyed, the one with the window that lied and showed you what you wanted to see.

“I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring her back. She’s stuck awake and sleeping. Exactly as she would have it.” I had nothing else to say about that. She was nothing and everything at every waking moment in my life.

All my guilt. All my possibility. All my warnings.

Most of all, she was my reason for destroying the remaining machines.

She was my reason for taking down the beds and making the room into a second office.

She was my reason for selling my home.

But he was my reason for staying in Rhode Island.

I linked my arm in his and walked to his truck. “How does the old place look?” I asked, acting casual about it. There was nothing casual about selling my house. Nothing casual about the fact that I couldn’t sleep there. Nothing casual about Gilda’s murder. Nothing casual about the blood on the floor and the crazy woman who had lived upstairs.

“It looks good.” He lifted his phone and flashed a picture of the new sign. It had daisies on it and a whimsical name. “Apparently, they’re putting in a pool.”

“Wind Swept Inn.” I smiled, almost laughing.

The poor house. It had been such a scary old Gothic mansion once upon a time and now it was a beachy luxury inn. I wasn't sure the bones would agree with the change, but it was done.

“Will you miss it?” he asked as he got my door.

“No.” I knew my eyes betrayed me with the lie I told.

“I will too.” He shrugged. “But I think you need a fresh start.”

“The new place is so small,” I joked, forcing us to move on in the conversation.

“Yeah, it is. But you’ll get used to five thousand square feet of beachfront property.” He rolled his eyes.

“Are you mocking me?” I narrowed my gaze.

“Of course I am. If I don't, who will?” He nudged me.

The truck ride was occupied with fillers. Small talk and laughing, fake laughing. He kept me at arms reach and I understood, grateful to even be this close.

When he dropped me off, I pointed at the house. “You wanna come in?”

“No, I have to work in the morning. Have a good sleep.” His tone when he said it killed off a piece of me. I hated that he only saw the liar and the villain. He didn’t see the person behind her. The one I was sometimes. The one I was now. The one who had gotten lost. He didn't understand, and I didn't know how to make him see. “Night, Em.”

“You called me a hag and a witch,” I spoke before I could stop myself. “When I met you, I didn’t know I’d gone so far the other way. I needed a renovation because a friend had come by and she saw us and lost her mind. We thought maybe she would bring doctors and straightjackets and lock us up. So we called you to come and fix the house, so at least we weren’t living in some run-down shack.” Tears filled my eyes. “But we weren’t fixing the house up for ourselves. It was so the machines wouldn’t get taken away. All my decisions were for those machines, for that world. Lana’s too.”

“Emma—”

“Let me finish, Mike. I didn’t know what I looked like. I was this broken woman, a shell of a human. I was living in the machine and pretending this life was the lie, and I didn’t look in mirrors or see the house because this world had nothing for me. There was nothing here for me to stay for. I could have died and no one would’ve noticed except Lana, and only because she needed me to bring her out.” The cold hard reality of it burned like acid in my throat but I pressed on, “And then you came and I started to notice things. You might not have seen me, but I saw you. I saw myself through you. Those stares, the horrified stares. They changed everything. They killed me. They forced me to take a hard look. And pretty soon what was in the fantasy of la la land wasn’t better than what was in the real world. Because of you—you, who called me a hag and a witch and told me I looked awful. And when you assumed cancer, I didn’t have the heart to tell you how or why I was so ugly. I just kept trying to fix it. And then you started looking at me like a normal person, sometimes even more than that, and I couldn’t go back. And it was wrong and I’m sorry. I never meant to mislead you or try to evoke your sympathies. I was just so ashamed.” I stepped back, closing the door. I turned and walked to the house, hating that I couldn’t get through it without sobbing.