Off the Deep End (42)
He cuts in. “Why do you think they were so bothered by it?”
“Really?” I roll my eyes at him. “Of course I know why they were bothered by our relationship. For the same reason I’d be bothered if Gabe was in a relationship with a forty-one-year-old woman.” He nods satisfactorily like he’s relieved I agree with him and am able to see things that way, but I’ve never had a problem understanding why our relationship makes people uncomfortable, especially his mother. I just had a problem with her keeping us away from each other. She didn’t know the implications of her actions. “Once Amber found out how much time we were spending together and how close we were, she totally lost it and forbade us to have any contact. She took him away and isolated him inside the house. That’s when she got into his head.” I was gutted all over again when Isaac was suddenly jerked away from me out of the blue. Neither of us were prepared for it, and it left both of us reeling. I could tell by how his texts spiraled, and then they just stopped. “It wasn’t just that we weren’t allowed to see each other—she didn’t allow any contact whatsoever. I wouldn’t have sent the hair if I had any other way of communicating with him.”
“I’m still not sure I’m following what the hair was actually for. Why that’s what you chose to send him. Flowers couldn’t have sufficed?” he jokes, and I appreciate it, even though it doesn’t let me off the hook with his question.
“I wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone. That I was still there and our bond was still solid. I had promised him at the hospital that I would be here for him in this life no matter what, and he needed to know I wasn’t breaking that promise. True love is forever.”
And I still mean it. My promise was as true that day as it is today.
THIRTEEN
AMBER GREER
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Mark had gone downstairs with Katie hours ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to get up and face another day just yet. I was still upset from my confrontation with Jules and the discussion with Detective Hawkins afterward. I’d expected him to follow me home last night, but he hadn’t. He must have gone down to the station instead.
What was Jules doing at this exact minute? What had she done when Detective Hawkins pulled me off her and dragged me out of the building? Had she run downstairs and found a way to call Isaac? Was it possible she was hiding him somewhere in that apartment? Was there a basement? Had anyone checked?
If I’d been able to sneak in there that easily, then other people could too. The only reason the staff member was suspicious or even knew me was because my face had been plastered all over the news. If I hadn’t been positioned dead center in the middle of the story captivating the entire nation, she wouldn’t have even noticed who I was or given it a second thought. She probably would’ve just let me inside.
What was Jules planning on doing with him? No matter how delusional she was, I still didn’t think she’d hurt him. She was more likely to keep him locked up in the basement or in a closet like he was some sick pet than take away his life. She couldn’t handle not having any contact with him for a few hours and lost it completely when he broke off everything. Killing him would be punishing herself, but even though she might not kill him, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t kidnap him and go to any lengths to keep him. She was convinced that she and Isaac were in this incredible, almost mythical relationship with each other because of what they’d been through together. It completely freaked Isaac out. He said he only talked to her because he felt sorry for her, and in the beginning, I thought it was really sweet. That was before they started spending so much time together outside the hospital. Nothing about that was normal.
She’d wormed herself into his head and tangled her messed-up logic in his thoughts. The fury rushed through me again just like it had when she was standing in front of me on the landing. She needed to leave him alone. How many times had I thought that?
Too many.
Guilt crept in like a slow fog. I’d known their relationship was creepy from the very beginning. How he went to visit her when she was at the hospital after her nearly fatal accident on the train tracks. He said he felt sorry for her and that he read her books to help pass the time and distract her from her terrible headaches. I thought it started out as innocently as he said it did, and there was no denying that it made him feel better. He smiled on the days that he went to visit her, and that smile was enough for me to shove any other misgivings I might’ve had about it aside. Besides, it wasn’t just about her.
He started meeting other patients, too, and under normal circumstances, I would’ve been worried about my fifteen-year-old boy making friends at the state hospital, but our world was so far beyond anything that I’d ever considered normal that I didn’t bother putting a stop to it. So he read books to Jules, and I’m sure they had conversations too. But he also played chess with Donald Higgins at the end of the hallway every Saturday morning. Donald was a veteran who had severe PTSD coupled with a nasty traumatic brain injury left over from the accident that had given him the PTSD to begin with. He’d been the only survivor out of four on an ATV that had gone over a land mine in Iraq. Isaac connected with him in a way he wasn’t able to connect with anyone else, and it was because they shared the same survivor guilt.
All I cared about at the time was that Isaac was finally starting to leave his room. And yes, it was weird, but for a few minutes every day, he was out in the sun and breathing fresh air. He spent time with real people. Even if they were mentally disturbed ones, at least they were real. More and more, he interacted only with the people he played video games with, and most of them were probably forty-year-old men still living with their moms. At least he was helping people by giving them something to look forward to in their day.