Reminders of Him(75)

Hours.

Your family was told I walked home and fell asleep, but that’s not exactly what happened. I’m almost positive I fainted from shock, because when the cops beat on my bedroom door the next morning and I opened my eyes, I was on the floor. I noticed a small puddle of blood on the floor next to my head. I must have hit my head going down, but I didn’t have time to inspect it because police were in my bedroom and one of them had his hand on my arm and he was lifting me to my feet.

That’s the last time I ever saw my bedroom.

I remember my roommate Clarissa looked horrified. It wasn’t because she was horrified for me. She was horrified for herself. It was as if she had been living with a murderer all this time and had no idea. Her boyfriend, we could never remember his name—Jason or Jackson or Justin—was comforting her like I had ruined her day.

I almost apologized to her, but I couldn’t get my thoughts to connect with my voice. I had questions, I was confused, I was weak, I was hurting. But the most powerful of all the feelings flooding me in that moment was my loneliness.

Little did I know, that feeling would become perpetual. Permanent. I knew when they put me in the back seat of the police car that my life had reached its peak with you, and nothing that came after you would ever matter.

There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you.

But there was, and I was in it.

I’ll be in it forever.



There’s still more to read, but my throat is dry and my nerves are shot and I’m scared of what Ledger is thinking of me right now. He’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles have turned white.

I reach for my bottle of water and take a long drink. Ledger directs his car all the way up his driveway, and when we reach his house, he puts his truck in park and leans his elbow against his door. He doesn’t look at me. “Keep reading.”

My hands are shaking now. I don’t know if I can continue to read without crying, but I don’t think he’d care even if I read through my tears. I take another drink and then start reading the next chapter.



Dear Scotty,

This is what it was like in the interrogation room.

Them: How much did you have to drink?

Me: Silence

Them: Who took you home after the wreck?

Me: Silence

Them: Are you on any other illegal substances?

Me: Silence

Them: Did you call for help?

Me: Silence

Them: Did you know he was still alive when you fled the scene?

Me: Silence

Them: Did you know he was still alive when we found him an hour and a half ago?

Me: Screams.

Lots of screams.

Screams until they put me back in a cell and said they’d come back for me when I calmed down.

When I calmed down.

I didn’t calm down, Scotty.

I

think

I

lost

a

little

bit

of

my

mind

that

day.

They pulled me into the interrogation room two more times over the next twenty-four hours. I hadn’t slept, I was heartbroken, I couldn’t eat or drink anything.

I just. Wanted. To die.

And then, when they told me you would still be alive if I had just called for help, I did die. It was a Monday, I think. Two days after our wreck. I sometimes want to buy myself a headstone and have that date written on it, even though I’m still pretending not to be dead. My epitaph would read: Kenna Nicole Rowan, died two days after the passing of her beloved Scotty.

I never even attempted to call my mother through all of it. I was too depressed to call anyone at all. And how could I call my friends back home and tell them what I’d done?

I was ashamed and sad, and as a result of that, no one in my life before I met you knew what I had done. And since you were gone, and your entire family hated me, I had no visitors.

They appointed me a lawyer, but I had no one to post bail. I didn’t even have anywhere to go if I could have posted bail. I found comfort being there in that jail cell, so I didn’t mind it. If I couldn’t be with you in your car, the only place I wanted to be was alone in that cell where I could refuse to eat the food they gave me and hopefully, eventually, my heart would stop beating like I thought yours had that night.

Turns out, your heart was still beating. It was just your arm that had died. I could go into more gruesome details about how it was so horribly crushed and mangled during the wreck that the blood flow was completely cut off and that’s why I touched you and thought you were dead, and how, despite all that, you still somehow woke up and got out of the car and tried to get the help I never brought back to you.

I would have realized that if only I would have stayed with you longer, or tried harder. If I wouldn’t have panicked and ran and allowed the adrenaline to pump through me to the point that I wasn’t even functioning within the borders of reality.

If I could have been as calm as you always were, you’d still be alive. We’d probably be raising the daughter together that you never even knew we made. We’d probably have two kids by now, or even three, and I’d more than likely be a teacher, or a nurse, or a writer, or whatever you would have undoubtedly given me the strength to realize I could be.

My God, I miss you.