Living Out Loud (Austen, #3)(84)

The line for my life was also deep and long, stretching in a gentle arch from an inch from my thumb and down to curve around the heel of my palm. I’d live until I was a hundred, as far as that line was concerned.

I felt a longing so irrationally deep in that moment, a frantic regret that I hadn’t looked into Annie’s palm, that I hadn’t traced the lines with my fingers. I wanted to see that crease travel across her hand and never end. I wanted to know that she would live until she was a hundred too, and that line would be some proof to carry me through the waiting, the unending waiting in a warp of time marked by a lost space man and infomercials for Brett Favre’s copper brace.

A shuffling caught my attention. Elle was transferring Meg’s sleeping torso to her aunt’s lap, who brushed the little girl’s hair from her face with reverence. Their mother sat in her wheelchair, staring at the television without seeing, with exhaustion on her face so deep, it seemed to reach all the way through to her bones. Her uncle’s elbow was propped on a hard plastic armrest, his face propped wearily in his hand and legs kicked out in front of him, his body sagging in the seat.

No one had spoken in a long time, long enough that Elle only spoke in a whisper, which they each answered with a nod.

She came to me last, taking the empty seat next to me, with her hazel eyes tired and kind and worried. “I’m going to get coffee. Can I get you a cup?”

“Yeah, sure,” I answered with a dry, creaky voice.

“I hope it’s not much longer. I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Me either.”

She stared at a spot on the ground, her eyes unfocused. “I can’t stop wondering what happened, how she ended up alone. You said she left the bookstore with Will, but what possibly could have happened between there and where you found her? How did she end up running through Central Park alone?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was his fault. There’s no other explanation.”

She shook her head and looked down at her hands, just as I had. “I wish I hadn’t texted him. I only saw her for a second when she came home. She was so tired, and we agreed to talk later. I didn’t see her again. I didn’t…I didn’t know they’d broken up.”

“I don’t fault you for texting him, nor am I surprised that he hasn’t answered you.”

Elle sat silently for a moment. “What did he do, Greg? What did he do to hurt you?”

I ran a hand over my lips, looking to her family. We were speaking quietly, and they were distracted enough that they didn’t seem to be paying us much mind.

“He used to date my sister. I wish it were as simple as him breaking her heart, but he took it so much further than that, so beyond what I could have even imagined. She told me he’d started rumors about her, which effectively ruined her reputation, and that was true. But she didn’t tell me the truth of the matter until today, before…before…”

I swallowed hard, clamping my jaw before speaking again.

“He drugged her and left her at a party, and she was assaulted by a stranger.”

Her hand moved to her mouth.

“I didn’t know. If I had, I never…I’d never have…” The words piled up in my throat. I swallowed them down again and started over. “I don’t know what he did to Annie, but the second I know she’s all right, the moment I see it with my own eyes, I intend to find out.”

Another stretch of silence passed, mine laden with determination, hers busy processing what I’d confessed.

She reached for my hand, which my eyes had found once more without my realizing.

“You didn’t know, Greg. You couldn’t have known.”

“Then why does this feel like it’s my fault?”

“If it wasn’t for you, she might not still be with us. If you hadn’t found her, she might have been lost to us forever. We owe you a great debt.”

I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything. All I want is Annie whole and well.”

“I believe we will have our wish, and you have to believe too.”

“I do. Because if I lose my faith, I’m afraid of what will happen to me.”

Elle squeezed my hand and let it go, and I turned my attention back to my empty hands.

A little while later, those hands held a cup of bitter coffee that I drank without tasting. And I didn’t look up.

Not until I heard a gasp from Elle.

Will stood across the room, his hair disheveled and eyes glassy and bloodshot. At the unexpected sight of him, the whistling emotion I’d so carefully tamped down came unsnapped, letting loose in a hot wind of fury that propelled me out of my seat and to him.

My hands didn’t care about the liquor on his breath or the repentance in his eyes as they reached for the lapels of his coat where the cold still hung.

I pulled him into me like a rag doll and arched over him. “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch? What did you do?”

His eyes, momentarily alert and wide with fear, bounced between mine. “I…I…”

I shook him once, hard. “What the fuck did you do?”

Commotion erupted around us, and hands pulled me away. I let him go and stepped back, my composure a breath away from shattering completely.

“Is she all right?” he asked.