This Close to Okay(77)
He’d called his parents and talked to them like normal, too, neither of them asking where he was or what he was doing, because he was a grown man. He told his parents he loved them. Got off the phone, ditched it for his new one, and cried privately before hitching to Sugar Maple, a town seventy-five miles away from Bloom. He’d sold his truck a week before, lying to his parents and saying he was on the hunt for a new one.
Rye caught rides with two more truckers before making it to Louisville and walking aimlessly. Louisville because Christine and Brenna loved the Louisville Zoo, especially the baby elephant. They came as a family to visit at least once a season. And he’d thrown that money in his backpack because when he was released from prison, people had given him the money they’d raised for him when he was inside. There was more of the money; he’d left it at his parents’ place, and his suicide letter would’ve told them exactly where, once they received it in the mail.
He had prayed for life to give him a break. He had prayed for God to give him a sign. He had thought All this will haunt me forever before he climbed up on the bridge on Thursday, praying. He didn’t want to die, but he had no other option. It was the only way. How else could he make it all stop?
TALLIE
Tallie couldn’t help but cry, seeing photos of Christine and Brenna for the first time, photos of Rye with them. His Eleanor Christina and Briar Anna. Christine was bright-eyed and so cheerleader-pretty that she looked as if nothing bad could ever happen to her. Brenna had Rye’s hair, the same splash of cinnamon freckles. She was so small and alive in the photos—in one of them, holding both hands straight up in the air, with her mouth wide open in squeal. Tallie stared at it, half waiting for the picture to make a sound. One of the websites offered a link to the audio of the 911 call Rye’s neighbor made, and Tallie caught her breath. Closed that tab on her phone as quickly as she could before it played.
Rye sat and then stood while Tallie looked at his mug shot: a T-shirt the color of peas, his eyes weary, his mouth an arrow. A photo taken the Christmas before Christine and Brenna died: the three of them laughing, wearing antlers on their heads and ugly Christmas sweaters, Brenna on Rye’s hip, Christine with her hand on his stomach, looking up at him. A family portrait: Rye playfully smushed between his strawberry-blond mother and his dark-haired father, a wide oak tree flush with green behind them. She stepped away and smoked as she flicked through article after article, photo after photo of his life before she met him.
A kaleidoscope of contradicting feelings spun in her heart, the colored glass of it shattering and revealing a new emotion with every turn. Rye was a wet petal, still grief-stricken and tender; Rye had betrayed her trust and gotten himself involved with Joel out of pettiness. Rye’s story was true, and she had pages and pages of news articles and YouTube videos to prove it; Rye had stayed with her in her home and lied about who he was. Rye was gentle and sweet to her at all times, especially when they’d been in her bed together; when they were in her bed together, it was twinned loneliness and she was worried about her brother, dizzied and desperate for a sexual connection and release to numb her.
Rye had saved Lionel.
She felt sorry for Rye; how could she not?
He may have lied about who he was without her picking up on it, but the core of her instincts had been right. She didn’t believe he’d killed his wife and daughter, and some would call her a fool, but she didn’t doubt her ability to read people’s energies just because she didn’t pick up Joel’s cheating husband energy as quickly as she could’ve. She’d been wrong about Joel, but she’d never been wrong about pure evil.
Rye was a lot of things, a lot of things she couldn’t know yet, but he wasn’t a sociopath or a murderer. She’d read about Christine’s autopsy, the drugs she’d had in her system, her history of mental illness. She’d watched a ten-minute video of an episode of a crime show he’d pulled up on YouTube, a team of attorneys explaining how he couldn’t have done it. The video had half a million views.
Diagnoses: Acute grief from the deaths of his wife and young daughter three years ago. Survivor’s guilt. PTSD from being accused and convicted of their deaths and subsequently falsely imprisoned.
*
“This is all so gut-wrenching, and I’m sorry…I’m just so sorry you’ve had to deal with this,” Tallie said. “Did you tell the cop who pulled us over who you really were?”
“Yes. And he recognized my name immediately. Googled me as I sat in his patrol car, and he got the same pitiful sorrow in his eyes everyone gets when they hear the story.”
Tallie changed the expression on her face, careful to not have those pitiful-sorrow eyes when she asked him, “Weren’t you worried someone would recognize you when we were at the party? The unicorn…my friend who thought you looked familiar? Did anyone say anything?”
Rye shook his head. “No one said anything, but there were a couple of times this weekend when people looked at me too long. In the pub…and an older woman stopped me in the grocery store. It’s usually older people. Old people love the news. Li said something about me looking familiar, though. And I thought your mom definitely recognized me when she came over. I thought your neighbor did, too. She looked at me weird.”
“Well…just so you know, my neighbor looks at everyone weird,” Tallie said.