Collared(73)

Once the bus stops at that same bus stop and I get out, my mind shifts. It isn’t Torrin I’m thinking about now.

There are actual cars and people around today but not many, and instead of crawling through the gates like last time, I pass through them. As I storm down the same roads and paths, I feel hot instead of cold. It’s another sunny day, and I’m wearing another sweater that conceals my neck, but it isn’t anything on the outside that’s heating me—it’s coming from the inside.

A furnace has been installed inside me, and it’s pumping heat throughout my body. The closer I get to the gravestone, the hotter I feel.

Jogging the last bit toward it, I have to bite my lip from shouting what I need to say right here. This time, I’m glad he’s been buried out here because I can scream all I want and probably no one will hear.

This time, I don’t kneel at his grave. This time, I don’t cry silent tears. This time, I don’t feel confusion. This time, the only thing I miss are the ten years that have been stolen from me.

“It’s me, Earl Rae.” My voice quivers with its anger as I step onto the cement gravestone. I glare at it. “Remember that girl you decided to take one night and play make-believe was your daughter? That girl?”

I see Torrin’s face fall in that fifth-floor waiting room. I see him reach for me and me unable to reach back. I see his smile and hear his question and envision the way my life could have been.

Then I see red.

“You took my life from me, you sick, pathetic bastard. You didn’t ask. You didn’t care. You just took it. That was my life. Mine. It was a great life that you took away because you were a bad person. An evil man.”

I don’t wipe the tears away, because unlike the others, these are derived from anger. They don’t hurt as much as the other kind. They actually feel pretty damn good.

“I loved him. He loved me. And you took that from us. You took it, and I can never get it back because you twisted and twisted me until I’m not sure I even remember what love is. How it feels. How it looks. I can’t remember . . .”

When a splash of sadness soaks its way inside me, I grind the dried weeds still resting above his name with the toe of my shoe.

“He still loves me, and I still love him, but I’m a fraction of what I used to be. That’s all I’ve got left to love back with, and it’s not enough. He deserves it all, and all I’ve got left are scraps.” I surge with anger that rolls down from my head. I hope it soaks into the ground and somewhere, in that inner circle, Earl Rae’s hell gets a little hotter. “I hate you. I hate you so, so much. I hate you more than any person has ever hated someone else.”

I don’t know if anyone hears me. I don’t know if anyone sees me. I don’t care.

“You want to know why your daughter probably ran away with her mom, you sick, sick f*ck? Because she couldn’t wait to get away from you. You want to know why she stayed away? Because she never wanted to see you again. Because look at your gravestone, Earl Rae—no one cares.” I kick the dried weeds away until they’ve disappeared into the grass. “You are a bad man, and no one mourns a bad person. You are a sick man, and no one loves a sick person.”

My throat constricts when I shout the last part, and I start kicking the gravestone. With the heel of my sneaker, with the toe of it, any part of it I can smash against it. “I wish you hadn’t taken the chicken-shit way out. I wish you hadn’t because that was my right. You took my life; it’s only fair I get to take yours. Except I wouldn’t have used a gun and made it quick. I would have used my hands. Around your neck. Until the life drained out of you the way it has out of me.” I’m jumping now, like I can break the cement in half if I just don’t stop. “I want to kill you! Again . . . and again . . . and again.”

I pause for a minute, panting. I’m staring at the gravestone like I’m waiting for him to say something back. I’m waiting for an explanation or an apology or something that will give me some peace as to why my life was ripped away.

There’s nothing. Only silence.

There’ll never be an explanation. Never an apology. Never absolution.

And without any of that, how is peace possible?

“I hate you, Earl Rae, you hear me? I hate you.” I glare at the gravestone, picturing the innocent look on his face that night I disappeared. How could someone so evil master such innocence?

“Burn in hell.” I wipe the sweat from my forehead and pull at the collar of my sweater because I’m stifling from the heat coursing through me. “I’m burning in my own.”





WHEN I SNEAK into the backyard hours later, it’s dark, and more houses are dark than light. My parents’ house is one of the few with lights still on, burning brightly inside.

I’ve missed dozens of calls from them. I’ve missed just as many from Torrin, whom they probably called after being unable to reach me, assuming I’d be with him. I don’t want them to worry. I don’t want to cause them any more pain, but it seems inevitable. Even when I try not to, I still find some way to hurt them. Like I did Torrin today when all I wanted to do was protect him.

Like when I didn’t answer my parents’ calls because I didn’t want them to hear me as I’d been earlier—I didn’t want them to discover just how damaged their daughter is now.