In the Stillness(46)

Bill spoke up. “I talked to your dad, Hon. He’s on his way.” I’d briefly forgotten that I’d given Bill my dad’s phone number while Ryker was overseas. I wanted to be able to be reached at all times. “Your mom is staying behind with your brother.”

At least I could be thankful for something. I wouldn’t have to face my mom and all of her assertions that soldier boyfriends would lead to no good.

“I’m so sorry, Natalie. Ryker hasn’t been right for weeks. I should have never called you when I didn’t hear from him.” Bill ran his hands through his hair and sat back in the chair.

“He’s sick, Bill. It’s not your fault.” Tosha spoke over me as I stared into the space at the end of my bed. “He needs help and maybe this will be his chance to get it.”

“The police want me to press charges,” I said to neither one of them in particular. Raising my hands to my eyes, I started to cry. “God, this is such a mess.”

And that? That’s when the fight left me. The fight for Ryker, the fight for us, and the fight for anything I thought I knew. In between my sobs of resignation, my dad came in and talked to Bill outside the curtain for a few minutes. Tosha stayed until my dad settled in, then she went back to the dorm.

I barely remember the exchange with my father, except that the nurses expressed concern about some “wounds” on my arms. They told him what they thought it was, and they were right, but I couldn’t tell my dad that. I just nodded when he said I’d be coming home with him and taking a semester off. I was barely passing my classes that semester, anyway, so I’d have to retake most of them.

Before I was ready to leave the next day, with nothing more than a nasty headache, I had to talk to the police again.

“I’ll sign whatever you want,” I said, “I just want him to stay away from me forever.” Walking out of the hospital that morning, I didn’t care if I ever saw Ryker Manning again. My dad told me a few weeks later that Ryker was put on probation and was required to receive a mental health evaluation. I was thankful that he’d at least have the chance to be helped. My mom made it a point, just after Christmas, to tell me I’d done Ryker a favor because with his arrest and probation, he probably wouldn’t be able to reenlist in the National Guard.

I hadn’t thought of that. I just wanted to pull myself out of his downward spiral, so I requested a restraining order; which may have been slight overkill since I was stuck in Pennsylvania for what would have been my Spring semester anyway. I knew that he wasn’t healthy enough to reenlist when he’d started talking about it, and I don’t know if it was a reaction to my mother telling me, but I started to feel guilty about stopping his life from going the way he’d wanted it to.

Still, by the time I got back to campus the summer before what would have been my senior year, but was my junior year re-do, I was living off-campus with a new cell phone and strict orders to stay away from all things Ryker Manning. It was easy to do when I was at home—to not think about him or wonder how was doing—but when I was back in South Hadley, I spent a lot of my time in the first few weeks looking over my shoulder and swearing I saw him. Right up through my graduation day two years later, when I swear I saw him through the crowd.

But. Nothing. He was gone. It was like he vanished into thin air. I was supposed to be okay with that—it’s what I’d wanted in the first place. Still, once my heart started piecing itself back together, it began to ache again for the smiling boy on the Amherst common who kissed me like he meant it, a minute after meeting me.

*

“Who knew ordering a cake would be such an event.” Tosha fakes being out of breath as she meets me in the produce section. Deliveries are just coming in and we have to dodge dollies of squash and asparagus as we fill our baskets. “Seriously, though, are you okay?”

“I’m feeling trapped, to be honest. Eric and I can’t be married anymore. I don’t love him and it’s just getting uglier between us by the day. That can’t be good for the boys. But, knowing Eric, he’ll press that it won’t be good for them if we split up their home now, especially with everything going on with Ollie . . .” I kneel down in front of a huge basket of yellow squash and start picking through them.

“It’s a bad reason to stay in a bad marriage, Natalie. A disability. You can’t do that to either one of you, or the boys.”

“Ugh, I know.” I sigh as I stand. “Luckily after next week, the boys will be at my parents’ for a week, so we’ll have time to sort through some shit while they’re gone.”

“Remember,” Tosha elbows me, “come stay at our place while you get everything squared away and find yourself a place to live.”

I nod and we head to the check-out. It makes sense that I would be the one to leave the apartment. Eric lived there before we even lived together—it’s his. I’m thankful, though, for the generous trust fund my grandmother Baker left to me when she passed away. I’ll be able to live off that for a little while, while I find a job.

Unless Eric and I can work it out . . . no, not an option on this side of the table.

As Tosha and I leave the market, I roll my eyes at the “Manning Farms” truck. Apart from seeing Ryker’s dad when I was eight months pregnant with the twins, that name is the most I’ve seen of Ryker since the stairwell in 2002.