Midnight Lily(69)

"I know, baby." He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my palm.

"Last year, it happened again, and that's why I ran away." I lowered my eyes. I could describe it from my doctors' perspectives, but I wanted him to understand it from mine. "It's so difficult to explain and have it sound rational because it's not rational. It's not and I know it." I paused. "The world shifts, and something in me shifts, too, because I just accept it. I accept a new story, a new life, new characters. Sometimes it's only a slight variation of my real life, and sometimes it's entirely different." As if I were looking at the real world through a kaleidoscope, there, but changing, shifting with a thousand different colors, and patterns, and light. I watched my own hands fidget in my lap, feeling embarrassed and insecure.

"I know," he said softly, because he did know. I looked up at him and saw the understanding, the acceptance in his eyes and felt both love and sadness blossom in my chest. My lips tipped up into what felt like a sad smile, and I nodded, taking a deep breath before continuing. "Last spring, I began imagining my mother was still alive. My grandfather—who had been ill—had passed away a few months before, and my grandmother was planning to sell Whittington. And in my imaginings, my mother wanted to spend the summer there. Just a couple months of the two of us, of mountain air, and sunshine, and a reprieve from my grandmother who did nothing but stare at my mom and me with worry and walk around wringing her hands. I can't even tell you exactly why it made sense in my mind that we go there. I could tell you the conversations I had with my mom, I could explain it all, but it would make me sound like the crazy person I am."

"Lily, stop, don't say it like that." His voice was raspy.

"It's true, though, isn't it?"

Ryan sighed, pressing his lips together for a moment. "I guess we're both crazy people, then. And Lily, I think that sometimes, well sometimes, the only way to survive is to go crazy."

I thought about that for a moment, how similar grief and madness seemed, two sides of the same coin perhaps. I thought about how the grief stricken tore at their hair, their clothes, seeming to want to escape their skin. And I thought about how the mentally ill sometimes did the very same thing. I'd seen it often enough at the institutions I'd been at, felt like doing it myself. Perhaps that's what a mental illness really was—an extreme, long-lasting cousin to grief. How did you carry such a thing with grace?

And he had to understand . . . "It happens to me again and again, Ryan. It happens over and over—even when things are seemingly fine."

"You've been well for a year now."

"Yes, and I've been well for a year before. Is this really something you want to deal with? When you already have struggles of your own? When you're just getting well? Just feeling strong? You are, aren't you?" I felt tears stinging my eyes again, one spilling over.

"Lily," he said, the tone of his voice tortured. "I want you just as you are. I just . . . I want you, and—"

"Please," I interrupted. "Please don't say that now." I brought two fingers up to his lips. "Please think about what I've told you. Consider what you're agreeing to. Consider what a life with me would be like. What a life between the two of us would mean. Please, Ryan. Please do that for me. And if you think about it and decide it's not best for you, for either of us, then you'll be honest with me, right? You'll be honest with me because you're good and kind and because you love me." I brought my fingers from his lips and used my hand to cup his cheek. Slight prickles of a new beard lightly scratched my palm. He closed his eyes and leaned in to my hand for several moments.

When he finally opened his eyes, he nodded, his expression so very solemn. "Okay. Yes, I'll always be honest with you. Always."

I let out a breath and nodded. "I know," I said. "I trust you, Boy Scout." I gave him a tremulous smile. "I've trusted you from the moment I met you."

Ryan leaned in and placed his forehead against mine and we both breathed together for several moments. "Will you tell me what happened at Whittington? How you found me and how your grandmother came to be there?"

I nodded. "Yes."

Ryan sat back and I cleared my throat. "I found you in the woods, right near Whittington. You'd fallen into a very shallow ravine. You looked to be mostly bruised and scratched, more so from your walk through the woods than from your fall."

"I was trying to get to you."

I nodded, bringing my hand up to his cheek again. "I know." I brought my hand away and continued, "I used a thick quilt and moved you onto it and dragged you to Whittington. And then I used your phone to call my grandmother. She was a nurse before she met my grandfather . . . Anyway, I knew she'd be able to help you." I shook my head. "I probably should have called an ambulance, but I didn't think you'd broken anything vital, and there was no blood—"

"You did just fine. I was fine."

I nodded, still feeling guilty. "Anyway, my grandmother assessed you and agreed to help as long as I promised to check myself into a hospital. Finding me there, muddy and frantic, learning that I'd been living at Whittington with my . . . mother," I bit my lip and closed my eyes briefly, "she was worried and heartbroken to say the least." I sighed, recalling that confrontation, the arguments, the tears. "I said I would check myself into a hospital as long as it was one near you. When we returned you to the lodge, I found your bag with a luggage tag on it with your name, faded and hard to read, but there. It just confirmed what I already suspected—that your name is Ryan. Ryan Ellis. My grandmother looked up the rest of your information." I paused. That whole time was so murky. I'd been filled with grief, with fear. I'd let my grandmother handle the details while I walked through the days as if I was half asleep. Grief does that to you. "Later, my grandmother rented a house in Marin, and we were going to return to Colorado after my treatment was complete."