I would have to ask him. If I was going to love this man, I needed to know what had changed him. Even if asking him caused me to lose him. The deeper I sank, the harder this would be. How did I love this man so much yet I didn’t completely know him?
JUNE 20 / 8 AM
Eli Hardy
I WAS AWAKE contemplating a run for the first time since Alice’s death when the phone rang. It was early and my mood lightened as I walked over to pick it up from beside the bed where I’d left it charging. The thought of hearing Ophelia’s voice made me hopeful. I’d woken up with my thoughts on her. My dreams had been sweet instead of the nightmare that had once plagued me every time I closed my eyes. She was solely to thank for that even if she didn’t know it.
The Atlanta phone number that lit up my screen made all the peace vanish as quickly as it had come. In its place came the heaviness that I tried so hard to push back into a dark corner and forget. The number I had deleted from my contacts months ago, but it was burned into my memory. I recognized it. I’d seen it so many times over the past six months.
That part of my life was over. I had closed the connection. Ended all attempts at trying to understand. There was nothing that could make the truth easier. None of it had been real. It had been a façade and, in the end, taken the only real thing it had given me. My son.
I ended the call without answering, dropped the phone on the bed this time just as quickly as I had picked it up wanting to get away from the memory. The need to run was now clawing at me in a way it never had. Walking back to the closet, I grabbed the running shorts that had been neglected for so long. Once I had run daily for fitness but the need to run from the demons that I would never be free from pushed me now. The phone call reminding me of what I’d never forget. Choices I could never go back and change.
I’d come to rely on Ophelia to keep me from getting lost in the horror that haunted me. Ophelia couldn’t always be here when the memories came. She made me feel centered and I was depending on her presence more and more every day. It was unfair to her. I had to find my own salvation from the past. Being with her shouldn’t be based on her easing the pain. I was using her, and I had to find a way to stop. Relying on someone else to cope with anything was unhealthy. The more I told myself this, the deeper my need for her grew.
The phone rang again. I didn’t move, standing still, unable to look in the direction of the phone I listened to each ring waiting for it to end. When the last ring faded, I exhaled. I didn’t go check the number. I didn’t want to see it. Grabbing my running shoes, I put them on and laced them tightly. Before I was finished with this task, the chime alerting me to a voicemail broke the silence. The pounding in my head began. It was a familiar reaction. I inhaled deeply and exhaled preparing for the sorrow to pull at me.
When only the bearable ache lingered inside me at the memory, I took another deep breath. It was confusing and almost relieving. My panic had been a habit. Seeing any reminder from my past had always triggered so many emotions I’d expected it to take over like it always had. This time the power of it was weak. The struggle to breathe hadn’t plagued me. I was standing here in my room alone and I was normal.
Walking over to the phone, confused by the ability to suddenly handle something that normally triggered the pain, I felt stronger. Able to face the memory. No longer hiding from it all but accepting it. I picked up my phone and pressed the voicemail notification. Putting it to my ear, I heard the familiar voice I expected.
“It’s Annie, but you know that. I have some things of Alice’s you might want . . . and Eli, there is something you also need to see. I can’t make you talk to me. But you need to see this and see the truth. Hating her won’t change the past. She paid for it all with her death. Shit. Whatever. Just call me back.”
I stood there after the message had ended. Annie was Alice’s older sister. Their voices so similar yet that was where their similarities ended. Annie was a dependable, stable, hard-working single mom, who didn’t let her childhood affect the person she had become. It had made her determined and not a victim.