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I pulled the chair out, collapsing into it, when I found the ring beside the piece of paper on the table. The old Dominic tapped out entirely, refusing to find out the truth and leaving this shell of him to deal with everything alone.
Clearing his throat, Otis pushed it over to me with his finger. “She left not a half an hour after you did.”
I flipped it over in my fingertips until it reached the end of my little finger, and I pushed it in place with my other hand. “Where?”
He blinked at the kitchen window as his lips fought each other to stay still. “I don’t know exactly.” The shoulder of his ratty yellowed t-shirt shifted slightly at me. “She said she’s staying with her mom for a while, but I haven’t talked to that woman in years. I wasn’t even aware they’d been in contact with each other.”
My eyes drifted over his head toward the hallway when I caught the hint of Faith’s Wild Musk perfume hanging on the dust droplets in the sunlight. “There’s got to be something in her room — an envelope or address written down in a notebook. She’s terrible with numbers.”
The piece of paper he was trying to hide from me hesitantly moved across the table. “She told me to give you this.”
Giving her choices never led anywhere good. I’m not saying I needed to run her life, but Faith always saw herself as less than she was. She had no confidence to do the right thing in any situation. Which meant more often than not, when forced to make a choice, she chose wrong — and man, did she fuck up this one. ‘I choose for you to have the life you planned for, but I won’t ever fit into it. I love you, and I’m sorry, Faith.’
“That’s not…” He lifted his eyes to me at last, and I pushed the chair back and rocked forward to stand up. “That wasn’t one of the options.”
Two steps.
I got not two steps away before the entire room closed in on me. “I can’t…” Fighting to breathe again, I slid my hand up my throat and fell into the wall. “I can’t” — I grabbed at the pain shooting through my chest — “not know where she is. I’ll die.”
The other chair scraped against the floor, and Otis laid his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sure it doesn’t make it easier, but she thinks she’s doing what’s best for you. She loves you so much and wouldn’t leave you unless she thought she had no other choice.”
The only thing that remained of her lay inside the four walls of that house — my only connection to sanity, love, and everything good. Lost in the dark spaces of my mind, I spun further and further away from reality. “I can’t live without her. I can’t.”
Gently rubbing his hand over my head, Otis held me up with the other when my knees gave up on me. “This was so impulsive. She’s never done anything like this before. So, maybe we only need to give her a few days to think things through and get her mind right.” Sliding his hands over my cheeks, he nodded, but the tears in his eyes said even he didn’t believe it. All the little voice in my head kept telling me was that she’d never survive without me. “She’s going to be okay, Dom.”
I wiped the slobber and tears and snot from my face with my hands and rubbed it off on my jeans. “We talked about all this. I don’t understand what changed between last night and now.”
He took a deep breath and rolled his eyes over the ceiling as he blew it out. “She…” Shrugging as he seemed to go back through time in his head, he spoke slower than usual, like he wanted to recall every word perfectly for me. “She thinks you deserve better than this place. Better than working in the quarry or the train yard or struggling to pay your bills all the time.”
Laying his fingertips on the center of my chest, he tapped them against me. “She wants you to have a better life than we do, and she’s afraid you’ll stay here and be miserable like the rest of us. And that would kill her.”
He bunched my shirt in his hand and tugged me closer. “If she comes back or doesn’t, you have to get out of here, Dom. Away from this town and your parents. Go to school, and play football, and be the best at everything you do.”
My eyes shut to him, and I put my hands over my ears.
I didn’t want to hear anything about the future if it didn’t have her in it. So, he smashed his forehead into mine and put the command in my head, anyway. “Then when all that’s over, once you’ve accomplished everything you need to, you can come back home and be one of us poor folks if it makes you happy.” My head rocked with his when he shook it at me. “But don’t make her running away from home like this have no meaning. Don’t do that.”
Impossible.
Any kind of existence without her in it would never be real to me. It wasn’t part of the plan, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I only wanted to close my eyes again and be with her. “I just want to go lay down for a while. I’m so tired.”
“Okay.” He stepped aside, sniffing away his tears and letting his hand drop from my shoulder as I passed him. “It’s going to be alright, Dom.”
But nothing was alright. Half of me just disappeared off the face of the planet. I didn’t know if she was alive or hurt or scared or hungry, and I couldn’t think of anything else.
My whole universe was chaos. I was only a teenage boy who couldn’t finish growing up, sitting still while everyone moved on with their lives around me.
Nothing would ever be right for me until we were together again.
14
The Real World
Faith
No matter how long I stared at the phone, I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up.
What could I say that would ever make what I’d done right?
