Читать книгу Come Away With Me - Karma Brown, Karma Brown - Страница 17

8

Holding the vase now, I don’t feel giddy or joyful. I feel heavy, sluggish with misery.

“Pick something out,” Gabe says softly. “Actually, pick three things, okay?”

“Why?” I ask, my bitterness seeping out. “What’s the point, Gabe?”

“The point is life, Tegan. It’s going to carry on, whether you want it to or not. And eventually you need to join back in.”

“No one understands.” I’m crying now. “Trust me, if there were some kind of switch I could flick I would. In a second. I want my life back, too.”

“I know you do, love. I know.” Gabe’s voice lulls me, the gentleness of his tone washing over me.

“But even if I hop a plane somewhere far from here, I can’t get away from it,” I say. “I can’t run away from my broken heart, Gabe. Or my broken body.”

“You’re right. So don’t think about it as running away from something. More running toward something,” he suggests. The look on my face says it all. “I know, I know. Hear me out, okay?” I shrug, keeping my eyes on the jar.

“Nothing can change...” His voice cracks and I imagine his Adam’s apple bobbing repeatedly, the way it does when he tries to swallow his emotions. “Nothing can change what happened. And staying here, reliving it every moment of every day, is breaking you, Tegan. You’re disappearing on us, and I’m afraid soon there won’t be any of you left.”

I don’t say it out loud, but that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. One day I’ll simply cease to exist, like a puff of smoke. There one moment, gone the next.

“But pulling something out of that vase? It’s going to force you to live. To create a new memory. And I feel like if you can do that, just make one new memory that isn’t sad, it will be easier to make another one. Then another one. And soon you’ll have a stack of happy memories to help balance the sad ones.”

As much as I’ve committed to my disappearing act, Gabe’s words spark in me the tiniest flicker of something. I’m not sure, but it feels different. Fresh, like a clean, fluffy towel, or biting into a tomato straight off the vine.

“And there’s all that money from my parents from the wedding, just sitting in our bank account. Doing nothing but gathering a pathetic amount of interest,” he says.

“I think your parents expected us to do something a little more grown-up with that money,” I reply. Gabe’s parents wrote us a check for $200,000 as a wedding gift, surely intending it to go into a house in the suburbs. A proper place to raise their grandson.

“Who cares what they want us to do with it? I can’t think of a more perfect way to spend some of it.”

I give a small smile and run my fingers gently over the black lettering on the vase, taking care not to rub it off.

“You need a change of scenery, Teg,” Gabe says. “You’re going to lose yourself if you stay here. And I can’t let that happen.” He sighs heavily. “Besides, school’s out in a few months and then you have the summer off.” Not that I’m going back to work anytime soon. Medical leave has turned into stress leave, buying me at least the rest of the school year. “The timing couldn’t be better.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “The thought of leaving this apartment exhausts me. Getting on a plane?” I shake my head.

“We can do this,” he says. “I’ll be with you the whole time. And I promise not to let you snore or drool if you fall asleep on the plane.” He laughs, and I feel the familiar pull of love, despite everything. “You need this, Teg. We need this.”

I look at him, then take a deep breath as I dig into the vase, stirring the papers. “Three things?”

Gabe nods.

I pull out the first one and set it down on the duvet, hands shaking. It’s the one we agreed on for our honeymoon. The trip we put off when we found out I was pregnant.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Gabe says, surprise in his voice. “Think it’s a sign?”

I shrug. Maybe. Though I don’t believe in that much anymore.

Reaching back in the vase, I pull out another one, and then one more. I carefully unfold the last two papers and smooth out the folds, taking my time lining up the small squares side by side.

Gabe starts humming a tune I recognize, breaking into song for the chorus. “We’re leaving...on a jet plane...”

There’s so much optimism in his voice, and I can’t stomach it.

I put my head in my hands and sob.