“Definitely better than the last one,” she muttered, still never missing an opportunity to drag Teddy. This time, she didn’t realize how right she was. I wished to God I could bring myself to tell her. I felt like I was drowning, not sure if I wanted to let myself sink or fight to keep my head above water. “Do you need me to come out there?” she asked.
“No!” I said a little too forcefully and bolted upright in my bed. Maxima Clarke on the farm was the last thing in the world I needed. “No, no. I’m fine, Max. I can handle this.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, and I imagined her narrowing her eyes trying to discern some deeper meaning in my words.
“Of course. Unless you want to feed chickens and muck out stalls.”
“You know I don’t, but I will drive four hours to whup somebody’s ass if they’re messing with my work wife.”
I snorted a chuckle. It felt weird to find something to smile about when I felt that my world was crashing in on me.
“Let me go, Max. I’ll call you if anything else comes up.”
“You better,” she admonished. “Love you, girl.”
“Love you, too.”
I made my way down to the kitchen, hoping to find Dan leaning on the counter drinking a mug of tea, but the kitchen was empty. After making myself a cup of coffee without destroying the kitchen, I went to his apartment. The door gave way when I knocked, and I was shocked to find the apartment was empty. It wasn’t literally empty, just empty in the sense that Dan wasn’t in it. It felt like he was gone—not just doing chores or working in the greenhouse, but gone. I raced to his bedroom. The room was immaculately clean,and his suitcases were missing from the closet. His refrigerator had been emptied. There were no stray clothes strewn about and not even one errant teacup. He’d even taken his toothbrush.
Dan decided to leave early for his brother’s wedding and didn’t even tell me he was leaving. He didn’t even say goodbye. A thought popped into my head suddenly, and I made my way down to my grandfather’s study.
For the last three months, Dan and I had been playing the same drawn-out game of chess in my grandfather’s study, night after night, one move at a time. Either one of us could have ended the game months ago, but for reasons that clawed at my chest as I stared at my grandfather’s antique chess set, neither of us had. I hoped to find that Dan had answered my last chess move, letting me know that we were still playing, still together. What I found knocked the wind out of my chest.
Dan had laid down his king on the board.
It was a signal of the end of the game and, perhaps, the end of us. I guess Dan had said goodbye after all. I sank into my grandfather’s chair, rolling the king between my fingertips and feeling the tears roll down my cheeks when my phone rang in my pocket. My heart leaped, hoping that it was Dan, but it wasn’t. Just when I’d thought my morning couldn’t possibly get any worse, it had. I sent the call to voicemail, and it rang again. After ignoring the call a second time, I received a text.
Teddy:Em, answer your phone. I’m still in town and I need to see you ASAP.
There have been some new developments and we need to get on the same page. Call me back.
The next few days were a blur. The meeting with Teddy was uneventful, mostly because I couldn’t remember it. He’d asked me to meet him at a restaurant two towns away. I’d sat across from him while he ate and talked about his grand plans for us, the town, and my farm. My appetite had completely deserted me since Dan left, so I simply stared at Teddy’s mouth moving while I turned a glass of water in my hands to keep them occupied. I didn’t remember the ride home, but when I got there, I took a long, hot shower, put on my pajamas, opened my first bottle of wine, and before I knew it, three days had gone by.
Choosing to ignore the fact that the wonderful new world I’d spent the last three months building for myself was crumbling around me probably wasn’t healthy, but it felt better than facing the truth. If I’d talked to my therapist, which probably would’ve been a good idea, she’d have probably said that I was going through the first stage of grief: denial.
I stumbled into my grandfather’s study, still in my pajamas and holding a coffee mug filled with merlot. The chess set was still sitting on the desk exactly as it was three days ago. I grabbed my grandfather’s journal from the shelf and quickly left the office. After settling myself on the living room couch, I opened the journal and began to read.
Every word fueled my rage. I wasn’t sure how long I’d spentreading, but by the time I was done, the sun had set. I slammed the journal shut and threw it across the room, before pulling out my phone and dialing.
“You took us away from them!” I screamed through tears.
“Emma, what in the world—” my mother gasped.
“They loved us, and you took us away from them,” I repeated, feeling the slur in my voice, “because you were afraid of losing your medical license.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Yes,” I answered, unnecessarily. “I am very drunk, but you haven’t answered my question.”
“You haven’t asked me a question,” my mother retorted. “You called my phone and started shouting at me.”
“I read my grandfather’s journal. I know about the fight, the marijuana. Why did you take us away from them?”
“Emma, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know I don’t because you’ll never talk to me about it. You never talk about Annie. You never talk about our grandparents. Why won’t you just tell me the truth? What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything. I did what was best for my family and my… children.” Her voice broke on the wordchildren, but she steeled herself and kept talking. “If you’d really read that journal carefully, you would see that your grandparents were reckless and put you, Annie, and our entire family in danger. But of course, you want to make me the villain and blame me for everything that went wrong.”
