Rey
Logically, I knew that Jack needed to leave. If he felt as bad as I thought he did here, he needed to go. It still hurt like nothing I’d ever felt. It only felt slightly less painful than losing my mom because the pain was different.
I realized I withdrew from everyone a little in the days after he hopped on the plane. I needed space to just…be. I needed to be able to just exist without putting on a brave face when I didn’t feel like being brave at all.
I helped with keeping everyone fed, even if it reminded me of him in surprising ways. One day I was dicing onions and my crying had very little to do with the chemical the damn thing produced and everything to do with how Jack had patiently shown me how to cut one to his standards in a way that kept my fingers safe from the sharp blades.
Theo walked in to see me weeping and came to stand behind me. He put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back to lean on himself. It was symbolic as fuck and made me cry even more.
Gently, he took the knife from my hand and turned me around, then hugged me close.
“You know,” he murmured after a minute or so of me falling apart. “You could check up on him, you know that, right?”
“How?”
“Well, I assume messaging him directly feels too much, but there’s always his sister and his niece?” He reached over to grab a paper towel and handed it to me. “How hard can it be to find the contact information for someone called Rhiannon Cook-Ayad?”
I blew my nose and mopped my face a little. “Yeah. I’ll…I’ll think about it.”
“Good. We all know you two love each other. We know that’s not the issue here, right?”
He wasn’t spelling it out, of which I was pretty damn grateful.
“I know.”
“Okay.” He squeezed me once more. Then he looked sheepish. “I forgot to pick up a new sack of carrots.”
I chuckled and went to the pantry where Jack’s special produce drawer was. I grabbed a small bag of carrots—one of many—and handed it over. “There you go.”
* * * *
It took me a few more days to look for Rhiannon online, then a couple of more to gather the courage to message her on Instagram. For a while I thought that since I’d found her daughter Samira through the likes on Rhiannon’s photos, I could message her instead.
Then I thought about it and knew that while it would likely be easier for me to connect with Samira, Jack wouldn’t want to burden her with his issues unless she’d been at Rhiannon’s when Jack made it there.
So, Jack’s big sister it was.
I made a new Instagram account—I hadn’t touched my old one in over a year—and used a close-up of the horse on the Twin Star logo as my avatar. Then I uploaded a photo of the stars on the logo as my first and only post.
And then, then I messaged Rhiannon.
Hi, Rhiannon. You don’t know me, but by now you know of me, I’m sure. My name is Rey.
I knew she’d likely not message me instantly, so I forced myself to put the phone away and go watch a movie with Madden.
He’d finally relented and let Toby buy him a laptop. A refurbished one, though, because apparently Madden was environmentally conscious like that.
Mona was having a sleepover at Toby’s, so Madden and I stretched out on their bed with snacks and tried to figure out what to watch.
“Does it have to be a movie?” he asked, after we’d been contemplating several options.
I glanced at him. “No, did you have something else in mind?”
“There’s this documentary I heard about that’s pretty interesting…” He seemed almost shy for some reason.
“Oh? Which one?” I busied myself with opening a bag of Twizzlers to give him space.
“Uh, the climber one?Free Solo?”
