She broke mine.
1 NEW EMAIL
From:Mercer County Records Office
Subject: Purchase Agreement, 1229 Sycamore Lane
Dear Ms. Logan,
Please find attached the requested deed and purchase agreement for the following property:
1229 Sycamore Lane
Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey 08610
Lot & Block Reference:Lot 42, Block 19
Purchasers:Raymond C. Loughlin/Dolly Gallagher Loughlin
Seller:Evergreen Properties LLC
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you require more assistance. Happy to help!
Best,
Devin Gorchuk
Mercer County Records Office
Chapter 49
BLAKE
SEPTEMBER
LIFE GOES BACK TO NORMAL when I return to Hastings.
If by normal, you mean sudden bouts of paralyzing sadness and random angry outbursts interspersed with feelings of sheer and utter numbness.
After two weeks of this, I’m used to it, and to be fair, itisgetting better. I had a blood test last week, and my hormones are leveling out. In another couple weeks, I’ll know if the reason I want to crawl in a hole and die is because of a hormonal roller coaster or because I broke up with the man I love.
It needed to be done, though. I had to enforce our rule, and not just because a part of me can’t shake the fear that he only stayed because I was pregnant. I’ll never know if that’s true now, if he would’ve stuck around without a baby in the equation, even though he insists he would have. When I told Mom, she said I should take Wyatt at face value, believe his words.
But the doubt still lingers. It’s been there all summer, the knowledge that I’m not enough to keep him. He was always going to Nashville,always going to record his album. One day, he’ll be a star. And I’ll still be me. Aimless and ordinary. Not a supermodel like Alex or an athlete like Gigi. I don’t even know what he sees in me.
Stop wallowing.
It’s the rational voice, the one that sometimes manages to pierce through my natural inclination toward depression and self-loathing. Sometimes, I’m able to listen to it. Other times, such as now, the insecurities drown it out.It was never going to work, those insecurities snap at the voice.
Grandpa Tim has been letting me use his car to go to campus, except on Fridays when he has curling practice. I went with him last week, and it was actually pretty fun. Yes, these days I spend my timecurlingwith seniors. A drastic change from a month ago, when I was secretly getting fucked behind the boathouse.
I shove the memory aside. The summer is over. Wyatt and I are not together. He’s off in Boston or maybe New York now. I’ve been forcing myself not to keep tabs on him, but he’s posted a few stories on Instagram, and I couldn’t resist clicking on them. A story of him at the piano with his mom. Another one showing a blank page of sheet music. Part of me wonders if it’s for my benefit, but that’s arrogant of me to assume. He’s probably not thinking about me at all since I ended it.
My classes this semester are as boring as they were every other semester. Even my politics course, in which I get to do oodles of research on communism, isn’t lighting a fire inside me. Nothing is, really.
For the last few weeks, Little Spencer has been blowing up my phone, begging me to record another episode of the podcast, but my heart’s not in that either. Hell, I don’t even care about the documents that were emailed the other day.
Before I discovered I was pregnant, I was able to learn that Raymond Loughlin and Dolly Gallagher sold the property at the Albany address and purchased another one in Trenton, New Jersey, but no amount of searching has led me to a phone number or even an email. If I want to verify whether Raymond and Dolly still reside at that address, I’ll have to go in person. Which, normally? Sounds like an awesome adventure. The Spencers even offered to come along and make a road trip out of it, yet I can’t muster up any enthusiasm, not even to possibly solve this mystery.
