“It’s over, it’s over,” I repeat to myself again and again, as if I’m chanting a spell. Like the power of my words can make it come true.
As we cling on to each other, Sadie’s body against mine feels both comforting and distant, while my consciousness begins to slip.
Soon, my limbs turn to lead and my head grows heavier, sinking deeper into the thin mattress.
As my eyes flutter, I tighten my grip on my daughter’s small frame.
I force myself to stay present, to remain strong for a little longer.
Stay awake for her.
In her hair I search for her familiar scent beneath the smell of sweat, trying to ground myself in something real. I can’t let go, not when Sadie needs me most.
Except, the darkness is fighting just as hard to drag me down.
As Sadie finally starts to calm down, her breathing becoming less ragged against my chest, I feel myself sinking deeper and deeper, my vision darkening even more and my eyelids growing heavier with each blink.
I try to speak, to reassure Sadie one more time, but my words slur together and dissolve into meaningless noises.
From a distance, Sadie asks if I’m okay, but I can’t answer. My tongue feels too swollen in my mouth, foreign and useless.
Terror forms a hard knot in the pit of my stomach. It’s too late.
“L…love you,” I tell Sadie. I’m unsure if she can make out the words.
Her sobs cut through the noise in my head, piercing the fog that threatens to swallow me whole. She’s sitting up now, shaking me, begging me not to leave her.
I want to answer, to make her promises I’m not sure I can keep, but the words don’t come.
The last thing I feel before darkness takes me is Sadie’s arms tightening around me, holding on.
THIRTY-THREE
GABRIEL
Present Day
I wake up feeling like I ran a marathon. And I look like I haven’t slept in months. Since Judy found out about the affair, the guilt has been like a living thing eating away at me from deep within, wounding me the way I wounded my wife.
Do I even have a right to call her that anymore?
Being alone in the apartment with Scarlett feels so wrong.
It must have been so hard for Judy to leave us yesterday, possibly wondering if we would pick up where we left off. That’s of course if she even believes it’s over between us. But it is, has been for months.
After Sadie disappeared, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt Judy more than she was already hurting, couldn’t risk her finding out the truth. I love my wife, even though I had lost sight of that for a while.
I tried avoiding Scarlett as much as I could, but we need to work together to do what we can on our end, while Judy is in the camp.
A few minutes later, I find myself in front of Scarlett’s door and take a breath before knocking.
“I’m coming,” she calls out instead of asking me to enter, which I appreciate.
When she opens the door, the dark bags hanging under her eyes are proof that she hasn’t slept much either, or at all.
“I still can’t reach Judy,” I say to her, barely meeting the eyes of the woman I slept with behind my wife’s back. “Her phone is off and she’s not responding to my messages.” I press the heel of my palm to the space between my eyebrows. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it. We need to do something.”
“But what can we do?” Scarlett stands by the window with her arms crossed.
