They wheeled Sabrina past a few minutes later. She was calling my name when they took her by us, “Julian… Julian.”I sat with my back half to her and my hand on the back of Alyssa’s neck and did not turn my head. Her voice got smaller down the hall, and then it was gone.
When the detective assigned arrived, Kendra pulled him aside. She knew him. “I’m family, and I’m conflicted out. I’m not touching the investigation. But she needs medical evaluation before anyone takes a statement.” She got cleared to be taken in for evaluation before being questioned. Shock, protocol, any statement later, through counsel, on our terms. They brought a gurney and a blanket for her shoulders, and they let me ride with her.
I climbedinto the back and sat on the bench beside her and took her hand in both of mine and a realization hit me at my core:
My father rode in the back of one of these with my mother and came home without her. He’d run to her and picked her up off the floor and begged her to stay, and she couldn’t, and he fell completely apart.
And for the first time in my life I thought: of course he did. This feeling that I had, in that moment, with the woman I loved,still breathingunder my hands was almost more than I could stand up under.
And she was alive. The love of my father’s life, wasn’t.
So of course. Of course he came apart. Of course he left. He had this same feeling and an empty bed. I’d get to have my woman. He got the grave.
I shut it down before it could open all the way. Not now.
I had almost lost her. I wasn’t going to think about that. I held her hand, and I didn’t let go, the whole way.
54/
you stay
alyssa
He droveme home in silence. I’d understood on the sidewalk outside the police station, with gauze taped around my hand and my calf, and a copy of my statement folded in my other fist, that when Julian saidI’m taking you home, Lyss,he didn’t mean my condo, and he didn’t mean his.
The streetlights came on while we were on the highway, and I watched his profile in the dark. He hadn’t said three sentences since the hospital. His jaw stayed tight, and every minute or so his eyes would cut to me and back to the road. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other around mine. In the many hours since he’d picked me up off the kitchen floor and held me in his arms, there hadn’t been more than a couple of minutes he wasn’t touching me.
I watched him as much as he touched me, because under all that composure, he was coming apart.
He’d held it together to get me out of his kitchen, into a hospital room, through a police station, and into his car. He had Tre drop his car off at the hospital, since he’d ridden with me in the ambulance. Julian was, no surprise, unshakable in a crisis. Four steps ahead, everything already in motion. But I knew he was holding it. I was afraid for him.
I’d been alive nine hours longer than I might have been, and the whole time, the main thing in my head was him. Whether he was okay. Whether he’d come out of this the same man. The cuts on my hand and leg weren’t what I was thinking about. He was.
He pulled into the long driveway at Belmead and killed the engine. Then he came around, opened my door, held out his hand, and helped me up the steps with the careful patience of a man who’d been told my body had been through something and would let me know about it in the next forty-eight hours. Unlocked the door. Took me inside. Ran me a bath.
I sat on the edge of his bed and watched him through the openbathroom door, testing the water with the inside of his wrist the way he always did, the way he’d been doing since he was a kid running baths for kids who weren’t his. He came back out.
“It’s ready, baby.”
“Come sit with me a minute.”
“The bath?—”
“It can wait.”
He sat. Kept hold of my hand and looked at our hands instead of my face, and I let him, and after a while he said it without looking up.
“I’m sorry, Lyss.”
“I know you are.”
“I should’ve changed the locks. Changed the code. I run a company, I know how a passcode works, I knew better than to keep the same base. I didn’t even know she knew it. Why didn’t I see it?” He stopped. “I should’ve been there.”
“You were on a run.”
“I had a feeling all week. Couldn’t put my finger on it. I should’ve stayed home this morning, should’ve taken the drive to Belmead last night, should’ve done any one of a hundred things, and I didn’t do a single one of them. You paid the price for that.”
I turned his face to mine. “Listen to me. I’m going to talk to you like a client, because right now you need lawyer logic. You did everything a reasonable person could do. You ended it. You documented her. You cut off access. You didn’t give her your passcode… shestoleit. That’s not on you. The fact that she’s sick is not on you.” I held his eyes. “I’m telling you as somebody who knows the law. You did your job.”
