Lee stares at me wild eyed. She looks lost, abandoned.
The roar of his engine fills the night as Lee and I make our way to the living room. We watch his headlights back out of the driveway before disappearing down the street.
It feels final. I’m not sure how it feels for Lee, but in my gut I know he’s not coming back. He’ll always be in our lives as Stella’s father, but it’s looking like hurricane Mitch is finally starting to dissipate.
20
Love like a Bullet
Lee
The days bleed by, black—somber as a funeral.
Mitch won’t pick up the phone. He’s steered clear of the house. Janice says he’s laying low with Colt.
Max is happy enough to fill the void. He’s resumed the role of faithful, loving husband, and the rhythm of the house has returned to just this side of normal.
On Thursday, Max asks to take me to Dr. Van Guard’s office, just the two of us. It feels off, like we walked backward into couples counseling, not that we didn’t need it.
“Mitch has maintained contact with me.” Dr. Van Guard’s smile retracts when he says it.
It’s the first topic of conversation, and my spirit soars just hearing his name. It makes Mitch feel real again, not like some dream I accidentally dragged Max into.
I struggle to read Dr. Van Guard, what he might be trying to tell me on a subliminal level. I’m desperate for a glimmer of hope that Mitch might be coming back here—to me—but Dr. V. offers nothing more than his elastic smile.
“Lee”—he leans over his glasses, looking at the two of us—“Mitch shared that you had another indiscretion with him. He also informed me that Max is aware of what happened.”
I hold my breath a moment. Indiscretion sounds like code for mistake, and I hate the thought of being with Mitch as a mistake.
“I’m very sorry,” I say. I’m mostly sorry I couldn’t tell Mitch what he needed to hear, but there’s no point now.
“Do you understand why I asked for the trial separation—the breathing room? You’re living in a boiling cauldron of emotion. Something like this was bound to happen without time apart.”
He should have taken me aside and pointed this out in private. Keep the fuck away, or you might accidentally sleep with Mitch. I give him a sharp look. I know he’s the least to blame. But I’d love to point the finger.
“Are you willing to rectify your marriage?” His eyes wander from Max to me.
So that’s it? He’s giving up on Mitch just like that?
“I am.” Max turns toward me.
“I am, too.” I don’t know who owns my mouth anymore. I smile hesitantly at Max and pull my lips back even further for the doctor.
A part of me dies in that moment. I can feel a literal death, taking place inside me. It feels so wrong not to mourn it, to feign happily-ever-after here with Max and the witchdoctor. I’m still hopeful, deep down inside, that Mitch and I will work things out.
I’m so desperate to believe the delusion.
Blatantly choosing Max feels like the biggest betrayal.
In the evening, Max and I review email after email from our foreign investors as they jump ship like a herd of wild lemmings. They pull out, one by one, and before dinner we manage to lose every one of our overseas distributors. The door has closed—bolted shut by foolish decisions and circumstances.
Max is lost in an expletive riddled tirade. I shuttle Stella and Eli upstairs and tell them to watch a movie in my bedroom. It’s such a treat for them, you’d think it was Christmas. It helps take the sting off of Mitch’s notable absence, which did not go unnoticed by either of them. It turns out “Picture Daddy” is quite the hit around here, and a huge disappointment when he’s gone.
“Lee.” Max looks up from his patchwork of spreadsheets.
I take a seat beside him, afraid to ask.
“It’s not good.” He leans in. “We’re going to have to leverage Johnson’s.”
“Sell it.”
“No.” His eyes darken. “It’s my gift to you. It’s not going anywhere. Besides—the market’s dead. It’s depreciated since escrow closed—considerably.”
“This isn’t right.” I shake my head in disbelief. “We made sound decisions. We’ve never lost our shirt once.”
“It’s not us. It’s Mitch coming back and—”
“You’re so quick to blame him.” It comes out in snatches.
“And I was going to add—my family. My brother and the pornographic diva didn’t exactly help the situation.”
“You’re right, it was your brother.” My voice rises to unnatural levels. “All Mitch ever did was survive, and he gets nothing but crap for it. It’s a wonder he doesn’t regret coming back.”
“Maybe he does.” Max opens his laptop once again.
“Did he say that?”
“No.” Max doesn’t bother looking at me anymore. He’s trying to evade conflict by sinking us back to the task at hand.
“I miss him. I need him.” Everything in me freezes at what’s managed to escape my lips. Truth is, I’m too emotionally exhausted to care.
“You ready for the zinger?” Max blinks up at me unmoved by my confession.
“Ready.”
“We need to take a second out on the house—hell, I’d take a third if they’d let us. If things don’t pick up, we’ll lose the roof over our heads.”
I narrow my eyes in on him. Wouldn’t he just like that.
“Sell your mother’s house,” I seethe. “Sell your brother’s dump and every damn car you own, but you’re not touching my house.”
“We’re in this fifty-fifty, Lee,” he bites the air with his words. “I have as much to lose as you do. This isn’t some Mitch-inspired vengeance. I haven’t wasted the last five years trying to figure out how to pull the rug from underneath him by way of you or this house. It’s simple math. It doesn’t matter if you accept it or not.” He picks up a file and tosses it in the air, spraying the kitchen with a shower of paper.
It’s a battlefield in here.
It’s a battlefield everywhere we look these days.
Mitch
Colt throws in another movie, third one in a row, while I listen to Lee’s message over and over again on the phone. I try and decipher her tone, try to figure out how desperate she may have felt when she made the call. I doubt that her desperation can ever begin to rival my own. If I call her back she’ll probably just offer more false hope. Not that I’m accusing her of it. I just happen to know for a fact she’s incapable of detaching herself from my worst nightmare. Maybe a break is exactly what she needs—what we both need.
Colt dives down on the couch across from me. He lets a belch rip from his throat and nods over to me as if daring me to top him.
I shoot him a look. I don’t like staying here. The constant stream of foreign women coming and going at all hours of the night makes it feel like a covert United Nations summit or something just this side of human trafficking. Another reason I hate it is because he bathes in proportion to their arrival and departure. Anything in between is up for hygienic dispute. It’s becoming painfully obvious he’s comfortable with his own special stench—ode to ass crack. It reminds me of prison. Funny how olfactory senses can work for or against you. I remembered Lee and her scent when I was there. I miss how much I longed for Lee, and now I can’t be near her because it brings everyone so much damn pain.
“Dude, wake up,” Colt snaps. “I’ve asked like six times for you to get up and hand me the remote.” Colton grates it out like he’s about to thrash me if I don’t comply. He hasn’t exactly been thrilled to share the amenities here at his carnal castle.
“Chill out.” He’s just lazy.
I get up and swipe it off the table before beaming it at his chest, torpedo style.
“You almost shot my nuts off!”
“If I was aiming for them, I would have,” I say, landing back on the couch.
“Get over yourself.”
“What did
you say?” I lift my head just enough to get a look at him.
“You need to get over Lee and move on.”
“I’m not listening.” I settle my head in the pillow, annoyed.
“I’m telling you, if she wanted to dump Shepherd, she would have done it by now. You need to realize there are other women out there that would kill to have a chance with you. Stop letting Lee and Max shred you to pieces. Man up and move on already.”
Man up and move on. The words pulse through my head like a heartbeat. The detention center blinks to life in my brain, and I feel like a bat trapped in the dark tunnel of isolation, thrashing its wings trying to get the hell out. But the joke is on me—somehow they’ve implanted that hellhole into my mind, and, now, I can never get out—never fly away home like I thought I did.
Fuck this. I roll off the couch and snatch my keys off the counter.
“Dude, get back here and sit down.” He’s softer now—afraid I might ruin his viewing experience if I don’t comply.
“No thanks.” His words burn through me like battery acid. He’s right. Lee has moved on. “I’m going to run out and get some food.”
“Hekili’s coming over. She’s bringing Hana.”
“All the more reason to get the hell out of Dodge.” My brows peak at his insanity. “Look, Colt. I appreciate you looking out for me, I really do. I wish I knew what was best for me right now, but I don’t. There’s not a woman in the world who can cure what’s going on inside my head.” Except Lee, but I don’t say it. There’s no point.
I’m not in the mood for my brother’s misguided matchmaking. He’s the one who let Max move in on Lee in the first place.
I’m done with Colt in general. It was nothing but a bad idea to detour here.
I head for the door.
“See you later.” Or not.
A boil of soot-covered clouds lay over the hills. They hug the trees, mingle in their branches cloying and uninvited. Everything looks sinister—hollow and gothic in this early evening light.
I get in the truck and just start driving. Up the coast, down, whichever light is green is how I end up playing it. Up wins—toward the dunes—the mother of all beaches. It’s where I made love to Lee for the very last time, and now it’ll forever be the marker of my misery.
I’m disoriented without Lee. I’m dying again—hell I’m already dead without her. Death is simply having its way with me, and, now, here I am, angry and bitter. All this pain, it just highlights how deeply I cared. In a way, I’ve dragged Lee down to the grave with me—the death of Mitch and Lee Townsend. That sounds about right. Death left a haunting void in my heart, knocked me off balance while on the brink of a steep, unknowable abyss—nothing but a raging sea of emotions waiting below to strangle the shit out of me. Death gave me a broken compass, turned out the lights, and made me try to grope my way out of a room that never stops spinning. Death still wants me. It wants to finish what it started all those years ago. It has never freed me from its clutches, just gifted me one fucking long day pass.
My foot falls heavy on the gas. I don’t even look at the water as I pass it, just keep a firm grip on the wheel and glance at the rearview mirror from time to time.
They say you can never go back. Never go home. I never would have believed it if they told me Lee was happily married to Max Shepherd, having his babies, having the time of her life trying to weld Townsend and Shepherd together at the hip. I would have laughed in their faces. Not my Lee. My family wouldn’t let Max near Townsend let alone, Lee.
Bull-fucking-shit.
It was all some figment of my prideful imagination. What you fear the most and what you need the least will happen to you—Mitch’s law.
My eye snags on an old grey convertible, tagging me about three cars down. It’s been in my sights since I left Colt’s. I thought it looked odd in the neighborhood since it’s just my mother’s property and two others on that road. But here?
My fingers fumble with the radio. The song Lee and I danced to at our wedding blares from the speakers with its macabre undertone. I switch it off like it might start an engine fire.
Strange. It’s not a popular song—not in this decade. Anyway, I don’t want to hear it. It depresses the hell out of me, makes me miss Lee on an unnatural level. It’s time to end this misery. I’ll stop by the house tonight and try to make things right with her—let her know I’ll give her and Max some space while I move back in with Mom. It’s time to start taking control of my life again and stop trying to control everyone else’s. Maybe at the end of the day, that was the lesson in all this.
Maybe I’ll head back to China and pay a quick visit—come home with some peace in my heart like I should’ve in the first place. Maybe then the entire damn country will stop hovering over me like a sickle waiting to finish the job it started.
I make a few odd turns in an effort to lose the beat up Chevy and curb my paranoia. It seems I’ve been paranoid about a lot of things lately. Sure, most of its been directed at Max and involves wild theories of him hijacking my life, but that set of paranoia seems to be panning out.
I cross over to the old road that runs along the farmland. It’s off the grid, so no one uses it. The lanes are too narrow, too many unloved potholes ready to swallow your tires.
I glimpse in the mirror just as the Chevy takes the corner.
Son of a bitch if he didn’t take that turn with me.
Its just one guy, no passenger—looks older, skinny with a wife beater on. Maybe he’s lost his way home from the bar and thinks I’m leading him through the desert like some magical prophet in a white pickup. I pull over to let him pass. There’s just the two of us now kicking up dirt. I might as well eat his dust. I eat everyone else’s.
He slows when he reaches me, stalls his car right in the middle of the road, and hops out.
Maybe I left something dangling on my bumper? A body. Max’s body would be nice.
My mother left a pair of scissors on her bumper once, and an old man followed her for miles trying to help her get them back. Spooked the shit out of her.
I roll down the window as he makes his way over. Lanky, not too tall, looks like he was attacked by a Sharpie, both arms inked up solid to his neck. I’m memorizing him for the police report.
“What’s up?” I give a bleak smile.
“You Mitch Townsend?” A gold tooth catches what’s left of the light.
Something in me loosens. He knows me. He’s probably a hand in the fields or someone who’s heard about me through the PR circus Kyle sucked me into. He might want an autograph. I stifle a laugh at the thought.
“Yup. What can I do for you?” I lean out the window.
“Eat this.”
A loud pop explodes from nowhere. A spear of fire rips through my shoulder. I look down as a bloom of crimson spreads over my shirt.
Shit.
His tires scream as he rushes from the scene, leaving a plume of smoke in his wake.
My fingers magnetize over the warm stain. I hold out my trembling hand, glossed in a viscous dark slick, and it takes a second to register.
I’ve been shot.
Call Lee.
I scramble for my phone and twitch it in my palm until I hear it ring the other line.
Max picks up, then it occurs to me I may have called Max.
Great. I’m dying, and I’ve just given Shepherd a front row seat.
“Hello?” He gruffs. “Mitch, I know it’s you. Lee’s busy.”
The world starts to vanish in a sea of grey. I try to choke out a word, but my vocal cords are on lockdown. I try to get out a coherent thought, a sound, anything, but I can’t catch my breath.
Blood is everywhere. A warm river streams from my body.
It’s done. God answered my prayer and brought me back to Lee, and now he’s bringing me home.
I close my eyes. Lee smiles at me from behind my lids just before everything fades to black.
Max
He’s still on the line—I think. r />
“Mitch?” He’s probably putting in an order for a triple heart-stopper—doesn’t want to interrupt his flow, so I hang on a minute. The unmistakable sound of moaning comes through.
“Mitch?” It sounds sexual, but knowing Mitch, it’s not. For one, Lee is upstairs, and two, he’d never call to gloat.
“Mitch, can you hear me?”
Without thinking I shout up to Lee that I’m going to the store. I grab my keys, and head for the truck. If I told Lee there might be something wrong with him she’d lose herself in a tailspin, and I don’t want anything happening to that baby. Nothing can happen to that baby—might be the last one I ever have with her.
“Mitch?” I scream into the phone while I back out of the driveway. “Tell me where you are, damn it. I can’t help you if I don’t know where the hell you are.” I start making my way toward town. Major intersection? Maybe there’s been a crash. That doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t be alone. Mono’s full of tourists. He’s obviously not at Janice’s, Lee and I left there an hour ago. Not at Colt’s because Colt’s most likely at a bar.
I pick up the phone again. Faint moaning this time. It sounds bad. Whatever it is he can’t breathe too well, sounds like he’s jonesing at the bottom of a cup with a straw. What if he tried to off himself? Fuck. He’s probably belly up at the base of a cliff somewhere.