The doctor looked at her and they shared some sort of silent exchange. He glanced at me, and he must have seen the wear on my face, the despair behind my eyes. The crevasse across my heart.
“You know, you’re right. There does seem to be a break there, along the proximal phalanx. Funny I didn’t notice it before. I’ll uh, write something up.”
Zane packed my things. She made all the necessary phone calls and had all the needed conversations. My intoxication moved into a hangover, and then into grieving as I processed what I’d lost. And I vowed to feel every fucking second of it.
The plane ride was torture. Just me and my thoughts and a hangover. I couldn’t even put in my earbuds. Music chipped away at my soul, every song about her. Every lyric haunted me. The smell of coffee on the drink cart made tears squeeze from my eyes.
When I landed, Ernie called. I answered without saying hello.
He blew a deep breath into the phone. “Girlfriends on tour…”
I laughed a little, despite myself. “It must be hard to always be right.”
“This is one time, my friend, that I really wish I had been wrong.”
The ride from Duluth to Ely with Dad was the worst of all. Long and quiet, tense with judgment. When he pulled into the garage, he put the truck in park, but he didn’t get out. He held the wheel and looked over at my bandaged hand, his eyes sad.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said with my forehead in my palm.
He looked at me, the pity on his face. And something else.
Loss.
He lost a daughter. I’d lost her for everyone.
My guilt and grief tripled, crushing me. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone. How would I face Mom? Sloan was a member of this family now, and I’d ripped her from their lives. I put a hand over my face and felt the wave of nausea and sorrow surge again.
Once I got inside, Sloan was everywhere and nowhere to be seen. I felt her in every inch of that house. She was grocery lists in the kitchen, tiny creamers in the fridge, and a stray blond hair on the couch. She was an abandoned shampoo in the shower and polish on Mom’s nails.
The sadness in Mom’s eyes.
The absence swallowed me whole and left nothing behind but emerging chords and painful lyrics that bubbled from a crack in my heart so deep it was fathomless.
I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t be anywhere. So I went where I would be nowhere.
I slipped into the mouth of the wilderness with my canoe and my guitar and I abandoned the world, that world without Sloan, behind me.
Chapter 41
Sloan
♪ It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) | The 1975
Three months later
Do you want me to meet you at the cemetery, Sloan?”
Kristen was worried about me.
“No, I’m not going today,” I said, sitting back to take one final look at the painting that had been drying for the last two weeks on my easel.
I gave it a soft smile. It was beautiful. It looked like a photograph.
It was the fifth one I’d finished over the last three months. Another addition to the collection in the gallery that had picked me up. I’d completed the commission I’d started in Ely, the little girl on the swing, and shipped that two months ago. Three more had sold, and this one in front of me was leaving today.
“You’re not going to the cemetery?” she asked. “It’s the anniversary of the day you met Brandon.”
I picked up the remote to turn off my crime show. “How do you remember this stuff?”
“I have reminders in my phone.”
I laughed, collecting my brushes. “Are you serious?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m serious. I have to watch you like a hawk.”
I slid off my stool. “I’m fine. I’m just finishing up some work before the thing.”
“Are you sure you’re up for this? I mean the dude’s hot as fuck, but we can skip this double date. It’s not a big deal.”
Josh’s cousin Adrian was in town from St. Paul. He was a lawyer, single, and, according to Kristen, the perfect rebound for me. He lived out of state and was only here for a few days. I think she thought it would be distracting or boost my shattered self-esteem or something.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do with him,” I said. “I don’t even kiss on the first date.”
“You need someone prescreened to tell you you’re pretty and hand you free drinks. And he’s got all the things you like. He’s tall, he’s bearded, and he’s from Minnesota.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ha ha.”
“Seriously, Sloan, we can call it off if we need to. I mean, he’s excited to meet you but Josh can just take him out instead. I figured you might need to hit something with a bat today so I made a piñata full of mini alcohol bottles and Starbucks gift cards. I could be there in a half an hour.”
I rinsed my brushes in the sink. “Nope,” I said, tapping the water off them. “I’m fine. It’ll be fun.”
It would not be fun.
“Look at it this way,” Kristen said. “If you guys hit it off, you’ll end up a Copeland. Then our kids would be related. And, what if Josh’s enormous penis is hereditary? I’m just sayin’.”
I snorted. “God, I do not want to think about Josh’s penis, thank you very much.”
There was a pause on the other end. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “I really am fine. I’ll visit Brandon on his birthday from now on, and that’s it. It’s time I stop living my life in the past. It’s what he’d want.”
Another pause. “And the other thing going on today?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s time I move on from that too.”
Jason was in town. He was playing the Forum in LA tonight.
I forbade my eyelid to start twitching today.
This day had loomed in front of me like an impending invasion. Jason had been in the UK for the last few months, as far away from me as humanly possible. And now he was going to be less than an hour from my loft.
I’d debated several options for dealing with this event. A sleepover at Kristen’s. A trip to literally anywhere as long as it was far enough to put a couple hundred miles between us again. But when Adrian decided to visit, from Minnesota no less, and Kristen had suggested this double date, it had seemed like the universe was sending me a message. So I agreed to it, and I had about as much enthusiasm for this outing as I did for going down to check the mail.
“Okay,” Kristen said. “Well, we’ll be there in a half an hour to get you. What are you wearing? You better make an effort. I’m gonna be pissed if I talked you up for the last three days and then you show up looking half-homeless.”
“I’m wearing the red dress. I have makeup on. I’ve done my hair. I won’t bring shame upon your house.”
“Good. Don’t wear underwear. Goodbye.”
I snorted and hung up, shaking my head at the Verdugo Mountains through the window in my living room.
My new apartment was nice. It had a pool and a hot tub, and I had my own washer and dryer. It was newly remodeled too. I didn’t have things breaking all around me, which was a pleasant change. There was a dog park nearby and a Starbucks on the corner.