| |
I awoke early the next day to overcast clouds, and my hopes skyrocketed. Maybe it would rain, and I could collect more water. Just in case, I ran to the roof and placed several large pots and bowls in various places. I put a large bucket from Barb’s apartment on my fire escape.
I needed to call my mom and tell her about Oliver. I picked up my phone and saw that it still had a little juice left. I contemplated waiting until the next day for our scheduled call, but it was important that she know the man was in my building in case something happened. She wasn’t going to like it. After a long, procrastinative cup of coffee, I picked up the phone.
“Hi. Anything new?” I asked, stalling.
“Not much. They released a new death count last night. Two hundred seventy thousand or thereabouts.”
I closed my eyes. “Wow, that’s just... I don’t even know what to say. That’s a lot. What about a cure? Have they come up with anything?”
“Not since the last time you asked, which was yesterday.”
I chuckled. “Sorry, I’m anxious, I guess.”
“I know, mija. Ask as much as you want.”
“Something’s happened. Please don’t be mad.”
I felt her apprehension through the phone. “Did you give me a reason to be mad?”
“Probably, but I had no choice. Yesterday, two men beat another man outside my apartment. They left him unconscious on my stoop. Now, this is the part you’ll be mad at.” I paused, reluctant to say the words. “I pulled him inside.”
“Karis, are you crazy?”
“I know, Mom. I took a risk.”
She let loose a string of rapid Spanish, which she only reverted to when really upset, that I didn’t understand.
“Mom, English.”
“Karis, that man could hurt you, or he could be sick! What were you thinking?” she translated.
“But I couldn’t just leave him out there bleeding, could I? Would you have left him there? He’s not sick. He has a wristband.” I didn’t tell her about the antibiotics. I believed he wasn’t sick, but I wasn’t sure my mom would.
She sighed and thought about it. “I honestly don’t know, Karis.”
“I don’t think you would have left him out there either. I’m sorry to worry you, but I tied him up and locked him in. Remember that time Dad changed the locks on the front door?”
She groaned. “Ugh, I could have killed him!”
I chuckled at her still-fresh annoyance. “Well, I did that to the apartment he’s in. I reversed the lock, so he can’t get out to hurt me. I’m going to let him heal from the beating. His ribs are injured, and his face is swollen and cut. When he’s better, I’ll ask him to leave.”
She paused, not expecting my solution. “Not so foolish then, are you? I guess your dad’s prank served some purpose other than to amuse him. What if this man says he won’t leave?”
“I’ve thought about that but haven’t come up with an answer. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
“I don’t like this one bit, Karis. But I understand where your heart is, and I can’t fault you for that.”
“I need to trust my instincts right now. They’re all I have left. But can you go online and look this guy up? His name is Oliver Wakelin, and he said his family owns a company in the UK called the Wakelin Group.”
“Sure. Hold on.”
I grabbed my binoculars and walked to my bedroom while she went to her computer. Because of the shape of the building, my bedroom window faced Mr. Tablock’s apartment across a narrow middle section. I wondered if I could see into Ollie’s room. Focusing the binoculars on that window, I was able to see half of the bed. I could just make out his back—he was lying on his side facing away from me, seemingly still asleep. I looked at my phone. The battery was deep in the red. I would have to be quick about this.
My mom came back on the line. “Okay, I have a picture of Oliver Wakelin. He’s got light brown hair and blue eyes.” She whistled. “He’s handsome! Maybe he’s single.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, really? Come on.”
“Hey, I’m a mom, I’m always looking out for you.” I could tell she was smiling, and I was glad she wasn’t angry with me anymore. “It says he’s Executive Director of Operations for the Wakelin Group. He does a lot of charity work for the company. They’ve started an organization to fight hunger in the UK. He’s never been married and seems close with his family. There are lots of pictures of them all together, and they look happy. That’s good. Oh wait, here’s a more recent article about an engagement. Darn.”
“Does he have a scar in his eyebrow?” I’d noticed it when I was swabbing his cuts. I could tell it was old and not something from the fight.
“Hmm. Let me find a closer image.” She paused. “Yes, here I see it, a diagonal white line that runs through the left eyebrow. Looks like he is who he says he is.”
“Good. Can you find anything else on him? I just need to feel like he’s trustworthy.”
“Give me a second. I’m still looking.”
I noticed movement in his window, so I looked again through the binoculars. He rolled over gingerly and tried to sit up. But immediately, he grabbed his ribs and lay back down. His head was bowed back, and his face was distorted in pain.
“This is interesting,” my mom interrupted. “It’s an article from the Daily Star, which is a tabloid, so who knows how reliable it is, but I’ll read it to you. ‘Hotel kingpin and resident playboy Oliver Wakelin stuns his family and the world today with a shocking decision to step down as Executive Director of Operations of the Wakelin Group. A source close to Mr. Wakelin confirmed he also called off his yearlong engagement to socialite Caroline Keaton. Their whirlwind romance has been the source of much gossip in recent weeks as their presence has been missed at several important events. The Wakelins and Ms. Keaton could not be reached for comment.’ Hmm. What do you think?”
I pulled the binoculars down from my eyes. He clearly lied about what he was doing here. What does this mean? “I don’t know, Mom. But I’m not gonna ask him.”
“Aren’t you even a little curious?” she pushed.
“No, I’m not. His personal life is none of my business. As long as he stays where he is and leaves me alone, I’ll leave him alone,” I said firmly, anxious to end the call.
She huffed. “Fine, but keep me updated. And be careful.”
“I will, I promise. I’ll start teaching Zeke to attack on command,” I joked.
My mom laughed. “I can’t even picture that. I’ll let you go. Bye, sweetheart.”
“Bye, Mom.”
When I hung up, I plugged my phone back into the speaker to charge for a few minutes and looked in the window again. He was gone. I thought about him lying there, struggling to get off the bed with his injuries. I was conflicted. I wanted to help him but also needed to have my guard up. Not only could he hurt me, but he’d lied to me. I didn’t trust him. Then another thought forced its way through: what if he could help me make it to the border? Getting across the country would be much safer if I had another person with me, but only if I trusted him. There were pros and cons to him being here. I made a list:
PROS: Another person to talk to and help keep my mind in check.
Having a man around is more security.
Maybe he can help me make it to the border.
CONS: He’ll use up more of my meager supplies.
I’ll have to hide my conversations with Zeke.
I went back and underlined the most important pro and con, using up more of my supplies and helping me make it to the border. Those were the only two that really mattered. I assessed the situation and decided the pro far outweighed the con.
There wasn’t much I could do about it immediately, so I went on with my day. During my workout, when I ran by his door, I stopped and listened a few times. Other than general apartment noises, I heard nothing else. I sighed, annoyed at myself. What was I hoping to hear? I shook my head and continued. Later that day, as I was starting to get uncomfortably restless, I started picking at a piece of loose yarn in the afghan my godmother made me as a farewell gift when I moved to New York. Instead of tying it back in, I began unraveling the blanket, trying to remember the pattern of loops and turns as I went. When the whole thing was a pile of maroon-and-yellow yarn on the ground, I stared at it, shocked that I thought I could learn how to knit that way. Slowly, I pulled the yarn through the various loops I created and knotted them when they didn’t seem secure. I took several wrong turns and had to backtrack, but four hours later, my blanket was put back together in some deformed Picasso-esque version of what it used to be. I held it up and smiled. It wasn’t even close to being as pretty as it had been before. But I made it, and the messiness of it reminded me that I was putting myself back together too.
I’d been antsy since I pulled Oliver into my building, and I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. I went to bed early after taking a Benadryl to help me sleep. In the middle of the night, Zeke woke me up, barking.
I bolted upright. “What’s wrong, Zeke?”
He whined and looked toward the windows, cocking his head. He must have heard something outside. I got up and walked into the dining room. Without the noise from my sound machine, I could faintly hear someone yelling. I walked to the window and pulled it up. There was a ragged-looking man walking down my street. He had on several layers of dirty clothes and pulled a cart filled with his possessions behind him. He was coughing and stumbled a couple of times.
“Someone, help me. Please, I have nothing. My house burned down. Please, let me in. Someone, please.” He doubled over and coughed violently.
My heart ached, but I knew I couldn’t let him in. I wasn’t sure if he was old or young, but the long, overgrown beard and shaggy hair made him look older in the moonlight. I watched for a minute as he walked slowly down the street and made his way toward the park. I walked back to my bedroom and sat on the bed, feeling guilty, but he was sick, and I’d already taken a risk by letting Oliver in. I went back to bed but had a hard time falling back asleep, the man drifting in and out of my consciousness.
The next morning, I looked around for the man while eating a breakfast burrito made of mashed acorns and coconut oil wrapped in a tortilla. I didn’t see him anywhere, even with the binoculars. My phone ringing interrupted my search. It shocked me because I realized I hadn’t changed it back to airplane mode. I needed to be better about that.
“Mom?”
“Hi. I did something that you may not like, but I had to.”
“This sounds familiar,” I said.
She laughed. “Last night, I looked up a contact number for the Wakelin Group and left my number for his parents. I said I had information about their son. His mom called me back this morning.”
“Oh my god, I hadn’t thought of that. What did she say?”
“She was worried about him, understandably. She hasn’t talked to him since the electricity went out. She was very happy to hear he’s okay. I didn’t tell her about the fight. I just told her that my daughter is letting him stay in her building. She told me to tell you thank you.”
“Did she tell you anything about him?”
“Yes, and this is even more interesting. His parents don’t know why he left or called off the engagement. He just told them that he needed time to work some things out. No, she said, ‘figure his life out,’ but she didn’t know what needed figuring out. He’d seemed perfectly happy up until two weeks before he left. He’d started skipping meetings and spent a lot of time on his computer. Then one day, he resigned and told them he was going to New York for a while and he’d call when he settled in. They asked questions, but he gave vague answers. The last time she talked to him was a few days before the power went out, but he didn’t mention any plans to leave his apartment.”
The term “figure his life out” left a sour taste in my mouth. I’d certainly heard that before. “Hmm. I don’t know what to make of this. But I feel better now that you’ve talked to someone who actually knows him and can vouch that he’s not a lunatic.”
“Me too. She was really great and told me not to worry, that her son is a gem.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll let you know what I decide.”
“By the way, you might be getting a storm in the next couple of days. Saw it on the news. Be careful.”
I exhaled a sigh of relief. “Honestly, Mom, the storm is a godsend. I’m running low on water.”
“Oh no. Do you have enough?”
“For now, yes. But I haven’t bathed in over a week to conserve. Not even a sponge bath. I’ll run out soon. I put buckets and pans out in case it rains.”
“Good idea. Let me know if you are able to get more from the rain. But make sure you boil it before drinking. I need to know you’re okay. You can’t live without water.”
“I know, Mom. I’ll keep you updated.”
I hung up the phone, slid it into airplane mode, and thought about what my mom just told me. I grabbed the binoculars and looked into the first-floor apartment. The bed was empty. I thought about yesterday and him struggling to get up. And since he was my only potential source of help, I gave in and decided to help him too. I fetched a bottle of Percocet from the bag of medicines I’d gathered from the apartments, a couple of candles, and more food and water, then ran downstairs. I pressed my ear against his door and waited. The floorboards creaked then something breakable crashed to the floor, followed by him cursing. I set the supplies on the ground in front of the door, unlocked it from my side, and knocked. Footsteps came toward me, so I quickly ran back up the stairs. The door opened when I got to the first landing.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he called out. I stopped, feeling as if I’d been caught, and contemplated continuing on upstairs, but instead I turned around. He had his arm across his ribs, cradling his injuries. “You unlocked the door. This must mean you trust that I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You could still try, but with those injuries, I think I could take you,” I said defiantly.
He gave a short laugh. “Touché.” He bent down and picked up the bottle of pills, holding his ribs. He looked at the bottle and then back up at me. “Thanks. This is really nice of you.”
“You’re welcome. Do you need anything else?”
He rubbed the stubble on his face, thinking about it. “I could bloody well do with a glass of whiskey to chase this down,” he said with a smirk, shaking the bottle of pills.
I thought about the whiskey up in my apartment and knew I wasn’t ready to share. We weren’t there yet. But he laughed at my silence and said, “I’m kidding. You’ve done enough already, really.”
I nodded. “Okay, see you later.” I turned around to walk up the next flight. When I turned the corner on the stairs, I looked back down. He was still watching me. My stomach dropped, and my skin tingled as I ran up the last flights. What is wrong with me? I vowed to keep my hormones in check and keep it a platonic, mutually beneficial relationship.
I tried to keep my mind on other things the rest of the day without much success. I exercised longer than normal, sewed some patches onto my old favorite pair of jeans, and read a few more newspapers I’d brought up from Mr. Tablock’s apartment, which I supposed I should start calling Oliver’s apartment. But my thoughts kept turning back to Oliver, conjuring up story after story about what could have prompted his retreat from his life. By dinnertime, I’d come up with stories ranging from infidelity to attempted murder. Fed up with all my ridiculous conjecture, I took a shot of whiskey for courage and walked downstairs with the bottle of Woodbridge in one hand and two short glasses in the other.
I knocked on his door and felt my pulse racing. He answered the door, wearing what I could only assume were a pair of Mr. Tablock’s sweatpants. He had a sweater in his hands that he hadn’t pulled on yet. For a moment, I was stunned into silence by his flat, toned stomach and bare chest. The bruises on his ribs only added to it, in a strange way.
I snapped out of my trance when he said, “Hi.”
I held up the whiskey. “I think I have that whiskey you ordered. Interested?”
His face melted in longing, and he groaned. “Oh, you’re an angel. Do you want to come in?”
Zeke had already wandered through his door and was sitting on the couch with his stuffed penguin in his mouth. I thought I’d taught him better manners than that.
Zeke dropped the penguin and barked angrily at me, annoyed at my motherly concerns. I looked at him then quickly back up at Oliver. “Sure.” But I hesitated in the doorway, rethinking my plan.
He put his hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear I will keep my hands to myself and will behave like an absolute gentleman. You can even zip tie me again if you want.” He held his hands together in front of me, one of them still holding the sweater.
I struggled not to smile but lost the battle and laughed. “Sorry. Yes, I’ll come in.”
I walked over to the couch and set both glasses down while he threw the sweater on and wrapped a thick scarf around his neck. After I filled our glasses with whiskey, we both sat back and took a sip.
“Oh man, that’s good. Where did you find this?” he asked.
“I had it before this happened. I’ve been saving it.”
He looked at me but said nothing.
After a few uncomfortable minutes, I asked, “So what were you doing running down the street like that? Why did you even leave your apartment?”
He thought for a second, seemingly weighing what to tell me. “I was close to running out of food, and then we lost power. I decided it would be safer to leave. The guy whose apartment I’d been subletting had a car. I found the keys on the key rack by the front door.” He paused and looked back at me.
A car! I’m sure he could see the thinly veiled excitement on my face.
“But honestly I have no idea what it even looks like. I know it’s a Honda from the logo on the keys. I started trying them in any car that was a Honda. I didn’t find it. He probably parked it in a garage somewhere rather than leave it out on the street since he was going to be away for months. Or his mom took it. Seems more likely.”
My excitement quickly deflated. He was probably right. The chances of finding that car were slim. “Then those two guys saw you?”
“Yeah. I’d made my way through two blocks but had no luck with the keys. I saw them when I was about to turn down this street. I stopped, and I could tell that they saw me too. So I just ran, looking for somewhere to hide before they turned the corner. But everything was too out in the open. I heard them shouting at me, so I just kept running. I could have made it, I think, if I hadn’t had my pack on. It slowed me down. I had stuffed it with bottles of water, whatever food I had left, and all the cash I had on hand. Looking back on it now, I know that was a dumb plan. I should have left all my supplies and brought the car back to my apartment to get my things if I found it.”
I nodded and refilled his glass.
“Why didn’t you get a flight out?” he asked after taking a sip.
“I had one, but they wouldn’t let me bring Zeke. I couldn’t leave him here alone, so I just stayed,” I said with a shrug.
He nodded, seeming to understand my decision. “And how have you not gotten sick?”
I paused. It was a little embarrassing to tell him the truth, and I could gloss over it. But I wanted to be honest with him and myself, and I was starting to feel like I had nothing to be ashamed of. My dating history and the depression that followed were both a part of me, part of why I was a stronger person than I had been before. “I’d gone through some breakups and decided I was done dating. I guess I was a bit depressed by it all, so I’ve been mostly hanging out with Zeke lately. I have my own office where I work, so it was easy to stay away from people. But even if it did save me in a sense, I feel silly now that I wasted so much time on a bunch of jerks.”
He looked away. “I know what you mean.”
My brow furrowed at his comment, but I let it pass. We sat in silence, sipping our whiskey, but I was taking very small sips. I needed a clear head. I kept refilling his glass as we talked about mundane things. He got up to look outside, watching the wind blow the trees around and searching for signs of life.
When I heard the slow tap of rain on the window, I rushed to his side to look out. “Yes! It’s raining.” I paused and looked at him. “We need more water. I put some pots and buckets out, so hopefully, we’ll have some more to add to the tubs. I’ve been charging my phone with a battery-powered dock, so I can still talk to my parents. My mom said we might get a storm. Sometime in the next couple of days. This must be the beginning.”
He nodded, and we walked back to the couch. I could tell he was pretty drunk. He wobbled slightly before he sat down. It was my chance. “Oliver, can I ask you something?”
He looked back at me with heavy eyes. “Call me Ollie. Everyone calls me Ollie. Only one person calls me Oliver.”
“Who’s that?”
“Caroline,” he spat, but he seemed to realize what he’d said and wanted to retract it.
I thought about the article my mom read to me about his engagement but decided not to push, and instead I came clean. “Ollie, I know you didn’t come here to start up operations for your family’s company. I had my mom look you up online. There was an article about you leaving the company recently.”
He looked trapped, his eyes widening slightly. Then he exhaled and put his glass on the table. He sat silently, looking at his hands, probably trying to explain his deception. I gave him the space to do that, taking a sip and pretending to look at a painting on the wall.
Finally, he slumped back onto the couch, looking defeated. “It’s a long story, not something I could’ve summed up in a few sentences when we talked about this before. What I told you was the truth as of two months before I came here. I was supposed to come to the US and start up the new offices. That was the plan all along. But then...” He paused, spreading his hands, looking for a way to explain.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted you to know that I know.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me. I held his stare.
“No, I should talk about it. I haven’t told anyone, not my parents or friends. I didn’t think they’d understand, it felt too... personal, something I needed to handle on my own. I only told one person, and that didn’t go so well.” He looked over at me, assessing my reaction.
I smiled slightly and raised my right eyebrow. “Consider me your confidante. I don’t know any of those people.”
He smiled thinly. “I had a girlfriend in college. Dana. She was from Pennsylvania but was doing a study-abroad program. She was so different from the women I’d dated before. Independent, bold, outspoken. We were completely in love, or at least it felt that way to me. I was just twenty-two years old. Dana got pregnant, and we both freaked out. Neither of us was ready to have a baby, I thought. When she told me, I didn’t have the best reaction. I started talking about abortion and adoption. Our lives were just beginning, and a baby wasn’t part of the plan right then. She was very quiet but nodded along with all my suggestions. I asked her if she wanted to keep it, but she just shook her head. We decided she’d have an abortion. I took her to the clinic, but she insisted on going in alone. I sat in the car for three hours. When she came out, she was crying and holding her stomach like she was in pain. She didn’t want to talk about it, so I took her home, made her dinner, and stayed with her all night. We were graduating the next week, and I was worried about her. But after that first night, she seemed fine, as though she had pushed it all away.”
“She was probably traumatized and didn’t want to think about it.”
“That’s what I thought, too, so I let it be. We had been planning on going back to London. I was going to start working for my parents, and she was going to look for jobs. But the day after graduation, she said she couldn’t go to London with me. I didn’t understand, and she didn’t really explain it properly. She said she loved me but was ready for something and somewhere else. She said that place and I reminded her constantly of what she’d done, and she needed to try to move past it. I was devastated. I argued with her, trying to convince her to stay or to let me go with her. But she refused. She moved back to Pennsylvania the next week. We kept in touch for a while, but I felt her pulling away. Eventually, we lost contact.”
I understood. “It happens. Hard to stay in contact when you live that far away and have another life.”
“Yeah, well. Five months ago, I was on Facebook, and you know how it gives suggestions for people you might know?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, anticipating what was coming.
“One of those suggestions was her, but with her married name. I clicked on her profile, and it showed she was married and had four kids. When I checked out her photos, there were several with younger children, and one with her son, who was much older. It was at his high school graduation. He looked to be about seventeen. Exactly how old our child would be.”
“Oh my god! What did you do?” He had my rapt attention.
He shook his head. “I knew he was mine. His name was Caleb, Dana’s father’s name. But he had blue eyes, like mine. Dana had brown eyes, and from the photos, so did her husband. Caleb looked nothing like the other kids she had. I was shocked and furious, dumbfounded how anyone could do something like that. I sent her a friend request with a message, asking her about Caleb. Five days later, I received a reply that just said, ‘I’m sorry. Please leave us alone.’ No explanation. I tried to message her again, but she had blocked me. I couldn’t view her Facebook page anymore either, or she took it down.”
“Wow. I’m speechless. That must’ve been awful.”
“I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I immediately went to Caroline, my fiancée, and told her. You know what she said? ‘He’s all grown now, so what’s the point?’”
“You’re kidding me,” I said incredulously.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe it at first, but then I realized that’s who she is. She didn’t even know if she wanted kids, and she certainly didn’t want any part of some other woman’s child. She seemed relieved that Dana didn’t want me in his life. Caroline can be quite cold and selfish, something I’d always brushed aside in the past. But after this, I was seeing her clearly for the first time. She was from a good family and sat on the boards for several charities. But it was all for show. She didn’t care about any of those causes, not really. She only cared how it made her look to other people. She was with me for the same reasons. I can see that now. I called off the engagement. She didn’t even seem to care. She just shrugged and said, ‘Don’t take too long coming back to me. I’ll find someone else quickly.’ I don’t think she ever loved me, and I’m pretty sure I never really loved her either. My parents are close with hers, and they pushed us together for years. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief when we finally got together. It was easy to go along with what everyone else wanted. But when I found out about Caleb, I started thinking about what I really wanted, and I realized I had no idea what that was. But I knew I wanted to find Caleb.” He looked at me then, his eyes soft and worried.
“Of course you’d want to find him! But why didn’t you tell your parents?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “My parents are amazing, but I’d just found out about him. I guess I wanted the chance to figure everything out first. I didn’t know how he’d react. What if he wanted nothing to do with me? I couldn’t put my parents through that.”
“Did you contact him?”
“I tried, but I think Dana blocked me on his account too. His account was set to private, so all I could see was his profile photo and hometown. I researched her and Caleb online. There wasn’t much—I couldn’t find a phone number or address, but I knew from their Facebook pages that they lived in Brooklyn. I told my parents that I needed to find myself, so to speak, and resigned. Then I booked the next flight to New York. I called my friend to see if I could crash at his place, but he said he was gone for the next four months on sabbatical, and I could take his place while I was here. I didn’t have Dana’s address yet, just Brooklyn. For a week, I tried to find an address, but the closest I came was an old one in Cobble Hill. I went there, but the woman didn’t know the previous tenants and didn’t have an address for them. I hired a private investigator, and the day before the quarantine, he sent me their last known address in Park Slope. I went there immediately, but no one answered. I hung around for a few hours, got some coffee, came back, and tried again. But there was still no answer. So I left, thinking I’d come back the next day. But of course, that never happened.”
I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat, listening. When he didn’t continue, I said, “So you never got to see him?”
He shook his head and then leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He sat like that for a minute before pulling back up. He had tears in his eyes. “No, I never got to meet him. I never found out why Dana did this. When the Death List came out, I scoured it for two days before finding both their names on it.”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes wide and my hand on my chest.
He nodded, looked down, and continued to cry. I didn’t know what to do or say. I reached out to pat him on the back but thought better of it and pulled it back. Instead, I just gave him the space to grieve.
Eventually, he let out a long breath and wiped his eyes. “Anyway, that’s my story. That’s why I’m here. To let my life completely fall apart.” He gave a short laugh.
I nodded, feeling at odds with myself all of a sudden. I’d hoped to keep him at arm’s length, to keep it all business, and to convince him to go with me to the border. But I couldn’t do that because I felt genuinely sorry for the guy. “I understand. I do. I would have done the same thing.”
He smiled with half of his mouth. “Thanks.”
He yawned, and I could tell the story had drained him. I rose from the couch. “I’ll let you get some sleep. It’s getting late.”
He nodded, looking down at his hands.
“Thanks for telling me. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”
He looked up at me and stared. Then he lay back on the sofa. “I needed to talk about it, to get it out. It’s been sitting in my gut like lead.”
I nodded. “Well, get some rest.”
“You too,” he replied with a sad smile.
I smiled back—I couldn’t help myself. The guy looked wrecked. I turned and walked out the door with Zeke. After closing the door, I leaned against it, trying to absorb Ollie’s story. Then I felt Zeke paw my leg. I looked down, and he barked then turned around and walked up the stairs. He was anxious for his evening Happy Hips chew, which I’d been rationing out in small pieces, much to Zeke’s chagrin. I followed him, feeling drained too. I had a hard time falling asleep. Before I finally drifted off, I realized the guy was getting under my skin. My mind circled around his story, his presence. I felt drawn to his pain, and I wondered if I should put some distance between us.