In the Stillness

CHAPTER 22



Stepping out of Tosha’s car, I pause a moment with my eyes closed and chin lifted to the sky to let the sun invigorate me. When I lower my head and open my eyes, I’m staring at a produce truck that causes my head to spin a little.

“Tosh, look.” I elbow her and point to the truck that says “Manning Farms” on the side. No one in Ryker’s family farms, but seeing his last name is just the cherry on the day.

“Okay, now the universe is just f*cking with you.” She laughs and links arms with me.

“No kidding, ugh, let’s get inside and buy enough greens to cleanse our auras along with our bodies.”

Once inside, Tosha tells me she has to place an order at the bakery. As she weaves through the crowded market, I head to the aisles and peacefully wander, placing items at random in my basket. I reach the frozen foods section and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the glass door. I look tired; the kind of tired that comes from deep inside. The kind of tired I’ve only felt once before.

* * *

I felt the splitting headache a few seconds before I peeled my eyes open.

“Hey,” Tosha whispered as she put her hand over mine.

“What the hell?” I turned to face her, squinting to try to keep my eyes in my head.

She kept her voice library-quiet. “You’re okay. You’re at the hospital.”

“What happened?” I asked, squeezing my eyes shut a few times, trying to pull a memory into focus.

“You don’t remember?” She handed me a cup of water and I lifted my head and sipped a bit from the straw while I tried to find my voice.

“I remember going downstairs with you, going back up to get my debit card . . .” I could hear the beeps measuring my pulse’s crescendo as a flood of images burst through the protective dam in my brain. “Oh . . . shit. Ryker . . .”

She nodded. “He pushed you, Nat. Down the stairs.”

I scrunched up my face at her. “No, he didn’t. I slipped—”

“Natalie, you don’t have to protect him anymore.”

“I’m not, Tosh. He told me he swallowed a bottle of Oxycontin, and then he started to get aggressive, but I ran. He grabbed me on the stairs and I pulled away too hard and fell backward . . . shit, has anyone called my parents?”

She looked like she sucked on a lemon. “Since it happened at school, they handled the phone call.”

“Great.” I let my head land back on the pillow. I knew they were going to be so pissed.

Before Tosha and I could sort out any more events, a nurse came in. After she took my vitals, she informed me that two police officers were waiting to talk to me about what happened. I asked Tosh to wait outside so I could speak to them alone.

A tall and lean Amherst police officer walked in. “Ms. Collins? I’m Officer Fox. My partner here is Officer Jackson.” He motioned to the slightly shorter woman to his side. “We’d like to ask you about what happened tonight.”

I nodded. “First, I’m really sorry about pulling that fire alarm. All the commotion it must have caused—”

“No,” Officer Jackson cut in with a smile, “that was an incredibly smart thing to do. You did the right thing.”

I spent the next several minutes piecing together what I could remember—which was most of it by the end of our discussion—and they took careful notes.

“So, you’re saying you “slipped” from Mr. Manning’s hold?” Officer Fox used air-quotes, and that annoyed me.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying, that’s what happened.” Officer Jackson’s eyes softened into something that looked like pity as I spoke.

Fox spoke up again. “Despite Mr. Manning’s violent history with you, you’re sure he didn’t push you?”

“First of all,” I sat up a little straighter, “I’m sure. Second of all, what violent history?”

Officer Jackson sat in the chair next to my bed. “Isn’t it true that Ryker pushed you outside of his house just a few days ago?”

I let out a frustrated sigh and told them the events behind that night.

“Thank you, Ms. Collins. You should get some rest. We’ll come see you tomorrow to talk to you about pressing charges.” Officer Jackson gave me a tight smile as she stood and headed to leave.

“Charges?” I asked, blinking the mess my life had suddenly become into focus.

Officer Fox looked me straight in the eye. “What happened tonight, Ms. Collins, could have been much worse. You’re a lucky young woman. Think about it.”

“Is Ryker okay?” I blurted out without thinking. The officers stared at me like I was on exhibit. “Whatever, look, is his dad here? Bill? If he is, can you send him in?”

Without another word they exited the curtained area, and Bill Manning suddenly appeared. Disheveled as he looked, he managed a smile and gave me a hug before taking the seat next to me.

“Bill, how’s Ryker? Is he okay?”

Tosha entered a second later and stood on the opposite side of my bed.

Bill squeezed my hand. “They had to pump his stomach. He’s sleeping now, and I suspect he’ll be hurting when he wakes up, but he’s going to live.”

Bill and Tosha took a few minutes to fill me in on the details of what happened after I fell. Apparently, as my fellow residents poured into the stairwell for the fire alarm, they found Ryker standing over my body screaming my name.

“When the girls came out and told me what was going on, I ran in after you,” Tosha continued. Her eyes filled with tears. “I met him in the entryway. He was carrying you like an infant. You looked dead, Natalie, and he was screaming for someone to help you.” Bill lowered his head as she spoke. “When the cops and the fire department came, Ryker was screaming orders at them and trying to get into the ambulance with you. They figured out pretty quickly he was messed up, so they called another ambulance and brought him here.”

Bill spoke up. “I talked to your dad, Hon. He’s on his way.” I’d briefly forgotten that I’d given Bill my dad’s phone number while Ryker was overseas. I wanted to be able to be reached at all times. “Your mom is staying behind with your brother.”

At least I could be thankful for something. I wouldn’t have to face my mom and all of her assertions that soldier boyfriends would lead to no good.

“I’m so sorry, Natalie. Ryker hasn’t been right for weeks. I should have never called you when I didn’t hear from him.” Bill ran his hands through his hair and sat back in the chair.

“He’s sick, Bill. It’s not your fault.” Tosha spoke over me as I stared into the space at the end of my bed. “He needs help and maybe this will be his chance to get it.”

“The police want me to press charges,” I said to neither one of them in particular. Raising my hands to my eyes, I started to cry. “God, this is such a mess.”

And that? That’s when the fight left me. The fight for Ryker, the fight for us, and the fight for anything I thought I knew. In between my sobs of resignation, my dad came in and talked to Bill outside the curtain for a few minutes. Tosha stayed until my dad settled in, then she went back to the dorm.

I barely remember the exchange with my father, except that the nurses expressed concern about some “wounds” on my arms. They told him what they thought it was, and they were right, but I couldn’t tell my dad that. I just nodded when he said I’d be coming home with him and taking a semester off. I was barely passing my classes that semester, anyway, so I’d have to retake most of them.

Before I was ready to leave the next day, with nothing more than a nasty headache, I had to talk to the police again.

“I’ll sign whatever you want,” I said, “I just want him to stay away from me forever.” Walking out of the hospital that morning, I didn’t care if I ever saw Ryker Manning again. My dad told me a few weeks later that Ryker was put on probation and was required to receive a mental health evaluation. I was thankful that he’d at least have the chance to be helped. My mom made it a point, just after Christmas, to tell me I’d done Ryker a favor because with his arrest and probation, he probably wouldn’t be able to reenlist in the National Guard.

I hadn’t thought of that. I just wanted to pull myself out of his downward spiral, so I requested a restraining order; which may have been slight overkill since I was stuck in Pennsylvania for what would have been my Spring semester anyway. I knew that he wasn’t healthy enough to reenlist when he’d started talking about it, and I don’t know if it was a reaction to my mother telling me, but I started to feel guilty about stopping his life from going the way he’d wanted it to.

Still, by the time I got back to campus the summer before what would have been my senior year, but was my junior year re-do, I was living off-campus with a new cell phone and strict orders to stay away from all things Ryker Manning. It was easy to do when I was at home—to not think about him or wonder how was doing—but when I was back in South Hadley, I spent a lot of my time in the first few weeks looking over my shoulder and swearing I saw him. Right up through my graduation day two years later, when I swear I saw him through the crowd.

But. Nothing. He was gone. It was like he vanished into thin air. I was supposed to be okay with that—it’s what I’d wanted in the first place. Still, once my heart started piecing itself back together, it began to ache again for the smiling boy on the Amherst common who kissed me like he meant it, a minute after meeting me.

* * *

“Who knew ordering a cake would be such an event.” Tosha fakes being out of breath as she meets me in the produce section. Deliveries are just coming in and we have to dodge dollies of squash and asparagus as we fill our baskets. “Seriously, though, are you okay?”

“I’m feeling trapped, to be honest. Eric and I can’t be married anymore. I don’t love him and it’s just getting uglier between us by the day. That can’t be good for the boys. But, knowing Eric, he’ll press that it won’t be good for them if we split up their home now, especially with everything going on with Ollie . . .” I kneel down in front of a huge basket of yellow squash and start picking through them.

“It’s a bad reason to stay in a bad marriage, Natalie. A disability. You can’t do that to either one of you, or the boys.”

“Ugh, I know.” I sigh as I stand. “Luckily after next week, the boys will be at my parents’ for a week, so we’ll have time to sort through some shit while they’re gone.”

“Remember,” Tosha elbows me, “come stay at our place while you get everything squared away and find yourself a place to live.”

I nod and we head to the check-out. It makes sense that I would be the one to leave the apartment. Eric lived there before we even lived together—it’s his. I’m thankful, though, for the generous trust fund my grandmother Baker left to me when she passed away. I’ll be able to live off that for a little while, while I find a job.

Unless Eric and I can work it out . . . no, not an option on this side of the table.

As Tosha and I leave the market, I roll my eyes at the “Manning Farms” truck. Apart from seeing Ryker’s dad when I was eight months pregnant with the twins, that name is the most I’ve seen of Ryker since the stairwell in 2002.

Until he hops out of the back of the farm truck.

“Ryker,” I whisper as I stop dead in my path, causing a woman to bump into me from behind.

“What?” Tosha mouths “sorry” to the woman behind us as she pulls me to the side. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

I set my bag on a nearby ledge and walk almost trance-like toward the mid-sized box truck. I should be running in the opposite direction. Far away. I have no way of knowing what the last ten years have done to him.

Tosha shouts unabashedly after me. “Natalie! Where are you going?”

As soon as “Natalie” springs from her mouth, Ryker stands straight and turns in my direction.

Holy shit, it’s really him.

With erratic breaths, and my heart slamming against my throat, I maintain my march toward him, needing confirmation that he’s really standing there and this isn’t the final straw in my psychological breakdown. He wipes sweat from his brow with his forearm, then takes off his gloves and rubs his eyes for a second before seeming to blink me into focus.

Yeah, it’s really me.

He’s more muscular than he was the last time I saw him. He’s the size he was before he left for deployment. Tanned and dirty, he takes my breath away. Still, this can’t be happening. I stop ten feet from him and stare a second longer than is socially acceptable. Miraculously, my vocal cords work.

“Ryker?” I shake my head, certain I’ve tumbled off the edge.

A lopsided grin takes over his face as he shakes his head, too.

“Natalie.”