“Mom, I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.” I place my bag over my shoulder and kneel quietly for a moment of silence in front of her grave, trying to steal a few more seconds with her before I call James back.
“I want to make you proud. I love you, Mom.” My voice cracks and I fight back the tears. My heart knows she’d say those same words back if she were sitting beside me.
I grab my heels and pull myself up to stand on my bare feet. I don’t want this time of ours to end, so I decide to take a memory of her with me. I open the camera app on my phone and take a quick snapshot of her tombstone. It might seem macabre, but since she wasn’t one to get caught in a photo, I have only a handful of memories from our life together.
I begin to walk back toward my car, but stop after a few feet. I look over my shoulder and move my lips to silently say goodbye again.
I’m in the driver’s seat of my car behind the dark tinted windows. They may shield me from immediate view, but not from James. I imagine him holding his phone, waiting for me to call. He knows the car hasn’t moved from its spot.
Knowing the longer I delay, the more time he has to stew in anger, I press “call back” and start the engine to circulate some cool air.
“Harlow, hold on,” he spits out his order like a drill sergeant. In the background, I hear a woman, probably a nurse, talking to him, and then silence. He’s put me on mute. I worry my lip as I wait for him to return.
“What the hell are you doing at the cemetery?” Though he’s talking barely above a whisper, his tone is laced with venom. I am sure he’d be yelling into the phone if he weren’t at The Clinic. “I thought I told you that place was off limits without me.” He takes several breaths, slow and deep.
Shit. He’s really ticked off. I’m starting to second-guess my decision to come here, but I feel like a weight has lifted off my chest. He calls, and like a dark cloud trying to hover over me, my mood shifts. He needs to hear the truth.
“I’m okay. I swear. I needed to stop by and I was out—”
“The club is miles away from the cemetery, so don’t even go there with me,” he scolds, like I’m a teen out past curfew, and I can’t help but feel like one. He stops and mumbles to someone under his breath. I’m embarrassed to have him speak like this to me in front of his possible peers. We never fight, but I also haven’t given him cause to be upset before. “Did you take your pills?”
“I took them.” The lie tumbles off my tongue with ease. I’ve been lying to him about them for weeks, despising how they make me feel.
“Promise me you’ll never go without me. You’re not strong enough to handle this alone.” His anger from before has mellowed some and I exhale.
“I’m sorry, James, but I swear, I’m fine. I was talking to Mom and I felt like she was right there.” I fire out my convincing speech so he can’t interrupt.
“We’ll talk about this later.” He dismisses what I shared by shutting me down and my mood deflates even more, if possible.
“Fine.” Stung, I reply fast and sharp.
“I need you to help me.” He doesn’t acknowledge or recognize that I’m upset, his tone reverting back to the normal, everyday James. “I’m just getting out of surgery. We had another heart transplant around noon. A young mother.”
“I hope she’s doing okay.” I lower my head and close my eyes. He’s fighting for a life. This side of James makes me wonder if I’m overreacting to his recent behaviors. It’s his nature to care for others, and maybe he’s trying to protect me. My thoughts keep bouncing from one possibility to another
“I need to stay and monitor her vitals with the team for the next few hours. I’ll likely be very late, so don’t wait up.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
After our conversation ends, I decide to head home and find a bottle of wine. I’m relieved he isn’t going to come home tonight. As his fiancée, my feelings spell trouble for us, signaling a decision needs to be made.
Stay or go? But go where?
I drive under the black wrought iron entrance of the cemetery and head in the direction of another set of iron gates. These gates have surrounded me like a prison for four months. Today’s little taste of freedom makes me want more, which is a dangerous desire if I stay with James.
Chapter Fifteen
Sin
I’ve been listening to the orientation speaker drone on and on about what to expect over the next four weeks during The Clinic’s clerkship, but my mind remains back at James’ house where I walked in and found Harlow strapped to a table. Fuck, I don’t even know how to process seeing her lying there before me, succumbing to my uncle’s will.