“I’ll be fine, Lindy. I’m good.”
I’m not good. I’m so far from good, there’s not even a word for it. But I haven’t celebrated Christmas for two years, and I’m not about to start now. I could practically hear my dad’s disappointment over the phone when I told him not to come up for the holidays, and Lindy looks equally crushed.
When will they learn not to expect anything from me?
“Mr. Paul—Paul,” she corrects herself, realizing she no longer works for my family, and that I’m no longer twelve.
Don’t, I silently beg Lindy. But she doesn’t pick up on my silent cue. Nobody ever does.
Well, Olivia did. But she’s gone. Gone for about a month now, without so much as a text or email. I don’t even know where she is.
“Paul,” Lindy continues, coming around to where I sit at the counter and standing close, looking like she wants to touch me but refraining, “I know things are…bleak right now. It seems like everyone’s leaving you. But you understand, don’t you?”
Actually, no. I don’t understand. I mean, I get why people don’t want to be around me. I’ve always wondered why Lindy and Mick stuck it out, especially when I was at my worst in those early days.
It’s like Olivia somehow set an example for the others with her tough-love voodoo.
Kali won’t talk to me either.
Not that I think Olivia told the others what happened. She was gone within an hour of telling me goodbye.
But her desertion sent a clear message: If the beast wants to be alone, then let him.
Whatever. I’ll be fine. Lindy’s right, I do make good eggs. I can brown beef for tacos, or whatever. I can boil water for pasta.
There’s always takeout. If my leg’s good enough to run, it’s certainly good enough to drive.
Not that I’ve been doing much running. I don’t like it anymore. She took even that from me.
Once I loved it for its solitude. And now? Now it just feels fucking lonely.
“You take care of yourself, Lindy,” I say, ignoring her questioning gaze.
Then I do what once was unthinkable: I hug her. And I let her hug me back.
She clings a little too long, and maybe I do too. She’s the closest I’ve had to a mother since my own passed away forever ago.
But I can’t let myself think like that. An employee retiring is one thing. A pseudo-parent walking out on you? It’s crushing. So I don’t even go there.
“You need help loading the car?” I ask as I pull back, desperate to change the subject.
“Nah, Mick took care of it all this morning,” she says, adjusting her scarf and doing the blinky thing again.
“Where is Mick?”
Lindy fiddles even more deliberately with her scarf, not meeting my gaze.
My eyes narrow. “Lindy.”
“Well…”
I sigh in understanding. “My father’s coming into town, isn’t he? Mick went to pick him up from the airport.”
“Yes,” Lindy says with a sheepish smile. “I think Mick wants to feel needed just one last time.”
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.
I haven’t seen my father since the last time he came up to give me shit about daring to show my face in Frenchy’s. And actually, it’s because of that fact that I’m not dreading his arrival as much as I would have just a few months ago.
If anyone will understand why I couldn’t meet Olivia’s outrageous demand of shopping trips and movie theaters and vacations, it would be him. He didn’t even want me to show myself to a bunch of small-town locals in Nowhere, Maine. He’d probably have a heart attack at the thought of me following Olivia to New York, or, worse, attempting to rejoin my old life in Boston.
In the weeks that Olivia’s been gone, not a day has gone by when I haven’t second-guessed my decision. My nightmares are no longer about the war, but neither are they a clichéd montage of me fumbling around in the public eye while everyone points and laughs at my face.
No, my dreams are about her.