“I can't tell you to leave. I still care about you.”
“You have to make a choice. Either you start a new life with me, or you just take care of someone who I'm not even sure loves you anymore. But I won't keep waiting here, sleeping alone at night while you try to fuck her pain away. It's sick, this whole thing.”
That's about all I can take before I turn and rush out of the building, tossing the lunch in the garbage as I wipe away tears. None of this has ever felt real. Because it wasn't. I kept telling myself I could make it more real than the life I left behind, but now I know it's not possible. Because Carter is faking it too. We're faking it for each other. We think that the other needs us. But we're holding on to an illusion.
I've only ever felt so completely desired by one person. This world found a way to move on without me. I was dead. Coming back has only thrown it off kilter. We all keep trying to find our balance, but it wobbles on its axis like a top spinning on its fragile tip, waiting to topple over.
My mother did her duty, she got me to adulthood and she's ready to get back to the life she stepped away from.
Johnny is thriving without me. And even if my mother would let me, I'm not the girl who can take care of him anymore. Not the way I once could. I can barely do it for myself.
And Carter, sweet Carter. I don't blame him. I'm not angry with him. He deserves someone who would cry and beg for him like that. Not someone who answers the phone to her kidnapper. Who protects the man who disrupted our lives. Not someone who has to try so hard to love him.
Ever since I returned, I have felt unsettled. Always uneasy. I'm not safe. And the only way I can feel at ease again is to go back towards the flames. Go into the fiery building and let it overtake me. I might turn to ash, but at least I won't live in fear of being burnt.
I may have a purpose. But it's not here anymore. It may not be a happy one. But my story doesn't happen here. It happens with Sam. Sheriff Ridgefield might think this is over, but this isn't over until I say it is.
I run into the apartment I share with Carter and grab a pen and paper.
Dear Carter,
I can't thank you enough for the love and support you have shown me. Before and after I was taken. You deserve a life full of love and devotion. And I can't do this. I have to leave. I have to start somewhere else. Maybe one day I'll come back and we'll see each other. But you should move on. Take someone else to Tahoe. It's not my place anymore. I'll be fine. I just need to go my own way for a while. Please don't look for me. I'll be back when I'm ready. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything.
Love,
Vesper
I grab my bags, Sam's box shoved safely at the bottom of one, and try to find something real.
I've been sitting in this diner for about two hours. I'm on my fourth cup of coffee and my runny eggs sit there, cold. I have to eat them. I don't have a job and all I have to live on are the savings I had before I left, money intended for nursing school tuition, and some money my mother, well really my stepdad, threw my way to help me get on my feet. It's enough to last me a few months, but letting this nutrition sit on the plate is foolish. I try to will myself to take a bite, but I can't. I'm closer to him. I can feel it.
“Need a refill?” the waitress asks. She's been patient with me taking up this table. But that's what people do in diners, right? They either come for a quick meal, or respite from something, a place they can come to sit for a cheap escape.
“Sure.” I reach for the cup to hand it to her, but it's shaky. I've had too much caffeine and I'll keep on drinking. I feel resolute to do something, but it's one of two somethings and one is the one I want, the other is the one I should. We can go back to the quiet mornings under the California sun, when I'd read him books. Or the afternoons in the water, but this time it could be the beach instead of the lake. At night we could listen to music. Our world would be quiet, it would be just us and it wouldn't be so loud and full. And he could do what he wanted with me, because I'd let him. I'd let him devour every inch of me like I was the sweetest thing. Like I was the only thing that could curb his hunger.
Or I could do what the lives represented in the box in my bag demand—find him, ring his doorbell at night and when he answers, shoot him in the face. I'll walk away the way he does: into the night. There will be no discernible motive. No reason for the police to trace his murder to me.
Then I'll dump the box and the gun in the ocean. I'll find a motel and because I will have killed the only reason I had left to live, I'll take a bunch of pills and go to sleep.
Both somethings pull at me. They weigh equally and opposite, each making the other unfathomable. So that I am affixed to this spot, anchored by the choice I need to make. And when I can't think about that any longer, I replay the conversation that got me down to LA.