Between Here and the Horizon (10 page)

“That’s okay, sweetie. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have given you so much to eat, should I? What do you say, you hang out with your brother in his room again while I get this cleared up, and then we can maybe watch a movie or something, huh?” Amie, sweet little Amie, nodded, smiling. I already knew I was never going to get the same easy compliance from her brother. No point in even trying.
 

While I cleaned up the bathroom, I finally allowed myself to break down. I was in way over my head. On the other side of the country, on a tiny island where I didn’t know a soul, and my boss had just thrown me in at the deep end in the most profound, irreversible way.
 
So unbelievable of him. So unkind. So fucking cruel. Did he really expect me to just float around The Causeway with his two young children in tow, teaching them and playing with them and pretending like nothing had happened? How delusional could one person be?

The letter downstairs. It would shed more light on the matter. I couldn’t face it though. Just couldn’t. Instead, I wiped my eyes, finished mopping up the puke from the floor, and I went and got the kids.
 

“I don’t care what you want right now, Connor. You can not like me all you want, but your dad left me in charge, and that means you have to do what I say, okay? And we’re going to get dressed and get out of the house. All day. We’re going to find somewhere to eat lunch, and we’re going to explore down by the beach.”

“Yay! The beach!” Amie started dancing around in her camisole and underwear, spinning in a circle with her hands in the air. “I
love
the beach!”

“It’s too cold.” Connor folded his arms across his chest, chin tilted down, eyes narrowed. He looked like he could have played Damien in the eighties horror movie quite convincingly. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Go.”

“Well. I’m sorry to hear that, buddy, but you don’t have a choice. Now get your shoes on.”

******

Ronan’s car keys were in the ignition of the SUV in the garage. There was an orange Post-it note on the middle of the steering wheel that said, USE THE CAR SEATS on it.
Of course I’m going to use the goddamn car seats. Helpful, Ronan. Really fucking helpful. You know what would have been
really
helpful? You not killing yourself, that’s what.

I screwed the Post -it up and quickly threw it into the glove box.
 

Connor pulled the most dramatic, unhappy face when I opened up the back seat door for him. “Do I have to sit in the back? Dad normally lets me sit up in the front with him.”
 

“Sorry, kiddo. There’s a booster back there for you. Amie, look at your car seat. Isn’t it cool?” It was red with green dinosaurs all over it. Amie clapped her hands when she saw it; Connor looked like he wanted to set the entire car on fire. Disgust radiated off him in scorching degrees.

“This is bullshit,” he mumbled under his breath. His eyes flickered to me, his shoulders stiffening as he waited for my reaction. I gave him none, which, by the looks of things, made him really mad.
 

I’d dealt with enough kids like him at school though, acting out to get attention. If you gave them nothing, they generally learned it was pointless and stopped after a while. Connor’s situation was more complicated, though. He was going to do more than act out when he learned about Ronan. His whole world was going to come crashing down.
Again
. How the hell was
I
qualified to handle
that
?

I didn’t know where I was supposed to be going when I drove down the long driveway and out onto the road, but I tried to appear confident, if only for the kids’ sake.
 

The morning slipped by. We drove around the entire island at least twice before I really saw any of it—rolling hills, so green and lush that they almost looked fake; steep, rocky cliff faces that plunged wildly down into white water and the raging sea; tiny little whitewashed houses with peeling green window frames and scruffy dogs tethered to posts out front; so many decrepit looking fishing boats rocking to and fro along the coastline, fraying lines caked in salt crystals threatening to snap under the tension of the boats trying to drift away. It felt like another time, in another world completely.
 

At around lunch, the storm finally hit. The thunderheads that were lurking out over the ocean finally rolled in, and thunder and lightning crackled overhead. The children weren’t scared at all. I parked the car at the side of the winding, narrow road that headed back to the house, and the three of us sat and watched the battle in the heavens commence. We counted the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunder…

One…two…three...

We didn’t make it past three; the fury was right on top of us. It felt safe in the car, even though we probably weren’t. For a second, such a brief, unbearably small snatch of time, I didn’t think about Ronan swinging from the ceiling fan. I didn’t think about CPS coming in the morning to take the children away. I just sat with them in the car and we shrieked and howled every time the ground shook beneath us, and the sky rippled with light, and everything else was just noise.
 

******

Negotiating bedtime with Connor was like negotiating peace in the Middle East. It was well after nine by the time he finally agreed to climb into bed, and that was only because his head was nodding and he could barely keep his eyes open any longer.
Jurassic Park
had gone on at seven, and Amie had been so excited within the first twenty minutes that she’d exhausted herself and fallen asleep straight away. I’d carried her up and put her in her tiny single bed in the room next to mine, and she hadn’t even stirred. Connor had made it to the last fifteen minutes of the film before he got up off the couch and staggered sleepily off in the direction of his room, silently, unwilling to admit defeat.
 

Fifteen minutes later, I was on the phone with Mom, balling my eyes out. It took three solid attempts to explain what had happened before she understood what I was saying.
 

“You aren’t
serious
?” she hissed down the phone. “George? George? Where are you? Ophelia’s boss
committed suicide
!”

Dad picked up the other line in the den. “
What did you say?”
 

I let Mom tell him; I didn’t have the energy to get it out all over again. Now that the children were asleep, I finally didn’t have to hold myself together anymore. It was a relief, but it was also frightening. I felt out of control, like I was barely retaining my grasp on reality.
 

“You have got to come home, honey. I knew there was something off about this whole thing. Honest to god, what a terrible thing to do. What a thoughtless bastard. Those poor little mites.” Mom was outraged for everyone involved, including me, but the children bore the brunt of her sympathy. Having my mother feel sorry for you was not necessarily a good thing in a situation like this. It tended to make her hysterical. “I mean, really!
Really
!” Her voice was getting higher and higher. “I just can’t believe it. How could someone be so self-serving? If you want to kill yourself you wait, until after your children have finished college. It’s just not done! I can’t believe it. What an asshole. What a complete
asshole
.”

“Calm down, Jen. Calm down. We don’t know the whole story,” Dad said, ever the peacekeeper. “Your mother’s right, though, darling. Come home as soon as you’ve handed the children over tomorrow. That’s not a healthy environment for you to be in right now.”
 

I didn’t tell them about Mr. Linneman and his paperwork. If they knew Ronan had essentially left his kids to me in his will, they would go ballistic, and I couldn’t deal with Mom’s voice raising another decibel right now. “I know. I will. I’m going to book a flight as soon as I get off the phone.”
 

The restaurant was going to be shut down. I wasn’t going to make the money Ronan promised me if I didn’t stay and see out the six months, there was no two ways about that. But maybe, if I was really lucky another job would come up as soon as I landed back in California. There might be enough time to build up a little bit of capital and save the business from going under if I started waiting tables at a second job as well.
 

“Look, guys, I’m so sorry. I’m beat. I’m going to have to go and sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I know what time I’ll be getting back, okay?”

My parents both wished me goodnight, and Mom told me to take care of myself about fifteen times. I was headed up to bed, trying not to look in the direction of Ronan’s study, when I felt a familiar niggle of doubt shoot through me. Why did he do it? Why? I was never going to know if I didn’t read that damned letter. I wanted to go home, yes, but how frustrating would it be to never truly understand what had happened and why? If I didn’t go into Ronan’s office and get that letter, I was going to be in the dark forever. And he
owed
me, damn it. He owed me an explanation. What he did wasn’t fair to me, and it really wasn’t fair to his kids.
 

I halted on the stairs, fear already prickling at my skin. I was going to do it. Being afraid was stupid. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum had taken Ronan’s body away hours ago. There was nothing in there now, but the unreasonably superstitious part of me was convinced Ronan’s spirit was still lurking in there, poking around in among the books and all of his papers, waiting for someone to come visit him.
 

Stupid. Really stupid.
 

I marched down the stairs, across the hallway and straight into the office, holding my breath. Nothing happened. The room was empty. The chair Ronan must have used to climb up onto his desk had been tucked neatly away. All of the sheets of paper on his desk were straight, apart from one small white envelope—the one I had come in here to find. It sat on top of a thick, leather-bound book that looked like it had been carried around by someone for years, all covered in scratch marks, a deep brown oil mark down the spine, probably from extended periods of handling. On top of the envelope and the book, something glinted and shone in the dark—gold and purple. A medal. A purple heart.
 

“
Shit
,” I whispered to myself.

The room, despite the fact that it was full of brand new furniture and still had that universal Ikea smell of flat pack bookcases and fresh woven fabric, was already filled with a sense of emptiness that chilled me inside.
 

Ronan had claimed the room forever now. No matter what, the space would always carry the history of his actions within its four walls. I picked up the medal first, turning it over in my hand. It looked pristine, brand new, like it had never been handled before. George Washington eyed me balefully from the cast of the metal, stern and cold. I dropped it back on the desk, snatched up the letter, then retreated out of the room at a run, my heart beating out of my chest.

 
It felt a lot safer sitting at the kitchen counter to read the note. My name was slashed across the envelope like Ronan had been in a terrible hurry when he’d written it.
 

Inside, the letter:

Ophelia,

We met for the first time today. You weren’t impressed with me in your interview, I could tell, but I was impressed by you. You weren’t flustered. You were respectful and polite, even when I was rude. You were steady. You were calm. You were exactly what I need you to be now, in this moment, when you’re reading this letter.
 

You probably think I’m a monster, and I suppose I am in a lot of ways. I haven’t made this decision lightly. Know I have wrestled endlessly over my decision to take my own life. Not because I wanted to live, but because of the effect it will have on the children. I haven’t second-guessed myself. Ever since Magda died, I’ve wanted to follow after her. My family was fairly religious when I was growing up—Roman Catholic—but I haven’t believed in that stuff for a very long time now. I don’t think Magda’s cancer was a test handed down to her by a higher power. I think more than likely it was a shitty hand dealt to her in a game of poker she didn’t even realize she was playing. But if there’s a chance there is an afterlife, something more that we go to when we leave this plane of existence, then I have to hope that I’ll be joining her soon.
 

I don’t expect you to understand how I can risk my children’s happiness on the slim possibility that I might be able to see my wife again. But you see, if I lived my children wouldn’t be happy. They would resent me. They would hate me. As the days, the weeks, and the months have passed me by, I have caught a glimmer of the man I am to become if I continue to live and breathe in this skin of mine, and he isn’t a good man. Before Magda, I was lost. I was weak. I was broken. I am even worse without her now.

So you see it’s better this way. I’ve amassed a fortune in the past few years. Enough money to make sure Connor and Amie receive the best education money can buy. They’ll never have to worry about making their mortgage payments. They’ll never have to stress about making ends meet. Their futures lie before them, all the better and brighter for the fact that I won’t be in them.
 

And you…this is where you come in. I’m sorry I lied to you. You’re a strong, smart, fiery woman, and in another life I’m sure we would have been great allies. You’re like Magda in so many ways that sitting across from you in that interview made me very uncomfortable.
 

I ask you to please carry out the job I hired you for. I’ve opened a bank account on the island and left enough money in there for you to be more than fine from now until the summer. Take care of my children. Teach them. Nourish them. Comfort them. If you’re too angry to do this for me, then please do it for my wife. Connor and Amie were her sun and moon. She was a sweet, kind, wonderful woman, and no matter how badly I am letting her down right now, I have been determined to make sure someone equally as wonderful as her safeguards the children until their uncle agrees to take them himself.