World of Echos (5 page)

           
Be
well. And don't forget me.

           
B--

           
Lucille didn't know what to do.
She checked their old emails, the ones they'd exchanged after they'd seen each
other at the bar and not known until they emailed who the other was, and found
his address. She ran to her car and jumped in. It was only a week and half
after their date. Everything had been going swimmingly, too. Even though they
were both so busy that their schedules, they discovered, would only allow them
to meet up maybe once a week, if that. It just hadn't seemed like a problem because
it wasn't. They were both mature adults that weren't trying to rush into
anything.

           
But
now she was in a rush though, and as she sped across town she saw lights
flashing behind her. When the cop got to her window she begged and pleaded with
him. When she started to cry the cop let her off with a warning, then she
resumed speeding toward Brent's house.

           
Lucille
didn't know, but the front door was unlocked and she was in his house and
everything was gone. The garage was empty except for a glistening oil stain on
the floor. When she looked in the backyard she found that he'd hoed up the
garden before he left. He must have known he would be leaving. Maybe that's why
he had been so sweet the last few days. He really didn't intend to be back to
his place that season, despite what his email had said. But maybe he really
didn't know and just didn't want to chance it. Didn't want to give her some
kind of false hope for her to hang onto for years on end when there was a good
chance he'd never be the same person again after his father had passed just a
short time before.

           
For
a while Lucille just sat on the floor of what had been Brent's kitchen but was
now just an empty space. She tried calling him again and again with no luck;
she tried going to the airport to see if he was there but no one would talk to
her once they learned who she was; she tried emailing him again; she tried
writing him letters hoping he'd have his mail rerouted to wherever he was
staying at now. But in the end none of it worked.

           
Days
passed, then weeks, then months. Six months passed by and still no sign of
Brent. Lucille thought about their first date and last night together, held
onto to it in her mind like something precious that she couldn't let go of. It
was like a diamond in her memory, something that shone like the sun when she
cast the gaze of her memory over it. She couldn't believe that he hadn't called
her or written. It meant only one thing—that his mother had passed and he was
trying to put himself back together. Lucille knew that if that was the case,
which it likely was, then there was a good chance that he would never be able
to really sow himself back together. Losing her father had almost ruined her,
so she knew how hard it could be to lose a parent. Would she couldn't imagine
was losing her mother now. And then she realized that Brent had already lost
the rest of his family. Now he was really alone. He didn't have anyone to talk
with about how he was raised, or anyone to call to be like, “Hey, remember when
mom got so mad at dad that she threw a crock pot at him, and when it broke they
both started laughing like nothing had ever happened.”

           
Brent
would live in a world of
echos
now, forcing himself
into the blurred places of his mind where memory seemed the most accessible, but
at the same time the most frayed. He'd try to relive parts of his life with his
mother and father, and his long gone two brothers, but it would never satisfy.
The more that he chased ghosts the more disconnected he would become.
Eventually, if he didn't pull out of it, the results could be disastrous.

           
Lucille
soldiered on through her days. She held onto the few memories she'd made with
him and did her best not to feel depressed, but she was. She wouldn't feel
sorry for herself, though. That was something she would not allow. She'd been
too lucky in life to have bounced back to let herself start slipping into that
kind of cycle now.

           
About
eight months after he left she started writing him letters. This time she sent
them to every address she could find of his relatives online. She didn't care
that she never heard.

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ack. When she wrote to Brent she thought of
him reading them, and that made her h