Page 175 of We Redeemed the Rain

His words on the page. Words he couldn’t say.

Tears swam in my eyes. With an unsteady breath, I turned the page.

“I blame the rain, maybe that isn’t fair though. Because the trouble in my life didn’t start with that tropical storm. It was just the reason I looked down and realized I was soaked and alone. It’s painful to be honest with myself—to admit the trouble was there long before. Starting with and stemming from my mother…”

For hours, I got lost.

For hours, I wept.

For hours, I grieved.

I grieved for the little boy who never knew love. Grieved for the best friend I adored. Grieved for the man I loved. I broke over and over as his heart became one with mine, his words wrapping around andsettling into the core of my soul. The ache and longing in his writing called to my spirit so intimately I felt sick with need to go to him.

Even in the pages of hopelessness, anger, shame, and regret…there was power.

He had no idea how strong he was.

Anyone who could walk through all that but still wake up and fill their lungs with air every morning was a living and breathing miracle. Forget accomplishments, forget career, forget family and relationships. Survival alone was the miracle.

Everything I’d felt for him—the admiration, the love, the affinity—grew, quadrupled, and burst to overflowing.

His story was written in three parts, and each part began with a short poem.

Part onewas about a boy who popped open a Coke minutes before his life changed forever.

Part twowas about a man who fell in love.

Part threewas about a man reaching out for help.

Part fourwas blank.

Two days later I stopped rereading his book and closed it. With shaky hands and a shattered spirit, I did the only thing I knew to do.

I reached for my heart and touched her strings.

FORTY-SEVEN

Tag

As I sat in my desk chair, staring at the scrap of paper in my hands, indecision rose like an angry tempest in my chest. I didn’t know what to do.

I sent that damn notebook ten days ago. Hadn’t heard a word.

Since letting the postal service worker carry it off and toss it into a shipping bin, I’d had doubts. Maybe I should’ve spent time crossing out lines or ripping out particular pages. Maybe rewriting a section or two and dumbing things down a bit would’ve been wise. I considered doing just that before sending it off, but I didn’t. Rereading the pages I’d written so long ago would’ve been pretty triggering. And I was still bouncing back from the last trigger.

As the days went by, shame’s chokehold squeezed. I couldn’t even think about those pages without feeling like I was going to die from humiliation.

I told myself I was going to give her space to think and that I wasn’t going to follow up or reach out. But I cracked on day seven. I texted her to make sure she got the package. Maybe it was lost in the mail somewhere.

The text was undelivered.

The call went straight to voicemail.

So did the rest I sent over the following two days.

Had she blocked me? Was she safe? What if something happened to her and I never knew? My thoughts followed their typical pattern—sane to insane, steady to spiraling. I hadn’t been able to sleep last night as scenarios assaulted my imagination.

Now, I sat here, staring at the scrap of paper she’d scribbled her brother’s phone number on. After talking with Bea about some of Meadowbrook’s financial troubles, she had written his number down and promised Peter would be able to help me.

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