Page 4 of The Caretaker
“Are you sure?” I implored.
“I’m positive. Who is she?”
“My wife.” I closed the folder, exhaustion taking its toll on me. “She didn’t survive the accident.” I gripped the two wedding bands and the diamond engagement ring dangling from the gold chain I wore. My band was a replica. The original was absent from my finger when I woke up in the hospital. Likely removed before I’d been rushed into surgery. No one could account for it. They’d had to sedate me after I’d noticed it was missing. Stacey’s rings were sitting on her bedside table when I got home. She hated sleeping in jewelry and had probably forgotten to put them back on before leaving. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
I let go of the rings that hung close to my heart and glanced up to find him staring at them, a broken expression overtaking his face. Did he lose his wife? Or husband? He didn’t wear a ring on his hand, so maybe a lover?
“Sorry for your loss.”
It was a sentiment I’d heard one too many times, but I didn’t hate it when he said it. Our gazes locked and held, and a senseless sort of longing filled me. I attributed it to Stacey, to missing her.
“She was pregnant,” I whispered.
“Did you saypregnant?” he breathed, like maybe he hadn’t heard me correctly. He’d leaned forward in his seat.
“Yeah. I had my wife and my opportunity at being a father taken from me in one fell swoop.”
“H-how far along was she?”
“Roughly twelve weeks is what I was told.”
He fell back as if the news were a blow, mouth slightly agape. I took his shock as sympathy. My gaze fell to his hands, which now gripped the edge of the table so tight they’d paled. I hadn’t wanted to invade his privacy with intrusive questions, even though I seemed to have no issue revealing my own problems to him. I couldn’t sit there and not care, though. Not ask. Not when it was clear that I wasn’t the only one at the table suffering.
“Hey,” I whispered, laying a hand on top of his. At the contact, his eyes snapped to mine, the devastation there matched the reflection I saw in the mirror every day.
“Did you lose someone?” I asked, pulling my hand back, the air around me becoming easier to breathe with the action.
“Yes.” He’d said it so low it was no more than a hiss. “Someone who made me feel like I could do anything, be anything. So I understand what it’s like to wish you could get back the person you loved and lost.”
“Did your person die too?”
“No, he didn’t, but it feels like it sometimes.”
“Maybe you should try and find him.” I would’ve given anything to have an opportunity to find Stacey. I would’ve paid any price to know she was alive and well, and that the onlything keeping us apart was the physical distance between us. I would’ve hunted her down and never let her go again.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Maybe.”
We gazed at each other, that string of familiarity at the back of my skull tugging wildly.
“Are the last couple years before the accident all you’ve lost?”
“No, but it’s the only part of my life I’ve lost so completely. It’s the only part of my life with her that I’ve lost at all.”
“Oh,” was all he said.
I leaned my forearms on the table, my fingers pressing into my forehead. “My estranged childhood friend Leland came back into my life during that time, and he brought with him his partner, Franklin, and Franklin’s sons, Jasper and Cole. Apparently, we’d all become one big happy family, except I don’t remember reconnecting with Leland, and I don’t remember Franklin or his sons at all. Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember Franklin. I lived in Seattle up until a decade ago. We’d met a couple times before I left for New York, but not under the best of circumstances, and we definitely weren’t friends. But now I’m supposed to care about him.”
I looked up, expecting to find him bored, to get some indication that he was ready to escape me. The opposite held true. He was listening, truly listening like he had nowhere else to be but right there with me, and I didn’t even know his name.
“Keep going,” he said, and so I did, because God knew I needed to. Needed to not feel so alone. And maybe he needed the distraction that listening to my problems provided. It helped to know that I may be helping him in return.
“My childhood years aren’t forgotten completely. Best way to describe it is waking up after a night of excessive drinking. Most of what happened is a blur. You have to rely on the people around you to recount the events. Some of what they say you remember clearly, some of it’s a distorted haze that you kind ofremember. The rest is news to me. Thankfully, I have the years spent with my wife. All but those last two.”
He nodded as though he understood me. “And that’s the missing time you want back.”
“It’s the priority, yes. My wife is the priority.”
“Not to minimize what you lost,” he started, “orwhoyou lost…” His voice gave out then, and he turned away, only turning back once he’d regained his composure. “Not to minimize any of it,” he began again, “but shouldn’t the time spent with the people still here be your priority?”
