Page 48 of Wasted Memories
After I moved out, Jett kept in contact with my mom. Not to the point that they’d speak daily, but they did exchange a few texts back and forth now and then. Jett would tell me when she’d text him. We didn’t keep secrets, or so I thought. Now I questioned if drugs weren’t the only thing he’d kept from me.
The relationship we had felt like a lie now. I didn’t want to admit it to myself because it made me sick to think about it, but he did all of this under the roof we shared. Under the roof he promised me forever, where we promised to be honest with each other, promised there would be no games. Turns out, it was all a game. I was a pawn.
Sexy and clueless. That’s how he portrayed me to everyone he sold drugs to. He used me to lure people in. To him, I really wasjusta smokeshow, but to me, he was my world. He took me out of the situation that was my childhood home and for the entire time I was with him, I was thankful. In a way, I still was, but looking at my mother’s house, I couldn’t help but wonder if I just traded one bad situation for another.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence, I turned to Wesley, who was watching me. I took a deep breath and reached for my seatbelt. He gently set his hand on mine, causing me to pause.
“I don’t know much about your relationship with your mother, but I’ll be by your side in there, okay? Squeeze my hand three times at any point and we’ll leave.”
I nodded and he removed his hand, taking his own seatbelt off. I didn’t fill him in on any details on the drive over. We were silent the entire way. One thing I liked about Wesley was that he didn’t force small talk.
He got out, coming around the front of the truck to open my door. He grabbed my hand as I got out of his truck, and as we crossed the street, I looked down at our hands, a small smile tugging at my lips. This was the first time we’d really held hands like this, and despite the current situation, it made my cheeks feel warm.
My gaze moved back up and noticed the corners of his mouth lifting. I shouldn’t be blushing by us simply holding hands, but something about the situation made me want to focus my emotions on me and Wesley. If I could ignore my mother calling me here for an emergency, I would. Believe me.
Stepping onto the small concrete porch, I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. I wanted to get this over with and go back to my daily life. Whatever that was at this point.
The faded red door swung open after a few seconds, my mom standing there with her graying brown hair in a messy bun. She was wearing a purple robe over pajamas despite it being the middle of the afternoon.
“Emerson. Come in.” She opened the door wider and eyed Wesley as we both stepped in, hand in hand. She brought us to the kitchen, where she gestured to the table for us to sit. “Would you like a coffee?”
I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, so I ignored her question. “What’s the emergency?” I tried not to look at the piles of mail on the kitchen table, or the dishes stacked next to the sink waiting to be cleaned. My mother wasn’t typically a messy person, and the house had clearly been cleaned in the last few weeks, but its current state looked like it hadn’t been touched in a few days.
She pulled out a honey oak chair at the table, the old wood creaking as she sat down. “Please, sit.”
“I don’t have time for this, mom. What do you need to tell me?”
She sighed and busied her hands, picking at her nails. “It’s about your father, Emerson.”
My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. My father hadn’t been around for almost two decades and during those two decades, my mother made every excuse not to speak about him.
“What about him?” My voice sounded too small, too weak.
Her brown eyes stared up at me with a sympathetic look. “I think you’ll want to sit down, sweetie.”
“Don’t ‘sweetie’ me. What the hell is the emergency?” My fingers twitched with the urge to give Wesley those three squeezes.
“They found his body.”
It was like any emotions I had in that moment froze, along with the breath in my lungs.
Four words.
Four words confirmed the end of a life I never got to know.
She didn’t have to say he was dead; she didn’t have to go into detail. Someone saying they found a body is an automatic confirmation that there was no soul.
But I wanted those details.
“What? When did they- How did he..? Who’s they?” I couldn’t get an entire sentence out. A million questions darted around in my mind about the man I never got to know. A man who didn’t care to raise me, to take me away from this place.
“Some hikers came across his body on public land in Wyoming. Police confirmed that he died of frostbite. They’re saying he must’ve gotten lost on a trail and ended up in the middle of a field before he couldn’t make it any further.” Her eyes welled with tears before she diverted her gaze away from me.
“Why didn’t he have a phone? Couldn’t he have called for help?” I didn’t realize I was shaking until Wesley squeezed my hand, pulling my focus to something other than the ocean waves slamming against the invisible breaking point in my mind. The instant those four words left my mother's lips, the storm had surged, washing away the strength I had meagerly mustered before coming in here.
Wesley pulled me to shore, feeding me a lifeline I so desperately needed right now.
She took a moment before answering, “He didn’t have anything on him. No phone, no wallet. They identified him by his fingerprints.” She choked on her words before adding, “He’s been a missing person for over a month, Emerson.”
