Page 18 of Nightclub Surprise
With a loud gasp, August’s eyes finally blinked, and his screaming stopped. “Oh, God!” he grabbed my wrists as I held his face between my hands. “God…” He took deep, heaving breaths as he slowly came back to reality. “Tawny, I’m sosorry!”
“It’s okay now.” I stroked his face and his hair for a few moments as he continued to calm down. “I’lldrive.”
He nodded, and we both got out of the car as the people in the traffic all around us watched with gaping jaws. I saw my son’s red-rimmed eyes as he watched August walk around the front of the car, getting in the passenger side—the side Calum had been sittingbehind.
My son took off his seat belt with frightened eyes, sliding to the seat behind the driver’s side. My heart broke at the sight. All of the trust that August had built with Calum had just been destroyed in a matter ofminutes.
Who knew how long it would take to get thatback?
ChapterEleven
August
My episode had spoiled the rest of that night. After stopping at Tawny’s place to drop them off, I drove myself home. A smell of smoke hung in the air even though no flames were in sight. It troubled me as I headed into myhome.
Joel, the groundskeeper, was inside talking to Tara, my chef. I was pretty sure the two liked one another, but they seemed to be taking things slow—maybe due to the fact they were both approaching sixty. But their progress was really slow, like hurry-up-before-one-of-you-guys-dies slow. But I kept that to myself. It wasn’t my business, afterall.
I did ask them about the smoke though, “Did you guys smell that smoke out there? Is there a fire near here that I don’t knowabout?”
“No, boss. I guess the winds have picked up around the current fires out in Angeles National Forest. They’re calling them the Creek Fires. Nothing to worry about here, sir,” Joelanswered.
“Cool,” I said with relief. “I’m heading to bed. It’s been a longday.”
Sleep proved hard to achieve that night. After an hour of trying, I called Tawny. “Hi, August. You get homeokay?”
“I did. Are you and Calum okay?” I put my hand over my eyes, wishing that the incident had neverhappened.
“I’m fine. I told you I could handle that,” she said, thenpaused.
“Calum’s not, is he?” I asked, but I didn’t have to—I knew I’d upset theboy.
“Well, he’s young, August. You’ve got to understand.” She sighed, and I hated to hearthat.
“I do understand. Believe me, I do. I just keep wishing I could go back in time and figure out what the hell triggered that episode.” As hard as I could, I tried to figure out what had caused it, but like many times before, Icouldn’t.
It was crazy; I had determined that loud noises could trigger one type of episode, one where I saw myself in battle with my fellow marines and where people I’d worked with for years were killed. Once I realized that specific catalyst, those kinds of episodes came less frequently until they finally stopped. But I still hadn’t been able to figure out what the trigger was for the episodes reliving those moments with JohnBlack.
“I think it might’ve been because I was asking you about your job and how you got your money,” Tawny offered. “When I asked you about that at the zoo, you told me that you’d tell me later, that that wasn’t the place. Since you’re home now and safe, why don’t you tell me about it now? It mighthelp.”
She might’ve been on the right track. So, I began my tale, “I told you about the accident with John Black, but I didn’t tell you that I sued the manufacturer of that gun and won millions. The first thing I did was look for an investment firm to help me grow that money. All I wanted to do was keep John’s name alive. I wanted to make as much money as I could from the settlement money so that I could make donations to charities in hisname.”
“So, you found a firm that helped you reach that goal?” sheasked.
“I did. I met Gannon Forester at the first firm I went to. He’s one of my business partners now. He put the whole settlement into the same investments and ventures he’d had a ton of his money in. He made me a billionaire and helped me see my dream come true. And now I live off part of that money and invest other parts of it, all the while giving chunks to different charities each month.” I felt better about telling Tawny about this. A weight lifted off my shoulders once I realized that it must have been the line of conversation that triggered that particularepisode.
For a while Tawny was quiet, and then she said, “What a weight you must carry around, August. MyGod.”
Did I carry a lot of weight around? I hadn’t realized that. “I don’t feel burdened by it,Tawny.”
“You may not feel it, but you hold yourself solely responsible for making sure that man’s name is kept alive. And you’ve gone to such lengths to do that, too. Going to court, suing a huge weapons-manufacturing company, winning, and then turning that money into an even bigger fortune—that’s not nothing. And you’re still not done—finding the right charities every month, that’s got to be difficult. That’s a lot to do for someone who isn’t even walking the earthanymore.”
“But he’s not here because of me,” I remindedher.
“No, he’s not here because of the malfunction of the weapon, not because of you, August.” She tapped her nails on something, and I could hear it through the phone. “If it had been your fault, then you would’ve never won that case against the manufacturer. You are not to blame for what happened to John Black, and you need to let go of that guilt. You’ve devoted your entire life to him since the accident—how do you expect to move on from that horror when it’s always lurking there at the edge of everything you do? I’m not saying stop what you’re doing—giving money to charities is a wonderful thing to do. But let the guiltgo.”
Her words were making my heart do flips inside my chest. Tears welled up in my eyes. In the year that I’d been seeing Dr. Schmidt, he’d told me a number of times that I needed to reconcile my guilt with the event, but he’d never hit on that as a trigger for my episodes. And he’d never quite gotten to the core of the issue as Tawny had—never gotten me to realize the immensity of the burden I carried, howeversubconsciously.
Tawny had done that in record time. “You’re an amazing woman, TawnyMatthews.”
