Page 100 of Chasing Never
I can see it in his eyes, how he’s recounting to himself every detail of our son’s face. Did he even get a glimpse? Now that I consider it, I wonder if Nolan was even granted the chance to see him. Our boy had been wrapped up in the Sister’s arms by the time Nolan came to us. Charlie had been the one to take our boy away from Malia. Does he know that our son possesses his dark head of hair?
“Nolan, I’m so—” I stop myself, unable to even bring myself to say “sorry.” It seems like a child’s word, something petulant. The word that’s supposed to get you out of trouble. A word that asks for forgiveness—but how can I ask forgiveness from my husband after bartering away his only child?
It seems cruel, selfish to do so.
He turns to me, his features stricken. Then his eyes widen when he beholds me.
“Darling, you’re pale,” he says. And as I try to stand, I collapse, my legs no longer able to hold me up. Though I’m not sure if it’s that they don’t have the strength, or that they simply lack the will. Perhaps they’ve decided that now that my son’s gone, they no longer have a purpose.
Why move me from place to place, if not to comfort my child while I rock him in my arms? Why advance, if every step forward is further away from the spot where I last held my boy?
Nolan catches me before I hit the ground, my entire body quaking in his arms.
“I did this,” I say. “I did this.” And there’s no forgetting it.
Nolan pulls me tight, his fists clutching the fabric of the shirt at my back.
“Charlie,” I say. “Nolan, I killed Charlie.”
“She’s not dead,” says Nolan. “Or she wasn’t when I left her. Maddox stayed behind to tend to her.”
My heart threatens to feel a bit of relief, but I don’t let it—not when I don’t deserve even that respite. If Charlie lives, I will not allow myself to feel happiness over it. It’s the least I can offer her.
The most I can pay.
Even if I wanted to, even if I felt I deserved that much, there’s no part of me that believes, even if Charlie is alive for the moment, that she will stay that way. Not after the wound I caused, the blood I saw ballooning in the water. There’s no telling how long her face was beneath the surface, either.
“We can still help her,” says Nolan.
I don’t nod. I don’t react at all. If my husband needs to believe that, if he needs to focus all his attention on saving Charlie because he cannot bear what we just lost, who am I to take that moment of relief away from him, when I’ve already taken everything else?
“Come on,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulders and hauling me to my feet.
“You should go on ahead,” I say. “You can get there—you can get to her faster if you’re not carrying me.”
Nolan doesn’t answer, other than to walk forward, his arm still securely around my waist.
We stumble through the lightless forest, silent other than Nolan’s heaving. Occasionally, an awful strangled sound escapes his throat, and I get the sense that he’s sobbing quietly, not wanting me to hear.
He should let me hear, though. Shouldn’t let me escape any of the consequences for what I’ve done, or what I’ve taken from him.
I just simply don’t have the energy to tell him as much.
When we reach the edge of the forest, the sound of the waves cuts, just barely, through the fog of my mind. The waves—and a voice, deep and desperate.
“Come on now. You’re going to be okay,” says Maddox, his bulky form coming into view at the edge of the water. He’s huddled over a slumped figure. “I’m not going to let you die. You can’t die. Not while you’re still mad at me,” he says, a twinge of a joke in his voice, caught by a sob. “I’m serious, Charlie. You don’t get to punish me for eternity. If you would just tell me what you want to hear, I would say it. Please, Charlie, just wake up so you can tell me what you want me to say. If you don’t wake up, you’ll never get to see how distraught I am right now. Surely you would find that enjoyable, at least.”
Maddox’s voice gets higher-pitched, struggling to maintain its levity. There’s part of me that wonders if by the time Nolan and I reach their spot on the beach, Charlie will have been long gone. If Maddox is simply in denial, coaxing a corpse.
And as we reach them, the clouds shift in the sky—just enough for a hint of moonlight to splay across Charlie’s chest. It is rising and falling, ever so faintly. In the cool of the night air, fog plumes, ascending above her open mouth.
Maddox has her on her back, and he’s pressing a cloth to her waist, though it’s already soaked in blood. Maddox’s chest is bare. I’m assuming that’s where the cloth came from. The bottom of his left trouser leg is ripped too.
“Nolan. Nolan, I need your shirt,” he says.
Nolan obliges, placing me on the ground and taking it off, handing it to Maddox. He uses it to try to staunch the bleeding.
Once again, I’m sure it’s no use. I’ve never seen a weapon as deadly as the one Charlie created with her own hands.
