Page 24 of A Me and You Thing
Yet, I know what I’m doing with a strange sort of determination. I might be acting impulsively, but my mind is clear.
“It sounds like foul play to me. I’m not going to let them get away with it. They’re asking family members to not come to their country looking for answers. They say there’s nothing to find. They’re telling me the bus caught fire and burned after the crash, that there are no remains, that there’s... nothing. How can that be?”
“Nothing?” she repeats. “No... body?” She can barely let the word pass her lips.
“Nothing. I have nothing. And they want me to accept it.”
“What do you say to that?” Mom asks, her eyes glittering.
I toss a few more items into my duffle. “I say,See you in the morning.On your doorstep and in your face.Oh, and by the way, I’m not leaving until I find my wife.And if that doesn’t work, I’m sure the media would love to hear my story. My outrage will become national outrage.”Brave words when all I really want to do is give in to the monster inside of me that wants to scream and yell and throw things around the room.
It can’t be true. It just can’t.
Mom shakes her head. “You have so much of your father in you. You’re a fighter, Sawyer. I don’t want you to ever change. Don’t worry about anything. We have everything taken care of here at the house. Don’t give it another thought. Just find Quinn and bring her home.” Her sentence ends on a deep sob, and we embrace one more time.
I don’t need to say out loud what I know we’re both thinking. Something isn’t right. Quinn is in a foreign country that doesn’t abide by the same laws as we do. My imagination is conjuring up all types of scenarios, none of them good. I can see in my mother’s eyes that she’s thinking the same thing.
“You’d better break the news to Charlotte,” Mom says while sniffling. Quinn’s mom. She’s downstairs with the twins. This is not going to be easy. With her poor health, I’m not sure she can handle it. But I have hope that this is all one big mistake. I’ll give that hope to Charlotte as well.
I’m coming for you, Quinn. Just hold on a little longer.
Chapter Eight
Sawyer
I WAKE UP and pull myself out of the hotel bed. It takes effort. I don’t even glance at the other side of the bed—the empty side. The blank space. I sit on my side of the bed, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.
Is Quinn really gone?
It’s a startling reality, an awful truth. I don’t want to wake up to this every morning, feeling alone and disconnected.
Will it ever change?
I doubt it. From here on out, I’m going to wake up feeling like there’s a rock in my stomach every morning of my life.
Forever. This is my new world.
No. I refuse to accept it. I’m here to find her—and I will. She’s not gone. She can’t be. I won’t allow it. I’m determined to will her back to life.
I miss Quinn. I miss her so much it physically hurts. I miss everything about her. Her smile. Her kiss. Her soft touch. Her Quinn Speeches. The way she loves me. My hand in her hair. Our early morning talks. Her laugh. Making love.
All of it. There’s nothing about her I don’t miss.
I groan into my hands. I’m a mess. Above all, I can’t stop thinking about our last night together, the way we held tightly to each other all night long. Her tears as she said goodbye to Josie and Jordyn are stamped on my brain. She had such a hard time leaving. The guilt for encouraging her to go is eating me alive. I wanted her to have some time to herself, but not this. Never this.
This is too much. Just too much.
I’m in Managua. Today I’ll travel to the site of the bus crash. I have to see it. Not because of some morbid fascination. No, because I have to see for myself what happened. I want proof, evidence that Quinn is really gone. I won’t leave until I get it. If the answers aren’t good enough, I won’t leave this country until I find my wife.
I splash water on my face, dress, and throw my belongings into my duffel, along with a pair of gloves and a coil of rope I picked up at a local market. I don’t want a police escort, and I don’t want some government official explaining the accident away and showing me only what they want me to see. Nope. I’m going solo. I want to form my own opinion of what really happened.
Before I left, Charlotte and Harlan—Quinn’s mom and dad—begged me to find her and bring her home. Their tears were nearly my undoing.
Not everyone responded positively to my actions. My sister, Adair, told me I was acting like a crazy man, that I was in denial and letting grief control my actions. She felt the proof—a simple phone call—was enough. She told me I needed to accept it.
“Quinn is not gone! If you really loved her, you wouldn’t give up on her so easily!” I yelled.
In the heat of the moment, I said a few other things I regret, a few things I shouldn’t have said. It was grief talking. I know she knows that. Still, I hate leaving like that, my angry words left in her heart.
