Finding Refuge (21 page)

He caught sleep in patches, in between those moments when he
jerked awake and had to re-orient himself, remembering where he was, and those
when the doorbell rang and more of the family arrived.

The phone woke him again at seven in the morning. “Travis.”
It was Uncle Mac, and the tremor in his voice sent an answering quake through
his gut. “I’m bringing your mother home.”

“Dad?”

Mac’s voice broke. “Another heart attack, about an hour ago.
He’s gone.”

The world spun wrong, and he sank to his knees, fighting for
breath, the phone slipping from his fingers. In the distance, he heard someone
crying out in agony. It took a few moments to register it was his own voice.

He pulled himself to his feet. His heart shredded, flaking
apart, every fiber of his being aching. He couldn’t take it anymore. It was too
much. Far, far too much.

Andri. Her image swam in his mind, an oasis taunting him as
he stood, shaking, in the hellish wasteland of his life. He’d crawl, broken and
bleeding to where she was, but what if she vanished, like a mirage?

He was vaguely aware of an aunt and uncle entering the room.
His mouth moved on autopilot, sharing the news. More crying, clinging to each
other, reaching for him—

No. Need for Andri forced him out the door. He concentrated
harder than he ever had in his life to drive safely, blocking out everything
but her. He clawed every last ounce of strength he had left from the tattered
wisps of his soul, forced it into focus. He had to get to Andri.

She opened the apartment door as he fitted the key in the
lock. She stepped back as he stumbled through.

“Travis, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head and she took his hand, drawing him to the
sofa. He sank onto it. Instantly, she crouched beside him, her arms pulling him
to her. It shattered him. “He’s gone, Andri,” he whispered, the last of his
strength fleeing. “My dad died.”

“Oh, Travis.
Kardia mou
, I’m so
sorry.” She wrapped herself around him, arms and legs. He tightened his arms around
her, and the overwhelming feeling of security crushed the broken pieces of him
into powder, scattering him like autumn leaves in the wind. He tucked his face
into her neck as tears streamed down his cheeks. The pain ripped through him,
and he cried out. He clung to her, shaking, as everything he’d stuffed into the
dark corners of his soul poured out of him.

Andri rocked him, her own tears coursing down her face in
response to his agony. There were no words of comfort, nothing at all she could
say. She recalled her own loss, the depth of that pain, knowing that his must
surely be worse. At least she had known her loss was coming. She’d had time to
bleed out the misery over the weeks before her dad breathed his last. Travis’s
burst all at once.

She did the only thing she could. She held him and let him
mourn.

When his brutal storm of emotion finally subsided, Travis
pressed a kiss to her throat before shifting away from her. She let him go,
watching him walk down the hall to the bathroom. He moved slowly, gingerly, as
though every muscle in his body ached.

Andri heard the shower running and went to make him a
sandwich, though she suspected his stomach was too tied in knots to eat it.
Travis walked into the kitchen a few minutes later, his hair still damp. He’d
changed into a gray t-shirt and black jeans he’d left in the drawer she’d
cleared out for him.

He slid an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple.
“Thank you.” His voice was gruff, raw. He stepped back as she reached for him.
“I should go. I’m sure there will be a lot to do, and I’m the one who has to do
it.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?” She guessed by the
smudges under his eyes that he hadn’t.

Travis gave her a non-committal shrug that she was pretty
sure meant
not really.
“I will at some point.” He
looked down at her, his gaze unreadable. “You’re going to be the most stable
person in my life for the next little while. And I don’t know what in the hell
I’m supposed to do exactly. Would you mind helping me?”

She swallowed hard, determined not to get teary-eyed on him,
though his request tugged hard on her compassion. As if he needed to ask. “Of
course.”

****

Over the next several days, Travis remained subdued, very
clearly functioning by sheer force of will. His mother had completely fallen
apart and Danny wasn’t in any better shape, so Andri provided assistance
everywhere she could as Travis worked out the details of his father’s funeral
and burial.

The time passed in a blur of planning and coping with
paperwork. Andri split her time between work, where her team and her boss
offered incredible support, and being with Travis, shoring him up however she
could. She felt incredible gratitude for Travis’s brilliant office manager, who
took nearly all his company obligations off his shoulders. She’d see to it that
Travis sent the woman on a vacation when everything eventually settled to what
would be the new normal.

She sat with Travis at his father’s desk while he sorted
through Terrence’s day to day life, making sure any bills were paid. He paused
when he uncovered some pamphlets. “What is this?”

Andri stood beside him, looking over his shoulder as he
perused the information before him. The pamphlets came from a local support
group for addicts and their families, similar to the one she and Dmitri had
attended in Colorado. Travis set the pamphlets aside and picked up another
sheet, printed with meeting times and locations. Tuesday and Thursday evening
meetings stood out, circled in red pen.

Travis dropped the paper on the desk and sat back in the
chair. Confusion flickered in the dark depths of his gaze. “I wonder if Dad
went to those meetings.”

“Maybe. Do you think your mom went with him?”

He shook his head. “I’d like to think so. If either of them
did, maybe they’ve already learned some of what you’ve tried to explain to me.
I’d sure feel better if Dad died with a little peace where Danny is concerned.”

Andri wondered if Danny had attended any meetings. If he
had, maybe things were getting better, little by little, and Travis wasn’t seeing
it. Though a backslide like the one that took his brother to Wendover probably
damaged his optimism.

The funeral service was huge. It was held at a church in the
Holts’ neighborhood, and the building filled to overflowing. Terrence had lived
a full, generous, respected life, and it seemed everyone who had ever met him,
even the most passing of acquaintances, came to mourn his death. Andri sat
beside Travis, glancing back a row at Rachel, Ian, and their parents, who had
flown in to pay their respects. Those who spoke, including Travis and two of
Terrence’s siblings, related fun times and memories of him. Still, a feeling of
deep, abiding sadness clouded the building.

Andri measured the sharp contrast to the party they’d had
for her father. Again, perhaps, the mood varied so drastically because they’d
had time to prepare. Dad had insisted that he didn’t want sadness, he wanted
joy. So they threw a party. Friends and family alike swapped stories and
laughed for hours. They had even decorated his gravesite with balloons and
party favors in addition to flowers.

Ma had been sober, just for Dad, and in giving it everything
she had to remember only the happiness, it helped her start to heal and truly
desire to be different. That had been her starting point, though it took both
Andri and Dmitri refusing to play her games or cater to her to finally make Ma
turn around for good.

Andri looked over at Danny, slumped on the pew, hair hanging
in his face. She knew suffering such a great loss could easily send him over a
cliff. But maybe it would do the opposite. Maybe it would push him in a better
direction. Andri prayed it would. She kept her thoughts to herself, though,
knowing what a touchy issue it was for Travis. If things were really getting
better, eventually he would realize it for himself.

After the graveside service, people crowded around Travis
and his family. She edged away, staying near enough for him to find her if he
needed her, but far enough away to be out of the fray. She looked at the nearby
gravestones, wondering about the other Holts buried there. The family had been
in Utah since the late 1800s, and some of the softer stone monuments were
weathered to the point that she had difficulty making out names and dates. She
examined one of the nearest stones, a gray granite marker with stark, strong
lettering.

Jacob Terrence Holt. Beloved son of
Terrence and Sophia Holt.

Wait, what? Son? She calculated the birth and death date
numbers. He wasn’t quite seventeen when he died. She thought back to the eulogy
during the funeral. There had been no mention of individual names of family
members that had died before Terrence, just a vague reference to those who had
gone on before.

Jacob had been Travis’s older brother. Clearly, the family
didn’t speak of him. She recalled the look on Travis’s face during their first
date when she’d asked about his siblings. The loss of a brother would no doubt
have hit him hard, especially when he’d been, what, ten or eleven? She turned
this new piece of the puzzle that was Travis over in her mind. What had that
loss done to shape him into who he was now?

****

Every night, Travis came to her, quiet, still caught in that
numbed yet functional state he’d fallen into after he’d cried for the loss of
his father. He had to climb out eventually, but Andri had no idea how to help
him. He made love to her urgently, his need so great she could see it in his
eyes, filtering through the wall that blocked off the rest of his inner
turmoil. He slept poorly, restless in her bed, and as a result, she found
herself looking more haggard every morning. Something had to give.

A week after the funeral, Travis sat beside her on his
chalet’s couch as she worked on the laptop. He’d barely spoken two sentences
since she’d arrived an hour earlier, and the silence ate at her. Finally, her
patience wearing thin, she closed the laptop and set it on the end table. She
turned to Travis, took one of his hands in hers. “Travis. Talk to me.”

He glanced at her. “About what?”

She looked him up and down, waving her hand to indicate all
of him. “About this. About you.”

He sighed, dropping his head against the back of the couch.
“I’m not sure what to say.”

A chill skittered through her, chased by the thought that he
wanted to end their relationship. Surely not. Not with the way he wrapped
himself around her every night, seeking comfort. Still. She’d rather ask than
be blindsided later. “Do you want to break up, Travis?”

His gaze snapped to hers, more alive than she’d seen him
since before the trauma began. “No.” His voice was flat but firm.

She chose to take his answer at face value. “Then what’s
going on inside that head of yours?”

He stood up and paced for a moment. “A lot of things. I feel
guilty.”

“Why?”

He turned on her. “Why? Seriously? I foisted my brother off
on my dad, and now Danny feels like he was that last bit of strain that pushed
Dad’s heart too far. Plus, if I’d just made Dad go to the doctor, even if I had
to force him, he’d still be here.”

She frowned. This was heading downhill fast, and though she
could see the craziness of his logic from the outside, when she looked at the
situation through Travis’s lens, he was right. How could she stop this? “You
don’t know that, Travis.”

“Yes, I do.” His voice dropped, soft and dripping with pain.
“Dad is dead. Mother is devastated. Danny is broken. My aunts and uncles and
cousins are hurting. The company employees are all holding their breath,
wondering if things will continue on without a major disaster. I know full well
I’m on the edge of completely destroying things with you. And it’s all. My.
Fault. Failure, Andri. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. And I
haven’t the slightest damned idea how to stop it.”

A wave of anger swamped over her, completely unexpected, and
snapped her loose from her carefully cultivated moorings. “Travis, what
happened to you? I can piece together some of what is going on in your head,
but the sheer mass of the responsibility you put on yourself, that I don’t
get.”

“I’m not putting it on myself, Andri. It’s mine. It’s just
the way things are.”

She shook her head, tension clawing through every muscle. “I
hate to break it to you,
kardia mou
, but you are not
the center of the known universe. Everything doesn’t fall on your shoulders,
but you sure try to stack everything there. And you don’t trust anyone else to
handle anything, not even their own lives.”

Frustration clouded his expression. “You don’t understand.”

Emotion boiled, raising her volume when she said, “Then make
me understand. Explain it to me.”

He dropped back onto the couch, leaning back and staring at
the ceiling. “I can’t.”

 “At least give me
something
to make it worth putting up with this for the long haul. Do you love me?”

The brilliant flash of panic in his eyes told her she’d
pushed as far as she could.

She clamped down on her anger, and on the sudden rush of
pain. She bit off a curse and turned away from him. She went out through the
sliding glass door onto the deck. Another afternoon thunderstorm gathered over
the mountains that made up the spine of the Wasatch. She turned into the wind
as it kicked up, drawing deep, calming breaths scented with pine, aspen, and
the coming rain.

He didn’t follow her outside, and honestly, she hadn’t
expected him to. She was losing him. Not to another woman, or a hobby, or work,
or even fading interest. She was losing him to the dark vortex that swirled
around him, sucking at his soul, keeping him mired in the misery of his
misplaced guilt.