Missing Hart (20 page)

The kindness of this lovely man who was a stranger to me was staggering. When I nodded he leaned over the bed and wrapped me in a gentle hug. I clung to him and cried my eyes out, devastated that my baby was gone and that no one would ever know that I’d even been pregnant.

When I had cried all that I could, he let me go and sat back down in the chair next to my bed. Grabbing a tissue, he gently wiped my tears. “You’re going to be okay. Not now, and probably not anytime soon, but someday, you will be. Take comfort in the fact that your baby will always be alive in your heart.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Patting my hand he gave me a sad smile. “You remind me of my own daughters. If something ever happened to hurt either of them, I can only hope that someone would realize that they needed some extra kindness. I’m going to give you my phone number because my wife would kill me if I didn’t offer you a hand up. If you ever need to talk, you can call me. My wife had a miscarriage before we had our first daughter. If it would help you to talk to someone who’s been through what you’re going through, I know she’d be happy to talk to you.”

I had a twinge of jealousy about what his daughters had with him as a father. How different would my life have been if I had a father like Dr. Tyler? I couldn’t even imagine.

I promised him that if I needed him, I would call. When he knew that I was solid enough for him to leave the room, he went to call my brother.

College was supposed to be an amazing life experience, but I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Living in a cramped dorm room with my sister was a serious problem because I had nightmares every single night about Dillon, our baby, Marissa or a combination of the three. Every night Delilah crawled into bed with me and soothed me until I went back to sleep, and every night I ignored her pleas to tell her what was wrong. My cover story for the nightmares was that I was dreaming about the accident, but she didn’t believe that for a moment.

“You cry in your sleep every night like your soul is dying and it isn’t because of the accident! Why can’t you be honest with me?”

My answer hurt me almost as much as it hurt her.

“Because I don’t want to be! Just leave it alone Delilah. I don’t want to talk to you about it.”

The date the baby had been due on was one of the worst days of my life. I wished that I’d died with my child instead of “surviving” and I just wanted to go to sleep forever. Everything that was wrong in my life was my own fault, and my selfishness resulted in the death of my child. My father had been right after all. I really was a selfish lying bitch, just like my mother.

It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d listened to Marissa tell me that she felt dirty on the inside. I hadn’t understood her then, but I did now.

I couldn’t bear to see Leah anymore because it hurt too much. She still called, texted and emailed me all the time, but I always made an excuse to get out of seeing her in person. I missed her desperately, but I knew that if I saw her I would lose it.

There had been absolutely no word from Dillon. If it weren’t for my memories it would be as if he had never existed at all. Like our baby, he was gone to me forever.

I knew that I should to talk to someone, should do something to change my outlook on life, but I didn’t know how to achieve that. Shutting myself off from the people that loved me the most hurt, and I felt like shit for how terribly I’d treated my sister in particular. She bore the brunt of my need for isolation because she was the person that could feel my emotions whether I showed them or not. I pushed her away out of self-preservation. If I let her in, eventually I would tell her about what I’d lost. I couldn’t share Dillon or our baby with anyone in my family.

My problem with being touched had come back after the accident. The worst thing about being in college was the expectation of being social, and I hated it. Delilah dragged me to parties and events but each experience was like hell on earth to me because I just wanted to be left alone.

I wrote a suicide note for my family. I kept it short and sweet after deciding that the more I said, the worse it would be. What it all boils down to is that enough is enough and I don’t want to live like this anymore. I understand now what Marissa meant when she said she was happy to go someplace else where she could be at peace. When I’m gone, I can be with her and my baby. I know little one will be waiting for me when I get there and the thought of being able to hold our beautiful child in my arms is the only thing I have left to look forward to.

I’ve blocked everything else out. My family will be upset but not devastated because they will still have my sister and that will make it easier on them. Someday she’ll marry Spencer, they’ll have children of their own and I’ll be a distant memory. Their lives will be easier without me around.

I had just finished putting the letter in an envelope when Delilah frantically burst through the door to our dorm room. Shoving the letter into a drawer, I turned and gave her what I hoped passed for a normal smile.

Looking from the drawer to me she spat, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Raising an eyebrow at her choice of words, I gestured to the books strewn across my bed. “Clearly I’m doing school work.”

Slamming the door behind her, she came at me so fast that I barely had time to register the fact that she was absolutely furious before she slapped me across the face. My jaw dropped as she grabbed ahold of my shoulders and started shaking me.

“You’re fucking lying to me! I know when you’re lying, Dominique, and I know when something is wrong with you. You’re quitting on me and I can feel it!”

My sister was the least violent person I knew and she rarely cursed. Seeing her as unglued as she was scared the shit out of me, even though I was mad that she had slapped me.

I shoved her away and backed up on my bed as I yelled, “I’m not quitting anything and you have no right to fucking attack me you crazy asshole!”

“I have every right you selfish bitch! I know what you’re thinking of doing and I can’t believe you would hurt our family this way. Don’t you care that it’s going to kill our brothers? Don’t you care that Mama San will have her heart broken? Don’t you care about me and the fact that I can’t live without you?”

“I’m not…”

“YES YOU FUCKING ARE! You’ll take us all with you if you do this. Dante wouldn’t be able to survive a month because the guilt would eat him alive. Once both of you were gone we would all be done. Is that what you want? IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT?”

Tears were practically leaping from my eyes as she railed at me, but I couldn’t admit to her that she was right.

“What the hell do you think it is that I’m going to do Delilah? Because I’m pretty sure that sitting here doing my class work isn’t going to destroy our family.”

With a yell of pure rage she leaned over and yanked open the drawer that I’d put the letter in. Holding it up, she got right into my face.

“Do you want to fucking lie some more and tell me that this isn’t a suicide note? Because you and I both know that’s exactly what this is. I felt it the moment you decided.”

I shook my head as I tried to grab it from her hand.

“It’s not a suicide note! I’m fine! You’re totally overreacting and imagining things. Let me have my letter.”

She slapped me again, this time so hard that I saw stars.

“Liar!” She roared.

Pushing me back on the bed she used the seconds that I struggled to get up to her advantage. I watched in absolute horror as she opened the envelope and pulled the letter out, sinking to the floor as she got confirmation of her worst fear.

I felt both her heart and my own breaking in unison into a million little pieces as her face leeched of color and tears started pouring down her cheeks. In that moment I knew that I would never be able to kill myself now, not when I knew what it was going to do to her.

She sobbed uncontrollably as she read it. When she finished she looked up and said, “Why?”

I shook my head, not knowing what to do or say.

“You’re not going to do it,” she said.

This was a statement, not a question. She knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it now that she knew.

“I didn’t know,” I cried, “I didn’t think it would be a big deal… I didn’t realize….”

I couldn’t even get a full sentence out, but she understood.

“There is something seriously wrong that you thought for even one second that it wouldn’t be a big deal. How could you not know how badly this would hurt? How could you not realize what you mean to all of us? Promise me you’ll get help. Promise me that, no matter what, you will never leave me. PROMISE ME.”

Dropping onto the floor I pulled the letter from her hands and started ripping it into tiny pieces. When I was finished I fell into her arms and whispered, “I promise.”

Eventually she pulled me up onto her bed and the two of us curled up, face to face and side-by-side clasping each other’s hand.

Running her hands over my face she asked, “What happened to you?”

Squeezing her hands in mine, I finally told her the truth.

“I lost something precious that I can never, ever get back.”

Touching the heart bracelet that I never took off, the one that Dillon had given me for my birthday she asked, “Something, or someone?”

“Both,” I whispered.

It was as honest as I’d ever been with her since the afternoon our father trapped me in his bedroom and altered the course of my life forever.

“Can you learn to live with it?”

Tears poured down both of our faces as I said the only thing that I could.

“I don’t know, but I can try. If you want me to do that, you’re going to need to keep this between us. That means no telling Spencer. Straight from my heart I’m telling you that I’m at my breaking point. Please give me time to figure this out. I’ll talk to you more, but I can’t talk to them. Can you put me first?”

She cried like I had stabbed her as she clutched my hands.

“When did you stop understanding that I would always choose you? You’re literally my other half. If you don’t want me to discuss it with Spencer, or anyone else for that matter, I won’t. I can’t lose you, ever. Do you understand?”

“I do now.”

No other words passed between us because there was nothing else to stay. Each of us understood what had been said and she knew that I wouldn’t break a promise to her. We stayed locked like that for hours, and for the first time in almost a year, I let my wall down and allowed myself to connect to my sister.

My sister was on a one-woman mission to rehabilitate me and she wouldn’t be stopping until she was certain that I was going to survive. I meant it when I promised her that I wouldn’t do anything, but I understood her fear and need to overcompensate. After Marissa, I knew all too well what could happen. I was trying harder, a lot harder actually, and I wasn’t as depressed.

Her pushing me did have positive effects. At her urging (when I say urging what I really mean is, on her orders) I pledged a sorority. Delilah wasn’t thrilled that we weren’t pledging the same sorority, but I needed the separation. The sorority I chose was a lot less “everyone smile and be a joiner” and a lot more “we’re chill and want to be successful in life.” Delilah’s sorority was all about events and sister activities and I wasn’t about that at all.

It wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows, far from it in fact. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t long for Dillon and grieve the loss of our child, but now I understood that I’d be doing to my family what Dillon had done to me when he cut me out of his life. I was loved and that was a gift, not something I could throw back at my family by killing myself and leaving a suicide note behind.

The idea now seemed completely alien to me. If I had done what I wanted to do that day, my family would have been destroyed and the certainty of that, more than anything, kept me from going back to that dark place.

Our first year of college was over and I was so relieved to get out of the dorm and go home for the summer. It wasn’t like we were far from home-half an hour, tops-but I had craved the normalcy of being home with my Aunt.

The Saturday that we moved back home I awoke in the middle of the night to my cell phone ringing off the hook. Nothing good could come from a middle of the night phone call that required repeated and frantic feeling callbacks.

Grabbing my phone from the bedside table, I sat up and squinted at the screen, surprised to see that it was Leah calling. My heart stopped beating for a moment as I imagined the worst-case scenario, which to me would be her telling me that Dillon had died. My hands were shaking as I pressed the answer button and croaked, “Hello?”

She was absolutely undone, completely hysterical. I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying, but what I finally pieced together was her repeating, “I need you, I need you” over and over again followed by a dozen pleas for me not to call Dillon.

“Please Minnie, I need help!”

By that time I was already pulling sweatpants on and jamming my feet into my sneakers. “Where are you?”

“I’m home… please, help me.”

“I’m coming now.”

I heard a broken sob just before she terminated the call, and my blood turned to ice. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good.

Swinging open the door to my room, I came to a dead stop when I found Delilah right there with her hand raised because she was about to knock. She had been on such high alert for every one of my emotions lately that it really wasn’t a surprise that the panic I felt when I realized that Leah was in some kind of trouble had pinged her twin alarm.

“What’s happening?” She whispered.

Shaking my head I told her the truth. “I don’t know but whatever it is, it isn’t good. One of my friends needs me and I have to go. I’ll text you.”

I broke a land speed record driving to Leah’s, and in less than ten minutes I was pulling into her apartment complex. The car was barely in park before I yanked the key from the ignition and went running for the door to her apartment.