Straightjacket (29 page)

The dim glow of Samuel’s image flickered next to him for a moment. His mind continued to urge him to fight and tricked his body, making his mouth open wide. The cold water flooded his nose and mouth and then traveled down his throat and into his lungs. But it only helped him to feel heavier and he sank even deeper.

Now it was growing even darker. The water wasn’t cold anymore, but it wasn’t warm either. His senses were dulled. His body had done its job, and now it was failing. His mind took over, and his thoughts were clear, clearer than they’d been in weeks. The medicine oozed out of him, and there was no threat anymore of disappearing. How weird that his life was flashing in front of his eyes, like everyone always said it would. He thought of his mother. He regretted his last words to his father but told himself it couldn’t be helped now. His house, the common area in the hospital, Samuel and his studio in heaven took turns appearing to him. He thought of Anna, how her hair felt, how she smiled at him. She was strong now and could get through what was going to happen.

She’d be happy again.

He’d make her happy again.

A sense of peace shrouded his body. He felt tired all of a sudden and gave himself permission to give in. He needed to rest and be ready.

He’d rebuild the cabin and the lake and the woods. Then the long, patient wait for her to join him would begin.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The search for Caleb lingered late into the night. The firefighters and EMTs tried to force Anna to stay in the cabin while they combed the woods.

She refused.

Dr. Hillman threatened to sedate her if she didn’t calm herself down.

“The only way I’m calming down is if I go out there and look for him.”

They gave her a flashlight and told her to stay close to one of the search and rescue teams. A dog led them through the thick underbrush. Every time a walkie-talkie beeped, Anna held her breath, straining to distinguish what the muffled voice on the other end was saying. But there were no leads.

They walked miles through cold, wet leaves, weaving in between trees, doubling back over and over, so that the area they actually covered was just a small section of the woods.

“If he’s here, we’ll find him,” one of the search and rescue guys had told her. “These dogs can find a black cat in a coal cellar.”

It didn’t make her feel any better.

As long as she could focus on the search, putting one step in front of the other, actually doing something that might help, Anna could hold it together. Even though the pace was quick, she kept up with them as they trampled through leaves and over fallen tree limbs. A vicious determination drove her body to its limit. There was no time to be tired. No time to fall apart.

And then what she had been waiting for happened. The dog stopped. With his nose pointed toward the treetops, sniffing voraciously, he let out a bark.

“Looks like he’s got something,” the team leader called out.

The dog was off. Anna thought they’d been moving fast before, but now she had to practically run to keep up.

After only a few minutes, the dog halted suddenly. He pawed at the bark of a tree, all the while letting out a shrill whine.

“Looks like we’ve got some blood on the bark here.”

Had he just said
blood
? Anna stumbled backward but caught herself against a nearby tree. Its bark left a small gash in the palm of her hand. She left her own mark on its trunk—a smear of deep red.

There was no time to think, to process what the blood meant. The dog set off again, racing through the woods on a mission. The group followed, and soon they’d broken through the trees and were standing a few feet away from the lake.

The sky was pink. Day was breaking, but she couldn’t have known from deep inside the woods.

The dog whined again with his nose buried in something she couldn’t quite make out.

Please don’t let it be Caleb’s body.
The prayer looped through her mind as she pushed her way through the human wall that had formed around the dog. There wasn’t a part of her that was spared of the trembling.

But it wasn’t Caleb’s body that the dog had found. It was his sketchpad. The leader of the team squatted down next to it and was reading.

And then he whispered, but she heard. “Hey, Paul, take the girl back to the house.”

“What! What is it?” The man said nothing. Had he heard her? Or was she too weak to get the words out? Was her voice just in her head?

She gathered all the strength she had left and forced her voice out of her throat. “Tell me!”

But he didn’t have to say anything. The dog told her what she needed to know, what she had been terrified of knowing. He was as close to the lake as he could get without the water lapping his paws. He barked not into the air, but straight at the lake.

Then another whisper, this time to a different man. “Call in the divers.”

Her breath left her. It didn’t come back in. Her legs cracked at the knee.

She was falling backward.

So slowly.

Finally she slammed against the ground.

I’m never getting back up again.

Epilogue

Anna pressed her hands against the glass and stared down into the parking lot. A car stopped at the yellow-and-black-striped gate. An anonymous arm reached out and fed the metal box a paper ticket. The gate flipped up and then back down once the car had made its way through it. She liked watching the cars pass through the gate, the people walking to and from the building, the two attendants in their white scrubs smoking cigarettes underneath the clear canopy. The scene was comforting. It was normal. It was life going on.

The click of the doorknob made her turn around.

“Anna, it’s so good to see you,” Dr. Blackwell said warmly as he walked toward her with his arm already extended, anxious for a handshake. She met him in the middle of the office. He squeezed her hand tenderly and placed his other hand over hers. “Please, come sit down.” Anna made her way to the couch and fell into the leather, taking a deep breath and inhaling its aroma.

“How are you?”

“I’m well, thanks.”

“It’s good to see you in person. I can see you weren’t lying when you promised me your first semester of college had treated you well.”

“Yeah, it’s been—it’s been a good thing.”

“I have to admit,” Dr. Blackwell began as he rubbed the lenses of his glasses with a handkerchief. “It can be difficult to judge how a patient is doing, really doing, from therapy sessions over the phone. But now that I see you—well, I just know that it really has agreed with you.”

“Thank you.”

“So you flew in this morning?” He slid his glasses back onto his face, balancing them on the tip of his nose.

“Yeah. I’ve got a lot more traveling ahead of me before the day is done.”

“And you’re driving up to the cabin today?” The worry was creeping into his voice.

“That’s my plan.”

“I know we’ve talked about this, but I just want to make sure you’re ready for it. I want to reiterate that I’m concerned it’s too soon. And to be—to be by yourself and so isolated.”

She cleared her throat, as if to announce that what she was to say next should be listened to carefully. “Like I said before, I feel comfortable there. It’s my home when I’m not away at school. I’m going to finish up my book while I’m there. It’s the perfect place for it.”

“I’m glad to hear about how well that’s going. That’s great. You’ve overcome a lot. I think your book is going to help a lot of kids.”

“I hope so. As hard as it’s been to relive all that stuff—all the abuse and the depression and the panic attacks—I just really hope it does some good.”

“You’re showing a lot of struggling kids out there that it’s not hopeless. They can live through it and it gets better. You’re proof of that.

“Thanks to you.”
And Caleb
.

“And, just to be clear, no contact with your parents today? They don’t know you’re back?”

“No.” She had grown strong, but to call them, she needed to be stronger. There would be time, later, if she ever chose it.

“You’ve really made a great deal of progress working through those issues over the last few months. I think you’ve made a wise decision, at least for right now. When you’re ready, we can work on preparing you for a reunion, a relationship, if that’s what you choose in the future. There’s still much work to be done.”

“I agree,” she said, propping a throw pillow behind her back so she wouldn’t have to slouch. “I want to keep up with my treatment over the summer. It’s helped me a lot.”

He didn’t respond. It was unlike him to allow such long pauses during their exchanges.

“Anna, I have to be honest with you. I really didn’t expect you to be handling all of this so well. Financially, I know Caleb…” He grew uncomfortable as he said the name, while Anna felt her heart skip a beat. “He made sure you’d be taken care of, but emotionally, I really didn’t know how you’d fare through all of it. But seeing you sitting here in front of me…you really have changed.”

She had tried to be honest with Dr. Blackwell since it happened, realized that she’d needed his help and accepted it. But she hadn’t told him everything. Her hand instinctively moved over to her hip, covering the pocket where, every day, she would tuck Caleb’s carefully folded note.

Dr. Blackwell knew about the note, but he didn’t know that it was the only thing that kept her whole, made it bearable, made everything as close to okay as it could ever be. She kept it close to her, like a nun would her rosary beads, and read it at least once a day without restraint, letting herself get lost in the words.

“Yeah, well, I guess time really does heal.” She couldn’t let Dr. Blackwell in, not all the way. Protecting what she and Caleb were to each other was the only thing that mattered.

At the end of the session, she set up her next appointment, this one over the phone, and thanked Dr. Blackwell for seeing her. As she moved toward the door, a sheet of paper bursting with color caught her eye. She took a step forward and saw that shoved into the corner of the desk, among the stacks of papers and piles of manila folders, was a drawing. It was Caleb’s portrait of Dr. Blackwell.

“Caleb—he drew that for me. It’s extraordinary.”

She smiled but said nothing and walked out through the door, past the bright red exit sign hanging over the stairwell, and straight toward the elevators. She reached the metal doors and stared at the white square button on the wall, a downward-pointing arrow painted next to it. Moisture formed on her palms. Her hand reached down into the front pocket of her jeans, pulled out the paper, and carefully unfolded it. Her fingers touched the words, passing over them as she imagined his voice in her head, reading them to her.

Anna,

I’m sorry. I didn’t have the right to choose. I would have given it all up, every cent, the cabin, my art, anything, to just be able to choose to stay. But they wouldn’t let me.

You know, the Greeks had this idea that people were created with these double bodies, like two people fused together. They tried to defeat the gods, so to punish them, Zeus tore them apart. They spent the rest of their lives searching for their other half, so they could feel whole again. I know that I found my other half with you. I know that part of me is going to be empty again for just a little while, but then I can have you back.

I’m going to try to be patient, and you try too. If we can just wait it out, we’ll be together again, and this time it will be forever. In the meantime I’ll be with you. I’ll try to remind you of me while we’re apart. The only thing I can’t bear to think about is that you might forget. But I’ll still be waiting for you, no matter what. I love you. Remember that. It’s still the only thing you need to know about me.

Caleb

He’d been right. There were signs all around her ever since he’d left, signs that proved he was still with her, watching her. She’d be driving his car and thinking about eating wild blueberries with him by the lake, and suddenly one of his favorite songs would come on the radio. Or she’d be reading a book, letting her mind wander and sweep over what he looked like in the morning before he’d had a chance to shave, and unexpectedly her eyes would catch the word
heaven
at the bottom of the page. She was sure he was there. The pain wasn’t all that excruciating when she remembered that he was there.

She folded the note again, carefully smoothing out the creases and tucking it back into her pocket. With a steady hand, she pressed the square button. The elevator arrived and the metal doors slid open. The panic hadn’t disappeared completely. Its weight still pressed down on her as she moved inside and waited for the doors to shut her in. But now, she knew she could bear it.

She had the strength.

And she had Caleb.

Acknowledgments

This book was three years in the making, and I’m forever grateful to all the people who helped me along the way.

Thank you to my agent, Nicole LaBombard, for your enthusiasm about my writing and all the hard work you put in on my behalf.

To my editor, Rhiannon Morgan—thank you for remembering Anna and Caleb, for seeking me out, and for making my dream of becoming a published author come true. “A good editor doesn’t rewrite words, she rewires synapses,” and that’s what you did for me. Today I am a better writer because of you.

An enormous thanks goes out to all my beta readers: Shana Berge, Stephanie Bunt, Chris Bunt, Lauren Fischer, Ryan Kroft, Vanessa Larkins, Marge Rehark, Pam Simek, Tiffany Simek, and Eugene Towbin.

Thanks also to all those in my life who supported me from the get-go: Brett Stern, Noah Stern (contract-reader extraordinaire), Richard Towbin, Emily and Michael Levenson, Charlotte and Alan Zeller, and Adam Zeller.

Thank you to Dr. Brendan T. Carroll for taking the time to answer all my questions about catatonia and, amazingly enough, diagnose Caleb for me.