Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,133
my hands in his.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I confronted Mom in front of all of her friends at Sylvia’s house.”
My eyebrows rise. “Wow.”
“Go big or go home, right?” He tries to smile, but it fails.
“How did that go?”
“Bad. Bad enough that I’m not sure she’ll forgive me.”
“She will,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s true. I hope it will be true. I hope that this will be the catalyst for her to get some help, but I also know that the sucky part of free will is that we don’t always choose wisely. “What happens now?”
Sawyer shrugs one shoulder. “I called my dad and told him that Lucy and I were coming sometime tonight and that there were problems with Mom.”
“How did he take that?”
“I’m not giving him much of a choice, but he seemed okay. Concerned. He has a lot of questions, but I told him I’m not telling him anything until I get there.”
My lips turn down as I stare at the floor. It’s like a hole has opened up below me and I’m falling. Sawyer’s doing what he needs to do, and I hate the ramifications for me. He’s leaving, there’s no way for him to know for how long, and for all I know, he’s leaving forever.
It’s what people do when they leave this town—they don’t look back.
I inhale deeply and force my head up. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“I hope so. None of it feels good so maybe that means I’m on the right path. God knows I’ve been doing too many things that feel good for too long and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere worth going.”
I lean forward and nudge his shoulder. “What about me?”
Sawyer smiles, a real one, the type that touches his eyes. “You have been one of the most difficult situations in my life. I expect you to turn right and instead you walk on your hands going backward. Under your yearbook photo, your senior quote needs to be ‘unpredictable.’”
I laugh, so does he, and then he lets go of one of my hands to cup my face. “I am so in love with you.”
“Same,” I whisper as my heart is breaking. He’s leaving, and once he’s gone, he’ll let go.
Sawyer leans forward, brushes his lips against mine and my heart flutters into overtime. So much so that I’m dizzy and feel like I’m floating on air. I’m in the happiest of places that I will ever be.
He rests his forehead against mine. “I finished Evelyn’s diary.”
“What did you think?”
“When I started, I thought it was going to be nothing but gloom and doom. She was given a life-threatening diagnosis, but then she still had this energy bursting off the pages. She got down, she was homesick, and she got sad. But overall, she was happy.”
Surprised by his answer, I edge back a little and meet his eyes. “She was.”
“It makes me look at this place differently.” Sawyer scans the walls.
“It does.” For me, the old TB hospital has been a mystery, but not the type of mystery that most people believe. “Makes you wonder how many people who stayed here to cure also had their first kiss, met the loves of their lives, made best friends and had moments of laughter. All people focus on is the bad things that happened. Yes, people died, but there are people who tried to live a full life while they were here. There are people who got well enough to leave and live their lives away from here. We’ve talked so much about residual hauntings and that they’re all bad. Makes you wonder if there are residual hauntings that are good. Surely the good ones would be more powerful than the bad.”
Sawyer lets go of me and walks toward the large window opening and peers inside. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately—about me, Mom, Lucy and Dad, about what everyone wants from me and about myself as an addict and how I need to change. Until recently, I never thought of myself as an enabler, but I am. I’ve spent years bending and twisting myself to make people happy. First my dad after the divorce, then Mom, then Lucy and then teachers, friends and coaches. There’s only been one time in my life when I’ve ever felt like me and not a shadow of the person I thought people needed me to be and that is with you.”
Sawyer looks at me then, the love and sadness on his face so powerful that