Yours Truly ❁ n.k.h

• chapter ten •

I think, just for a second, Detective Haven broke something inside me. It was small, not even much to ruminate over, but a piece of me felt the difference in how the puzzle of my brain fit together.

Talking about Angel was something that I swore to be off limits when I left New York. It hurt too much. In processing and in passing - it all hurt too much.

Haven came back a short amount of time later disgruntled saying they decided to let me go. Despite this, it didn't stop her from drilling into me with all that she had though, reminding me that there was always a liberty of me being back if I kept running.

And I didn't realize until that night that I'm tired of running.

Even if it means that I don't leave Asheville and adjust to my new life, I want to stay in one place. Live a predictable life for once. I can't take any more changes. I can't take any more heartbreaks. I can't do much more surprises.

The washing machine in front of me glared back like a cruel reminder on a Saturday morning that my trip to the police station wasn't a dream. There was no pinch to wake me up with. I wasn't lucid.

There were so many holes in the fabric of my story, not even from myself, but from my mind. It was as if someone went in and just started deleting random bits and pieces.

I've been so caught between being irritated and being confused (or maybe just irritated because I was confused) that I didn't realize how much there wasn't to avoid. There wasn't much I remembered.

My memory mainly consisted of pictures. Like photographs, distraught expressions and moments of agony were just caught in real time over and over. Then sometimes I'd hear her voice, or her cry. Other times it'd be Angel.

I'd see the blood caked into her brown hair with a face shaped like her mother's. But then she'd look up at me and I'd see my eyes.

It's so hard not to take pain so personally when it happens to someone you love. Someone made in your image. How could I look her in her eyes and tell her everything's going to be okay when I know it's not? One stupid argument and a truck spun out of control after a night at the movies changed her life forever.

And my wife took the brunt of it. In a weird way sometimes I wondered if the person who carried the child took pain the worst. I mean, think about it. You carry a child for nine months, your organs literally move around and make space and shit, and then you give birth. Then you spend seven years teaching this child to walk and talk and how to be a functioning member of society. And then it almost gets ripped away in one swoop.

I don't say this to discredit the love I have for my daughter, I'd take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. But I just didn't find myself being able to react in the same way. I felt like such a robot in that hospital. All of the theatrics everyone else was doing just didn't make sense to me. It wasn't like it was going to change anything. Screaming and crying wasn't going to erase the previous twenty four hours.

The best thing to do was just process the information and move on. Make a game plan as to how we'll move on from this.

Judging by my actions, mine meant moving to North Carolina. I'll admit, not one of my brightest moments. But there's so much missing from my brain that I'm afraid to face the things I think I know. What if I see her and it all comes back? What if I can't take it and go off the deep end? What if I want to run away again?