Lifeline - Sequel to Good Enough
Prologue: Where You Are

I'm in limbo. I always knew I wouldn't go to heaven, because no-one who lives a full life does… and hell never did overly appeal, but this is far more hellish than anything I imagined. I'm in limbo, stuck here without you, the taste of heaven still deep within me if I search long and hard enough. I'm in limbo, but not dead, or dying. I'm in limbo, because no matter where I drive to tomorrow, it's never where I want to go to. Where I need to go to.

Night after night, lying in foreign beds and dank little motel rooms, this same patterned wallpaper that's seen too much sadness, this mattress that can barely support itself… night after night I lie, in a town I've already forgotten, in a state I've passed through more times than I care to remember. I breathe out into the damp air… headlights scream down the interstate, a baby cries in the room next door, the walls paper thin. I breathe in once more, because that's what comes next… and the phone doesn't ring, someone curses out in the corridor, the cries slowly escalate.

I want to be where you are.

I need to be where you both are.

The crying rises and falls, the wrong octave somehow… there is a groan, feet tumbling from the warmth of a bed to the threadbare carpet floor, unsteady footfalls towards a rented cot. The screams begin again in earnest, searching for something lost and unknown. I sigh, ragged and full of tears… collapse a pillow over my head, trying desperately to delay the thoughts I know are coming.

Adia didn't cry like this. I wonder, turning on my back and trying to find the ceiling in the dark; how does she cry now? How often, what pitch, what for? The cries next door are thin and whiny, stinging the air. Adia's thick gurgling used to echo around the caves… soft and easy, a natural cry, when it did come. She was so good as a newborn, sleeping right through some nights… you'd wake up, and be half disappointed when she slept on, lost in those baby dreams. You'd come back to bed grinning at the little form of her, solid and warm and full in Aaron's old cot. You'd find me on that ledge between sleep and dozing, slipping down on either side, my reveries mixing into reality; you'd lie on your back propping up your head in your arms, and I'd nuzzle into your chest and fall asleep listening to the reverberations in your throat as you opened up your heart to me.

I wonder, what you do now when you wake to find her well and sleeping and lost to you. Do you lean over the cot I've never seen, watching her scrunch her fists and nose? Do you return to that bed that's too big just for you, the side that's always cold, the picture frame that doesn't offer the same warmth as I should be there to give… do you do as I do, curling into myself and letting the tears that fall wet the pillow, convincing myself I can smell you there. Telling myself those cries that now slowly die away, comfort found, are those of my little girl; and maybe you're both just in the next room, maybe we're just playing a game, and you're not all those thousands of kilometres and countless obstacles away.

Sleep's the only refuge I can find. In sleep I can find you both waiting for me; standing at the end of a long corridor, and Adia runs to me, remembers me despite all these months where I've played no role in her life… you walk slowly behind her unsteady footsteps, smiling with a completeness I recognise from the day our little girl was born. We collide, fast and soft and full of need; you welcome me with that hug I long for, a tender kiss that says it all, your eyes that offer tears as we are reunited. We do something mundane and ordinary, an everyday chore, but you angle your body so it catches mine whenever possible… Adia giggles as we threaten each other's bare arms with damp tea towels after doing the washing up, that sting neither of us will really inflict, the devilish grin that spreads to your eyes.

God, how I love these dreams. I can almost convince myself they're real. I can almost trick myself into never waking up.

The trouble is, waking up brings the ache, the endless emptiness in my arms like a great mass I cannot find and yet weighs me down… the physical throb that fills me and pounds within me every waking second after I've surfaced from rest. I find no you, no crib, no little smiling face or childish giggles filling the room… no life as I once knew it, that life that does continue, but in a house I've never seen, in a place I cannot go.

I have a home, where I've never slept. I have a family, who I cannot hug. I have a life, which I cannot live.

Because the second I go to that door that somewhere exists, curl up in the solid beech bed you've told me about, put together some nachos in that kitchen with the granite worktops and fridge with the ice dispenser; just live my life… my old life will come back to haunt me, with handcuffs and summons, jail terms and freedom lost, forever.

I miss you. I would say 'like you can't even imagine', but I know that's not true. I splay my whole body out in this bed, toes stretching until they curve around the edges of the mattress, fingers mimicking them. And what I wouldn't give to be squashed into one half of this space, to be woken by the cries of a child as my neighbours are, to curl into you against the noise. What I wouldn't give to hand over even more of the area, have our little girl held in between us both here, her softness joining us, all three of us failing to wake in time to see the morning.

What I wouldn't give just to pick up the phone, dial home, listen to you breathe.

But I can't hold you close, can't pick up my child, can't even throw some numbers into the phone for fear of the call being traced. I can only call from phone boxes, and even then it's for mere minutes before I dash to the car in a blur of tears, floor the gas until I'm a good distance from the offending phone box. And it's never enough, always rushed, too factual and clinical. I want to spend long moments just basking in your voice, how you stop for breath, the distraction that comes over your words as you carefully watch Adia play or eat or just live her life. I want to whisper how I love you, and her, and tell you every reason why. I long to play the 'You Hang Up' game, dissolving into adolescence, calling you back even when one of us does give in.

A million times I've sat outside yet another police station, ready to hand myself in. More than handful of times I've cruised around downtown LA, knowing the place I should call home is so achingly close; that if I dared myself to, I could coast past, maybe see your silhouette as you put Adia down for the night, maybe catch the colour of my front door with a casual glance. Those nights I end up driving all night in the opposite direction, the tears streaming down my face, my limitations mocking me.

Even now, this motel is across the road from a cop shop, south of Portland. I should just walk over there, hand myself in. At least then I could start serving my sentence, I tell myself. At least then I could see you and Adia regularly, even if it would be behind a square of Perspex, even if I would be adorned in an orange jumpsuit.

But then I know we'd never stand a chance. Because Adia would have her own kids before I saw freedom again. Because I'd never feel good enough for you, hiding behind that crime I in truth still don't regret, trying to avoid your eyes for fear of what I'd find. I can't let my little girl grow up with the burden of weekly visits to her jailbird mom. I can't be that looming presence she'll never really know, who cannot do her hair or take her shopping or embarrass her in front of her friends. I won't put her through that. I won't wrap up that obligation in a ribbon, for her or for you.

Rather you not see me at all, than see me there. And I know you'd disagree; we just never talked about it, because you know I'll do what I think is best. Either way, landing back after the island, we had only those few precious hours to bask in before we knew they'd figure out our weak cover story. And so we did fun things, stupid things, passport photos of the three of us, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, rollerblading on the pier. We didn't waste the time, figuring out what we'd do, how it'd work. Finding your eyes, you knew without ever asking that I'd have to run, and you'd forced yourself to accept that reality in total silence.

The day after I left, before the sun had even risen, the feds had smashed down your hotel room door… and you lied through your teeth for me, as our daughter screamed herself purple with the fundamental need for her mother.

And six months later, I lie here with only land and old lives holding us apart… I toss and turn, still clinging to the memories of that final day, my fingers curled around the little monkey plush toy I took from the bundle of goodies we bought Adia. And you two, you're my lifeline, pulling me back and keeping me alive with the love I know exists.

And I don't know what the future holds, or when I might be able to see you both again. I don't know, now, if my daughter's sleeping, or what you made for dinner tonight, or how work's going.

But I know you love me, for like you said last time we spoke, a month ago now… "Whenever you think of us and don't know what's happening, know that we'll be loving you."

Oh, how I ache for you. I crawl into myself, wrapping myself into the duvet, longing for sleep to come so it will be tomorrow and, at seven in the evening, I can find a pay phone someplace quiet and dial those numbers.

And phone home, and hear your voice… like gravel and silk and love and tears all mixed together. Hear you tell me about presents and nursery pals, a party dress I will not see, a chocolate cake adorned with the number '2' in pink icing.

My daughter's second birthday, and the life that goes on without me ever being there.