At Logan, I devised a very technical and scientific method for deciding where to travel.
I closed my eyes and stabbed at a map of New England.
North Conway, NH.
"Live Free or Die," I shrugged, and headed for the ticket counter.
The flight was full people just like me: dressed for work, carrying only a briefcase. No one would even notice me.
Except for the woman who did.
She was in the aisle seat, and leaned across the guy between us to talk at me.
Bright and chirpy, she was in her mid-fifties with hair that was so red it looked as though it had been scribbled in with a crayon. She talked so long and so fast that all I got out of it was that she wanted me to join her coven or something. It wasn't easy to tune her out, but I tried.
At least I could look out the window. And think. Eventually her babbling
I had approached a ticket counter no less than three times with the intention of purchasing a ticket for a flight to LaGuardia, but I finally let logic have its way. Once they realized I was gone, that would be the first place they looked.
It would be worth getting scooped up by them again to be able to see Maurice just one more time.
But that would be unfair to him. Here he was trying to get his life back together after, by Faith's accounts, actually being dead.
He didn't need, and I'm sure didn't want, me showing up telling him – what, exactly: Hello?
I'm sorry?
I'm glad you're alive?
It wasn't worth it?
It was worth it?
I miss you?
You made me want to be a normal person again?
Have a nice life?
I think about you every single day and sometimes it doesn't even hurt?
I need closure?
My particular brand of chaos was the last thing he needed now.
I'd done enough.
I needed to start over with a brand new everything.
It was too early, and the city sounded wrong.
Wrong city.
Another grey day. I stared at the ceiling.
She didn't want to be found. I'd spent at least six months trying to figure out how to look for her before…this.
I'd asked for her help, but Faith had wanted nothing to do with it, so I didn't really understand her change of heart. But I was grateful for it.
What had I been thinking?
She didn't want me to find her.
Didn't want me.
She'd cared enough to risk her safety in order to call Faith, and check in weekly, but then that was Kate. I'd bet everything I had that over the past year she'd attached herself to a whole bunch more homeless orphans.
I winced. That's what I'd called her on that first night.
I lay there for a long time and thought over things. Everything. Start to finish.
What she'd done hadn't warranted the things I'd said. I was angry at the situation, not at her. And the situation was my own fault.
I had meant it when I'd said I wouldn't have touched her. Faith had been right. I'd been denying everything I knew and then acting in spite of it. Those mistakes had hurt her because of my deception.
I didn't blame her for hating me, especially after I'd made such a big deal about her telling me the truth. At first I'd withheld information for her protection, but after that, honestly, I just liked having her around.
Faith had been right about that, too. I'd wanted to keep her. She was there against her will, and she'd made decisions based what she thought the truth was, what I'd led her to believe the truth was. The more I thought about it, the more horrible a human being I seemed to myself to be.
She was gone. And this was as close as I was going to get to her.
I thought about that for a long time, too, before deciding I needed to get to the airport.
Don't take anything?
Bite me.
I took her Shakespeare cross-stitch off the wall for the second time. Just in case.
One last look around, a deep breath... and I walked out, slamming the door on life with Kate.
