Read Online Love Gone by Elizabeth Nelson - Free Book Online Page B

the terror
and confusion of that night back. He looked at the broken window
and its torn screen and saw that someone, probably Lisa, had
attempted to tape a black garbage bag over the gaping hole so
weather wouldn’t get in and ruin the carpet. As if it mattered what
this room looked like. He never wanted to sleep in it
again.
    He grabbed some clothes off the floor
and stuffed them in the black duffel he used for his gym clothes. A
T-shirt, a flannel, a pair of jeans, some underwear and socks. That
would have to be enough. He didn’t want these things, any of them,
to come with him out of this room. He felt like they should be
frozen forever on the floor, waiting for a kid named Liam to come
in and kick them around in an attempt to find a video game or a CD
that was buried underneath. He used to be that kid, but he never
would be again, he knew.
    The bag slung over his shoulder now he
backed out of his room, careful not to touch anything he didn’t
have to and found himself walking to the head of the basement
stairs. The last place he’d seen his mom and dad
together.
    Staring at the steps he remembered the
look in his mom’s eyes as she leaned over his dad, whispering in
his ear. She had looked at him like she didn’t care if he still
lived and was scared. She chose his dad. He saw her do it and he
knew she’d seen him see it. He felt different about her.
    Oh, he knew that his parent’s have –
HAD- he reminded himself sternly, a strong, almost otherworldly
bond – but to see his own mother choose his father, almost as if
she would have rathered that it be Liam on the floor and his father
standing in his place. It was enough to break him, he thought. He
didn’t want it to, but standing at the stairs where his father had
taken his last breaths in this house…he felt something crack deep
inside.
    Goodbye to the kitchen where he ate
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after school when his mom was
running late getting home. Goodbye to the living room where he’d
gleefully spent every Christmas morning that he could remember,
ripping open packages and laughing with joy over the small treats
his parents had sacrificed to afford for him.
    She hadn’t told him they were leaving
in so many words, but he overheard Lisa and Bill discussing his and
Faith’s situation in their bedroom when they thought he was fast
asleep in the guestroom and it seemed that the general consensus
was that they weren’t staying in Ketchikan. Nashville seemed to be
the city they were headed to, although, again he didn’t know for
sure.
    God damn it mom, he wasn’t a kid, he
thought angrily as he took one last look around. He didn’t want to
be here either. Every knickknack and creak of the floorboards
screamed out, “guilty.”
    It was all he could do not to fly
apart at the seams with regret and guilt. If only he hadn’t begged
his mom to drive that night. If he’d backed off when she’d first
said no, his dad would still be here riding him about joining
afterschool sports instead of the drama club, and his mom would be
refereeing between them like she always did. All it took was one
bad decision – gas or brake – for everything to fall apart; for his
whole life to change.
    His mom couldn’t even look at him.
He’d visited the hospital the last two days and she had pretended
to be asleep every time he came into the room. He wasn’t a kid, he
thought again, angrily. He could tell when someone was faking and
she was. Faking that was. Her breath was jumpy and her eyelids
fluttered with the effort to keep them closed. Yesterday he hadn’t
even bothered to stay more than five minutes. Why make her keep up
the act?
    “Bye mom,” he’d said when he’d left.
“I’m still alive, in case you were wondering or cared,” he’d added
childishly on his way out the door. He hadn’t turned around to see
how she’d taken that comment. It had been a stupid thing to say, he
knew it, but at the time he’d meant it. I’m still alive. He