“Marketing!” Jenna storms without warning
into my office. Today she is wearing a hideous yellow sweater and a pink flower
in her hair. The colleague sitting at the desk across from me rolls her eyes
and demonstratively puts her headphones on.
“Huh?”
Jenna waves a bunch of papers in my face. I
catch the logo of the start-up company for which we have applied. “I got a job
offer! As part of the marketing department here in the city.”
I frown at her. “Marketing? Did you ask for
that?”
“Well, I applied for programming but…
during the interview I told them that I would be really interested in
marketing, too.”
“Wow. Well… congratulations, I think?”
Jenna points to the pile of unopened
letters on my desk, her eyebrows raised. Lately I really am not in the
condition to work, or even open my mail. It has been more than a week since we
searched Jacob’s house and called hospitals for half of the night and there is
still no sign of him. I cannot stop thinking about him. I return to his
prison-like house regularly, clinging to that tiny, miserable shred of hope
that one day he will just be there again. Every time I step on the terrace to
water the plants in Jacob's garden I imagine he would sit in the wicker chair,
turn around and greet me with his small smile. It never happens.
There is also the other side, the one where
I imagine him not alone, but in the company of that beautiful woman with auburn
hair from the photo and with his child, maybe a boy with a snotty nose and a
hole ripped in his pants at the knee or a girl with a pink sunhat and curly
hair, around one year old probably. What if all he is doing is spending a nice
vacation with his family at some lake or in the mountains? Real mountains, not
the laughable hills we have here, that he showed to me.
“You must have gotten a letter, too,” Jenna
cheers and brutally rips me from my thoughts.
“I don’t think-“
“Oh my god, oh my god!” Jenna fishes a
letter from the middle of the heap with dead precision and dangles it in front
of my eyes. “You got one, too! I told you, Cait!”
I stare at it unbelieving.
“Open it, open it! Oh my god, this is so
exciting!” Jenna jumps up and down, eliciting an agonized groan from my
co-worker.
I feel my heart rate increase as I open the
letter. Can it be that they actually want to hire me? There must be a
misunderstanding. I do not have high expectations, probably it is just an
unusually early letter telling me that unfortunately I do not fit into their
corporate image or bullshit like that.
Jenna reads aloud from over my shoulder.
“Dear Miss Guo… blabla…thus we are pleased to inform you that we would like to
welcome you as program manager, computer software. What. The. Fuck… Cait…
Cait???”
I stare at the piece of paper in front of
me, the black letters barely registering in my mind. I hear Jenna’s voice from
far away.
“Oh. My. Goodness. This is the absolute
jackpot of all lotteries, Cait. I can’t believe it.”
I turn the letter around, ready to see a
hint that this is all a joke. Program manager? Surely there must be a mistake.
“Did you apply for that?”
I blink at Jenna. “No… I applied for
back-end, of course.”
“Of course.”
I have finished reading the letter and my
heart sinks. “It’s in the capital,” I say hollowly, staring at the words.
Jenna sighs and squeezes my shoulder. “I
know it’s not my place but… Don’t you think it would be good for you to get
away from here? From all of this?” she says lowly.
I turn the letter around in my hand, unsure
of what to do. Finally I take a pen and paper and write my response.
***
I immerse myself in work so I do not have
to think of Jacob anymore and with every passing day it is getting better. I
start looking for an apartment in the capital and as the days gradually grow
hotter I stop passing by Jacob's house to water the garden. Every day that I
hear nothing about neither Jacob nor Marcus I sleep a little deeper, eat a
little better, feel a little more like myself again until things seem to be
almost like they had before. I know of these stories, real stories of people
vanishing without explanation to never turn up again, and I start to believe
that I am part of one. When it happens, out of the blue, one ordinary day in
the cafeteria.
“Cait…”
“Hm… yeah?”
Jenna is watching a point over my left
shoulder, her lips a thin line. “It’s him.”
For a second the world tilts, sound tuning
in and out while I stare at Jenna’s face, frozen with my fork halfway to my
mouth and the words not correctly registering in my brain.
“Who?” I ask unnecessarily because I know
exactly who, my voice a small squeak.
“Your second prince,” she adds, her face
darkening. “Jacob.”
I force myself not to turn around and look
while my pulse hammers in my throat. It is him, he is alive, he is okay… He
came back! I swallow, trying not to burst into tears right away and place the
fork down on the plate with suddenly trembling hands. I am not hungry anymore.
Deep within myself something had given up, had tried to come to terms with the
fact that I will never see him again and now that he is here I am so relieved,
I feel sick from it. On the other hand, there is a strong urge within me to
jump up and show the idiot what I am made of, give him a healthy slap across
the cheek for scaring me to death. At the same time I want to grab Jacob’s
beautiful face and kiss him until I am drowning. My head is swimming with the
possibilities and instead of doing anything I stay seated and try to breathe.
The photograph of that woman comes back to my mind, his arms around her, her
hand on her belly.
Jenna’s face suddenly falls. “Oh my god!
What happened to him?”
Before I can restrict myself I have
swiveled around, my heart beating wildly in fear. Images pop up in front of my
eyes of Jacob gravely injured, propped up in a wheelchair, looking like an inch
from death and I have to fight against the sudden nausea to keep my food down
that is sizzling as if it were alive in my stomach.
Relief pulses through my veins with sudden
numbness spreading over my body as my eyes indeed find Jacob. He is limping
along the glass wall separating the cafeteria from the hallway, his gaze sweeping
across the hall. From afar he looks like I remember him, slowly swinging his
left leg from his hip and leaning on his cane, a thin T-shirt barely covering
his arms, the left one bent, fist tucked to his chest. I turn away again
quickly, exhaling a shuddering breath. He seems okay.
Jenna blinks at me. “Did he get hurt? You
never told me-“
Oh… that! I nearly laugh out loud because
the situation is so ridiculous. I actually never told her. “No, he didn’t,” I
mumble.
“Then what’s wrong with him?” Jenna demands
to know, her eyes still wide.
I clench my teeth. “Nothing is wrong with him,” I grate.
Jenna’s eyes turn to me again. “Sorry…” she
says, sounding confused. “I just thought… never mind… Um… I think he has seen
you and he is coming here.”
I jump up from my seat. “I don’t want to
talk to him.” My eyes fly around the cafeteria, over people milling, chatting
and eating. I feel panic at the prospect of hearing the truth. I do not want to
learn it, never. Not now, at least.
Jenna nods, gripping her water glass
firmly. “Take the exit through the terrace. I got this.”
Sometimes I could kiss her. I turn and flee, squeezing past people sitting at the tables over their lunch, calling angrily after me when I bump into their backs or the edge of a table in my haste, without taking a glance back.
***
The thought of staying the night in my
small and lonely apartment makes me panic. I have passed many a night at
Jenna’s since the breakup from Marcus and also today I stand on her doorstep
and ring after a few seconds of hesitation. I sometimes wonder how long she is
going to keep up with me. She must grow bored with my wild stories and pathetic
problems, eventually, mustn't she? I stare down at the mat on the floor. She
has one of those silly ones with a joke on it. When the door opens I try to
shake off the depressing thoughts. I look up and freeze when I perceive who has
opened the door.
“Hello, Cait.”
I stare into the blue eyes. They have lost
their brightness, appearing dim and gray in deep sockets with dark rings under
them, the skin is waxen up close, pale and unhealthy. Jacob looks like shit.
Where in all hells has he been? “Traitor,” I murmur. I hope Jenna feels really
bad for that move.
“Cait-“
I raise a hand and Jacob falls silent at
once. The words however will not come to me. I feel like I am suffocating.
There is a small white plaster visible at
the edge of his palm which is currently placed atop the handle of his cane. At
least that wound I caused seems to be healing as it is supposed to.
“Cait, I’m sorry-“
I have already turned to go, feeling the
tears starting to burn behind my eyes. I am not going to cry in front of him.
“Please, Cait, please, let me explain.” His
voice is hoarse and desperate.
I whirl around, already a few steps down
the corridor. Jacob has followed me.
“Explain? What can you possibly explain,
Jacob? Why you vanished for weeks without telling anyone? Or maybe why you are
cheating on your wife?”
He blinks, a line between his eyes growing
as he gets closer. I might be imagining it but I think he is even slower than
usual, his movements exceptionally stiff. “I am not married, anymore,” he
grounds and stops at some distance. He shifts a little, leaning against the
wall to relieve his right hand. “How do you-”
I inhale a shuddering breath, not listening
to him anymore. “Where have you been?” I ask sharply.
Jacob sighs. “That’s a very long story. Why
don’t we-”
“You lied to me.” My voice is low but
poisonous.
He nods, slowly. “I left things out… and I
know this is as good as lying.” He adds as I scoff. “I have no words to say how
sorry I am, Cait. Please believe me, I… I had my reasons. I can explain-”
I snort. “Well, you know what? I don’t want
to hear it. Your ex-wife did not seem to want to put up with your bullshit
excuses and neither do I. Keep thinking about a story that you are going to
tell your child when it is old enough to ask!”
I do not know how but I act out of reflex
when Jacob slips, with his weight on the wrong side and nothing on the naked
wall to stop his fall. I catch him before he crashes down and as I try to keep
him upright with my arms around his waist, the impossible weight of his body
nearly tearing me down with him, I feel him trembling against me.
“Jacob?!” I do not want to sound worried,
but he is frightening me a little.
He manages to get his legs sorted out and
rams his cane into the floor with a dull sound. He frees himself and shuffles
away from me, his eyes hard and turned towards the ground. “I have no child,”
he whispers.
I feel the blood draining from my face.
“But…”
He surges back with lurching steps and
barely manages to stop before he crashes into me, shaking all over, the sides
of his nose flaring. “How do you even know?” he bellows. His eyes are ablaze,
cutting through me like knives.
“I—I saw the picture,” I explain, subconsciously
walking backwards. He follows, faster than I thought him capable, his face a
mask of rage, his uneven shoulders looming over me. I am suddenly terrified of
him, I do not know what he will do and somehow everything seems possible. I
stare at the hand that is gripping the cane with the knuckles standing out
white, my thoughts racing to find the point where this went all wrong.
Then
Jenna’s voice sounds and calls us both back to reality. “That’s enough now. Inside with you both. I
have a good relationship with my neighbors and I would like to keep it that
way. You are not helping with that.”
Jacob deflates and snorts but when Jenna
offers her arm to help him he maneuvers past her inside again, not without
sending her a poisonous look. She lifts her eyebrows at me and rolls her eyes a
little. “Men,” she mouths.
I exhale a shuddering breath and slump back
against the wall behind me.
***
Jenna makes tea. I suspect she thinks
everything can be solved if it is discussed over a cup of tea. Might be her British
heritage, I don’t know. I am highly suspicious of the powers of tea. As she
busies herself with the kettle and the cups in the kitchen and I hang around,
trying to ignore the fact that Jacob is currently sitting in her living room,
she tells me in a low voice that Jacob begged her to let him see me. “He told
me a few things… By the way, did I tell you? I stopped him following you by
splashing the contents of my glass over his pants and blocked his way, loudly insisting
on paying the drycleaner, until you were gone. You should have seen that, Cait,
I was amazing! Well… we managed to dry his clothes a bit… it was only water, so
never mind. Where was I? Oh yes. What he said did not really make sense to me
yet, but I think we should hear him out.”
I sigh. I guess I owe Jacob that much.
I curl up in one of Jenna’s flannel
blankets on her couch, next to Jenna. I am endlessly grateful that she is here,
I do not think I could go through this without her. Jacob is sitting across
from us on the edge of the seat of her armchair. He ignores the tea, his gaze
going into nothing and tugs at his left arm. It does not seem to budge and the
wince as he tries to extend the stiff fingers does not escape my attention.
Jenna clears her throat. “Jacob?”
Jacob startles, rubs his eyes, sighs and
finally looks up. His ashen face seems to me like he might pass out any moment.
I am starting to think it would be better if we postponed all this, when he
takes a sip of his cup of tea that is sitting in front of him on the table and
starts to speak.
“Jenna told me that you have both figured
out that I worked at Recom before I went to TalcTech.”
Anger flares up inside of me at the mention
of yet another one of his secrets but I manage to control myself. I nod
stiffly.
“So… I was quite successful, you know that,
too. And yes, I was married. To a woman who still works at Recom.”
I draw the blanket closer around myself and
look at the dark sky outside.
“Higher management. Maren… Kissinger.”
I frown but the name does not ring a bell.
I suppose this is no wonder, I know barely anyone at that level.
“We got divorced,” Jacob goes on.
“Yesterday.”
I flinch. I clearly must have heard wrong.
He got divorced yesterday?
Jacob lifts his arm in surrender. “Hear me
out! Please…”
Jenna tugs at my blouse and I realize I
have shot up from the couch. I let myself fall down again and huff impatiently.
“We’ve been separated for a year now. The
whole divorce process took that long. It was nasty… We have both good lawyers.”
I look at him, not following.
“It wasn’t particularly easy. We had a
marriage contract but not a very good one apparently and with all that had
happened…” He rubs his left knee. “Obviously I cannot work nearly as much as I
did before and my income has dramatically changed as well... There was a lot to
figure out, financially.”
I blink. “When you went silent on me during
the last months… or to ‘visit relatives’ or when you vanished the last weeks
you actually were…”
“At an appointment with my lawyer… or... at
court, yes.” Jacob says lowly. “There were multiple hearings. The final trial
took one week. I stayed at a friend’s house in the capital during the last
weeks leading up to it and I... I don't know. I didn't know what to do, I was
in a very bad place. I’m sorry, I know I should have informed you that I was...
I just… the trial... it was all too much.”
I think back to Vito suggesting that Jacob
could have harmed himself and the horror must have been written in my face.
“I am back, Cait. I am here now,” Jacob
says, his voice suddenly deep and calming. “I'm okay.”
I breathe out through my nose, lean back
into the warmth and softness of the couch and mull over what he has said. I
guess it makes sense.
“You could have told me that before. It
would have made things a little easier,” I murmur.
Jacob grimaces and averts his gaze. “There
is... there is more that I haven’t told you… haven’t told anyone. I didn’t want
to… didn’t want it to become real again.”
“The picture…” I cannot make myself say it
again. The kid. What about the kid?
Jacob grips his knee so hard, the veins in
his hand are standing out blue under the papery skin.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Jenna says.
Jacob shakes his head slowly. “No. It’s
okay. I want you to know,” he says lowly and lifts his eyes to mine. I stare
into the blue, frozen. “That’s why I came here.” His face is contorted with
pain and his voice is so quiet I have to strain my ears to understand the
words. “Because I want you to know what they did.”
And then he tells us the story of how he
discovered, by chance, a wide-ranging scandal at Recom, involving some of the
highest managers and a big amount of money. In a flat voice he continues with
how he did not report his discovery as would have been his duty but instead
used it as leverage to reach his own goals, pressured the managers involved
into helping him climb the career ladder.
“For a time it worked well, maybe too well.
I got greedy, and reckless. I felt invincible and better than these assholes. I
should have known that I was steering right into hell, but I would not listen
to the voice in my head telling me to be careful.”
He tells us how he went home one night,
late again, expecting to find his pregnant wife who had been stuck in traffic
on her way back from a friend though. Instead, he surprised a gang of burglars who
were just about to rob his house clean.
I gasp involuntarily at this point. The
dark interior of the prison-like house appears in my mind, the alarm system
that Jacob still always turns on, Jacob opening the door, Jacob attacking me. I
only register that I am squeezing Jenna’s hand hard when she hisses in pain and
I release my hold.
“Only… they were no regular burglars. They
were send by someone to make it look like I had accidentally run into burglars
at my home who then attacked me and got away. They weren’t burglars, primarily.
They were criminals hired to silence me.”
“Who—“
Jacob shrugs. “I don’t know. I did not
recognize them. They were masked. And… I don’t think anyone at Recom would have
participated in the dirty work themselves. No…” He laughs drily, the sound
ripping from his throat and I shiver. “No… they hired professionals to do that.
They took my laptop and all records I had about Recom to make sure I could not
retaliate afterwards. I… gosh, I had made it so easy for them, I did not even
have a backup in a safe. That’s how invincible I felt!” Jacob rocks his upper
body back and forth, his right hand tangled in his hair. “Recom kicked out some
minor manager, someone to explain a few crooked numbers and to distract the
media and everyone else involved got out without a scratch.”
“The people who hurt you… they were never caught?” Jenna asks.
Jacob shakes his head. “No… The police ran
most investigation on the matter while I was still between life and death.
There had been a range of burglary events in the neighborhood at that time, and
they assigned the assault to the same group of criminals. By the time I could
have taken up actions, Recom had already nicely covered up everything so that I could not
even show that they had had a reason to put me out of the way. I have no proof
that there really is a link between the events and the company.”
“So…” Jenna says slowly, throwing a gaze
towards me before she turns back to Jacob. “Your arm… and your leg… that’s
because of the assault?”
Jacob nods.
“You… you told me you had a stroke…” I
whisper.
Jacob locks eyes with me, tired, blank
ones. “That was the truth. I had a stroke, later. They beat me to the brink of
death and left me lying in the hallway. My wife… ex-wife found me…” he swallows
convulsively.
“I had lost consciousness somewhere through
it. She called an ambulance and I got transported away to the hospital. I spent
weeks in an artificially induced coma. There were complications. They operated
on me several times, I never knew how often in the end. A blood clot that
caused the stroke nearly killed me. I should have died. In the end… I didn’t.
But I paid the price for my hubris. Brain injury, due to the attack, due to the
coma, due to the clot… No one could say for certain what had led to what in the
end... But... but that was not the worst, not by far...”
Jacob’s gaze is fixed on his right hand in
his lap and I know with sudden dread that we are nearing the heart of the
matter. “The worst of all… the worst of all was that my wife lost our child.”
He is silently crying now, not attempting
to wipe the tears away. “The doctors told me it was probably due to the stress.
Finding me… not knowing if I would survive…”
Jacob gasps and goes silent for a while,
takes ragged breaths, his cheeks glistening. “I was told she visited a few
times when I was still in a coma but not much after that. We did not really
speak again until I was already several weeks into second rehab, learning how
to remember the steps to brush my teeth and things like that. She… had changed.
Well, she said I had changed.” He
chuckles bitterly. “I mean, I probably had, yes, how should I know? Everything
was fuzzy… not real to me… I wondered if she knew something, if somehow she was
involved... It was like this fix idea, and once it had planted itself in my
brain it would not go away. How did they know the exact time I would return
home? How did they know that Maren would not be there? Was there another reason
why she had not been home?”
I shake my head, numb. “She was your
wife... she had carried your child...”
Jacob inhales slowly, nodding his head. “I
know... I know... I was out of my mind, I could not think clearly. There were
days when I thought the nurse had come to finish the job the burglars had not
managed and they had to restrain me and pump me full of drugs to keep me still.
I wanted to talk to my ex-wife about what had happened, I wanted to hear from
her that she had nothing to do with it; but she only said that I was imagining
things, that the people in our house had just been regular burglars, that there
had never been anything more going on at Recom than what had been discovered
already. Now... now I think that she was probably in fact clueless about
everything and that she just could not take it anymore... losing our child,
nearly losing me and then the prospect of me never fully recovering, the
uncertainty of the extent of the lasting damage to my brain... She could barely
look at me. I think it was all too much for her and I cannot blame her because
I felt the same, only I am stuck with this.”
His right hand has formed into a fist,
mirroring his left one. “I wanted to talk about our child but…” He stares at
the table for a few moments, collecting himself, “A few months later she sent
the divorce papers to the rehab facility.”
“I am sorry,” Jenna says. She is crying,
too, but she looks at me. Then she gets up and leaves on surprisingly quiet
feet.
I am left alone on the couch, feeling sick
and too empty to cry. The room is silent for some time, Jacob’s tears drying on
his cheeks while he stares at the ground.
When he speaks again his voice is hollow.
“I haven’t told anyone who did not already know. It's... it's surprisingly easy
to forget something if the people around you don't know. And all I want is to forget,
Cait, can you understand that?”
I nod. Yes, I do.
“And I… I… I feared that… I know that this… me…” he spits out the last words, “is enough burden already as it
is and I cannot even come up with a single reason why you want to put up with
me in the first place. I simply didn’t want to add to that, that's why I never
told you. I’m sorry.”
I do not answer him. How can he think that
I would leave him if I had known that he had suffered terrible, unspeakable
things in his past? Is his faith in me really so small that he thinks I could
run away at that? It leaves me with some hope though that he confided into me
just now and I can only guess how hard it must have been.
Jacob tries to get up and fails, his jaw
tense as he punches the armrest in frustration. “I don't deserve you. I am
useless, this... If only I had not been so stupid as to think I was the clever
one. If only I had cared less for my own fucking success and more for my wife,
my child… If only I could have been there for my wife when- This is all my
fault, all of it… I should have died that night-”
“No!” I jump up. My heart is racing and
there is a sudden conviction in my voice, within myself, that I have not felt
before. As monstrous and unbelievable as the things he told me sound to me and
although I cannot relate to it a tiny bit, all I can see in this moment is a
man who has conquered so much pain in the recent past, it does not make him
weaker in my eyes, but stronger. I know one thing for sure like I have never
known anything in my life: I do not want to lose Jacob. Not again, never. And I
know that I am ready to do everything to make him believe me, even if I am
taking a huge risk, one I never wanted to take ever again.
He flinches when I sit down on the armrest
next to him. My hand rubs soothing circles into his upper arm. “You are not
useless. Far from that.”
He chuckles drily. “I don’t even feel that,
you know?”
My hand shrinks back when I suddenly
realize what I have been doing. “I’m sorry.”
He manually turns the wrist of his left
hand a little, grimacing as he does, not looking at me.
“I didn’t know,” I say and then I put my
hand back, let it carefully settle on his left arm. My fingers glide over the
tight muscles in his shoulders, follow the bent elbow to his hand. I do not
know so much about him. How can one person contain all of this without
exploding? How can one person endure all this pain without breaking? I close my
hand around his fist. “What about here?”
Jacob’s eyelids flatter and he nods, the lines of his lips hard. “Um… maybe a little. I guess it’s patchy
in general.”
He watches me, his expression stunned as I work a finger
under his, feeling his dry palm and then start kissing his knuckles. I lift my
eyes to his wide ones and carefully slide one leg over his lap, straddling him
slowly in the armchair. He does not move but also does not try to push me away.
I scowl as I work my way up his arm in reversed order, kissing along physical
evidence of his past that has always been there clearly for me to see although
I never fully understood what it meant, might not fully understand it even now.
My lips taste every inch of the warm skin but when I have reached the side of
his throat, Jacob turns his head away from me.
“Cait… please….” His face is a mask of
emotional pain.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t… we shouldn’t… please
don’t…”
I sink against his chest, our heartbeats
fast and arrhythmic in my ear. “I’ve got something to tell you, too.”
I detach myself from his warm body and take
place on the couch next to him. He angles himself towards me. “Guess this is
the night of truth,” he says, sounding very, very tired. “Go on then.”
--> Chapter 17
--> Chapter 17
Oh so great! Please let them be okay. Please!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Well, we will see... ;-)
DeleteFinally. thank you so much!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Yes, Jacob sure took his dear time.
DeleteReally great, as always. As I was reading I was thinking how I would love to watch this story as a movie. It has a real plot, it is both funny and tearbreaking, and has believable and relatable characters. Besides it would be the deviest movie ever ;). I will be very much looking forward to what awaits Cait and Jacob in the next chapters!
ReplyDeleteOh, ano, I would love that! Well, one can always dream, right? Haha... thanks for your kind words!
Deleteespetacular, gostei muito. Parabéns!!!
ReplyDeleteHappy you liked it! Obrigada.
DeleteThanks for the update!
ReplyDeleteTc
You're welcome! Thanks for commenting!
DeleteEnthralling! I sat reading this at the edge of my chair. Amazing chapter. I look forward to hearing Cait's confessions, soon.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Pepper! Always glad to hear you enjoyed it.
DeleteWhat a read!
ReplyDeleteYou really know how to write an exciting story. I'm looking forward to next Saturday and can't wait for the really deavy scenes between them.
Thank you, chandelier! We are getting close to those scenes now, so stay tuned ;-)
DeleteSo very good. Great chapter full of surprises and yummy Jacob. Can't wait to hear what's up with Cait.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Blueskye!
DeleteMiss Lovis, it is not okay to leave us hanging like that!! Ugh, as a fellow writer, I love writing cliffies, but as a reader, I've gotta say that it makes me wanna bring the rotten tomatoes out again>< But lovely chapter as always, and I fully support another mid-week surprise again;) - Nessa
ReplyDeleteHaha, sorry! Ah well, I'm teaching you patience, that's an important lesson =) *hides from tomatoes*
Delete