Page 22 of This Might Hurt

When her eyebrows furrow, I realize I’m staring at her with a probably unmistakable edge of panic. I have to hold up under this pressure all day, and I’m already cracking. Since I can’t fix the look on my face, I glance down and pretend to adjust one of my shirt cuffs. “No, I haven’t seen him.”

“Don’t worry about anything.” She straightens up to her not very considerable height, her voice going polite and professional again. “We’ve got it all handled. I’ll see you later.”

As I step into the airy morning room with its large windows overlooking the prizewinning Scottish garden, I realize with a wave of relief that Archie isn’t here. My mother, Colin, and a wedding coordinator are seated at the long dining table.

My mother glances up hopefully when I drop into a chair across from her, then slumps back with a huge mug of one of her foul-smelling detox teas cupped in her hands. “Where’s Daxton?”

“How the hell should I know?” The words burst out of my sleep-deprived mouth before I can stop myself. Maybe this would be easier if everyone would shut up about the man for two fucking seconds and let me think.

Mother’s eyebrows go up at my tone, and Colin lifts his head slowly from his phone to stare at me with interest. “Sorry,” I murmur, accepting the Americano that appears in front of me and taking a deep, painful gulp.

“I’m just anxious to start…” I gesture toward the young blonde woman seated behind a fortress of documents, binders, color samples, and menus. “...planning.”

Colin snorts and returns to his phone, earning an eye roll from my mother.

When she tries to grab it, he shoves her arm away without looking up in one of those gestures that reminds me they’re siblings.

The three of them were once free-spirited kids scampering around this huge estate together.

I’ve always thought of my mother and uncles as worse people than my grandfather, crueler and more petty, with no vision for changing the world.

But sometimes I wonder who deserves to be blamed for what they grew into.

“We have to start planning without him,” Mother decides, looking out the window with a martyred expression.

“Well,” the coordinator muses, eyeing me with her pen poised over a long, handwritten list. “The main logistics are already taken care of, but I want to make sure we include any personal touches you’d like.”

“Um.” I glance between her and my mother, feeling adrift. The only personal detail I know about Daxton is that my life currently hangs on the question of whether or not he did something last summer.

I’m saved when a member of the outdoor staff ducks through the doorway, looking out of place and nervous in his synthetic jacket and slightly dirty shoes. He murmurs something to my mother before disappearing again, but I can’t quite read his lips.

“Jesus Christ.” Mother tips her head back and closes her eyes, looking even paler than usual in her white summer dress.

“His car’s still not back and he’s not answering his phone.

” Her eyes slide open and fix on mine. “What’s the matter with all of you?

Can no one be grateful and do as they’re told? ”

I shrug one shoulder, partly because I don’t know what answer she wants, and partly because my mouth has stopped working. Did he really not come back? What the fuck happened? And underneath that, the worst and most exhilarating question—is he scared?

“Call him,” she demands all of a sudden, accepting some silently offered aspirin from one of the staff and downing it with a half-finished glass of orange juice.

“Me?” My stomach drops.

“Of course you.”

She watches me impatiently as I fumble my phone out of my pocket and search for his number like I’ve never called someone before.

If he hears my voice, he’ll know. I’ll probably tell him myself, sitting here in front of everyone, and ask for forgiveness—because even though he’s much stupider than Archie, I’m starting to realize he has the same almost biological control over me that my uncle does.

But when I wait with my heart pounding in my throat, it rings out.

I try one more time, then put my phone face down on the table and stare at it.

“Guess I’ll join the search,” Colin deadpans, standing up and escaping in the direction of his office without looking up from his emails.

Mother massages her forehead, then abruptly turns on the wedding coordinator who has been examining her paperwork with that “I-didn’t-hear-anything” expression our employees put on whenever we start arguing in front of them.

“I want the napkins changed to a dusty coral. And the seating arrangements aren’t going to work… ”

When they’ve talked for three minutes straight without so much as glancing at me, I pick up an orange scone from the middle of the table and flip my phone over.

Trying to force the bread down my dry throat almost chokes me, but I want Carla to see that I ate one.

Opening the text to Jude, I add on under my first two sentences. He’s disappeared. Why did he disappear?

Someone from the kitchen swoops in and starts silently clearing away the place setting next to mine. I watch their hands move as they stack the plates and carry away each piece of Daxton until there’s nothing left.

It can’t have worked, I type frantically, flubbing all the spellings. Where did he go? What the fuck did we do?

I reread those sentences a dozen times, then add another, more slowly. Am I supposed to be happy now?

I can picture him glancing up from his phone, his eyes bright with that wild, unnerving joy that looks straight through me. He’d say, Well, are you?

And I’d say I don’t know. I’ve never been happy.

Then I have no idea what he’d tell me, because win or lose I’m never going to see him again and I’ll never know him well enough to be able to finish that conversation.

This time I delete all the words and replace them with just four.

It might have worked. I tell myself I’ll wait three more hours, then send them.

“Calm the hell down, boy.” I splutter for air as Sid shoves his huge nose against my ribs for the tenth time, trying to knock me over backward.

He tosses his head impatiently in the cross ties, scooting away from me every time I try to brush his flank.

“We’re not going out again. I just cooled you off, and you already pushed yourself too hard. ”

My grandfather bred Obsidian Dream from some of the best racing stock in the Northeast, but the unlucky black stallion kept going lame and foundering until the farrier and vet practically lived in our stables.

When I was young, I liked to lead him up and down the road, explaining why he couldn’t run and that it wasn’t his fault.

Grandfather had him gelded and almost sold him on for pennies, but when I begged to have him, the old man relented.

I left standing orders with the vet to pursue every therapy, every anti-inflammatory treatment, every possible shoe and bedding, and it seems to be helping.

This morning I only planned for a short walk around the pasture to clear my head, but he surged under me like he could feel the restless confusion in my body and I struggled to hold him to a canter.

We followed the river in the high midday sun until both of us were too sweat-drenched to have any worries.

Then we enjoyed a long, lazy stroll home while he watched boats and pinned his ears at a flock of geese.

Sid stretches out his long neck and nibbles at my pocket until I fish out a treat and let him snuffle it from my palm.

Everything’s so clean and precise out here—the singing of sparrows in the trees, the earthy scent of the stalls, Sid’s whiskers tickling my damp skin.

I can almost believe something has changed, that I’m waking up from the endless nightmare where I have no voice.

I tip my head down and let my forehead rest against his for a minute, closing my eyes.

“Good boy. I’m back now, I promise. I’ll take you out every day this summer. ”

He huffs, twitching impatiently under my hand until I let go, then bobs his head eagerly like he’s still trying to coax another ride out of me. I capture his long, fuzzy nose for a quick kiss, then nod at one of the grooms to take him back to his paddock to graze for the rest of the afternoon.

On the half-mile walk back to the main house, I forgo the wide gravel track in favor of a meandering dirt path that cuts through tall grass and stands of maple and beech to the north gate.

Disturbed grasshoppers bounce off my legs, like they did on that riverbank near Buffalo.

I remember thinking that the thwack of their tiny bodies would be a strange final memory to take with me.

Now I have so many more memories from the last two weeks, most of them choked with helpless rage at Jude for making me stay and then abandoning me to live with the consequences.

But today it’s the sensation of Sid prancing ecstatically under me when a woman walking along the river gave him an apple, the way we both laughed at him and chatted for a moment about the weather.

For the first time, it’s a reason to be grateful I stayed.

This is my favorite approach to the house, lined with sturdy horse chestnut trees and framed by a rustic archway built from thousands of small stones placed so expertly that they don’t need mortar to hold them together.

Every time I come through, I stop to examine it, wondering what would happen if I pulled a single one out of place.