When I got to my car, I took a moment and sat behind the wheel, leaning forward to put my head against the cold leather steering wheel cover, and said a short, sharp prayer of thanks that she was, essentially, going to be fine.
Then I pulled out of the parking lot and made my way back toward Raychel’s, to the wrong side of the tracks where her apartment was. The building was rundown and nondescript on the outside. I knew she lived in number twenty-one, and it was the middle of the day so there was no one around. Taking a silver ring of keys out of my glove box, I stuck them in my back pocket. It held every key to everything on my estate from sheds to old cars. I was pretty certain that I had put a spare of Raychel’s key on that ring at one point.
When I was facing her door, I took out the group of keys—some marked and some not—and luckily, had her door open in less than five minutes. I took the key off the ring and put it in the front pocket of my jeans to add it to my main key ring for future use. Raychel may not like it, but I figured with her current condition, I would need to be visiting her place often.
Her apartment was dingy and depressing, but neat as a pin, just as I expected. There was very little furniture besides a couch, a big comfy-looking chair that had seen better days, a mini stereo that I remembered giving her for Christmas one year, and a tiny TV.
But what was there glued me—dumbstruck—in place. Paintings. Tons of them. All around the perimeter of the room. Buildings and locations of New Orleans—some spots I recognized from my daily life. The occasional, Mississippi river water’s edge painting, then one set at sunset with a dad and his little one on his shoulders frolicking in ankle-deep water of the bayou. City life, bayou, the French Quarter, and red flowers, almost all of them.
Except one.
Unlike the others, this one was framed, and hung on the wall above the television. It was Dasha. I could no more prevent myself from walking over to stand in front of it than I could stop the sun from setting tonight. I had to. It called to me. “My brother.”
She had captured her father perfectly—the light from within, the humor, the fey cast about his eyes that said you never knew what he was going to do or say next, but it was probably going to be a lot of fun… it was all Dasha. I felt like I was standing in front of my dearest friend again, for the first time in five years. When he died, I had no idea just how much I would miss him.
My eyes filled with tears that overflowed down my cheeks as my heart nearly burst in my chest. My hand reached out, automatically, wanting to touch him, then it fell, lonely and unused to my side. God, I wanted nothing more than to share our favorite aged gin with him again as we discussed business and then on to more lighter topics.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, lost in intimate, soul-shaking memories, but when I finally came out of it, my heart ached worse than it had since about two months after it happened. When you lose someone you love abruptly, the worst isn’t when you’re told about it, or the funeral, or even coming home after the funeral, like a lot of people say. The worst hits a month or two later, when your life simply doesn’t have the person in it any longer.
That’s when the realization really hits that they’re gone, and you’ll never, ever see them again. Ever. And all you have left to remind you of them are your pictures and your memories, and God help you if you didn’t live every second you had with them as if you knew that godawful day would come.
I stumbled into her bedroom, realizing with a sad smile that it looked just as I had expected it to look: barren like a nun’s cell in an old Irish convent. I recognized the comforter on the bed as the one I’ve given her for Christmas a couple of years ago. Three stuffed animals sat in front of the pillows at the head of the bed, and several family photos were arranged in cheap frames on top of a dresser that had seen much better days. Other than that, the room was pretty stark. Thankfully, there were no portraits here.
Taking myself firmly in hand mentally, trying to shake off the melancholy that portrait of Dasha had inspired in me, I rummaged in the top drawer of the dresser and came up with some perfunctory cotton briefs, deciding against a bra because I didn’t want her to wear one, rather than figuring she might want one. Nightshirts—also probably older than the hills—were in the next drawer, and I took two. Once they’d ruled out problems with the concussion, she’d probably be released.