Laura Miller - For All You Have Left

A soft but unexpected laugh tumbles off my lips, sending my gaze straight to the floor.

“I work out of Truman Hospital.”

His words sober me up fast, and I cringe on the inside.

“What do you do?” he asks.

I slowly meet his eyes again — those blue, blue eyes. “I write for the magazine downtown.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“We get it at the hospital. Ada Cross?”

I feel the heat rushing to my face. It’s not every day that someone puts my name to my writing.

“Yes,” I say, trying not to smile as wide as I feel like smiling.

“I knew it was you.” He pauses for a second, as if he’s finally putting my face to my name. My photo has really only been in the magazine a couple times. Most of the time, it’s just my byline on top of the story. “I like your people stories,” he goes on. “There are some pretty interesting people out there.”

I force out a laugh.

“You have no idea,” I mumble.

His tanned, chiseled face shows off a crooked grin. “Well, I was just headed to work and I saw your keys,” he says, pointing to my lock.

“Yeah.” I shake my head. “Thank you,” I add, squeezing the pink keychain inside the palm of my hand.

“No problem,” he says.

I watch him start to make his way down the stairs.

“Lots of creeps out there, but don’t worry, I’ve got your back,” he calls up to me.

My smile starts to fade, but he can’t see it; his back is already toward me.

I really hope that wasn’t a warning — him warning me about himself. Deep down, I really don’t want him to be a creep. Maybe I do just want a normal neighbor for once — a normal, cat-less, renaissance-less neighbor.

“Lada, where’s your lotion?” Hannah asks, busting into my apartment.

Hannah’s always been a fixture in every place I’ve ever had. She’s never been an actual roommate, just more of an honorary one, I guess. This new apartment is no exception. She has a key. She uses it liberally.

“My hands feel like dead lizards.” Her voice trails behind her as she makes a beeline for the back rooms.

I scrunch up my face. “Eww. Why do they have to be dead?”

She doesn’t answer me. Instead I hear her rummaging through my drawers in my bedroom. My bedroom! I jump up and run to my room. But right when I spot her, I freeze in the doorway. I know she has already seen it. She’s bent over, with her back to me. She’s staring at something — it — inside my nightstand drawer.

I just stand there and watch her — waiting, for what seems like an eternity.

Eventually, she pulls it out from the drawer and turns back toward me.

“Lada,” she says, holding up a marriage license.

I take in a deep breath and let out an audible sigh.

“I didn’t know you still had this,” she softly says.

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing I can say really.

“Lada, you’ve got to move on,” she pushes out, gently. “I know you love him, but he can’t keep coming in and out of your life like this. You can’t let him. You can’t do this forever, Lada. You have to live.”

She looks at me with two sad eyes — those same sad eyes that she always gives me when this same subject comes up.

“I am living, Hannah,” I force out. “I’m living. I eat. I sleep. I smile every day.”

Her sad eyes don’t waver.

“Lada,” she says and then follows it with a long sigh. “You know what I mean. You’ve gotta let him go. You’ve gotta let someone else in.”

I stare at her for a moment before I lower my face. “It’s not that easy, Hannah.”

A minute passes in the quiet, and then I hear her voice again.

“All I’m asking you to do is try. That’s all anyone is asking you to do.”

My eyes catch and get stuck in the red polish on my toenails.

“I do try,” I whisper.

It’s true. I try. I don’t try in the way she wants me to try, but I do try. I try to tell myself that it is possible to move on — that it is possible to actually live two happy lives in the span of one lifetime. I try to push the thoughts, the dreams, the nightmares from my old life to the back of my mind. But ultimately, I know what moving on means. It means never going back, and that terrifies me more than anything. I know Hannah wants me to forget, but I can’t forget. I don’t want to forget. If I forget, I lose it all twice. I want to remember. I have to remember.

Hannah’s gone. She eventually got her lotion for her dead-lizard hands — after she had played the big-sister card, of course, and dispensed her infamous words of wisdom. I’m used to that card though and her words of wisdom. She says her peace — and it’s usually always the same peace — and then she leaves it alone. I’m thankful for that — the leaving it alone part. She doesn’t understand me like she thinks she does, but I do love her. Deep down, I know she means well. I just don’t think I’m as strong as she thinks I am.

I rest my feet against the wooden railing on my little balcony and sit back in my Adirondack chair. The chair was a gift to me from my grandpa. He made it himself and gave it to me when I got my first place back in college.

I’m alone now. It’s just me and the warm summer sun and a little, black spider crawling down a far rung in the railing. I’d freak out if I saw it inside, but I don’t mind it so much out here. I watch it scurry across the painted wood, avoiding tiny roadblocks that I can’t see. The spider reminds me of my grandpa’s farm. There were always spiders there — spiders and mice and hay and tall grass and endless games of hide and seek. I think about those days when we were all just kids sometimes. And sometimes, I think about them so hard that I feel as if I’m there — in an open field with grass up to my waist and nothing but hours and hours before the summer sun goes down…

“James, you’re on Hannah’s team,” Andrew says.

“But I was on Hannah’s team last time,” James protests. “You said I could be on Logan’s team this time.”

Hannah sends James her most serious look — the look of death.

“Like I want to be on your team, little squirt,” Hannah says, piercing James with her narrowed eyes. “Andrew, why do you always get to pick the teams anyway?”

She turns her attention to Andrew.

“I’m the oldest,” she continues. “I should pick, and I pick not to be on that little squirt’s team. He’s awful at this game.”

“I’ll be on his team,” I say. “I’ll be on James’s team.”

James is little. He can barely see over the grass. And he’s slow, and he talks a lot. Hannah’s right; he’s not really very good at this game. But I feel bad for him.

“No,” Andrew shouts. “I’ve picked the teams. It’s already done. Hannah’s with James. You’re with me, Logan.”

Everyone’s quiet.

“Fine,” Hannah puffs. “But this is the last time, Andrew, or I’m not playing anymore.”

Andrew smiles proudly. James looks dejected but satisfied enough.

“Okay,” Andrew says. “You guys count to sixty. Me and Logan are gonna go hide.”

Andrew grabs my hand and takes off. I’m jolted forward, but I don’t fall because Andrew has my hand and he’s pulling me along. We run for a few seconds, but then suddenly, he stops and catches me as I almost fly face-first toward the ground.

“And no peeking,” he yells back at Hannah and James. “And don’t let James count.”

“Nine, ten, eleven,” Hannah shouts.

Andrew looks at me and smiles before we take off again. I wonder why he smiles. He must have a really good hiding place in mind.

We run and we run. We run across the field, cutting a jagged line through the tall grass. And every once in a while we backtrack and take a different way. I know Andrew does this to throw Hannah off. I feel pieces of the green stalks slide across my bare arms and legs as we flatten paths in the grass. It tickles my skin.

“Andrew, where are we going?” I ask, finally.

“The barn,” he says.

My grandpa’s farm is full of hiding places. We’ve hid in that old barn a million times.

“They’ll find us there,” I say.

“No, they won’t.”

I keep running, since I’m still attached to his hand, until we get to the barn and squeeze through a little space in a cracked, wooden door that reads Black Angus Farms in old, faded letters across its front. I always imagine the letters being bright and pretty — the way they must have been a long, long time ago.

It’s musty inside the barn — dusty and full of big, sticky cobwebs. It looks like what I think an old dungeon would look like. I’d never be caught dead in here alone.

“Come on,” Andrew says, pulling me along.

He runs to the other end of the barn and ducks his head when he gets to an old cattle chute.

“Watch your head,” he calls back at me.

I duck my head under the wood and metal and let him pull me through.

We stop at the little, wooden slats that climb the wall to the hayloft.

“Up here.” He reaches for a slat high above his head.

“Andrew, they’ll find us up there. It’s the first place they’ll look.”

“No, they won’t,” he says.

My shoulders slump, but after a second, I follow him up the ladder. And no sooner do I get a couple rungs off the barn floor, it starts raining dust and hay.