Fly Away
Prologue
She is in a restroom stall, slumped over, with tears drying on her cheeks, smearing the mascara she applied so carefully only a few hours ago. You can see instantly that she doesn’t belong here, and yet here she is.
Grief is a sneaky thing, always coming and going like some guest you didn’t invite and can’t turn away. She wants this grief, although she’d never admit it. Lately, it’s the only thing that feels real. She finds herself thinking about her best friend on purpose even now, all this time later, because she wants to cry. She is like a child picking at a scab, unable to stop herself even though she knows it will hurt.
She has tried to go on alone. Really tried. She is trying still, in her way, but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.
Once—a long time ago—she walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane all alone, on the worst night of her life, and she found a kindred spirit.
That was our beginning. More than thirty years ago.
TullyandKate. You and me against the world. Best friends forever.
But stories end, don’t they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way to go on.
I need to let go. Say goodbye with a smile.
It won’t be easy.
She doesn’t know yet what she has set in motion. In moments, everything will change.
One
September 2, 2010
10:14 P.M.
She felt a little woozy. It was nice, like being wrapped in a warm-from-the-dryer blanket. But when she came to, and saw where she was, it wasn’t so nice.
She was sitting in a restroom stall, slumped over, with tears drying on her cheeks. How long had she been here? She got slowly to her feet and left the bathroom, pushing her way through the theater’s crowded lobby, ignoring the judgmental looks cast her way by the beautiful people drinking champagne beneath a glittering nineteenth century chandelier. The movie must be over.
Outside, she kicked her ridiculous patent leather pumps into the shadows. In her expensive black nylons, she walked in the spitting rain down the dirty Seattle sidewalk toward home. It was only ten blocks or so. She could make it, and she’d never find a cab this time of night anyway.
As she approached Virginia Street, a bright pink MARTINI BAR sign caught her attention. A few people were clustered together outside the front door, smoking and talking beneath a protective overhang.
Even as she vowed to pass by, she found herself turning, reaching for the door, going inside. She slipped into the dark, crowded interior and headed straight for the long mahogany bar.
“What can I get for you?” asked a thin, artsy-looking man with hair the color of a tangerine and more hardware on his face than Sears carried in the nuts-and-bolts aisle.
“Tequila straight shot,” she said.
She drank the first shot and ordered another. The loud music comforted her. She drank the straight shot and swayed to the beat. All around her people were talking and laughing. It felt a little like she was a part of all that activity.
A man in an expensive Italian suit sidled up beside her. He was tall and obviously fit, with blond hair that had been carefully cut and styled. Banker, probably, or corporate lawyer. Too young for her, of course. He couldn’t be much past thirty-five. How long was he there, trolling for a date, looking for the best-looking woman in the room? One drink, two?
Finally, he turned to her. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew who she was, and that small recognition seduced her. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t know. Can you?” Was she slurring her words? That wasn’t good. And she couldn’t think clearly.
His gaze moved from her face, down to her breasts, and then back to her face. It was a look that stripped past any pretense. “I’d say a drink at the very least.”
“I don’t usually pick up strangers,” she lied. Lately, there were only strangers in her life. Everyone else, everyone who mattered, had forgotten about her. She could really feel that Xanax kicking in now, or was it the tequila?
He touched her chin, a jawline caress that made her shiver. There was a boldness in touching her; no one did that anymore. “I’m Troy,” he said.
She looked up into his blue eyes and felt the weight of her loneliness. When was the last time a man had wanted her?
“I’m Tully Hart,” she said.
“I know.”
He kissed her. He tasted sweet, of some kind of liquor, and of cigarettes. Or maybe pot. She wanted to lose herself in pure physical sensation, to dissolve like a bit of candy.
She wanted to forget everything that had gone wrong with her life, and how it was that she’d ended up in a place like this, alone in a sea of strangers.
“Kiss me again,” she said, hating the pathetic pleading she heard in her voice. It was how she’d sounded as a child, back when she’d been a little girl with her nose pressed to the window, waiting for her mother to return. What’s wrong with me? that little girl had asked anyone who would listen, but there had never been an answer. Tully reached out for him, pulling him close, but even as he kissed her and pressed his body into hers, she felt herself starting to cry, and when her tears started, there was no way to hold them back.
September 3, 2010
2:01 A.M.
Tully was the last person to leave the bar. The doors banged shut behind her; the neon sign hissed and clicked off. It was past two now; the Seattle streets were empty. Hushed.
As she made her way down the slick sidewalk, she was unsteady. A man had kissed her—a stranger—and she’d started to cry.
Pathetic. No wonder he’d backed away.
Rain pelted her, almost overwhelmed her. She thought about stopping, tilting her head back, and drinking it in until she drowned.
That wouldn’t be so bad.
It seemed to take hours to get home. At her condominium building, she pushed past the doorman without making eye contact.
In the elevator, she saw herself in the wall of mirrors.
Oh, God.
She looked terrible. Her auburn hair—in need of coloring—was a bird’s nest, and mascara ran like war paint down her cheeks.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out into the hallway. Her balance was so off it took forever to get to her door, and four tries to get her key into the lock. By the time she opened the door, she was dizzy and her headache had come back.
Somewhere between the dining room and the living room, she banged into a side table and almost fell. Only a last-minute Hail Mary grab for the sofa saved her. She sank onto the thick, down-filled white cushion with a sigh. The table in front of her was piled high with mail. Bills and magazines.
She slumped back and closed her eyes, thinking what a mess her life had become.
“Damn you, Katie Ryan,” she whispered to the best friend who wasn’t there. This loneliness was unbearable. But her best friend was gone. Dead. That was what had started all of it. Losing Kate. How pitiful was that? Tully had begun to plummet at her best friend’s death and she hadn’t been able to pull out of the dive. “I need you.” Then she screamed it: “I need you!”
Silence.
When she opened her eyes again, she stared, bleary-eyed, at the pile of mail on her coffee table. Junk mail, mostly; catalogs and magazines she didn’t bother to read anymore. She started to look away, but a picture snagged her attention.
She frowned and leaned forward, pushing the mail aside to reveal a Star magazine that lay beneath the pile. There was a small photograph of her face in the upper right corner. Not a good picture, either. Not one to be proud of. Beneath it was written a single, terrible word.
Addict.
She grabbed the magazine in unsteady hands, opened it. Pages fanned one past another until there it was: her picture again.
It was a small story; not even a full page.
THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE RUMORS
Aging isn’t easy for any woman in the public eye, but it may be proving especially difficult for Tully Hart, the ex-star of the once-phenom talk show The Girlfriend Hour. Ms. Hart’s goddaughter, Marah Ryan, contacted Star exclusively. Ms. Ryan, 20, confirms that the fifty-year-old Hart has been struggling lately with demons that she’s had all her life. In recent months, Hart has “gained an alarming amount of weight” and been abusing drugs and alcohol, according to Ms. Ryan …
“Oh, my God…”
Marah.
The betrayal hurt so badly she couldn’t breathe. She read the rest of the story and then let the magazine fall from her hands.
The pain she’d been holding at bay for months, years, roared to life, sucking her into the bleakest, loneliest place she’d ever been. For the first time, she couldn’t even imagine crawling out of this pit.
She staggered to her feet, her vision blurred by tears, and reached for her car keys.
She couldn’t live like this anymore.
Two
September 3, 2010
4:16 A.M.
Where am I?
What happened?
I take shallow breaths and try to move, but I can’t make my body work, not my fingers or my hands.
I open my eyes at last. They feel gritty. My throat is so dry I can’t swallow.
It is dark.
There is someone in here with me. Or something. It makes a banging sound, hammers falling on steel. The vibrations rattle up my spine, lodge in my teeth, give me a headache.
The sound—crunching, grinding metal—is everywhere; outside of me, in the air, beside me, inside of me.
Bang-scrape, bang-scrape.
Pain.
I feel it all at once.
Excruciating, exquisite. Once I am aware of it, of feeling it, there’s nothing else.
* * *
Pain wakens me: a searing, gnawing agony in my head, a throbbing in my arm. Something inside me is definitely broken. I try to move, but it hurts so much I pass out. When I wake up, I try again, breathing hard, air rattling in my lungs. I can smell my own blood, feel it running down my neck.
Help me, I try to say, but the darkness swallows my feeble intent.
OPENYOUREYES.
I hear the command, a voice, and relief overwhelms me. I am not alone.
OPENYOUREYES.
I can’t. Nothing works.
SHESALIVE.
More words, yelled this time.
LIESTILL.
The darkness shifts around me, changes, and pain explodes again. A noise—part buzz saw on cedar, part child screaming—is all around me. In my darkness, light sparks like fireflies and something about that image makes me sad. And tired.
ONETWOTHREELIFT.
I feel myself being pulled, lifted by cold hands I can’t see. I scream in pain, but the sound is swallowed instantly, or maybe it’s only in my head.
Where am I?
I hit something hard and cry out.
ITSOKAY.
I am dying.
It comes to me suddenly, grabs the breath from my lungs.
I am dying.
September 3, 2010
4:39 A.M.
Johnny Ryan woke, thinking, Something’s wrong. He sat upright and looked around.
There was nothing to see, nothing out of place.
He was in his home office, on Bainbridge Island. Once again, he’d fallen asleep working. The curse of the working-from-home single parent. There weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, so he stole hours from the night.