When the doctor came into the ER with his clipboard, I couldn’t even remember how Zane had gotten me there.

The doctor pulled up an X-ray of my hand on the monitor, and I stared at it, bleary and shattered, from the edge of the paper-covered exam table, the smell of rubbing alcohol stinging my nostrils. “Well, it’s not broken. Pretty bruised, but not broken. Ice it, take some ibuprofen, and you should be able to use it in a few days.”

But Zane shook her head. “Naw, Doc. It looks broken to me. He probably needs at least a couple weeks to rest up that hand. I’m thinkin’ severe exhaustion and dehydration too. Maybe some other stuff you just missed.” She nodded at his clipboard. “We’ll need a medical report. Something to show his record label since he’ll have to cancel some tour dates.”

The doctor looked at her and they shared some sort of silent exchange. He glanced at me, and he must have seen the wear on my face, the despair behind my eyes. The crevasse across my heart.

“You know, you’re right. There does seem to be a break there, along the proximal phalanx. Funny I didn’t notice it before. I’ll uh, write something up.”

Zane packed my things. She made all the necessary phone calls and had all the needed conversations. My intoxication moved into a hangover, and then into grieving as I processed what I’d lost. And I vowed to feel every fucking second of it.

The plane ride was torture. Just me and my thoughts and a hangover. I couldn’t even put in my earbuds. Music chipped away at my soul, every song about her. Every lyric haunted me. The smell of coffee on the drink cart made tears squeeze from my eyes.

When I landed, Ernie called. I answered without saying hello.

He blew a deep breath into the phone. “Girlfriends on tour…”

I laughed a little, despite myself. “It must be hard to always be right.”

“This is one time, my friend, that I really wish I had been wrong.”

The ride from Duluth to Ely with Dad was the worst of all. Long and quiet, tense with judgment. When he pulled into the garage, he put the truck in park, but he didn’t get out. He held the wheel and looked over at my bandaged hand, his eyes sad.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said with my forehead in my palm.

He looked at me, the pity on his face. And something else.

Loss.

He lost a daughter. I’d lost her for everyone.

My guilt and grief tripled, crushing me. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone. How would I face Mom? Sloan was a member of this family now, and I’d ripped her from their lives. I put a hand over my face and felt the wave of nausea and sorrow surge again.

Once I got inside, Sloan was everywhere and nowhere to be seen. I felt her in every inch of that house. She was grocery lists in the kitchen, tiny creamers in the fridge, and a stray blond hair on the couch. She was an abandoned shampoo in the shower and polish on Mom’s nails.

The sadness in Mom’s eyes.

The absence swallowed me whole and left nothing behind but emerging chords and painful lyrics that bubbled from a crack in my heart so deep it was fathomless.

I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t be anywhere. So I went where I would be nowhere.

I slipped into the mouth of the wilderness with my canoe and my guitar and I abandoned the world, that world without Sloan, behind me.

Chapter 41

Sloan

? It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) | The 1975

Three months later

Do you want me to meet you at the cemetery, Sloan?”

Kristen was worried about me.

“No, I’m not going today,” I said, sitting back to take one final look at the painting that had been drying for the last two weeks on my easel.

I gave it a soft smile. It was beautiful. It looked like a photograph.

It was the fifth one I’d finished over the last three months. Another addition to the collection in the gallery that had picked me up. I’d completed the commission I’d started in Ely, the little girl on the swing, and shipped that two months ago. Three more had sold, and this one in front of me was leaving today.

“You’re not going to the cemetery?” she asked. “It’s the anniversary of the day you met Brandon.”

I picked up the remote to turn off my crime show. “How do you remember this stuff?”

“I have reminders in my phone.”

I laughed, collecting my brushes. “Are you serious?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m serious. I have to watch you like a hawk.”

I slid off my stool. “I’m fine. I’m just finishing up some work before the thing.”

“Are you sure you’re up for this? I mean the dude’s hot as fuck, but we can skip this double date. It’s not a big deal.”

Josh’s cousin Adrian was in town from St. Paul. He was a lawyer, single, and, according to Kristen, the perfect rebound for me. He lived out of state and was only here for a few days. I think she thought it would be distracting or boost my shattered self-esteem or something.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do with him,” I said. “I don’t even kiss on the first date.”

“You need someone prescreened to tell you you’re pretty and hand you free drinks. And he’s got all the things you like. He’s tall, he’s bearded, and he’s from Minnesota.”