“Of course. We’ll be right back,” Tallie said to Joel, loving how good it would feel to walk away from him with another man. Joel took a seat in one of the empty chairs lining that section of the hallway and pulled out his phone. Tallie and Emmett walked around the corner, where they were alone.
“I’m so sorry. You’ve been so kind to me. This is my fault Joel is here, and I was going to tell you everything, I swear. I was just about to tell you when you saw him,” Emmett said. He looked away from her and back again, up at the ceiling, down at the floor. As if he were offstage, too nervous to step out. Was he crying? Tallie’s brain swirled.
“Emmett, I don’t understand. Slow down. I don’t understand anything you’re saying. How in the world is it your fault Joel is here? Trust me, this isn’t your fault. What do you mean? Are you feeling okay?” she asked. Was he having another episode? He really ought to look into medication, and she’d tell him that as soon as they got through this part. So much was happening that it was probably shorting him out, sending him into overdrive. It was almost sending her into overdrive, too. Her stomach wobbled like gelatin.
“You took my letters, so I talked to Joel. It was a messed-up thing to do, and I’m sorry,” he said.
“Your letters?” Tallie said, searching her mind like she’d searched his pockets on Thursday night. “Okay…right. I…yes…I looked at your letters. I should’ve said something…Uh, what do you mean you talked to Joel? Talked to Joel how? About what?”
Emmett had talked to Joel? Emmett had talked to Joel. The sentence was a cipher, impossible to decode.
Joel rounded the corner wagging his finger at them.
“I knew I recognized you, man. You’re Rye Kipling. From Bloom. I followed all that shit you went through some years back. The Southeastern Kentucky News said you were missing. Why’d she say your name was Emmett? Who’s Emmett?” Joel asked, lifting his chin.
His words vaporized, caught in her throat. And now it was Tallie who felt on fire.
RYE
Ryland Miller Kipling was born in 1987 in Bloom, Kentucky, an hour south of Clementine. When he was twenty-three, Rye married Eleanor Christina Bloom in the spring. That same year, Christmas Day, they welcomed their daughter, Briar Anna Kipling, into the world. Briar Anna’s hair held the same red-gold-blond as Rye’s, and their daughter had Eleanor Christina’s brown eyes and Cupid’s bow. Rye worked long day shifts that stretched into nights at the restaurant on Lake Bloom in order to pay for their home, the Honeybee House.
When they met, Eleanor told him to call her Christine because she was an actress, and Christine Bloom sounded more old-Hollywood to her. “Like someone they would name a perfume after,” she’d said. And once Briar Anna began to talk and say her name—she tried as hard as she could, but no matter what, it came out of her mouth as Brenna. So they called her that.
Christine was a bit manic and unpredictable, but Rye had found it alluring, never a problem in the first year of their relationship. He had his own mood swings and weirdness, too, like everyone else. But Christine’s mental issues spun out after Brenna’s birth. Days turned into full weeks when she wouldn’t leave their bedroom. Depressive episodes bled into manic episodes that bled back into depressive episodes that spread into their bedroom again, poured across their hallway floor into the living room and kitchen, onto their lawn. Oil spills slicking everything in their life. She’d been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder after having Brenna. Christine told him she’d always felt like she had mental issues, but her parents ignored her, told her she’d grow out of them. The Blooms didn’t want mental illness staining their perfect family. They suggested that maybe it was Rye who was making her feel so bad.
Rye accompanied her to the psychiatric appointments, leaving Brenna with his parents for the afternoon. He would go and sit next to Christine on the couch if she wanted or he would stay in the waiting room when she asked, staring at his phone or flipping through new and old issues of Field & Stream, Time, People. Christine would emerge from her dialectical behavior therapy gauzy and backlit with hope. And on they’d go, back home to try again. She’d take her medication and it’d work; she’d hate the numbness and stop. The pattern repeated and repeated, a revolving door of progress and setbacks.
There were strings of days when it seemed as if they could get through this. Together. When necessary, Rye would cook every meal or bring food home from the restaurant, clean the house, take care of Brenna when Christine couldn’t. And there were times when Christine, clear and happy, was bright-eyed and attentive to Brenna, asking for help when she needed it. If he was the easy heart, she was the wild one—a big, wild heart with big, wild dreams of being a famous actress and playwright. Christine started working at the local theater again.